Marc Elias, a top lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign, has gloated that the FBI’s Monday raid on Mar-a-Lago could disqualify President Donald Trump from running for re-election in 2024.
As Slay News previously reported, FBI agents raided Trump’s home in Palm Beach, Florida on Monday.
Trump released a statement confirming the news, saying that his home was “under siege.”
He described the raid as “an attack by Radical Left Democrats” that is part of an effort to prevent him from running for president again in 2024.
“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.
“It is prosecutorial misconduct,” he added.
“The weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024.”
FBI agents executed a search warrant of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property, reportedly seeking classified documents he allegedly took from the White House when he left office in 2021.
According to a senior government official, the search warrant was conducted in connection with the National Archives.
This led Elias to cite U.S. Code to highlight that Trump could be barred from seeking public office again.
The news comes as the 45th president continues to drop hints that he will soon announce plans to seek a second term as commander-in-chief.
“The media is missing the really, really big reason why the raid today is a potential blockbuster in American politics,” Elias gloated in a post on Twitter.
Elias pointed to the passage of U.S. Code Title 18, Section 2071 which states:
“Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.”
However, legal challenges could make efforts to prevent Trump from running again under this code difficult, Elias acknowledged in a follow-up tweet.
For Democrats to attempt to use the U.S. Code to bar Trump from running, they would have to take on their eternal foe – the U.S. Constitution.
“Yes, I recognize the legal challenge that application of this law to a president would garner (since qualifications are set in Constitution),” he wrote.
“But the idea that a candidate would have to litigate this is during a campaign is in my view a ‘blockbuster in American politics.'”
https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1556804512576323584?s=20&t=X6GFOaMdzjcRRUDcuVDX2A
The Presidential Records Act of 1978 requires presidential administrations to preserve certain documents.
According to the National Archives, the presidential records in 15 boxes taken from Mar-a-Lago earlier this year include documents classified over national security concerns.
The agency has also called on the Department of Justice to probe whether Trump violated federal law in his handling of records.
“Because [the National Archives and Records Administration] identified classified information in the boxes, NARA staff has been in communication with the Department of Justice,” then-U.S. archivist David Ferriero wrote in a letter to Congress.
