Majority of American voters believe the FBI is ‘Biden’s Gestapo’ after Mar-a-Lago raid, poll finds 

The raid by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on former President Donald Trump’s home has damaged the agency’s standing with Republican and independent voters, according to a new poll, which found that a majority agree with the idea that it has become ‘Biden’s Gestapo.’

The search of Mar-a-Lago has emboldened Trump supporters and generated a wave of donations to the former president’s political organizations.

And close allies including Steve Bannon have used the public platforms to compare the FBI with Hitler’s Gestapo or East Germany’s brutal secret police force, the Stasi. 

In a new survey, Rasmussen Reports asked 1000 likely voters whether they agreed with Trump loyalist Roger Stone, who last year said the FBI had become President Joe Biden’s ‘personal Gestapo.’ 

At the time he said it, some 46 percent of voters agreed with that assessment.

Now, some 53 percent of voters agree – including 34 percent, who strongly agree. 

The numbers divide along party lines. Seventy-six percent of Republicans agree with Stone while 57 percent of Democrats disagree. 

A property receipt unsealed after last Monday’s raid showed the FBI seized 11 sets of classified documents as part of its investigation into presidential files

Trump fans rallied around his Mar-a-Lago resort in a show of support after the raid

Trump allies have accused President Joe Biden and his administration of politicizing the Department of Justice and the FBI to knock the former president out of the 2024 race

The FBI has become the target of Republican attacks since the raid to recover White House documents from Mar-a-Lago last Monday.

A property receipt unsealed later showed the FBI seized 11 sets of classified documents. 

Some were marked not just top secret but also ‘sensitive compartmented information,’ a category designed to safeguard the nation’s most important secrets. 

Even so, Trump and his allies have blasted the investigation, accusing the government of using all its resources to prevent him from running again in 2024. 

For example Sebastian Gorka, a Trump administration official turned firebrand radio host, blasted the agents on the raid

‘The idea that you’re an FBI agent, and you’re given this warrant to serve against President Trump that you know is spurious, that is a hatchet job, that is Gestapo-Stasi tactics, and you don’t instantly give your badge and your gun to that that senior FBI agent and say, sorry, I’m not a member of the Gestapo.

‘Every FBI agent on that raid has forsworn their oath.’

After days of rhetoric like that, the telephone poll of voters found that 44 percent of respondents said the raid made then trust the FBI less, compared with 29 percent who said it made them trust the bureau more. 

Mike Pence on Wednesday in New Hampshire urged fellow Republicans to stop their attacks on the FBI after it conducted a search on Trump’s Florida property

‘Mike Pence said, ‘We gotta stop criticizing, we’re a law and order party,’ Steve Bannon said. ‘This is what this mindless, gutless simp said’

Some senior Republicans have spoken out against the stream of bile and threats directed at the FBI and its agents.

Mike Pence, Trump’s vice president, said Republicans could hold the FBI accountable without attacking its rank-and-file personnel. 

‘Our party stands with the men and women who stand on the thin blue line at the federal and state and local level, and these attacks on the F.B.I. must stop,’ he said at an event in New Hampshire. 

‘Calls to defund the F.B.I. are just as wrong as calls to defund the police.’

He was bashed by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon for speaking out.

‘Mike Pence said, ‘We gotta stop criticizing, we’re a law and order party,’ Bannon said on his War Room podcast. ‘This is what this mindless, gutless simp said.’