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When FBI agents stopped by Donald Trump’s club in Florida on Monday morning to conduct a search of top-secret government documents — approved by a federal judge and requested by the U.S. attorney general — the former president happened to already be crowded with his lawyers. at Trump Tower in New York, a thousand miles to the north.
They they had to be getting ready Trump will be impeached later this week in an entirely different matter, a civil investigation into Trump’s family business. But the session was interrupted by a phone call informing the former president of the extraordinary events taking place at his Mar-a-Lago club, said Ron Fischetti, his New York lawyer.
Trump and his close allies were quickly caught up in the events that unfolded in Palm Beach, said knowledgeable people of the day. Some watched the officers through CCTV security cameras as they searched Trump’s office and personal quarters and a first-floor storage room, another of his lawyers, Christina Bobb, told Fox News. Distracted, Trump kept jumping on the phone, Fischetti said, trying to figure out why the agents, dressed casually in khakis and polo shirts to cause less of a scene, were wandering the waterfront. installation had tried to mark “the winter White House,” which was mostly closed for the summer
So distressing was the search that the usually loquacious Trump team remained mum for much of the day, until 6:51 p.m., when Trump himself confirmed the raid in a bombastic statement declaring it unwarranted and politically motivated “They even broke into my safe!” he announced
The search authorized by the court it was a remarkable moment even for Trump, who has done it has been under investigation by state and federal prosecutors almost continuously since taking the oath of office in 2017. What began as a low-level dispute over the chaotic and haphazard logging of Trump’s White House had morphed into an investigation deeply serious about whether the former – the president had endangered national security by hoarding highly classified documents, some potentially related to nuclear weapons.
The FBI searched Trump’s home for nuclear documents and other items, sources say
The events of the past week, which began with the raid and continued with Attorney General Merrick Garland’s rare move on Thursday to publicly defend the FBI from partisan criticism and misinformation, take personal responsibility for the investigation and announce that wanted a court to vacate the sealing order. turning point in the Justice Department’s stance toward Trump.
Garland had promised to erect a strong wall between politics and law enforcement, and had faced sharp criticism from Trump critics that he had been too cautious in holding the former president to account. Now he was the face of a police crackdown that threatened to further divide the nation, as some of Trump’s allies likened the FBI’s search to a more common political manhunt in a “banana republic” or even under Nazi rule.
For Trump, the episode opened a new chapter in his troubled relationship with law enforcement, confirming that his vulnerabilities expanded beyond the most publicized and ongoing investigations into his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his personal business dealings.
According to the search warrant, agents at Mar-a-Lago were looking for evidence of three possible violations of federal statutes: a section of the Espionage Act that makes it a crime to possess or share national defense secrets without authorization, a law against the destruction or concealment of documents to thwart an investigation and a law against the theft, destruction or mutilation of government documents.
Government officials had worried when Trump left office that he presented what experts considered the perfect profile of a security risk: a disgruntled former employee with access to sensitive government secrets, determined to bring down what he believed it was a deep state. take it. But Trump had spent years fueling a growing distrust among his most ardent supporters of the agencies tasked with monitoring such risks, the FBI and the Justice Department.
Justice Department officials have declined to comment on the document investigation or provide details about its findings, citing general privacy protocols for ongoing investigations. Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich did not respond to questions for this article but shared a statement attacking “this unprecedented and unnecessary raid,” blaming the Biden administration and accusing the media of “suggestive leaks, anonymous sources and without concrete facts”.
In the immediate aftermath of the search, Trump appeared to believe the FBI had played into his hands. Instead of showing any concern, two people who spoke to him Monday evening reported that Trump was “optimistic,” convinced that the Justice Department had overreached and that he would rally Republicans to his cause and they would help him regain the presidency in 2024.
“He feels it’s a political coup for him,” said one friend, who spoke with Trump repeatedly during the week. Like many others interviewed for this article, the person spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the criminal investigation.
On Friday, however, unsealed court records showed that agents had seized 11 sets of classified documents, among other things. Howls of protest from Republicans became somewhat more muted, and people around Trump said his good mood sometimes turned dark.
A slow-burn investigation
The fight over documents taken from the White House when Trump left office was more than a year in the making. “This has been like a pot of water simmering, and now it’s making this noise where it’s hitting the hot burner,” said one person involved in the dispute.
In the spring of 2021, the National Archives and Records Administration, the government agency charged by law with maintaining the papers of former presidents, alerted Trump’s team to a problem. In reviewing materials transferred from the White House in the chaotic final days of Trump’s presidency, officials had noticed that certain high-profile documents were missing. Trump’s correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that he had called “love letters.” A National Weather Service map of Hurricane Dorian, which Trump had famously marked with a black Sharpie pen as extending into Alabama.
According to the Presidential Records Act, the items belonged to the American people. The Archives asked them back.
People familiar with those initial conversations said Trump hesitated to return the documents, dragging his feet for months as officials fumed and eventually threatened to alert Congress or the Justice Department to his reluctance.
On January 17 of this year, Trump relented, allowing an archive contractor to load 15 boxes at Mar-a-Lago and transport them north to a facility in Maryland. The boxes contained some of the notable items from Trump’s presidency that archives officials had been looking for.
15 Boxes: Inside the Long and Strange Journey of Trump’s Classified Records
But as Archives officials examined the recovered documents, they began to suspect that some records were still missing. They also noticed that some of the returned material was clearly classified, including highly sensitive signals intelligence — intercepted electronic communications such as emails and phone calls from foreign leaders.
All of this raised a disturbing possibility: Could there still be classified records hidden in Trump’s private Florida club?
Although presidents have unlimited power to declassify U.S. secrets, they lose that power as soon as they leave office.
In February, Archives officials had formally referred the matter to the Justice Department.
The agency was already there deeply engaged in one of the largest criminal investigations in the country’s history: a wide-ranging exploration of the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, inspired by Trump’s rhetoric about his election loss.
Hundreds had been accused of storming the Capitol or helping to plan the insurrection. But Garland was under enormous pressure to also examine Trump’s role in fueling the unrest, as well as the campaign by the former president and his advisers to overturn the certified results. Now the attorney general faced a new dilemma: what to do with the missing documents.
Before, during, after: A Washington Post investigation into the January 6 attack
Garland, a former appeals court judge determined to avoid the mistakes of his predecessors in politically charged cases, refused to tip his hand on how the department might treat the 45th president.
“We follow the facts and the law wherever they take us. That’s all I can say,” he told reporters who asked about Trump at an April briefing on an unrelated matter. “It’s our longstanding policy not to comment on ongoing investigations. The best way to undermine investigations is to say things out of court about how they’re going.”
By choosing Garland, President Biden had insisted he was making a choice that would restore the department’s independence, a marked departure from the Trump administration, in which officials were expected to show loyalty to the president and publicly criticized when they failed to do so. .
“You’re not going to work for me,” Biden told his running mate. “You are not the president or the vice president’s lawyers. Your loyalty is not to me. It is up to the law, the Constitution, the people of this nation to ensure justice.”
Jamie Gorelick, a deputy attorney general for President Bill Clinton who brought in Garland as a top aide and considers him a personal friend, said she trusted him not to be swayed by public criticism.
“That wouldn’t motivate him one bit,” he said. “It’s by the book. I wouldn’t consider politics. I just wouldn’t.”
At first, Archives officials believed the FBI was not taking the documents problem seriously and became frustrated, according to…