The Los Angeles Times has written an article sharply criticizing Rep. Mike Garcia for saying that the Biden administration is “acting more like a Third Reich than they are the United States” by executing a raid on former President Donald Trump.
The Times‘ headline reads: “California congressman becomes latest Republican to invoke Nazis to defend Trump, bash Biden.” The use of the phrase “invoke Nazis” suggests that Garcia cited or relied upon the Nazis, associating him with them.
In the body of the article, written by Melanie Mason, Garcia’s remark is presented as if it offended Jewish people. His opponent, Democrat Christy Smith, is quoted with accusing Garcia of a “horrific trivialization of the Holocaust.”
The article does not discuss the substance of the criticism of the Trump raid — that it violated the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and its ban on unreasonable searches and seizures, a protection against the behavior of totalitarian regimes.
The Department of Justice has refused to allow Trump a request to appoint a “special master” to ensure none of the materials seized in the raid violates attorney-client privilege — another constitutional right, guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment.
Rather, the article simply said that “GOP politicians denounced the actions by the Department of Justice as those of a banana republic or other oppressive regime,” before noting that anti-Trump Republicans echoed Smith’s criticism of Garcia’s remark.
On Monday, Trump filed a legal challenge to the raid, asserting his constitutional rights. The motion argued, in part: “Law enforcement is a shield that protects Americans. It cannot be used as a weapon for political purposes.”
President Joe Biden has frequently “invoked Nazis” to attack Trump, including by claiming (falsely) that Trump praised neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia, after a riot in 2017, when in fact then-president Trump said that the neo-Nazis should be “condemned totally.”
Rep. Garcia is running to defend a seat that he first won in 2020 in a special election against Smith, whom he also defeated in the general election. He is currently running for re-election in the newly-redrawn 27th district, north of Los Angeles.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.