Marco Rubio warns feds view Republicans as ‘potential insurrectionists’
Marco Rubio.

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'That’s the next step in this playbook, sadly.'

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio continues to offer grim warnings about what this week’s FBI raid of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate means for Republicans.

On Tuesday night, Rubio suggested that the FBI’s action against Trump means that the feds see all Republicans as “potential insurrectionists.”

“The next step in this process is going to be that people who are supporters of Donald Trump or just conservatives complaining about this are going to begin to get harassed, are going to begin to get labeled as potential insurrectionists and are going to begin to get harassed by law enforcement. That’s the next step in this playbook, sadly,” Rubio said Tuesday night on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program.

“They want Donald Trump arrested. They want him charged right now. They wanted him charged months ago, years ago. They wanted him charged, and I’m telling you the next thing you’re going to see here, Sean, because it’s the playbook. And that is, they are now going to begin to say, ‘Oh these Trump supporters, these Republicans, they’re very upset. They’re saying very angry things. We think they might be a threat and we think they might be radical extremists. Let’s start arresting them,” Rubio contended.

As details have emerged from the FBI search of the Trump compound, which led to a full 18 boxes of materials being removed from the property, some Republicans have suggested the search was just a pretext. Rubio shares that view.

“I actually don’t think they went in looking for documents. I think that was probably their excuse that they found some (Barack) Obama donor judge to write, not even a judge, a magistrate, to write and give them the search warrant. I think they went in there looking to see whatever they could find. Their argument is, ‘Alright, we were here looking for documents. We didn’t find those but look what we did find.’ Who knows what happened while they were in there because the lawyers weren’t allowed to see it,” Rubio said, going on to suggest the FBI search was not even targeted to specific evidence.

“They can’t say they’re doing it because of Jan. 6. They thought this was a cute way to get around it and they could say, ‘Oh no, this has nothing to do with the Capitol stuff and the Jan. 6 Committee. This is because of the documents that he retained that he still has and that’s why we went in there. But we didn’t find that, but we found all these other things that we think are incriminating.’ They don’t know what they were going to find. That’s the point.”

Rubio is running for his third term in the Senate this year, a relevant fact given that his campaign and not his Senate office pushed the rush transcript of the Hannity hit to media overnight. Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is also running for re-election, has restricted his social media commentary on the search to his political Twitter account, rather than his official handle thus far.

However, Rubio has made the Trump incident much more central to his re-election messaging than DeSantis, who was in Rhode Island yesterday fundraising.

In the roughly 36 hours between the raid and this writing, Rubio released a number of Twitter videos offering similarly dire warnings.

A.G. Gancarski

A.G. Gancarski has been the Northeast Florida correspondent for Florida Politics since 2014. He writes for the New York Post and National Review also, with previous work in the American Conservative and Washington Times and a 15+ year run as a columnist in Folio Weekly. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter: @AGGancarski


7 comments

  • Joe Corsin

    August 10, 2022 at 9:13 am

    The GOP is a dangerous far right party. Declare this party a national security threat and eliminate the terrorist entitiy.

  • Tjb

    August 10, 2022 at 9:29 am

    Should The Baker Act be enforced for Rubio? It looks like he is becoming deeply paranoid and delusional.

  • Shelly

    August 10, 2022 at 9:32 am

    Really? strange since Obama used the IRS to go after Conservatives. Democrats are a cancer eating this country up. Claiming there is a pandemic while inviting every illegal and terrorist in the world into our country. Yeah, the Dems are not a bunch of lying whackos. The rest of us are delusional. lololol

    • Tjb

      August 10, 2022 at 5:50 pm

      Just a reminder … Trump went after those who challenged him by directing the IRS to do intensive IRS audits on folks such as James Comey and Andrew Mcacabe and possibly many others.
      Yes, you are correct that the iRS went after a hand full of conservative groups but the investigation by the US Justice Department stated that Obama was not involved. Most of these audit where directed at Tea Party organizations waning to defund or eliminate the IRS.

    • Bobo Robo

      August 10, 2022 at 6:23 pm

      The IRS went after conservative AND liberal POLITICAL groups who were hiding behind non-profit status, fraudulently claiming they were “social welfare” groups.
      Why do you Republicans always give HALF the story, as if it validates your fraudulent argument? Do you like POLITICAL groups claiming non-profit status for either party? When you marinate in right wing news, I guess that’s the only narrative you get.

      • Tjb

        August 10, 2022 at 6:56 pm

        Well stated.

Comments are closed.


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