In recent statements about the raid carried out by the FBI against President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) called the entire incident an “unprecedented action that needs to be supported by unprecedented justification.”
While speaking this past Sunday on “Face the Nation,” from CBS, Fitzpatrick, who formerly worked as an agent for the FBI, stated that it is incumbent upon members of Congress from both sides of the aisle to not get caught up in the hype and rush to conclusions without the proper evidence.
Fitzpatrick also claimed that those within the Department of Justice should officially release the affidavit of probable cause as a means to clarify the torrent of conflicting information flooding into the public eye from the press and the actual documents themselves.
“It was an unprecedented action that needs to be supported by unprecedented justification,” expressed Fitzpatrick in the wake of the raid. “Part A, was it unprecedented action? Yes, we know that. This has never happened before in our country’s history. To the second question, was there unprecedented justification? That’s remains an open question and we know exactly where to look, the affidavit of probable cause, the one document that remains under seal.”
“Because we don’t have that information, I’ve encouraged all my colleagues on the left and the right to reserve judgment and not get ahead of yourself because we don’t know what that document contains,” he stated. “It’s going to answer a lot of questions. When we had the press conference on Friday with my fellow [House] Intelligence Committee members, I telegraphed to the press then, I said the documents you’ll see unsealed [Friday], which was the warrant, the rider to the warrant and the property receipt, are not going to shed a whole lot of light beyond the statutes that were being investigated.”
Fitzpatrick did highlight the idea that while the mishandling of classified information did violate federal law, it was still entirely unclear if that is actually what happened because of various conflicting reports floating around from the Biden administration and the press.
“The problem is the administration is disputing a lot of what’s being publicly reported, so the affidavit will answer that question,” he stated. “It will be able to tell us who is providing misinformation– is it the prior administration or the current administration? We need to get that clarified.”
“At the very least if [the DOJ] don’t want to unseal it for public consumption, they can certainly bring it into the [Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility] to bring it to our House Intelligence Committee members,” concluded Fitzpatrick.