US federal agents were looking for documents related to nuclear weapons when they raided former President Donald Trump’s Florida home this week, US media said Thursday. It was unclear whether those documents were recovered at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort. in Palm Beach. The US Justice Department on Thursday asked a judge to make public the warrant authorizing an FBI search of Donald Trump’s Florida home after the former president attacked the search as an act of political remuneration.
Attorney General Merrick Garland confirmed for the first time that agents had searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.
The search is part of an investigation into whether he illegally removed White House records when he left office. Mr Garland, the country’s top law enforcement official, said he had personally approved the decision to order the search. “I personally approved the decision to apply for a search warrant in this matter,” he told reporters. “The department does not take this decision lightly.” His confirmation was highly unusual, as US law enforcement typically does not discuss ongoing investigations.
But it came after Trump himself announced the search on Monday night, claiming it was an act of political payback by Democratic President Joe Biden.
Garland did not elaborate on the reason for the search, but stressed there was “probable cause” and said he had asked a court to make documents in the case public. The FBI’s extraordinary raid this week on Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence has sparked a political firestorm in an already bitterly divided country and comes as he weighs another run for the White House. Top Republicans have rallied around the former president, who was not present when the raid took place. Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence, a potential 2024 challenger, expressed “deep concern” and said the raid smacked of “partisanship” by the Justice Department.
Garland criticized “baseless attacks on the professionalism of FBI and Justice Department agents and prosecutors.”
Donald Trump defends the fifth
Since leaving office, Trump has remained the country’s most divisive figure and a force in the Republican Party, continuing to sow falsehoods that actually won the 2020 vote. Trump has also condemned the attack as politically motivated and a ” weaponization” of the Department of Justice. “Nothing like this has ever happened to a president of the United States,” Trump said. Just days after the FBI operation, the 76-year-old was questioned for four hours Wednesday in the Manhattan office of Letitia James, the New York state attorney general, who is investigating the practices Trump Organization commercials.
US media reported that Trump invoked his legal right not to answer questions more than 400 times during that statement about alleged fraud in the family real estate business.
Former President Donald Trump gestures as he leaves Trump Tower, Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2022, in New York. Source: AAP/AP
Ms. James suspects that the Trump Organization fraudulently overstated the value of real estate properties when applying for bank loans while understating them with tax authorities to pay less tax. Trump said he had “no choice” but to invoke the Fifth Amendment, which allows individuals to remain silent under questioning, during the deposition.
“I refused to answer questions about the rights and privileges granted by the United States Constitution to all citizens,” he said in a statement.
Trump has also faced intense legal scrutiny over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters. Garland has repeatedly pushed back on whether the Justice Department is building a case against Trump over the Capitol riot. More than 850 people have been arrested in connection with the 2021 attack on Congress, which came after Trump gave a fiery speech to supporters near the White House, falsely claiming the election was “stolen.”
Trump was impeached for the second time in history by the House after the Capitol riot—he was accused of inciting an insurrection—but was acquitted by the Senate.