EAST MILLINOCKET, Maine — U.S. Sen. Susan Collins called the raid this week on former President Donald Trump’s residence “shocking” and said Americans needed more answers on why it took place.
“It is unprecedented for there to be a raid on a former president’s home over an issue involving disputed documents,” the Republican said while touring the Katahdin Higher Education Center in East Millinocket on Tuesday.
The raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida on Monday appeared to be focused on classified documents that Trump brought with him after he left the presidency in early 2021. The FBI and Justice Department have not commented on the raid, while the White House has said President Joe Biden and top aides learned about it through media reports.
Collins’ remarks differentiate her from Republican colleagues who strongly condemned the raid after it was made public on Tuesday. They showed her relative distance from Trump while he maintains a hold on her party.
Criticism was harsh from many prominent Republicans, including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who said the Biden administration was “playing with fire” by escalating an investigation into the president’s potential 2024 opponent. Trump has stoked electoral conspiracies in his statements, calling the raid an “attack by Radical Left Democrats” who do not want him to run again.
Collins declined to say whether she agreed with Rubio’s statement, but she noted that there are still many details that have not been made public about the raid, saying “we don’t know what evidence led up to it” or if there is “more involved in it.”
“This is something that the American people need more information on to make a judgment,” she said. “But it certainly is unprecedented.”
The Maine senator repudiated Trump after he clinched the Republican nomination in 2016, calling him unfit for the office and saying she would not vote for him. Collins never said how she voted in the 2020 election in which she faced her own re-election campaign, but she later voted to convict him on an impeachment charge related to the Capitol riots of Jan 6, 2021.
Trump called Collins “atrocious” in February after she told The New York Times that no Republican should fear his influence. In January, she told ABC it was “not likely” she would support the former president in 2024, but she has not yet ruled it out. Last week, Collins’ office did not respond to a request for comment about the prospect of a third Trump run.