On Monday, bombshell news came out south Florida as former President Donald Trump issued a statement that the FBI was raiding his residence at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
In his angry statement (see below), he claimed “They even broke into my safe.”
Former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade told MSNBC that a raid like this one is usually an effort that begins well in advance, and she predicted that given the size of Trump’s resort it was likely that several dozen agents were on hand to conduct the search.
McQuade further noted that a judge would not ever issue a search warrant simply on the presumption of what might be there. Instead, they have to already have proof that something illegal is there, which means that someone who knows Trump’s world and his current life gave up information to the Justice Department.
The New York Times reported and many sources later confirmed that the search was related to the classified documents that Trump and his associates/family took with them from the White House to their Mar-a-Lago home when his term ended.
Back in February, The Independent, a U.K. paper, predicted the classified information would later be a big problem for Trump, after national security experts and former federal prosecutors told them that the “classified material identified in 15 boxes of records retrieved from former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence by National Archives and Records Administration (Nara) officials could pose a more perilous threat to his freedom and his plans for a 2024 presidential campaign than any investigation into his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.”
The Independent further reported:
“According to Archivist of the United States David Ferriero, Nara officials have found items bearing markings used to identify classified materials within the boxes, which he said are still being inventoried. The explosive revelation came in a letter from Mr Ferriero to House Oversight Committee chair Representative Carolyn Maloney, who last week asked him if the boxes recovered by Nara were being searched for classified information. ‘NARA has identified items marked as classified national security information within the boxes.’ In response to a query from Ms Maloney on whether Mr Ferriero had notified Attorney General Merrick Garland that Mr Trump had removed records from the White House in violation of the 1978 Presidential Records Act, the archivist said Nara officials have been “in communication with the Department of Justice” because they had identified classified material within the boxes.'”