Michael Steele, MSNBC host and former chair of the Republican National Committee, urged the justice system to put Donald Trump's "behind in jail," on Sunday after the ex-president attacked the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on social media last week.
Trump was indicted last summer for allegedly mishandling classified documents upon leaving the White House in 2021 and obstructing the government's efforts to retrieve them after the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, in August 2022. The former president, who is also the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, has pleaded not guilty to all charges and claimed the case is politically motivated against him.
On Tuesday, Trump posted on his social media site Truth Social that the DOJ "AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE," referring to the language in the Mar-a-Lago search warrant that is standard in all federal search warrants.
The former president also recently sent out an email to his supporters accusing his political rival, President Joe Biden, of being "ready to take me out." The email read: "BIDEN'S DOJ WAS AUTHORIZED TO SHOOT ME! ... You know they're just itching to do the unthinkable ... Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger."
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland called Trump's allegations "false" and "extremely dangerous," adding that the language in the warrant is a "Justice Department standard policy limiting the use of force...in fact, it was even used in the consensual search of President Biden's home."
In January 2023, the FBI found classified materials in Biden's Wilmington, Delaware, home. Classified documents were also found in his Penn Biden Center office in Washington, D.C., in November 2022. The DOJ conducted an investigation and decided not to criminally charge Biden.
Glenn Kirschner, an ex-federal prosecutor, told MSNBC's The Weekend hosts on Sunday that Trump and his family were not even in Florida at the time that the search warrant was executed, which was specifically "coordinated" to happen that way by the FBI.
Kirschner, a former assistant U.S. attorney who served in Washington, D.C. and frequent Trump critic, pointed out that Trump is currently out of bail.
"There is a vehicle in the law designed to address this. When a pre-trial defendant on release, he's on release still technically in four cases, is a danger to even a single person in the community, the law says he is to be detained pending trial," he said. "As we were just discussing, this is another failure of the equal application of the law to Donald Trump and we are paying the price dearly for it. "
Steele then chimed in: "Well, if we believe he's not above the law, then put his behind in jail. And that's how that would work for everybody else."
Newsweek reached out to Trump's spokesperson via email for comment and MSNBC via email for comment from Steele.
Kirschner is not convinced that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over Trump's classified documents case, will punish Trump for distorting the language of the search warrant and attacking the DOJ.
"Judge Cannon will pay no attention because she's obviously not going to do anything, including, I don't believe, modify his conditions of release because of the really violence-inducing rhetoric that he just engaged in," he told Newsweek via telephone on Sunday.
Cannon, who was appointed by Trump, has been criticized for her pre-trial decisions, which some view as too Trump-friendly. Earlier this month, Cannon postponed Trump's trial indefinitely in order to address issues concerning classified evidence that need to be resolved ahead of the case being presented before a jury.
Update: 5/26/2024, 5:05 p.m.: This article was updated with additional information.
Update: 5/26/2024, 6 p.m.: This article was updated with comment from Kirschner and additional information.
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