Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday pushed back on claims that former President Trump’s political opponents are out to kill him as “outlandish and dangerous” and urged GOP colleagues to tamp down conspiracies he worries could lead to violence.
“What Donald Trump said falsely suggesting his political opponents are out to kill him is beyond the pale and is the stuff that leads to political violence,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “Donald Trump seems to have no consideration for the sanctity and peacefulness and further functioning of our democracy.”
Schumer called the claim “absurd” and pointed out that the FBI consulted with the Secret Service before they went into Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to search for classified records now at the center of one of the former president’s court cases. Trump was in New Jersey when they searched his Florida home.
And Schumer warned that Trump appears to be trying to rev up his supporters in the same way he did on Jan. 6, 2021, when they stormed the Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
“What Donald Trump is doing [is] using conspiracy theories to spin the hard right into a frenzy, and it’s despicable for members of Congress to spread Donald Trump’s lies. This is how people get killed, how the seeds of political violence are sowed, and how people lose faith in democracy,” he said.
Schumer was responding to Trump’s claim that FBI agents were ready to take him out when they raided Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 to recover classified documents.
Trump claimed in a fundraising email Tuesday that FBI agents were “locked & loaded ready to take me out” because law enforcement documents unveiled this week included a statement that officers were authorized to use deadly force if confronted with “imminent danger of death or serious physical injury.”
He doubled down on the claim in a post on his social media site Truth Social.
“WOW! I just came out of the Biden Witch Hunt Trial in Manhattan, the “Icebox,” and was shown Reports that Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE. NOW WE KNOW, FOR SURE, THAT JOE BIDEN IS A SERIOUS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY,” he posted.
Trump’s allies, including Fox News host Sean Hannity, have echoed the claim.
“It’s the weaponization of justice in America,” he told his viewers Tuesday. “This was not typical federal search.”
But Schumer said the statement on use of force is standard law enforcement practice.
“What the FBI did was follow standard practice. They worked with the Secret Service at Mar-a-Lago ahead of time to coordinate how to carry out a search warrant. Donald Trump wasn’t even in Florida but instead in New Jersey on the day of the search. So this idea that his political opponents are out to kill him is absurd,” Schumer said.
And he warned that if lawmakers in both parties don’t condemn Trump’s claim, it could set the stage for future political violence.
“Every single member of the House and Senate, Democrat and Republican, should condemn Donald Trump’s outlandish and dangerous statement,” he said.