Today the warrant that resulted in the raid on 45th President Donald Trump’s home was obtained by multiple news outlets, which in turn report that the men spent an entire day in Mar-a-Lago to retrieve a couple dozen boxes containing various documents from his presidency.
Trump issued another statement clarifying that the documents and other items seized in the brazen FBI raid on his Florida home were “all declassified,” and added that the agency did not need to resort to “breaking into” his family’s home to retrieve them.
The warrant appeared to allow the FBI to have mostly unrestricted access to the 45th President’s home. Trump previously revealed that agents who raided his estate “rummaged through” the closets, clothing, and “personal items” of former First Lady Melania Trump, leaving her personal effects in a “relative mess.”
“The locations to be searched include the ‘45 Office,’ all storage rooms, and all other rooms or areas within the premises used or available to be used by FPOTUS and his staff and in which boxes or documents could be stored, including all structures or buildings on the estate,” the warrant states.
According to the warrant, several boxes of documents were seized, with some supposedly being labeled “top secret” and “classified.” Among the documents taken, apparently, was the clemency paperwork for former Trump advisor and longtime Republican political strategist Roger Stone.
While the warrant reveals that some document boxes were labeled, the FBI was also given blanket permission to retrieve items marked only “documents” in the warrant. It is unclear at this time exactly what those documents were, and early reports from left wing media outlets speculated they have something to do with nuclear information. Trump and his team deny those claims.
BREAKING: 11 sets of classified documents, including some marked as ‘top secret,’ removed from Trump’s Mar-A-Lago – WSJ
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) August 12, 2022
The FBI was allowed to seize “All physical documents and records constituting evidence, contraband, fruits of crime or other items illegally possessed in violation” of the law.
These include “Any physical documents with classification markings, along with any containers/boxes (including any other contents) in which such documents are locations, as well as any other containers/boxes that are collectively stored or found together with the aforementioned documents and containers/boxes,” as well as “Information, including communications in any form, regarding the retrieval, storage, or transmission of national defense information or classified material…”
In addition, the agency was able to seize “Any government and/or Presidential Records created between January 20, 2017,” and the end of President Trump’s four years in office.
Following the warrant’s release Trump said in a statement that “Number one, it was all declassified. Number two, they didn’t need to ‘seize’ anything. They could have had it anytime they wanted without playing politics and breaking into Mar-a-Lago. It was in secured storage, with an additional lock put on as per their request…”
“…They could have had it anytime they wanted—and that includes LONG ago,” Trump added.
Donald Trump / Truth Social
The former president then pointed to 33 million pages of documents taken from the White House by former president Barack Obama to his home in Chicago. Trump claimed that many of the documents are “classified.”
“ALL THEY HAD TO DO WAS ASK. The bigger problem is, what are they going to do with the 33 million pages of documents, many of which are classified, that President Obama took to Chicago?”
“The government could have had whatever they wanted, if we had it. Everything was fine, better than that of most previous Presidents, and then, out of nowhere and with no warning, Mar-a-Lago was raided, at 6:30 in the morning, by VERY large numbers of agents, and even ‘safecrackers,” Trump said in an earlier Truth Social post.
Donald Trump / Truth Social
Donald Trump / Truth Social
Attorney General Merrick Garland revealed yesterday that he “personally approved” the raid on Trump’s home earlier this week, which seems to contradict previous claims that the Biden administration was left in the dark on the raid, Valiant News reported.
According to a new report by Newsweek, the dramatic and unprecedented raid on the home of the former president was “based” largely on information from an FBI confidential human source,” who told the agency that 45th President Donald Trump was “hiding” classified documents, and subsequently pinpointed their location.
Claims that an informant leaked the information to the FBI were brought forth by two senior government officials with direct knowledge of the agency’s operations against Trump, the report claims. These moles had supposedly been embedded in Trump’s orbit, and there has been much speculation about their identities.
Trump himself had personally reported on Wednesday that the FBI agents conducting the raid on his Florida resort residence did not allow anyone, including his lawyers, to witness their actions and questioned whether agents could have planted evidence against him.
“The FBI and others from the Federal Government would not let anyone, including my lawyers, be anywhere near the areas that were rummaged and otherwise looked at during the raid on Mar-a-Lago,” Trump said Wednesday on his social media platform Truth Social.
“Everyone was asked to leave the premises, they wanted to be left alone, without any witnesses to see what they were doing, taking or, hopefully not, ‘planting,’” Trump wrote.
This story is breaking and may be updated.
