The FBI has issued a rare statement after former President Donald Trump and several GOP lawmakers spread false claims suggesting President Joe Biden authorized his assassination during the search of his Mar-a-Lago resort in 2022.
In a fundraising email responding to right-wing media reports that offered a distorted reading of a newly-unsealed court filing in Trump’s classified documents case, Trump falsely claimed Biden was “locked & loaded ready to take me out.”
In a separate post on his Truth Social platform Tuesday evening, Trump further said he was “shown Reports” that Biden’s DOJ “AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE” in their search of the property for classified documents.
[…]“The FBI followed standard protocol in this search as we do for all search warrants, which includes a standard policy statement limiting the use of deadly force,” the FBI said in a statement Tuesday evening. “No one ordered additional steps to be taken and there was no departure from the norm in this matter.”
Multiple former FBI and DOJ officials also confirmed the standard nature of the inclusion of the deadly force policy.
“Anytime the fbi takes an adversarial action like executing a search warrant, there is a deadly force policy,” former DOJ official and ABC News contributor Sarah Isgur tweeted. “If there is danger to you or public and there’s no alternatives, you are authorized to use deadly force. This is standard policy.”