Monday, during an appearance on FNC’s “Jesse Watters Primetime” following news that the FBI had raided former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, FL for undisclosed reasons, George Washington University Law School professor and constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley questioned why Attorney General Merrick Garland would not have proceeded with a special counsel before green-lighting the raid.
According to Turley, the potential appearance of politicization would have warranted an impartial investigation, which could have been done with a special counsel.
“Well, it’s a breathtaking moment to have a raid like this on a former president and potentially the future opponent of the current president,” he said. “My first reaction beyond shock is that it is baffling how this raid would occur, but Merrick Garland decided not to appoint a special counsel. If there was evidence that supports a warrant, and apparently a federal judge found that evidence, why didn’t Merrick Garland ask for a special counsel to be appointed? You know, people like Archibald Cox and others are celebrated because we appointed a special counsel to look into Nixon. Why? It was because we wanted to assure the American people that an investigation would not be political, would not be influenced in that case by Nixon himself.”
“Now, here you have the past opponent of the current president and the expected future opponent,” Turley continued. “I can’t imagine how Attorney General Garland would look at that situation and not see an absolute necessity for a special counsel. And, instead, they did this raid on this — on the former president’s home. And it is going to trigger the anger that you have already seen. Now, we don’t know what these charges are. The assumption is that it is related to January 6. We have seen warrants being issued from a grand jury. I have expressed skepticism over the ability to charge the president on the evidence that we have seen thus far in that committee.”
“But, for me, there is a threshold question of who should be ordering these types of raids,” he added. “Merrick Garland has refused to appoint a special counsel in Hunter Biden. He apparently has not appointed a special counsel in this case thus far. I just can’t understand why.”
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