Judge who approved FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago connected to Jeffrey Epstein

The Florida magistrate who signed the search warrant authorizing the FBI raid of former President Donald Trump’s resort on Monday evening represented the employees of convicted sex pedophile Jeffrey Epstein more than a decade ago.

Sources told the New York Post that Judge Bruce Reinhart, who once quit his job as the local U.S. Attorney’s office to work for Epstein, approved the FBI’s search of the Mar-el-Lago estate in what Trump called an “unannounced raid on my home.”

Then an assistant U.S. attorney working on a probe of Epstein’s alleged activities, Reinhart left the office on Jan. 1, 2008, and went to work representing Epstein’s employees on Jan. 2, 2009, reported the Miami Herald in a 2018 series titled “Perversion of Justice.”

He was named in a 2011 lawsuit that accused him of violating Justice Department policies by switching sides from investigating Epstein to defending him. According to one case, the plaintiffs alleged Reinhart “‘joined Epstein’s payroll shortly after important decisions were made limiting Epstein’s criminal liability’ and improperly represented Epstein victims in follow-on civil suits,” referring to a secret 2007 plea deal.

Reinhart continued to work in private practice until he was appointed U.S. Magistrate in March 2018. He is one of three federal magistrate judges in the West Palm Beach offices of the US District Court for the Southern District Court of Florida, along with William Matthewman and Ryon McCabe, according to the New York Post.

The FBI launched the raid of Trump’s Florida resort seeking classified documents Trump may have taken from the White House.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) condemned the raid on Twitter, calling it an abuse of state power

"The raid of MAL is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents, while people like Hunter Biden get treated with kid gloves. Now the Regime is getting another 87k IRS agents to wield against its adversaries? Banana Republic." DeSantis tweeted Monday evening.