Former US President Donald Trump claims the US Justice Department wanted to kill him and President Joseph Biden was prepared to "eliminate him and put his family in danger".
The Republican made the accusation on social media.
"They long to do the unthinkable. Joe Biden was ready to eliminate me and put my family in danger. Biden's corrupt Justice Department, in its illegal and unconstitutional attack on Mar-a-Lago, authorized the FBI to use deadly force against me," Trump wrote on Truth Social.
His words refer to a search warrant issued in August 2022, when plainclothes agents raided Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in search of classified documents he refused to hand over to the government, the Guardian reported.
A court filing from Trump's legal team, filed in May, said the search warrant contained a "statement of policy regarding the use of deadly force," stating that "Department of Justice law enforcement officers may use deadly force when necessary."
The quotation extracted from the record is apparently taken from the DOJ policy on the use of force in executing a search warrant.
The full text reads, "Law enforcement officers and DOJ employees may use deadly force only when necessary, i.e., when the officer has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force is likely to cause imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to an officer or other person."
In a statement, the FBI described the use of those words as "a standard policy statement that limits the use of deadly force and that no one has directed that additional steps be taken to deviate from the regulations on this issue."/BGNES
