Abbott Says FBI Search Trumps Watergate
as Conspiracies Swirl on Mar-A-Lago Sweep

Capitol Inside
August 8, 2022

Governor Greg Abbott conjured visions of the Watergate scandal on Monday night when he lashed out at Democratic President Joe Biden amid reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation searched Donald Trump's winter residence in south Florida in a surprise visit that the former president characterized as an assault.

"This is next-level Nixonian," Abbott tweeted at 10:43 p.m. "Never before has the country seen an Administration go to such extent to use the levers of government to target a former President and political rival. This weaponizes power to squelch dissent. Such abuses must have limits."

Trump said that he'd been caught off guard by the convergence of federal agents on his estate in Palm Beach. But the former president acknowledged that he'd been "working and cooperating with relevant Government agencies" without revealing the specific reason for the search. Trump spends the summer in New Jersey at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster.

“These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” Trump said in an email from the Save America PAC.

A highly rare move for someone in the American political arena, the search at Trump's estate ignited a hurricane of conspiracy theories on far right on an elaborate scheme to keep the ex-president out of power. The leader of the Conservative Political Action Conference, Matt Schlapp, implied in a Twitter post that Trump's strong showing at a meeting in Dallas during the weekend had prompted the search.

"We are in a most dangerous place," Schlapp tweeted. "This has been an ongoing coup. Get Trump out of office then put him in prison. We are a banana republic."

Schlapp's anger intensified. "These bastards funded the riot at the White House which was almost breached. Our President was moved to a bunker and the Presidents’ church was burned. Kamala sprung them and now they use their power to invade a presidential office," the CPAC chief added. "This is unAmerican. This is fascism."

The CPAC leader's wife, Mercedes Schlapp, took aim at federal investigators. "The FBI is the most corrupt American institution," she contended. "I hope Republicans stop this abuse of power."

Schlapp doubled down on the leftist conspiracies with speculation in the tweet that the FBI raided Trump's home in Florida after seeing how warmly he was received at the CPAC gathering where he moved closer to a presidential comeback campaign in 2024.

"Pres Trump comes to @CPAC and they see he is inching closer to running and the deep state will do anything with their power to slime him," Schlapp asserted. "This has never happened. America keep growing the big red wave and Save America from these corrupt fascists."

The Schlapps conducted an interview with Governor Greg Abbott at a panel that got the CPAC meeting in Dallas off the ground. With the CPAC boss and his spouse, who's a former Trump campaign senior advisor, on the stage with him, Abbott didn't have to worry as much about being booed and heckled like he'd been at a Trump rally in Conroe in January.

more to come ...