In light of the unprecedented FBI raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, Senator Rand Paul has called for the repeal of the Espionage Act that he claims has been abused since Word War I. Paul went on to say that the act is “an egregious affront to the 1st Amendment.” Many Americans are enraged by the raid on Trump’s home, viewing it as a gross overreach by a federal agency.
FOX NEWS: Sen. Rand Paul calls for repeal of the Espionage Act following FBI raid of Trump’s Florida estate
Adam Sabes; August 14, 2022
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is calling for a repeal of the Espionage Act after the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided former President Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.
Paul made the announcement in a tweet on Saturday night.
“The espionage act was abused from the beginning to jail dissenters of WWI. It is long past time to repeal this egregious affront to the 1st Amendment,” Paul tweeted.
Agents from the FBI executed a search warrant on the Florida estate of Trump on Monday and seized items, which included 11 sets of material that were listed as classified, as well as some that were marked as top secret.
In a post on Truth Social after the warrant was publicly released on Friday, Trump said that the documents taken by federal agents were “all declassified.”
“Number one, it was all declassified. Number two, they didn’t need to ‘seize’ anything. They could have had it anytime they wanted without playing politics and breaking into Mar-a-Lago. It was in secured storage, with an additional lock put on as per their request…” Trump said. “They could have had it anytime they wanted—and that includes LONG ago. ALL THEY HAD TO DO WAS ASK. The bigger problem is, what are they going to do with the 33 million pages of documents, many of which are classified, that President Obama took to Chicago?”
The National Archives and Records Administration said in a press release that former President Obama isn’t in control over presidential records from his administration.
Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images