Outraged Republicans United in Silence
Classified Docs Retrieved at Mar-a-Lago
Capitol Inside
August 15, 2022
A hush has fallen over the Republicans in Austin on the subject of a federal raid at Donald Trump's home in Florida since they learned that it turned up a treasure trove of classified documents including records pertaining to national security in what appears to be a violation of a law that's a felony.
The state's three highest-ranking statewide leaders - Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton - had expressed outrage on the night of the Federal Bureau of Investigation search at Mar-a-Lago one week ago and the next two days.
A passel of GOP lawmakers that included State Reps. Jeff Leach of Allen, Mayes Middleton of Galveston and Briscoe Cain of Deer Park joined the initial chorus of howling with baseless accusations of federal womanization in the immediate wake of the FBI convergence on Trump's Palm Beach estate when they were all clueless about it's actual purpose. The Texas GOP falls into that category as well.
But these same elected state officials have been holding their tongues in unison since the search warrant was made public on Wednesday and news photos of a small mountain of boxes filled with records that are government property being hauled away from the former president's residence. The collective silence suggests that most of the Republicans here may not be buying Trump's attempt to defend himself by insisting that he'd declassified the documents that the FBI seized without a shred of evidence to support the claim.
As federal law enforcement officials warn of violence among radical Trump loyalists - having already thwarted an attempted mass shooting by one of them - the lion's share of GOP leaders and lawmakers in Texas have quietly dropped out of the stampede to justice at the same time they've escalated social media attacks on immigration while touting other hot-button topics that are dear to them like private school vouchers.
The Republicans here are not unanimous, however, in their silence on the Trump raid since they discovered its official motivation. Some Texans in elected offices have refused to back down from their original positions on the Mar-a-Lago maneuvering - with Republicans like U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson of Amarillo, Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller and State Rep. Bryan Slaton of Royse City continuing to portray the search with conspiracy theories that paint Trump as the innocent target of a concerted attack by the Biden administration to destroy him.
Jackson was arguably Trump's most shocked and angered defender in Texas in the days before and after finding out why federal agents visited Mar-a-Lago on Monday night last week. Jackson fired off a fusillade of tweets on Monday and Tuesday - declaring that the FBI "officially became the enemy of the people" as the secret police and personal weapon for a tyrannical Biden administration that hates freedom and would "go after every conservative" if it could.
Jackson - a rookie lawmaker who served as Trump's physician at the White House - set the stage for the unveiling of the warrant that a Republican-appointed federal judge had approved with a tweet two days after the search.
But Jackson didn't go mum like the governor and other top Republicans here after a dose of reality with the warrant's unveiling - doubling down on a Twitter barrage that branded the FBI as a "TOTALLY CORRUPTED" deep state agency that had a mole "imbedded" at Trump's home to spy on him before planting the evidence that they ostensibly discovered during the search.
Jackson and the other GOP officials who lashed out at the FBI all failed to note that its current director Christopher Wray was handpicked by Trump. Jackson's cloak-and-dagger depiction may have been a reaction to news that the U.S. Department of Justice had the search conducted as part of an investigation into Trump for possible violations of the Espionage Act. The search warrant was approved by a federal magistrate who'd been chosen by district judges.
While Jackson has been in a league of his own in terms of Trump raid rage, Slaton served up one of the most sensational quotes on the day after it.
"We are at war with the Left," the freshman legislator tweeted on Tuesday. "Watergate pales in comparison and it’s time to stop acting like Democrats are a party we can work with.
Texas should immediately expel all FBI employees from our state until this madness ends."
Abbott had led the Texas elected Republican rhetorical condemnations charge on the night of the raid with an indirect reference to Watergate in a tweet. "This is next-level Nixonian," the governor declared late Monday night.
But Slaton didn't forget about the search on Twitter like Abbott, Patrick, Paxton and some of his most conservative colleagues in the Texas House would do after learning that Trump could have committed a crime that he'd had upgraded to a felony offense during a sole term as president. Slaton did not appear fazed by the search warrant's contents like so many other GOP officials in the Capital City.
"First they said he colluded with Russia," Slaton tweeted on Friday. "Then they said he engaged in corruption in Ukraine.
Then they said he choked Secret Service agents and grabbed a steering wheel. Now they’re claiming he stole top secret nuclear plans.
When will the Left stop lying about Trump?"
more to come ...
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