Donald Trump’s golf resort residence Mar-a-Lago was searched by the FBI on Monday, August 8th, according to a statement put out by Trump himself.
Earlier this year, the National Archives and Records Administration asked the Justice Department to investigate Trump’s alleged mishandling of official presidential documents. Reports had been mounting at the time about Trump’s habits of ripping up documents when he was done reading them, even reportedly throwing those scraps in the toilet. (Trump denied doing that but this week, reporter Maggie Haberman shared pictures she’d obtained showing toilets with what appear to be torn up papers with Trump’s handwriting in them.) If true, this was a huge violation of the Presidential Records Act, which requires all written communications related to a president’s official duties to be preserved.
On top of that, 15 boxes of documents—some of them classified—were found at Mar-a-Lago long after he left office. Trump says he’s been cooperating with the investigation since then and his son Eric even went on Fox News Monday night to say as much.
“The purpose of the raid was, from what they said, was because the National Archives wanted to corroborate whether or not Donald Trump had any documents in his possession,” Eric said. “And my father has worked so collaboratively with them for months. In fact, the lawyer that’s been working on this was totally shocked. He goes, ‘I have such an amazing relationship with these people and all of a sudden, on no notice, they send 20 cars and 30 agents?'”
Clearly, the FBI didn’t agree that Trump was fully cooperating because they showed up Monday to search his home. As Trump wrote in a statement, “They even broke into my safe!” In his statement, he also compared the raid to Watergate which, I don’t know, seems like a comparison former presidents would usually try to avoid making.
Trump’s fans gathered outside Mar-a-Lago to yell their support, even though he is not there, but up at his New Jersey golf club, and naturally, Republicans and conservative media figures are melting down. In his statement, Trump said that “such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World countries,” a sentiment that has been echoed by others. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said that the “Department of Justice has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization.” Lindsey Graham called the search “beyond problematic.” Fox News is going all-in on whatabouting Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden.
In reality, the FBI and DOJ would have to have had an incredible degree of probable cause to execute this raid, which also would have had to have been signed off on by an independent judge.
The FBI also didn’t leave empty handed. They went in looking for documents and reportedly left with multiple boxes. We don’t yet know what sorts of documents they contain but according to NBC News, the search was tied to incredibly “top secret” classified documents that the National Archives and Records Administration noticed were missing from their records.
(image: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Getty Images)
