Sixth District Republican Ben Cline could barely conceal his anger after the FBI had executed a search warrant at the Florida golf club of former president Donald Trump.
His silence following a shooting at an FBI field office by a man who had said on social media that he was motivated by his anger over the search is deafening.
“I am proposing war,” Ricky Shiffer, 42, wrote on Truth Social on Monday, after the FBI search at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. “Be ready to kill the enemy, not mass shootings where leftists go, not lighting busses on fire with transexuals in them, not finding people with leftist signs in their yard and beating them up. Violence is not (all) terrorism. Kill the F.B.I. on sight, and be ready to take down other active enemies of the people and those who try to prevent you from doing it.”
Shiffer, according to his social media accounts, had been at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 for the Trumpist failed coup.
The FBI is now investigating his possible ties to right-wing extremist groups.
Shiffer wrote on Truth Social, the platform started by Trump, at 9:30 a.m. Thursday about his effort to try to breach the FBI’s Cincinnati field office.
“Well, I thought I had a way through bullet proof glass, and I didn’t,” Shiffer wrote. “If you don’t hear from me, it is true I tried attacking the F.B.I., and it’ll mean either I was taken off the internet, the F.B.I. got me, or they sent the regular cops.”
Shiffer, according to authorities, had tried to enter a visitor screening facility at the field office at 9:15 a.m. The attempted breach triggered a heavy law enforcement response, and Shiffer fled the scene, firing at officers during the ensuing pursuit, which ended on a rural stretch of road where he exchanged gunfire with authorities.
The standoff ended shortly before 3 p.m. when officers shot him after he raised a gun at police.
Republicans who had been all over themselves to arouse sound and fury over the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago have offered nary a public word on Ricky Shiffer.
“Today’s raid by the FBI of President Trump’s home is unprecedented, and it reeks of more of the same – the continued weaponization of the Department of Justice to target a past and possibly future political opponent. That’s a story from a third world country; not from America.”
This was Cline from his official congressional Twitter page.
He was a bit more direct on his campaign Twitter: “Never has a former President’s home been raided by his political rival, yet the Biden administration took that outrageous step today when they raided Mar-A-Lago. Our Justice Department must never be used as a political tool. Never. The FBI and Biden Justice Department must immediately address their unconscionable decision to raid President Trump’s home – the American public deserves answers now.”
Cline has also yet to comment on either of his Twitter accounts on the move by Attorney General Merrick Garland addressing the request for “answers now.” Garland said yesterday that his office had moved to unseal the search warrant, which would reveal the reasoning behind the search, pending agreement from Trump, who signaled late last night that he would support the warrant being made public.
Reporting from multiple media outlets, citing law enforcement sources, has it that the Department of Justice has evidence that Trump had in his possession top secret documents containing sensitive information on nuclear weapons.
Cline has been mum on those reports as well.
Neither have we heard anything on Ricky Shiffer, Garland or the revelations about nuclear documents from two other Virginia House Republicans, Bob Good and Morgan Griffith, who had, like Cline, been vocal in the aftermath of the Monday FBI search.
Good had echoed Cline in terming the search as “weaponization of the federal government against its citizens and political opponents continues under the Biden/Garland march toward a police state.”
Griffith had been a bit more measured, calling on the FBI and Department of Justice in a statement to “offer an explanation immediately.”
“Attorney General Garland and Director Wray cannot expect that Americans kept in the dark about their unprecedented choice will retain any faith in their impartiality,” Griffith said in a statement after the search.
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Chris Graham
