US Attorney-General Merrick Garland dismissed former President Donald Trump’s claims that the FBI was authorized to shoot him during the 2022 search of his Florida club as false and extremely dangerous.
Garland clarified that Trump and his allies were referencing a standard operations plan that restricts the use of lethal force when executing search warrants. The FBI conducted the search at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in August 2022 to retrieve classified material retained by him after leaving office, which led to one of the four criminal prosecutions he currently faces.
Prior to the search, the FBI issued a policy statement, made public this week, authorizing the use of deadly force only if an officer or another person was under immediate threat. Notably, Trump was not present during the search.
Trump's unfounded claims of the FBI being authorized to attempt an assassination were circulated in fundraising messages sent by his campaign, which Garland condemned as false and dangerous. He emphasized that such use-of-force policies are routine and were also in effect during consensual searches of President Biden’s homes in a separate classified documents investigation.
Garland further emphasized the routine nature of these policies during a press conference announcing a lawsuit against the concert promoter Live Nation. The unsealed use-of-force document is among hundreds of pages of records in the criminal case accusing Trump of unlawfully retaining sensitive government documents after leaving the White House in 2021. Trump has pleaded not guilty, and his defense team is seeking to suppress the evidence seized during the search, arguing that it violated his constitutional rights.
Prosecutors revealed that FBI agents seized about 100 classified documents from Mar-a-Lago during the court-authorized search, after Trump resisted government demands to return the documents.
