Tea Party Patriots Action, a conservative group with significant sway in conservative circles, has filed a federal complaint against Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart for approving the FBI’s warrant to raid former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, earlier this month.
The lengthy complaint was filed with the Judicial Council of the 11th Circuit Court. In it, Tea Party Patriots CEO Jenny Beth Martin argued that Reinhart has an agenda against the former president and that he should have had no involvement in the approval of the warrant.
“Judge Reinhart has a conflict of interest and a pattern and history of hostility to President Trump,” said the filing. It includes a number of cases in which Reinhart openly attacked Trump on social media and documents the financial donations he made to former president Barack Obama, an outspoken critic of the former president, as well as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who was one of Trump’s 2016 GOP challengers, the Washington Examiner reported.
However, Martin’s complaint doesn’t stop there, arguing that Reinhart should be removed from the bench entirely.
“Judge Reinhart should be disciplined and removed as a federal magistrate because of his failure to meet the standards of ethical conduct and character necessary for the public to have confidence in the nonpartisan role of a judge in a matter of this extreme public interest,” says the sixth charge listed in the ethics complaint, the outlet reported
Critics of Reinhart’s signing of the warrant that permitted the FBI to search the resort have since found significant evidence showcasing Reinhart’s anti-Trump opinions. Along with the donations and social media attacks, Martin cited a case which involved Hillary Clinton in which Reinhart recused himself, arguing that he should have done the same in this case.
“The entire episode of the unprecedented search of the former president’s home, authorized by a political appointee of President Trump’s successor, and approved by a federal magistrate who has been outspoken in his opposition to and loathing of President Trump threatens the principle of ‘equal justice under law’ and the confidence of the American people in an unbiased judiciary,” the seventh charge in the complaint states.
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