El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele on Trump FBI Raid: ‘What Would the U.S. Say’ if I Did That?

El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele speaks to the press at Mexico's National Palace after
AP Photo/Marco Ugarte

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele criticized the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) raid on former U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal residence at Mar-A-Lago on Monday in a statement posted by Bukele’s official Twitter account, the Spanish news agency Agencia EFE reported.

“What would the US Government say, if OUR police raided the house of one of the main possible contenders of OUR 2024 presidential election?” Bukele wrote on August 8.

The Salvadoran president posed the question in a caption accompanying an article he attached to the post concerning the FBI raid on Mar-A-Lago, Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida, residence, that day.

Former President Trump confirmed the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago in a statement issued on August 8. Trump said that his home was “currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents.”

He added that, “Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before.”

Two people allegedly familiar with the matter told Politico on Monday that the FBI executed the raid as “part of an investigation into the alleged mishandling of White House records, including potentially classified material.”

“The Florida raid, which one of the people said took ‘hours,’ resulted in the seizure of paper records, according to one person familiar with the development, who also noted that Trump attorney Christina Bobb was present during the search,” the news outlet wrote.

“It was a historic step by the [U.S.] Justice Department and FBI to investigate the residence of a former president […] No former president — particularly one who is openly considering another bid for the Oval Office — has faced such a public law enforcement action,” Politico noted.

Bukele’s administration (2019-present) maintained friendly diplomatic relations with that of Trump during his presidency (2017-2021), Agencia EFE recalled on Monday, writing:

The Government of President Bukele was close to the Administration of former President Trump and the Salvadoran president maintained a close relationship with his ambassador -at the time- in Salvadoran territory, Ronald Johnson.

However, El Salvador’s relationship with the United States changed with the arrival of President Joe Biden and is currently tense due to some decisions made by Bukele that have been criticized by the Biden Administration.

The news agency referred to an alleged “pattern of slights” against Bukele from the Biden administration and U.S. Democrats over the past two years, according to the Associated Press (AP).

The AP cited two unidentified aides of Bukele on April 8, 2021, who alleged that he was upset by U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price’s comments on April 5, 2021, that Washington “look[s] forward to President Bukele to restore strong separation of powers where they’ve been eroded and demonstrate his government’s commitment to transparency and accountability to the people of El Salvador [sic].”

“Price’s comments followed a spat between Bukele and one of his fiercest U.S. critics, Rep. Norma Torres, a Democrat who co-chairs the Central America caucus in Congress,” the AP noted at the time.

The news agency detailed the disagreement, writing:

In a series of Tweets last week, Torres accused Bukele of behaving like a “narcissistic dictator” indifferent to the plight of Central American migrants who undertake great risks to reach the U.S.

She attached a photograph that was widely circulated in 2019 showing the bodies of a Salvadoran migrant and his daughter laying lifeless in the Rio Grande on the Texas border. […]

Bukele pointed out that he wasn’t even in office at the time of the deaths, which came during a previous surge in Central American migration under the Trump administration. He urged Salvadoran and other immigrants living in Torres’ Southern California district to vote her out of office.

Bukele, 41, has served as president of El Salvador since June 2019. The AP described him in April 2021 as “by far the most popular politician in Central America, a region plagued by corruption and criminality.”

U.S. State Department spokesman Price criticized Bukele’s administration on April 10, 2021, when he said that Washington was “concerned” about the El Salvador Legislative Assembly’s “passage and implementation of the April 5 Criminal Code amendment […] criminalizing reporting on certain gang activities.”

“We continue to support El Salvador in its efforts to reduce the proliferation of gangs,” Price said at the time. Bukele responded to this comment in a statement shared by his Twitter account on April 11, 2021, that read:

“The U.S. government continues to support El Salvador to reduce the proliferation of gangs”. Really?

Yes, we got support from the U.S. government to fight crime, but the was UNDER THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION.

You are only supporting the gangs and their “civil liberties” now.

The U.S. State Department released a list on May 17, 2021, that labeled 17 Central American politicians, including current and former members of Bukele’s administration, as “corrupt.” The action seemingly prompted El Salvador’s congress to ratify a 2019 cooperation agreement with China — one of Washington’s top foes — the next day. El Salvador’s Congress ratified an economic cooperation agreement with Beijing on May 18, 2021, that was originally signed in 2019. The deal called for China’s government to invest $62 million in various infrastructure projects across El Salvador, including a water purification plant.

Bukele and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro both issued public statements in support of U.S. podcaster Joe Rogan on February 2. The two leaders expressed hope that Rogan would continue fighting for “freedom of the press” and “freedom of speech,” respectively, in America amid increased scrutiny of his podcasts from establishment media outlets.

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