Former President Donald J. Trump said Monday that the FBI had searched his Palm Beach, Florida, home and opened a safe, an account that signals a dramatic escalation in the various investigations into the final stages of his presidency.
The search, according to several people familiar with the investigation, appeared to be focused on material Mr. Trump had brought with him to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence, when he left the White House. Those boxes contained many pages of classified documents, according to a person familiar with their contents.
Mr. Trump delayed the return of 15 boxes of material requested by National Archives officials for many months, only doing so after the threat of taking action to retrieve them.
The search appeared to focus on material that former President Donald J. Trump had taken with him to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, after leaving the White House. Credit… MediaPunch, via Associated Press
The FBI would have had to convince a judge that it had probable cause that a crime had been committed to obtain a search warrant, and searching the home of a former president would almost certainly have required approval from higher-ups office officials. and the Department of Justice.
An FBI spokesman declined to comment, and Justice Department officials did not initially respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Trump was not at his home in Florida at the time of the attack and was in the New York area.
Mr Trump, who campaigned for the presidency in 2016 criticizing Hillary Clinton’s practice of maintaining a private email server for government-related messages while she was secretary of state, was known throughout his mandate broke official material that was intended to hold for the presidency. files A person familiar with his habits said it included classified material being shredded in his bedroom and elsewhere.
“After working and cooperating with the appropriate government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was neither necessary nor appropriate,” Trump said, maintaining that it was an effort to prevent him from running for president in 2024. “This raid could only take place in broken Third World countries.”
“They even broke into my safe!” He wrote
Mr. Trump did not share any details about what FBI agents said they were looking for.
The search took place Monday morning, a person familiar with the matter said, although Trump claimed agents were still there many hours later.
The search was at least in part to find out if there were any records at the club, the person familiar with the search said.
Aides to President Biden said they were surprised by the development and learned about it on Twitter.
“After working and cooperating with the appropriate government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was neither necessary nor appropriate,” Trump said, maintaining that it was an effort to prevent him from running for president in 2024. “This raid could only take place in broken Third World countries.”
“They even broke into my safe!” He wrote “What’s the difference between this and Watergate, where the agents broke into the Democratic National Committee? Here, in reverse, the Democrats broke into the home of the 45th president of the United States.”
The search comes as the Justice Department has also stepped up questioning of former Trump aides who had witnessed White House discussion and planning of Mr Trump’s efforts. Trump to stay in office after his loss in the 2020 election.
Mr. Trump has been the focus of questions from federal prosecutors in connection with a scheme to send “fake” electors to Congress for Electoral College certification.
The current director of the FBI, Christopher A. Wray, was appointed by Mr. trump
The law governing the preservation of White House materials, the Presidential Records Act, has no teeth, but criminal statutes can come into play, especially in the case of classified material.
The penal codes, which carry prison terms, prohibit anyone who “willfully injures or commits any depredation against any property of the United States” and anyone who “willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys” documents governmental
Samuel R. Berger, national security adviser to President Bill Clinton, pleaded guilty in 2015 to a misdemeanor charge of removing classified material from a government archive. In 2007, Donald Keyser, an Asia expert and former senior State Department official, was sentenced to prison after he confessed to keeping more than 3,000 sensitive documents, from top secret to top secret, in his basement.
In 1999, the Central Intelligence Agency announced that it had suspended the security clearance of its former director, John M. Deutch, after concluding that he had improperly handled national secrets on a desktop computer at home his
In January of this year, the archives recovered 15 boxes that Mr. Trump had taken with him to Mar-a-Lago from the White House residence when his term ended. The boxes contained material subject to the Presidential Records Act, which requires all documents and records relating to official business to be turned over to the archives.
Items in the boxes included documents, memorabilia, gifts and letters. The archives did not describe the classified material it found other than to say it was “classified national security information.”
Because the National Archives “identified classified information in the boxes,” the agency “has been in communication with the Department of Justice,” David S. Ferriero, the national archivist, told Congress at the time.
Federal prosecutors subsequently launched a grand jury investigation, according to two people briefed on the matter. Prosecutors earlier this year subpoenaed the archives to obtain the boxes of classified documents, said the two people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.
Authorities also sought interviews with people who worked at the White House in the final days of Trump’s presidency, according to one of the people.
Jonathan Martin contributed to this report.