(Washington) Monday’s FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida home continues to rock Washington and broader American politics amid a whirlwind of questions about what led the Department of Justice to take such an amazing step.
Updated at 0:03
The raid came after federal agents — including a Justice Department counterintelligence official — visited Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and Palm residence, last spring. Beach, Florida, to discuss documents the former president improperly took with him when he left the White House.
Mr. Trump was briefly present during that visit, along with at least one of his lawyers, according to people familiar with the situation.
These documents contained numerous pages of classified information, according to a person familiar with their contents. By law, presidential documents must be retained and sent to the National Archives when a president leaves office. It remains unclear what specific documents the agents might have been looking for on Monday, or why the Justice Department and FBI decided to pursue the search now.
Mr. Trump delayed for many months the return of 15 boxes of documents requested by National Archives officials and only did so in January, when the threat of action to recover them grew.
The archives referred the case to the Justice Department earlier this year.
Right support
The raid is the latest notable twist in long-running investigations into Mr. Trump’s actions before, during and after his presidency — and even as he plans to announce a new run for the White House.
It comes as the Justice Department has stepped up its separate investigation into Mr Trump’s efforts to stay in office following his 2020 election defeat and the former president also faces a criminal investigation in Georgia and to civil actions in New York.
Mr. Trump has long viewed the FBI as a tool of Democrats looking for lice on him. The search sparked a furious backlash among his supporters in the Republican Party and on the far right.
Kevin McCarthy, Republican leader in the House of Representatives, has hinted that he intends to investigate Attorney General Merrick B. Garland if Republicans take control of the House in November. A delegation of House Republicans was scheduled to travel to Mr. Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, to have dinner with him on Tuesday night.
PHOTO MARCO BELLO, REUTERS
Pro-Trump protesters outside Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday
Aggressive language was ubiquitous in the right-wing camp as Monday-Tuesday night turned into morning.
” This. Means. War,” wrote the Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump outlet, in an online post that was quickly amplified by a Telegram account linked to former Trump political adviser Steve Bannon.
Trump was shredding official documents
The FBI had to convince a judge that they had probable cause that a crime had been committed, and that the agents could find evidence at Mar-a-Lago, to obtain a search warrant. A search of a former president’s home would almost certainly have required the approval of senior officials in the bureau and the Justice Department.
The search, however, does not mean that prosecutors have determined that Mr. Trump committed a crime.
Despite the historic and politically inflammatory nature of the raid, neither the FBI nor the Justice Department has publicly commented or explained the basis for their action, in keeping with their policy of not discussing ongoing investigations.
PHOTO DAKOTA SANTIAGO, THE NEW YORK TIMES
People demanding the arrest of Donald Trump and some of his relatives demonstrate outside Trump Tower in New York the day after the FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago.
Mr. Trump was in the New York area at the time of the search. “Another day in paradise,” he said Monday night on a conference call for Sarah Palin, who is running for a congressional seat in Alaska.
Eric Trump, one of his sons, told Fox News that he was the one who informed his father of the search and that the warrant was for presidential documents.
Donald Trump campaigned for the presidency in 2016 criticizing the practice of Hillary Clinton, who kept a private email server for government-related messages when she was secretary of state. He was known throughout his tenure for tearing up official documents intended for preservation in the presidential archives. A person familiar with his habits said that some classified documents were shredded in his room and elsewhere.
The search was intended, at least in part, to determine if any records remained at Mar-a-Lago, a person familiar with the matter said. It took place on Monday morning, the person said, although Mr. Trump said officers were still at the scene several hours later.
“After working and cooperating with relevant government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was neither necessary nor appropriate,” Donald Trump said, arguing it was an effort to keep him from running. for the presidency in 2024. “Such aggression could only take place in broken Third World countries. »
“They even broke into my safe!” “, he wrote.
Trump did not share details about what the FBI agents said they were looking for.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday that President Joe Biden was not briefed by the Justice Department before the FBI intervened.
Other classified documents already recovered
In January of this year, the National Archives recovered 15 boxes that Mr. Trump had taken with him to Mar-a-Lago from the White House residence at the end of his term. These boxes contained documents submitted to the Presidential Records Actwhich requires that all documents and records relating to official business be turned over to the archives.
PHOTO STEFANI REYNOLDS, THE NEW YORK TIMES ARCHIVES
National Archives employees board boxes of documents in front of the White House on January 15, 2021, 5 days before Donald Trump leaves the presidency.
Items in the boxes included documents, souvenirs, gifts and letters.
The National Archives did not describe the classified documents they found, other than that it was “classified national security information”.
Because the National Archives ‘identified classified information in the boxes,’ the agency ‘has been in communication with the Justice Department,’ David S. Ferriero, the national archivist, told Congress at the time. .
Federal prosecutors then opened a grand jury investigation, according to two people briefed on the case. Prosecutors this year issued a subpoena to the archives to obtain the boxes of classified documents, according to the two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the ongoing investigation.
Authorities also made requests for interviews with people who worked at the White House in the final days of Trump’s presidency, one of those sources said.
In the spring, a group of federal agents — including at least one agent involved in counterintelligence — visited Mar-a-Lago in search of some documents, according to a person familiar with the meeting.
This article was originally published in the New York Times.