Florida Police Reportedly on Lookout for Armed Protesters at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago After FBI Raid
© Sputnik / Aleksey Bogdanovskiy
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New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman revealed on Monday, just hours before the Mar-a-Lago raid, that Trump had destroyed White House files by ripping them up and trying to flush them down the toilet. Axios published two photos of the attempts.
According to the UK’s Daily Mail, which cited “a Florida law enforcement source,” area police departments are preparing for armed pro-Donald Trump protesters to rally outside the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach. FBI agents reportedly “raided” the resort on Monday in search of documents illegally taken by the former president when he left office.
There were already protesters outside the resort not long after news broke about the FBI raid on Monday night, including some with homemade Trump 2024 signs and one who reportedly self-identified as a member of the far-right gang Proud Boys.
However, according to the source, Palm Beach police are bracing for armed demonstrators to converge on the town and have informed neighboring police departments to be on the lookout for armed motorists.
In the hours after news of the raid broke on Monday night, observers recorded a noticeable spike in tweets with the words “civil war” in them, reaching about 10 times the normal volume. In addition, many posted related things such as boasting about buying ammunition and calling on others to take up arms.
Driven by tweets like this: https://t.co/CFQ6lLN4wK
— Donie O'Sullivan (@donie) August 9, 2022
Fear-Driven Following
The calls echo rhetoric common on the far-right in recent years, where paramilitary groups have predicted a coming civil war in which the US government - often bizarrely characterized as socialist or communist - stops following the US Constitution and makes a grab for power, in particular by coming for people’s guns, which Americans own in staggering numbers, allowing unhindered immigration into the country, or banning Christian worship.
That fear has motivated conspiracy theories like Qanon, which casts Trump in the role of a savior of mankind, destined to do battle with a secretive cabal of Satan-worshipping, child sex-trafficking Democrats. More recently, it has absorbed anti-LGBTQ fearmongering in which transgender people are demonized as “groomers” of children, prompting violence and threats of violence.
Those forces converged on January 6, 2021, when Trump supporters ranging from far-right militia groups to Qanon believers and Proud Boys stormed the US Capitol, temporarily dispersing Congress in an attempt to block certification of the November 2020 election results, which Trump claimed had been won fraudulently by Biden. Their efforts failed and Biden was later sworn in under heavy guard, but the sentiment that Biden’s presidency is not legitimate and that he leads a conspiracy to keep Trump out of power has persisted on the right.
Raid Sought Missing Documents
The FBI and US Department of Justice have kept mum about the Monday raid, but sources close to Trump in Florida told CBS News that FBI agents carried away boxes and documents using a warrant issued under the Presidential Records Act. The US National Archives had already retrieved some 15 boxes of files from Mar-a-Lago earlier this year of White House documents Trump was supposed to surrender to them at the end of his presidency but had instead taken home, and a federal grand jury subpoenaed the remaining documents in May.
(FILES) In this file photo taken on December 24, 2017 a general view shows US President Donald J. Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida
© AFP 2023 / NICHOLAS KAMM
The president’s son, Eric Trump, told Fox News on Monday that the boxes of documents removed from the White House had been “press clippings” that The Donald is apparently known for keeping in large volume. He attempted to cast the raid as personally ordered by US President Joe Biden and aimed at blocking Trump from returning to power in the 2024 elections.
“They want to attack a guy who they view as his greatest threat, Biden's greatest threat,” Eric Trump told Fox’s Sean Hannity.
According to the White House, Biden was not briefed ahead of time on the FBI raid and learned it had occurred through social media.
It’s unclear if charges will be brought against the former president, or if he could face either jail time or permanent barring from holding office, all of which have been heavily speculated upon in the media.
