Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) thinks that the reported reason for the FBI raid of former President Donald Trump’s personal residence at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is “thin gruel,” his spokesman told Breitbart News, adding that he backs other Republican calls for an immediate investigation into Attorney General Merrick Garland on the matter.
The publicly reported reason for the raid, which Cornyn believes is “thin gruel,” is Trump duking it out with the National Archives over presidential records he supposedly took to Mar-a-Lago upon leaving the White House. The fact that the FBI raided his personal residence and broke into his safe—which was, according to his son Eric Trump, empty when agents opened it—is a significant escalation for a process fight over document sharing and preservation.
Cornyn’s spokesman, Drew Brandewie, told Breitbart News that the Texas Republican backs House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy’s announcement that Garland is under investigation for the matter.
McCarthy, the would-be House Speaker should Republicans retake the House majority in November’s midterm elections, announced on Monday night that Garland is under investigation and ordered him to preserve all documents related to this matter and clear his schedule to be prepared to testify imminently. He said:
I’ve seen enough. The Department of Justice has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization. When Republicans take back the House, we will conduct immediate oversight of this department, follow the facts, and leave no stone unturned. Attorney General Garland, preserve your documents and clear your calendar.
Cornyn’s position is significant because the Texas Republican is widely expected to make a play to succeed current Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell when the time comes that McConnell will leave. It is unclear when McConnell will leave his post atop Senate Republicans, but Cornyn joining other senators like Sens. John Barrasso (R-WY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC)—who are also possibly expected to make moves towards the leadership position when the day comes—and more in criticizing the FBI goes beyond typical rabble-rousing Republicans and represents a core distrust among most Republicans of the federal law enforcement agency. McConnell, for his part, has refused to weigh in on the FBI raid at this time, deflecting questions at a press conference earlier on Tuesday.
Cornyn’s move here is also significant because he is one of 20 Republican senators who voted to confirm Garland as Attorney General last year during the early days of President Joe Biden’s administration. As such, this represents a sign that Garland’s approval even among those who backed his confirmation is waning amid this and other high-profile politicization at the Department of Justice. Combined with a lack of justice for Democrats like Biden family members accused of corruption, and with the Department of Justice’s severe mishandling of a request from the National School Board Association (NSBA) to inaccurately label upset parents engaging at school board meetings as “domestic terrorists” last year, this latest incident threatens to spiral the Biden DOJ into a serious political scandal tailspin perhaps even worse than the scandal-ridden DOJ during former President Barack Obama’s tenure thanks to then-Attorney General Eric Holder’s mishandling of several major issues including most notably the Operation Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal.
With top Republicans already out there ripping the Biden administration for how this has been handled, though, it is very likely that after the midterms, assuming the GOP retakes one or both chambers of Congress, the outcome is very different from during the Obama years, when hard-charging Republicans seeking answers and accountability for the scandals then ran into resistance from leadership like then-Speaker John Boehner.