Dangerous DOJ Device Seizures Criticized by Napolitano on Newsmax

Former New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano told Newsmax on Monday that the new tactic of President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice to serve warrants and seize electronic devices from suspects on the streets, like what happened to New York City Mayor Eric Adams last week, is “dangerous and unnecessary.”

“This is a new style of gathering evidence under the Biden DOJ,” Napolitano said on “Wake Up America.” “They did this to Michael Lindell, the My Pillow founder, and they did this to a congressman just walking up to him on the street, showing him a warrant and demanding the cellphone right then and there.

“That type of confrontation is dangerous, is humiliating, is terrifying, and it’s unnecessary, because all of the data that the FBI seeks, whether it’s from the mayor’s mobile device, or his iPad, or whatever he has in his in his van, is stored in the mainframes of the computer service provider or the telecom provider, and a simple grand jury subpoena to Verizon or whoever it might be will gather that information.”

The New York Times reported Friday that FBI agents seized several electronic devices from Adams last Monday after an event in Manhattan in connection with a criminal probe of the Democrat mayor conspiring to take Turkish campaign money.

According to the report, the FBI agents asked Adams’ security detail to step away from them as they entered Adams’ SUV and took at least two cellphones and an iPad under a federal warrant.

The report said the devices were copied and then returned within a matter of days.

“There’s no need for the confrontation, but under the [Attorney General] Merrick Garland, Joe Biden Department of Justice and under the Chris Wray FBI, we have seen again, and again, and again, even with public figures, these dangerous on-the-street confrontations,” Napolitano said. “People should not have to walk down the street wondering and worrying if the FBI is going to stop them and demand their iPhone and then leave with the iPhone. That’s not the way this should be done.”

Napolitano said that there is a “theory” that the action was taken to publicly “embarrass” Adams after he criticized the Biden administration for its handling of the illegal migrant crisis.

“There is a theory that because Mayor Adams was expressing the views of so many of us, complained about the migrant problem visited upon New York, and was critical of President Biden of his Department of Homeland Security, that this public embarrassment was done in order to teach him a lesson,” Napolitano said. “That’s not right.

“First of all, what he said was true. The migrant problem is a mess, and it’s caused by the terrible mismanagement of the border by the Biden administration. And second, the purpose of law enforcement is to gather evidence and prosecute. It’s not to humiliate people.” 

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