FBI Trump Raid Affidavit Revealed

Transcript

Good morning everyone. I’m Michele Carroll and welcome to the News Diet where I’ll give you daily news bites in under 10 minutes. Today I’m gonna talk about the unsealed affidavit that allowed for the raid into Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. Let’s be informed so we can get on with our day.

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By now we know that former President Trump’s Florida Mar-a-Lago home was raided by the FBI earlier this month. Searching a former president’s residence has never happened before, so of course the question is why did the Justice Department feel this raid was justified, what were they looking for, and what did they end up finding? Usually, in order to obtain a warrant, an adequate case needs to be established before being given permission. Well on Friday a judge ordered the Justice Department to unseal the affidavit that was used to justify the search. Unfortunately, the released affidavit is heavily redacted, so honestly not a ton of new information is out, but I’ll tell you what we do know.

But first, the lead up to the raid does go back starting from the day Trump left office, so I’ll start there. On January 20, 2021, the day of President Biden’s inauguration, Trump leaves the White House, as do dozens of boxes containing documents and other materials. These boxes are sent to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida where he also resides.

Throughout the rest of 2021, The National Archives, which is a government agency charged with the preservation and documentation of government and historical records, engages in back-and-forths with the Trump team regarding missing records that they claim should have been left behind in the White House. In January of this year, Trump’s team sends The National Archives 15 boxes of materials. Here, the agency contacts the House Oversight Committee claiming that “classified national security information” was found in these boxes. This is also when the Justice Department is contacted.

In June, so just a couple months ago, officials from the DOJ and FBI travel to Mar-a-Lago with a grand jury subpoena to see if there’s more materials. Trump’s team showed them the basement storage where more boxes were being kept and handed them over. This interaction was reportedly quite cordial. In fact, it’s said that when the Justice Department counterintelligence chief Jay Bratt asked that a more proper lock be used to secure the documents, that the Trump team complied without issue. They also handed over requested Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage. The results from this visit was The National Archives claiming that over 150 more sensitive documents were found and this is when the Justice Department starts thinking that urgent action is needed to see if Trump was still in possession of more.

The main question at this point is did Trump have a right to have these materials? And also, to what extent, if any, did he break the law? For the first question of Trump’s right - he claims that through his presidential powers before leaving office he declassified the documents. But apparently, evidence of that has yet to be revealed. As for if he broke any laws - obviously that’s yet to be established, but according to the affidavit the DOJ believes there’s probable cause for at least possible violations of the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice.

And so this is when the DOJ obtained a search warrant and raided Mar-a-Lago while Trump was out of town, finding more sensitive materials - bringing the total of classified documents under Trump’s possession to over 300. We’ve still yet to learn what exactly these materials are.

Regardless of the nature of the information in question, the unprecedented nature of raiding a former president’s residence has some saying that not even former presidents can be above the law and that this should be treated as a serious national security issue, and others saying that the severity of the raid was overkill considering the somewhat cooperative nature of how the ongoing communications between the The National Archives and Trump were going.

Trump has responded by calling the raid politically motivated. He’s also suing the Department of Justice, asking that a special watchdog be appointed to review the documents before the investigators. These types of parties are generally used when some materials are thought to be protected, for example through attorney-client privilege, which Trump claims here. He also claims that they seized passports and broke into his safe.

Comparisons are being made to the 2016 email scandal of Hillary Clinton. At that time, when she was running for president, ironically against Trump, one of the main topics of the campaign was regarding the revelation that she had been using her own private email servers to send and receive classified information during her time as Secretary of State. Clinton denied multiple times ever sending materials that were marked as such as the time of delivery, but an FBI investigation concluded that 110 emails and 52 email chains contained classified information at the time. Regardless of these findings, FBI Director James Comey declined to prosecute.

Outside of this investigation, Trump is also being investigated for his potential involvement into the January 6 attack on the Capitol, two separate New York investigations into the use of his business finances, and also a possible implication in a Georgia investigation regarding interference with the 2020 election.

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You’ve just been informed so now it’s time to get on with your day. I’m Michele Carroll. Thanks so much for listening.

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