WASHINGTON: Donald Trump drew disbelief and some support on Wednesday, after he suggested that standard language from an FBI search warrant executed in 2022 (on his Florida mansion), ‘showed’ that President Joe Biden wanted armed agents to ‘shoot him’.

Trump’s latest incendiary claim was in response to a court filing outlining plans for the FBI search at the Mar-a-Lago club, where he kept ‘classified national security documents’ after leaving the ‘White House’.

The filing included standard FBI wording, stating that agents are ‘allowed to use deadly force’ (if someone is in ‘imminent danger’).

However, Trump, who is running to de-seat Biden in November’s presidential election, distorted the statement to say that it showed the Justice Department ‘was ready to shoot him’ and ‘harm his family’.

“It’s just been revealed that ‘Biden’s DOJ’ was authorized to use ‘DEADLY FORCE’ for their ‘DESPICABLE’ raid in Mar-a-Lago. You know they’re just itching to do the unthinkable” Trump stated on Tuesday (in a fundraising email shared by the US media).

“Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger. He thinks he can frighten me, intimidate me, and KNOCK ME DOWN!” The ‘wild’ remarks add to the pile of false claims made by Trump against President Biden, whom he has ‘repeatedly accused’ without ‘evidence’, of weaponizing the justice system in order to target him.

The Democratic Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer called for ‘all’ lawmakers to condemn Trump’s “outlandish and dangerous” remarks in a speech, in the upper chamber of Congress.

“We cannot let this man, Donald Trump, or anybody else, throw these kinds of matches to light flames that could burn our democracy” he said. David Axelrod, a White House aide under Barack Obama, termed Trump’s comments “patently nuts and dangerously provocative” in a post on the social media platform ‘X’.

In contrasts to this, several of Trump’s staunchest allies have joined Trump in ‘misrepresenting’ the court filing. Georgia congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene, posted on X that the Justice Department and the FBI “gave the green light” to ‘assassinate’ Donald Trump. On the day of the raid, Trump was not in Florida but at his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey.

The FBI issued a ‘rare statement’, saying “there was no departure from the norm in this matter.” The bureau (which recovered more than 100 classified documents), including some marked ‘top secret’, got the go-ahead for the raid from a federal judge after the government tried ‘for months’ to get the records back.

The billionaire is accused of willfully retaining national defense information and obstructing government efforts to recover it.

Published in Dawn, May 23rd, 2024