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Former President Donald Trump is suing the Department of Justice (DOJ) for $100 million over the 2022 FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate, alleging political persecution.

What’s the deal: Trump and his legal team argue that the FBI’s 2022 raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate was a deliberate act of “political persecution” orchestrated by the Department of Justice, led by Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray. They claim that the raid was an abuse of power, clearly intended to target Trump for political reasons. His lawyers describe the operation as “tortious,” citing it as an example of “intrusion upon seclusion, malicious prosecution, and abuse of process.” Lawyers also said that “Garland and Wray should have never approved a raid and subsequent indictment of President Trump because the well-established protocol with former U.S. presidents is to use non-enforcement means to obtain records of the United States.”

What Trump’s lawyers are saying: In an interview on Fox News, Daniel Epstein (a lawyer for Trump) said, “What President Trump is doing here is not just standing up for himself – he is standing up for all Americans who believe in the rule of law and believe that you should hold the government accountable when it wrongs you.

DOJ’s stance: The Justice Department has not yet responded to Trump’s lawsuit, but it has previously pushed back against accusations that President Biden has “weaponized” the department to undermine Trump’s campaign. Attorney General Merrick Garland has defended the investigations into Trump as justified and noted that the White House had no involvement or influence in the department’s decisions. Garland has also labeled Trump’s claims of DOJ weaponization as “dangerous to our democracy.”