Trump cries foul as FBI raids his home
PALM BEACH: Former US president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida was raided by FBI agents in what he called an act of “prosecutorial misconduct”.
“These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” Mr Trump posted on his Truth Social network.
The FBI declined to comment on the search, but reports indicate that it was in relation to the mishandling of presidential records which must be sent to the National Archives after a president leaves office, including all letters, work documents and official emails.
The National Archives asked the Justice Department in February to investigate Mr Trump for his handling of official papers. It said it recovered 15 boxes from Mar-a-Lago, which The Washington Post reported included highly classified texts taken with him when he left Washington following his election defeat.
The documents should by law have been turned over at the end of Mr Trump’s presidency but instead ended up at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Officials also accused him of illegally ripping up many documents and flushing them down the toilet at the White House. Mr Trump has denied all the claims, calling everything “fake news”.
Aerial footage of Mar-a-Lago showed police cars outside the property.
“It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponisation of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024,” said the former president, who was in New York at the time of the raid.
“Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries. Sadly, America has now become one of those Countries,” he said, adding: “They even broke into my safe!”
A Trump adviser told CBS the search was about the presidential records.
“They (the FBI) just left and they left with very little,” the Trump source claimed.
The Secret Service had been notified shortly before the warrant was served at about 10am local time.
Several boxes were taken away, the source said, adding that no doors were kicked down and the raid had concluded by late afternoon.
The recovery of the boxes has raised questions about Mr Trump’s adherence to presidential records laws that were enacted after the 1970s Watergate scandal that require Oval Office occupants to preserve records related to administration activity.
White House staff also regularly discovered wads of paper clogging toilets, leading them to believe Mr Trump was trying to get rid of sensitive documents that could have been incriminating, according to a forthcoming book by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman.
A senior White House official told CBS the West Wing was given no notice of the FBI raid on Mr Trump’s home.