It's not every day that the FBI raids a former president's home.
So why'd they do it? And what were they looking for?
Former President Donald Trump is no stranger to legal troubles. Even before he sought and won the
highest office in the land, he had been embroiled in over 4,000 lawsuits over the span of 30 years,
according to USA Today. Even now, nearly two years since his loss in the 2020 presidential election,
he's still facing legal scrutiny.
"Does anybody know more about litigation than Trump?"
On August 8, 2022, FBI agents descended on Trump's Palm Beach, Florida, residence,
Mar-a-Lago, executing a search warrant. Although nothing has been confirmed by Trump or the FBI,
news outlets such as CNN are speculating the search is in connection to classified documents.
Even though the motives of the Justice Department aren't known, Trump put out a statement labeling
the search as a political stunt meant to interfere with his potential run for the presidency in 2024.
The FBI search potentially involves the Presidential Records Act,
which mandates that White House records be turned over to the National Archives when
a president leaves office. Representatives from the National Archives had to travel to Mar-a-Lago
in January to retrieve 15 boxes of documents that legally should have been handed over to
them. Among those documents was classified information pertaining to national security,
which prompted the Archives to contact the Justice Department, CNN reported.
The former president's daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, seemed to confirm in a Fox
News appearance that missing White House records are at the heart of this issue.
"You know, I think it's assumed that it--that these documents in question,
these 15 boxes that the FBI took yesterday, have something to do with the National Archives."
She also made the claim that he had "every authority" to take them from the White House.
However, it's a crime to improperly handle classified documents, and Trump's lawyer,
Christina Bobb — who was present during the search — told NBC News that documents were confiscated.
In addition to the missing presidential records, the January 6 congressional
committee is also investigating Donald Trump in connection to efforts to overturn the election
results for the 2020 presidential election. He's also facing scrutiny
from a Georgia district attorney over alleged attempts to overturn state election results,
CNBC reports. The Trump Organization is likewise under investigation by the
New York Attorney General's Office for its business practices. Trump himself refused
to answer questions from prosecutors in the latter investigation on August 10.
Whether Trump will be charged with a crime in any of these investigations is unknown,
but Salon notes that former President Barack Obama's ex-attorney general, Eric Holder,
speculated in a radio interview that Trump would likely face criminal charges,
first for election tampering in Georgia, and then for actions taken to overturn the election.
Lending credence to Holder's predictions is news that Trump's legal team is in
direct communication with the Justice Department. USA Today reports that the
talks are believed to center around the extent of Trump's executive privilege,
particularly if that privilege extends to certain conversations.
All that said, don't expect anything official to be announced anytime soon. The Huffington
Post notes that Holder doesn't expect any action from the Justice Department until 2023.
It should come as no surprise, but Donald Trump himself
didn't take kindly to the FBI raid on his property. He wrote in a statement,
"After working and cooperating with the relevant government agencies, this unannounced raid on
my home was not necessary or appropriate. [...] Such an assault could only take place in broken,
Third-World Countries. Sadly, America has now become one of those Countries,
corrupt at a level not seen before. They even broke into my safe!"
Trump was in New York at the time of the search.
This isn't the first time that authorities have swooped in to seize sensitive documents. The New
York Times reports that In 2007, former State Department official Donald Keyser
admitted to keeping more than 3,000 documents related to matters of national interest.
The Times also notes that in 2005, Samuel R. Berger, national security adviser to
President Bill Clinton, pleaded guilty to removing classified material from an archive.
The Times cites one more case from 1999, in which the CIA's former chief, John Deutch,
was found to be using his personal computer to store information related
to national security. He promptly lost his right to handle classified information.
Only time will tell if Trump will suffer any similar consequences from the FBI's search.