Elie Honig Pillories ‘Ridiculous’ Marjorie Taylor Greene for Wild Claim That Biden Tried to Kill Trump
CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig had some pointed words for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who claimed President Joe Biden was “planning to assassinate” Donald Trump.
After his criminal trial in New York adjourned for the day, Trump claimed on Truth Social that when the FBI executed a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago residence in August 2022, agents were authorized to use deadly force. Greene highlighted the post and stated, “I made sure that he knew. The Biden DOJ and FBI were planning to assassinate Pres Trump and gave the green light.”
Kaitlan Collins dismissed the allegation on Tuesday’s edition of The Source.
“The FBI to put out a statement today saying this is standard procedure, that the FBI always has lethal force,” she said. “They showed up to Mar-a-Lago knowing Donald Trump wasn’t there. They didn’t show up at six o’clock in the morning. They didn’t come with the lights flashing and the guns blazing. It was a very chill scene for a scene where they were showing up to find classified documents.”
Honig, a former federal prosecutor, scoffed at the charge and explained that the Mar-a-Lago search warrant was basically standard fare:
This is ridiculous. There’s nothing to see here. And I looked even at what specifically they’re talking about. If you look at the search warrant documentation, there is a standard form. It’s page 11 of the sheet and it gives the FBI and the generally-acknowledged standard for use of lethal force. It says essentially, you can only fire your weapon, you can only use lethal force if there is imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury to somebody else. If you see somebody else about to shoot somebody, about the stab somebody. It is, if anything, a very tight limit on when you can use lethal force. almost never.
It appears in every search warrant, every operational plan, every ops plan. There is nothing to this. The notion that there’s something dangerous, wrong, I’m hesitant to even dignify the assassination talk by even mentioning it, but completely out of line.
In addition to the state charges in New York, Trump is under indictment in federal court in Florida for what prosecutors say was the former president’s retention of classified documents after he left office. Trump also faces criminal charges in two other cases stemming from his attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. He has pleaded not guilty to the 88 counts he faces.
Watch above via CNN.
