‘You Have Martyred Donald Trump’: CNN Guest Rips Mar-A-Lago Raid

The Monday raid on Mar-a-Lago carried out by the Federal Bureau of Investigation could end up making former President Donald Trump a “martyr,” a CNN guest said Monday night.

“If you don’t convict Donald Trump now, you have martyred Donald Trump,” Scott Jennings, a former aide in the George W. Bush administration, told “Anderson Cooper 360” guest host John Berman. “You have basically guaranteed him the nomination for the Republican Party in 2024, and you’re going to give him a big weapon to go after Joe Biden or, you know, whatever Democrat emerges in 2024 if they don’t convict him.”

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“I mean, they’ve raided the guy’s house,” Jennings continued. “One person told me there’s no going back now. This is total — you know, there’s no reconciliation here when you raid somebody’s house. And so because of the political implications of that, I’m curious to know about what did the White House know?”

The FBI raid involved classified documents allegedly taken from the White House by Trump when he left office in January 2021, according to The New York Times. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and many Republicanscriticized the raid as an “abuse of power.”

“I want to know if Joe Biden knew,” Jennings said. “And frankly, given the implications of this, former president, probable candidate, I think the current president ought to say whether he knew about it in advance from the attorney general because I think a lot of Americans — a lot of Republicans are going to want to know the answer to that question.”

“We did not have notice of the reported action and would refer you to the Justice Department for any additional information,” a White House official told the Daily Caller News Foundation.