Anthony Sabatini, a Republican member of the Florida House of Representatives who is currently running for a seat in the United States Congress, appeared on “The Stew Peters Show” Wednesday night to call for Florida law enforcement officers to arrest any federal law enforcement officials who might attempt to arrest former President Donald Trump.
On Monday, the FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence “as part of an investigation into the handling of presidential documents, including classified documents,” according to CNN. In response, Sabatini fired off a tweet demanding that Florida “sever all ties with DOJ immediately” and that “any FBI agent conducting law enforcement functions outside the purview of our State should be arrested upon sight.”
On Wednesday, Sabatini joined far-right conspiracy theorist Stew Peters on his program to defend his proposal. Peters is a white nationalist-promoting broadcaster who, despite using his nightly program to spread wild conspiracy theories and calls for violence, has managed to build close ties to various far-right political candidates and to interview several elected officials, GOP candidates, and former members of the Trump administration.
“The first and easy thing to do is pass a law saying none of our sheriffs, none of our police, none of our state law enforcement is going to work with [federal agencies], communicate with them, or recognize any of their authority,” Sabatini said. “If you do that, if you stop tax collectors, clerks of the court, counties, cities, everybody from operating with them, communicating with them, you leave them in the dark. We need to do that immediately.”
“The second thing is the much more controversial idea, and that’s using nullification, using the 10th Amendment to say if a federal agency is operating and performing so-called law enforcement functions—which is what they’re pretending is what they did when they raided Mar-a-Lago—they have to gain state permission. If they do not do that, we should treat them as trespassers and arrest them. If the FBI is going to try to haunt Donald Trump and arrest him at Mar-a-Lago—which I believe they’re going to try to do in the next few months if we don’t stand up—we need to physically prevent these rogue federal agencies from doing that. And that means using our law enforcement. If we don’t have agents that are willing to do that, recruit new ones, but use the state power against federal power. It’s obvious.”
Peters and Sabatini then agreed that there is no real difference between the FBI and the secret police forces that operated in communist nations, like the KBG in the Soviet Union or the Stasi in East Germany.
“I think what the FBI is doing right now is a step towards being just a straight up partisan police power,” Sabatini said. “A KGB or a government police that just seeks to haunt and harass the political opponents of the regime is what they’re moving towards. They’re already there. It started in 2016 when they spied on Donald Trump, but now it’s at the point where they’re executing raids. We all know what’s coming next: They’re gonna try to come and arrest both Donald Trump and other Republicans that oppose what Joe Biden is doing, and if we don’t stand up and fight back, then no, there is no significant difference between them and a state police.”