US Attorney General says ‘personally approved’ Trump home search
WASHINGTON: US Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday he had “personally approved” the dramatic raid on Donald Trump’s Florida estate and, in a highly unusual move, was requesting the warrant justifying the search be made public.
The country’s top prosecutor did not reveal the reason for the unprecedented search of the home of a former US president, and condemned “unfounded attacks” on the FBI and the Justice Department that followed it.
“I personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant,” Garland told reporters in his first public statement since Monday’s raid. “The department does not take such a decision lightly.”
While noting that “ethical obligations” prevented him detailing the basis of the raid, Garland said he had asked a Florida judge to unseal the warrant because Trump had publicly confirmed the search and there was “substantial public interest in this matter.”
Trump, who has a copy of the search warrant but has – so far – declined to reveal its contents, said late Thursday night he would not oppose the unsealing of the warrant.
“Not only will I not oppose the release of documents... I am going a step further by ENCOURAGING the immediate release of those documents,” the former president wrote on Truth Social, the social media site he launched this year.
In another post, Trump repeated his claim that the search was an “unprecedented political weaponisation of law enforcement.”
Andrew Weissmann, a former Justice Department official, said Garland had “called Trump’s bluff” by putting the onus on the former president to object or consent to release of the document. The Justice Department motion to unseal the warrant noted – and did not dispute – statements by Trump’s representatives that the FBI was seeking presidential records and potential classified material.
According to US media, the search related to potential mishandling of classified documents taken to Mar-a-Lago after Trump left the White House in January 2021. The Washington Post on Thursday cited anonymous sources close to the investigation as saying that classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the papers sought by the FBI agents during the raid. The newspaper did not clarify if the nuclear weapons involved belonged to the United States or to another country.
The FBI raid on Trump’s palatial Mar-a-Lago residence sparked a political firestorm in an already bitterly divided country, and comes as he is weighing another White House run in 2024.
In a statement on his Truth Social platform on Thursday, Trump said his attorneys had been “cooperating fully” and “the government could have had whatever they wanted, if we had it.” Leading Republicans have rallied around Trump, and some members of his party have harshly denounced the Justice Department and FBI, accusing them of partisanship in targeting the former president.