FBI Director Christopher Wray has claimed “deplorable and dangerous” threats have been made against the agency following the raid on former President Donald Trump’s private residence in Florida.
In response to various threats circulating online, primarily on Gab, Wray told the Associated Press that “violence against law enforcement is not the answer.”
“I’m always concerned about threats to law enforcement,” Wray said. “Violence against law enforcement is not the answer, no matter who you’re upset with.”
Wray declined to comment on Monday’s raid at the former president’s private residence of Mar-a-Lago, where reportedly 30 agents raided his private office as well as former first lady Melania Trump’s wardrobe. Per the New York Post:
FBI agents scoured Melania Trump’s wardrobe and spent several hours combing through Donald Trump’s private office, breaking open his safe and rifling through drawers when they raided the former First Family’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida Monday morning.
The Post has learned that the search warrant used by the FBI to enter the palatial Palm Beach property focused solely on presidential records and evidence of classified information being stored there.
A source close to the former president expressed concern that FBI agents or DOJ lawyers conducting the search could have “planted stuff” because they would not allow Trump’s attorneys inside the 128-room building to observe the operation, which lasted more than nine hours.
Nearly all Republicans and the former president’s supporters denounced the raid as a blatant power grab by the Biden Justice Department, likening it to third-world dictator tactics. Biden’s supporters and the left, in general, have all denounced those responses as dangerous rhetoric that could lead to violence. In an op-ed for Vanity Fair, Bess Levin argued that hot takes about how the Biden administration is potentially using law enforcement agencies to destroy a political opponent will lead to another January 6.
“It’s not that hard to imagine where this type of rhetoric could lead people, because something similar happened, oh, just 19 months ago, on January 6, 2021. But apparently that’s of little concern to Team Trump,” argued Levin.
Breitbart News assembled various clips of the corporate news media arguing that conflated criticisms of the raid with conspiracy theories.