Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) on Sunday sought to distance himself from those in his party calling to defund the FBI following the agency’s search of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
“Oh yes, it’s crazy,” Crenshaw responded when CNN’s Jake Tapper asked him about recent GOP rhetoric on “State of the Union.”
Many in the GOP have portrayed the search, which was connected to an investigation into the former president’s handling of classified documents, as politically motivated. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) filed impeachment articles against Attorney General Merrick Garland and called for the FBI to be defunded.
Those demands have been met with condemnation from some in the GOP, drawing comparisons to the defund the police movement that has been promoted by progressive lawmakers including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
“It makes us seem like extremist Democrats, right?” Crenshaw said on Sunday. “And so Marjorie and AOC can go join the defund the law enforcement club if they want. Ninety-nine percent of Republicans are not on that train.”
Despite separating himself from those calls, Crenshaw on Sunday did call for accountability and transparency from the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) following the search, saying it was “automatically political.”
A federal judge last week signaled openness to releasing a redacted version of the affidavit to support the search warrant application, but the DOJ has opposed the move, citing concerns for witness safety.
“The criticisms that we’re leveling against the FBI and DOJ are fully warranted,” Crenshaw told Tapper. “It is not those criticisms that lead to a crazy person attacking an FBI.”
An armed man attempted to breach the FBI’s Cincinnati field office in the days following the Mar-a-Lago search, and the intelligence community cited the incident in a recent bulletin warning of increased threats to federal law enforcement.
The FBI arrested a Pennsylvania man following the search for allegedly threatening to kill the agency’s personnel.
“That’s completely wrong, but that’s not where 99 percent of Republicans are at, of course,” Crenshaw said on CNN.
