Fox News Publishes Op-Ed Defending FBI Raid on Trump’s Florida Estate: ‘Let The Justice System Run its Course’
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Bradley P. Moss published an op-ed on FoxNews.com Monday arguing that the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago was in fact “justified.”
The op-ed raised a few eyebrows around the media world as the article running on Fox Digital certainly offered a different voice to the website. Adding to the diversity of opinion, Harvard Law Prof. Laurence H. Tribe also co-wrote an op-ed on FoxNews.com Monday.
Moss, a prominent national security attorney, noted that since the raid “the political world has been aflame with hyperbole, accusations, innuendo, and hysteria.”
Many commentators on the right have echoed former President Donald Trump’s heated rhetoric on the topic and called the raid a personal attack on their basic rights.
Moss took these types of criticisms head on, writing, “And the former president and his allies, as is their custom, have sought to flood the zone with political justifications and haphazard legal explanations to deflect from his conduct.”
“The truth needs to be set forth plainly and simply, and so let’s get down to brass tacks here. What happened on August 8, 2022, was not tyranny. It was not political persecution. It was not a minor dust up over bureaucratic processes blown out of proportion. It was the criminal justice system operating just like it does with any other private citizen on any other given day ending in a ‘y,’” Moss charged.
Moss went on to argue that after noon on Jan 20th, 2021, Trump was a private citizen and therefore subject to the same laws as every other American.
He added that while citizen Trump now has the same duty as every other citizen to follow the laws of the land, Trump also had a “particular legal obligation as the former president to properly turn over presidential records to the National Archives and Records Administration. That is mandated by the Presidential Records Act because those records are the property of the United States. They are not Trump’s personal property.”
Moss goes on to note that any “competent” White House would have easily complied with the Presidential Records Act and simply archived the contents of the executive office of the president and turned everything over.
Of course, this did not happen and we now know that Trump took some 25 boxes, by Moss’s count, home with him to Florida. Moss then argues that the issue at hand is not that classified materials accidentally ended up among the documents in those boxes, but instead “buried into those boxes were countless properly marked classified documents.”
“Those documents lacked any markings indicating that Trump had ever declassified them. No actual substantiated evidence indicates Mr. Trump ever declassified them. No one viewing those records would have any reason to view them as anything other than properly classified documents,” he then argues, shooting down an emerging narrative out of Trumpworld.
On Monday, in a statement, Trump declared “ALL documents have been previously declassified.”
Moss concluded, noting that FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago actually boils down to a very simple fact: “You cannot remove properly marked classified documents and place them in a location not authorized for retention of classified documents.”
“You cannot obstruct a federal investigation seeking to lawfully recover those documents. You cannot present false statements to federal investigators,” Moss added, noting, “Our jails are filled with people who have gone to jail for less.”
He concluded by arguing, “None of this means former President Trump will ultimately be indicted,” added though, “He very well might be.”
“If Trump is indicted, he will have access to the full criminal justice process and can make every declassification defense he wishes at that time in pre-trial motions,” Moss then argued, concluding, “Until that time, let the justice system run its course.”
