People with knowledge of the situation said Monday that the FBI searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate as part of an investigation into whether he took classified documents from the White House to his Florida home. This action marks a dramatic and unprecedented increase in law enforcement scrutiny of the former president.
In a long statement announcing the search, Trump claimed that agents had entered his house and opened a safe. He called their actions an “unannounced raid” and compared them to “professional misconduct.”
The investigation into how classified materials ended up in boxes of White House archives discovered at Mar-a-Lago earlier this year has been intensified by the search. It happens while a separate grand jury investigation into attempts to rig the 2020 presidential election is ongoing, and it heightens the possibility of legal trouble for Trump as he prepares to run again.
During a four-year administration shadowed by FBI and congressional investigations, familiar battle lines swiftly took shape once more Monday night. Despite the Biden White House claiming to have no prior knowledge of the search and the fact that the current FBI director, Christopher Wray, was appointed by Trump five years ago and previously held a high-ranking position in a Republican-led Justice Department, Trump and his allies attempted to portray the search as a weaponization of the criminal justice system and a Democratic-driven effort to prevent him from winning another term in 2024.
These are grave times for our country, Trump wrote, “as my magnificent home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is under siege, being invaded, and seized by a big group of FBI investigators.” “A President of the United States has never experienced anything like this before.”
According to Trump’s statement, “this surprise raid on my residence was neither necessary nor acceptable after working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies.”
Dena Iverson, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, would not comment on the search, including whether or not Attorney General Merrick Garland had personally approved it.
Trump made no further mention of the reason behind the search, but the Justice Department has been looking into possible classified information handling violations ever since the National Archives and Records Administration reported receiving 15 boxes of White House records, including documents containing classified information, from Mar-a-Lago earlier this year. Trump should have turned over such information after leaving office, according to the National Archives, which requested an investigation from the Justice Department.
There are numerous federal rules that regulate the handling of sensitive government documents and classified records, including laws that make it illegal to take such information out of the proper area and store it there. Federal officials seeking a search warrant must first show a judge that they have reasonable cause to believe that a crime has been committed, even though a search request does not imply that criminal charges are imminent or even expected.
The search took place earlier on Monday, according to two persons with knowledge of the situation who went on the record to discuss a current inquiry. Agents were also checking Trump’s estate to determine if there were any other presidential records or sensitive documents.
Trump has in the past insisted that the release of presidential documents occurred “in usual and routine process.” The search was conducted because “the National Archives wanted to corroborate whether or not Donald Trump had any records in his possession,” according to his son Eric, who said on Fox News on Monday night that he had spent the day with his father.
When asked how the papers got to Mar-a-Lago, Eric Trump responded that they were among the things that were removed from the White House during the “six hours” on Inauguration Day as the Bidens got ready to move in.
Eric Trump stated that his father “always kept press clippings.” When he moved out of the White House, “He had boxes.”
Just before eight o’clock in the evening, Trump waved to onlookers as he left New York City’s Trump Tower in an SUV.
During a tele-town hall on behalf of Leora Levy, the Connecticut Republican he has endorsed in Tuesday’s U.S. Senate primary to choose a general election opponent against Democratic U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Trump did not bring up the search in his first public remarks since news of it broke. Late last week, Trump publicly endorsed Levy, declaring her the finest choice “to replace Connecticut’s joke of a senator” on Monday.
The search was described as a “weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024” in a social media post he made on Monday night.
That statement was shared by other Republicans. Ronna McDaniel, chair of the GOP National Committee, called the search “outrageous” and said it was a good reason for people to vote in November.
In a statement posted on Twitter, the Republican governor of Florida Ron DeSantis, who is rumored to run for president in 2024, called it “an escalation in the weaponization” of American political institutions. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy declared in a tweet that the Justice Department “has reached an untenable stage of weaponized politicization” and promised an investigation if Republicans take control of the U.S. House.
It is all the more surprising that Trump would get involved in a probe into the handling of classified information given how he attempted to use an FBI investigation into his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, during the 2016 presidential election to his advantage regarding whether she improperly handled classified information via a private email server she used while secretary of state. James Comey, the then-director of the FBI, came to the conclusion that Clinton had given and received secret information, but the FBI did not suggest that Clinton be charged with a crime because it found that Clinton had no intention of breaking the law.
Trump criticized that choice and then increased his criticism of the FBI when they started looking into possible collusion between his campaign and Russia to swing the 2016 election. During that investigation, he fired Comey, and even though he later nominated Wray, he frequently lambasted him in his capacity as president.
There has never been a precedent for an FBI raid on an ex-president, even dating back to the Watergate scandal, according to Thomas Schwartz, a history professor at Vanderbilt University who specializes in the presidency and writes about it. Schwartz pointed out that when Richard Nixon left office in 1974, he was not permitted to take any recordings or other materials with him, and that many of his files were left behind in Washington for several years before being moved to his presidential library in California.
Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography author Schwartz stated, “This is different and it is a sign of how unique the Trump period was.” How his actions were so odd.
Trump faces a number of legal issues in addition to the investigation. A different inquiry into Trump’s and his allies’ attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which sparked the melee at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, has also been gaining steam in Washington. A number of former White House employees have been summoned by grand juries.
Additionally, a district attorney in Georgia’s Fulton County is looking into possible attempts by Trump and his close friends to tamper with the election there, which was won by Democrat Joe Biden.
