Day: August 11, 2022

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Justice Department moves to unseal search warrant used to seize documents from Trump’s home

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Washington — The Justice Department moved to unseal the search warrant used by federal agents to seize documents from former President Donald Trump’s home in Florida, with Attorney General Merrick Garland revealing he “personally approved” the decision to seek the warrant.

In brief remarks from the Justice Department as the government filed its request, Garland defended the move to search Mar-a-Lago, and said he “does not take such decisions lightly.”

He noted, however, that he was bound by federal law, department rules and ethical obligations from providing more information about the basis of the search.

“Faithful adherence to the role of law is the bedrock principle of the Justice Department and our democracy. Upholding the rule of law means applying the law evenly without fear or favor,” he said. “Under my watch, that is precisely what the Justice Department is doing. All Americans are entitled to the even-handed application of the law, to due process of the law and to the presumption of innocence.”

The decision by the Justice Department to move to make public the warrant was made “in light of the former president’s public confirmation of the search, the surrounding circumstances and the substantial interest in this matter,” Garland said.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks about the FBI's search warrant served at the home of former President Donald Trump in Washington Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks about the FBI’s search warrant served at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida during a statement at the U.S. Justice Department in Washington on Aug. 11, 2022. LEAH MILLIS / REUTERS

The former president revealed that the FBI had executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, and sources confirmed to CBS News that the search was connected to a Justice Department investigation into Trump’s handling of presidential records. The National Archives and Records Administration retrieved 15 boxes of presidential records, some of which contained classified national security material, from Mar-a-Lago in mid-January, and asked the Justice Department to investigate.

During its search earlier this week, the FBI took boxes and documents, two sources confirmed to CBS News, and no electronics were taken. One official said some or possibly all of the seized records contained classified information.

Sources familiar with the matter told CBS News on Thursday that a federal grand jury issued a subpoena related to the document investigation in the spring, before Justice Department officials met with Trump attorneys at Mar-a-Lago in June regarding the records. The online news outlet Just the News first reported the existence of the subpoena.

Trump and his GOP allies were quick to denounce the search, claiming without evidence it is a politically motivated attack against a likely challenger to President Biden in 2024. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy forecasted an investigation into the Justice Department if Republicans win control of the House in the November midterm elections, telling Garland in a tweet to preserve records and prepare to testify next year.

Robert Costa and Andres Triay contributed reporting.

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FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home followed tip classified records were there – report

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Federal investigators searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach after an informant told them he might be storing classified records at his private club, the Wall Street Journal has reported.

The search on Monday reportedly came two months after federal law enforcement officials came to Mar-a-Lago to talk about boxes of government documents that were being stored there.

Federal authorities searched Trump’s sprawling south Florida residence having obtained a warrant to seek classified and White House records that the US justice department thought Trump had kept unlawfully, two sources previously told the Guardian.

The warrant, executed by FBI agents, intimated that this investigation involving Trump is a strictly criminal inquiry.

The sources said justice department officials became worried that these records were being held unlawfully at Mar-a-Lago following government attorneys’ recent discussions with Trump’s legal team. The unprecedented search of an ex-president’s residence marked the apex of a fight between Trump and his overt disdain for the Presidential Records Act of 1978 – which mandates preservation of official records – and parties tasked with upholding that law.

The search and reports about an informant for the FBI in or around Trump’s inner circle has drawn condemnation from Trump loyalists, who have framed the search in partisan terms – and used it as a call-to-action for fundraising and voter mobilization for November’s election.

Extremist far-right Republican Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene derided any potential informants as “traitors”.

“We now know that there was an FBI informant at Mar-a-Lago, who is that and how many other FBI informants are around President Trump on a daily basis, working at his clubs, working at Mar-a-Lago, or maybe Bedminster, or on his staff?” Greene said on her web show, according to Newsweek.

The Journal’s report chronicled discussions between justice department officials and Trump’s lawyers over these records. On 3 June, a high-ranking justice department official and three FBI agents came to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago house “ to discuss boxes with government records sitting in a basement storage room along with suits, sweaters and golf shoes”.

Trump and his team seemed unaware of the possible gravity of the situation during this meeting, the newspaper said. “The former president even popped into the June 3 meeting at Mar-a-Lago, shaking hands,” the Journal reported. A source told the Journal that Trump said: “‘I appreciate the job you’re doing … anything you need, let us know.’”

The FBI sent a missive several days later asking for a more secure lock to be placed on the storage room’s door. “In the following weeks, however, someone familiar with the stored papers told investigators there may be still more classified documents at the private club,” the Journal reported.

The potential presence of these records follows the National Archives’ removal of 15 boxes earlier this year. Officials with the justice department were skeptical that Trump’s team was being forthright about the records that were still at his home, a source told the newspaper.

The warrant for this search alluded to the Presidential Records Act and a potential violation of statute governing classified records, an attorney for Trump reportedly said. Trump has neither disclosed this warrant nor discussed the records removed by federal agents.

Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican minority leader, said the justice department had come to “an intolerable state of weaponized politicization”. When Republicans win back the House, McCarthy said they will carry out oversight of the justice department – warning the attorney general, Merrick Garland, to “preserve your documents and clear your calendar”.

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Wall Street Journal: Informant tipped off investigators about more documents at Mar-a-Lago

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Ex-Trump attorney: What Trump fears the most about the FBI search

(CNN)The FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence on Monday was prompted by a tip to investigators about the possibility of additional classified documents at the Palm Beach club, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

CNN previously reported that investigators from the FBI and the DOJ met with Trump attorneys at Mar-a-Lago in June, seeking more information about classified material that had been taken to Florida after Trump departed the White House. Following that meeting, where investigators looked around the room where the documents were being stored, the Wall Street Journal reports that “someone familiar with the stored papers told investigators there may be still more classified documents at the private club” beyond what Trump turned over to the National Archives earlier this year.

CNN has not confirmed the WSJ report.

Monday’s search warrant execution pertained to both the handling of classified documents and the Presidential Records Act.

For months, investigators have been looking into how Trump handled material taken with him when he left the White House after the National Archives and Records Administration referred the case to the Justice Department earlier this year.

The Monday search followed a belief from authorities that the former President or his team had not returned all the documents and other materials that were property of the government, according to a person familiar with the matter. There had been suspicion that Trump representatives were not being completely truthful with investigators, according to another person familiar with the matter.

The concern arose after the former President returned some 15 boxes of materials to the National Archives in January.

Before FBI agents arrived at Trump’s private club earlier this week and searched his residence, people around the former President had been under the impression that the probe into how he handled classified information had stalled, according to two sources familiar with the thinking.

It remains unclear why those around the former President believed the investigation had stalled, but in June, his attorneys received a letter from investigators asking them to preserve the remaining documents in his possession “until further notice,” one source told CNN.

The Mar-a-Lago search, which focused on the area of the club where Trump’s offices and personal quarters are located, marked a major escalation of the classified documents investigation. Federal agents removed boxes of material from the Palm Beach property. The Secret Service had about an hour heads up before the FBI executed the warrant, a source familiar with the situation told CNN.

The Wall Street Journal’s report comes amid increased pressure for the Justice Department to provide a public statement about the unprecedented move to search a former President’s home.

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9:51 AM 2/13/2021

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And it was simply impossible to do it: to conduct the professional investigation of the extremely complex set of issues in 1-2 weeks. 
The artful montage of the video documentary is not a legal proof yet. We need to see and to understand the mechanisms, organizational structures, connections, foreign connections, finances, leaderships, their personalities, etc., etc. behind the facts and behind the screens. 
However, with all due respect to the intricacies of the “legal analysis”, met with the loud laughter in the Chamber, this Trump’s complicity question is like the situation with the suspected pregnancy: it is all or nothing. For Trump, just like for Putin and many other autocrats, it translates into the prospects of the prison term, lurking still from afar but quite realistically. He had all the motivation in the World to be complicit, and this type of behavior would be very much in line with his character. 
There are good reasons to believe that Trump was complicit, and therefore he might be viewed as culpable. The degree of culpability is the next legal exercise. 
It looks like everything was very carefully coordinated, and for some time. 
The Counterintelligence Investigations cannot be conducted within the legal framework, this attitude invites defeat and is the recipe for disaster. The CI activities are most optimal when they extend from the post factum, defensive stance to the pro-active, offensive stance and extend deeply into the adversaries camps, into their plans, and into their operations, as apparently practiced by the German and Russian Security Services. 
These are the observations of the lay observer.
That’s the ($1000K) Question! 

9:51 AM 2/13/2021

https://soundcloud.com/mike-nova-3/sets/news-and-music-february-2021


–

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Trump Claims He’s a Victim of Tactics He Once Deployed

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Donald J. Trump’s efforts to politicize the law enforcement system have now become his shield as he tries to deflect accusations of wrongdoing.

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Former President Donald J. Trump’s view of the law enforcement system has been shaped by his own encounters with it.

Former President Donald J. Trump’s view of the law enforcement system has been shaped by his own encounters with it.Credit…Brittainy Newman for The New York Times

Peter Baker
Published Aug. 10, 2022Updated Aug. 11, 2022, 7:20 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON — Two days after the 2020 election that Donald J. Trump refused to admit he lost, his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., made an urgent recommendation: “Fire Wray.”

The younger Mr. Trump did not explain in the text he sent why it was necessary to oust Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director his father himself had appointed more than three years earlier. He did not have to. Everyone understood. Mr. Wray, in the view of the Trump family and its followers, was not personally loyal enough to the departing president.

Throughout his four years in the White House, Mr. Trump tried to turn the nation’s law enforcement apparatus into an instrument of political power to carry out his wishes. Now as the F.B.I. under Mr. Wray has executed an unprecedented search warrant at the former president’s Florida home, Mr. Trump is accusing the nation’s justice system of being exactly what he tried to turn it into: a political weapon for a president, just not for him.

There is, in fact, no evidence that President Biden has had any role in the investigation. Mr. Biden has not publicly demanded that the Justice Department lock up Mr. Trump the way Mr. Trump publicly demanded that the Justice Department lock up Mr. Biden and other Democrats. Nor has anyone knowledgeably contradicted the White House statement that it was not even informed about the search at Mar-a-Lago beforehand, much less involved in ordering it. But Mr. Trump has a long history of accusing adversaries of doing what he himself does or would do in the same situation.

His efforts to politicize the law enforcement system have now become his shield to try to deflect accusations of wrongdoing. Just as he asserted on Monday that the F.B.I. search was political persecution, he made the same claim on Wednesday about the New York attorney general’s unrelated investigation of his business practices as he invoked his Fifth Amendment right to avoid testifying because his answers could incriminate him.

“Now to flip the script and falsely claim that he’s the victim of the exact same tactics that he once deployed is just the rankest hypocrisy,” said Norman L. Eisen, who served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the first Trump impeachment. “But consistency, logic, evidence, truth — those are always the first to go by the board when a democracy comes under assault from within.”

Mr. Trump’s Republican allies argue that he was not the one who undercut the apolitical tradition of the F.B.I. and law enforcement, or at least he was not the first to do so. Instead, they maintain, the system was corrupted by the bureau’s leadership and even members of the Obama administration when Mr. Trump and his campaign were investigated for possible collusion with Russia during the 2016 campaign, an inquiry that ended with no charges of conspiracy with Moscow.

The former president’s camp has long pointed to text messages between a pair of F.B.I. officials that sharply criticized Mr. Trump during that campaign and to surveillance warrants obtained against an adviser to Mr. Trump that were later deemed unjustified. The Justice Department acknowledged the warrants were flawed, and an inspector general faulted the F.B.I. officials for their texts. But the inspector general found nothing to conclude that anyone had tried to harm Mr. Trump out of political bias.

In a letter to Mr. Wray on Wednesday, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, alluded to the history of the F.B.I.’s previous investigation of Mr. Trump to cast doubt on the current inquiry that led to Monday’s search for classified documents that the former president may have improperly taken when he left office.

Christopher A. Wray’s F.B.I. executed an unprecedented search warrant at the former president’s Florida home.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

“The F.B.I.’s actions, less than three months from the upcoming elections, are doing more to erode public trust in our government institutions, the electoral process and the rule of law in the U.S. than the Russian Federation or any other foreign adversary,” Mr. Rubio said in the letter.

The search was approved by a magistrate judge and high-level law enforcement officials required to meet a high level of proof of possible crimes. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, himself a former appeals court judge who was appointed by Mr. Biden with bipartisan support and whose caution in pursuing the former president until now had generated criticism from liberals, has offered no public explanation so far.

The degree to which Mr. Trump has succeeded in promoting his view of a politicized law enforcement system was evident in the hours after the F.B.I. search on Monday when many Republicans, including Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House minority leader, wasted little time assailing the bureau’s action as partisan without waiting to find out what it was based on or what it turned up.

Card 1 of 7

Numerous inquiries. Since Donald J. Trump left office, the former president has been facing several different civil and criminal investigations across the country into his business dealings and political activities. Here is a look at some notable cases:

Jan. 6 investigations. In a series of public hearings, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack laid out a powerful account of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. This evidence could allow federal prosecutors, who are conducting a parallel criminal investigation, to indict Mr. Trump.

Georgia election interference case. Mr. Trump himself is under scrutiny in Georgia, where the district attorney of Fulton County has been investigating whether he and others criminally interfered with the 2020 election in the state. This case could pose the most immediate legal peril for the former president and his associates.

Even Republicans who have been critical of the former president in the past felt compelled to challenge the validity of the search. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader who excoriated Mr. Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on Congress, waited 24 hours but finally spoke out on Tuesday to question whether something untoward had happened.

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“The country deserves a thorough and immediate explanation of what led to the events of Monday,” he said in a statement. “Attorney General Garland and the Department of Justice should already have provided answers to the American people and must do so immediately.”

But some law enforcement veterans said Mr. Trump simply projects his own views onto others. “Trump may actually believe that Merrick Garland is serving a political agenda because he has trouble processing anything else,” said Michael R. Bromwich, a former Justice Department inspector general. “Trump simply doesn’t understand people like Garland and the top leadership of D.O.J. and the F.B.I. because their values are so alien to him.”

The F.B.I. has a history at the intersection of politics and investigations. Under J. Edgar Hoover, its longtime director, the bureau bugged and pursued domestic opponents of the federal government, at times serving as a political tool of various presidents of both parties. But with revelations of past abuses after Hoover’s death in 1972, Congress and the F.B.I. sought to cast off the bureau’s history and transform it into a more professional, politically neutral organization.

F.B.I. directors were appointed to 10-year terms to make them less subject to presidential whims, a new office of professional responsibility was established, the House and the Senate set up intelligence oversight committees, and other reforms were enacted to remove the bureau from politics. Along the way, the bureau earned the respect of both parties and many Americans in the last half-century.

That built-up store of public credibility has eroded significantly in the Trump years. The proportion of Americans who told Gallup pollsters that they thought the F.B.I. was doing a good job fell from 57 percent in 2019 to 44 percent in 2021.

And while public approval of the bureau had long been bipartisan, views have now diverged along party lines. In Mr. Trump’s first year in office, as he attacked the F.B.I. over the Russia investigation, the share of Republicans who had a favorable view of the bureau fell to 49 percent from 65 percent in surveys by the Pew Research Center while remaining steady among Democrats at 77 percent.

“Trump upset the post-1970s status quo when he became president, tipping off-balance over 40 years of an imperfect-though-laudable D.O.J.- and F.B.I.-constructed culture of apolitical independence,” said Douglas M. Charles, a historian of the F.B.I. at Penn State and the author or editor of several books on the bureau. “It seems to me Trump has really put that culture and the F.B.I. itself to the test to expose the weaknesses and limitations of the post-1970s system.”

Mr. Trump’s view of the law enforcement system has been shaped by his own encounters with it, starting as a young developer in New York when the Justice Department sued his family company in 1973, accusing it of racial discrimination. Eventually, the Trump firm settled and agreed to change its policies, leaving a bitter taste in Mr. Trump’s mouth.

By the time he ran for office, Mr. Trump viewed the justice system through a political lens. He led rally crowds in “lock her up” chants as he suggested he would imprison his opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was investigated but not prosecuted for improper handling of classified information — much as he is now suspected of doing.

James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, at the Capitol in 2018.Credit…Tom Brenner for The New York Times

After winning, Mr. Trump saw law enforcement agencies as another institution to bend to his will, firing the F.B.I. director James B. Comey when he declined to pledge personal loyalty to the president or publicly declare that Mr. Trump was not a target of the Russia inquiry. The president later fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from that investigation and therefore not protecting Mr. Trump from it.

During his time in office, Mr. Trump repeatedly called on the Justice Department and the F.B.I. to investigate his foes and let off his friends. He publicly criticized the prosecutions of campaign advisers like Paul J. Manafort and Roger J. Stone Jr. and his former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, eventually pardoning them. He complained when two Republican congressmen were charged shortly before the 2018 midterm elections because it could cost the party seats.

Frustrated with Mr. Wray, Mr. Trump sought to install a more supportive director at the F.B.I. in 2020, backing down after protests by Attorney General William P. Barr. By that fall, as the president trailed in the polls for re-election, he pushed for the prosecution of Mr. Biden’s son Hunter and lashed out at Mr. Barr and Mr. Wray for not prosecuting Democrats like the elder Mr. Biden and Barack Obama because of the Russia inquiry.

“These people should be indicted,” Mr. Trump said. “This was the greatest political crime in the history of our country, and that includes Obama and it includes Biden.”

After losing his bid for a second term, Mr. Trump ultimately disregarded his son’s advice and did not fire Mr. Wray, but in his final weeks in office pushed the Justice Department to help him overturn the election. Mr. Barr rebuffed Mr. Trump and publicly rejected the false election claims before resigning.

Mr. Trump repeatedly pressed Mr. Barr’s successor, Jeffrey A. Rosen, to go along with his scheme to discredit the election results and came close to firing him when he would not and installing an ally who would, Jeffrey Clark. The president was blocked only when told that every senior Justice Department official would resign in protest.

That was his last chance to influence law enforcement from the inside, at least for now. So from the outside, he rails against what he calls the injustice of a law enforcement agency run by his own appointee.

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Prosecutors say lawyer used clout to plant damaging information on Trump with FBI

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WASHINGTON, May 17 (Reuters) – Federal prosecutors on Tuesday sought to portray an attorney who formerly worked for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign as a privileged, high-powered person who abused his connections with the FBI in a bid to harm former President Donald Trump’s campaign just weeks before the election.

In opening arguments in a federal court in Washington, prosecutor Brittain Shaw told a jury that attorney Michael Sussmann misled the FBI about who he represented when he met with the bureau’s top lawyer on Sept. 19, 2016, to provide a tip alleging internet communications between Trump’s business and a Russian bank.

The allegations were investigated and later discredited.

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“The evidence will show that this is a case about privilege – the privilege of a well-connected D.C. lawyer with access to the highest levels of the FBI,” Shaw said, adding that Sussmann abused his connections to “use the FBI as a political tool.”

The case against Sussmann is being led by Special Counsel John Durham, who was appointed by then-Attorney General William Barr in 2019 to probe any missteps in the FBI’s investigation into whether Trump’s campaign was colluding with Russia.

President Joe Biden’s Justice Department has allowed Durham to finish his work.

The case focuses on a meeting in which Sussmann met with then-FBI General Counsel James Baker to provide evidence of potential secret communications between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank, including thumb drives with technical data.

Prosecutors say Sussmann lied when he claimed he was not passing along information about Trump on behalf of any specific client, when in fact he was representing two clients: Clinton’s presidential campaign and Rodney Joffe, a technology executive who oversaw the research into the alleged connections between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization.

“The FBI is our institution. It should not be used as a political tool for anyone,” Shaw told the jury, saying they should set aside their political beliefs about Trump and Clinton in this case.

Attorneys for Sussmann said on Tuesday that he did not lie to Baker and did not arrange the meeting on behalf of his clients.

“No one told him to go. No one authorized him to go,” said attorney Michael Bosworth.

Bosworth also poked holes in the government’s case, noting that Baker did not record or document his meeting with Sussmann in any way. “Mr. Baker’s memory is as clear as mud,” he said.

Baker is expected to be called to testify in the trial.

Scott Hellman, one of the FBI agents tasked with vetting the data, testified that he did not find allegations about the secret communications between Trump’s business and Alfa Bank to be credible.

“Whoever had written that paper had jumped to some conclusions that were not supported by the technical data,” Hellman said.

“I did not feel that they were objective in the conclusions that they came to.”

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Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch in Washington
Editing by Andy Sullivan, Bill Berkrot and Matthew Lewis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Trump lawyer says FBI teams focused on three areas at Mar-a-Lago

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An attorney for former President Trump said the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago focused on three specific areas: a bedroom, an office and a storage area. 

Lindsey Halligan, a Florida-based lawyer for Trump who was at Mar-a-Lago during the search, told CBS News in an interview that she was not allowed to go into the complex while the search occurred and needed to stay outside between the ballroom and the residence. 

Halligan said she first received a call that FBI agents were executing a search warrant at 10 a.m. on Monday, and she arrived about an hour later. Another attorney for Trump had already arrived. 

She said 30 to 40 FBI agents conducted the search for eight hours, some of whom were wearing suits but most in casual clothing. She said 10 to 15 vehicles went into the property. 

Halligan said she did not see agents taking any documents but believes they did. 

The FBI conducted its search reportedly focused on records sought by the National Archives and Records Administration that Trump should have turned over when he left the White House. The National Archives recovered 15 boxes of material from Trump, including some containing classified information, earlier this year. 

Average US gas price falls below $4 per gallon Historic debt relief program for farmers of color takes hit after discrimination suits

Trump has slammed the search, saying in a statement confirming it occurred that he has cooperated with relevant government agencies.

Halligan told CBS that Trump was shocked at the search and believed he had cooperated with investigators. She said he told her that he instructed his attorneys to turn over documents if they have them. 

She said the search warrant was sealed. She said the search was “an appalling display of abuse and power — complete overkill.”

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Trump ponders whether FBI ‘planted’ evidence during raid

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Former President Donald Trump openly pondered Wednesday whether FBI agents planted evidence during their search of his Mar-a-Lago resort Monday.

Trump underscored that there were no witnesses to observe the FBI’s behavior, noting that the FBI instructed people at the resort, including his lawyers, to steer clear of the premises as agents conducted the search. He is slated to face a deposition before the New York Attorney General’s Office.

TRUMP LAWYER CLAIMS MAR-A-LAGO RAID SEARCH WARRANT ‘VERY’ THIN

“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.’ Why did they STRONGLY insist on having nobody watching them, everybody out? Obama and Clinton were never ‘raided,’ despite big disputes,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.

Trump’s remarks follow similar concerns about evidence-planting from some of his allies. Trump lawyer Alina Habba said during an interview with Fox News’s Jesse Watters she was “concerned” about evidence-planting.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich also asserted that he has “no idea” whether agents planted evidence at the resort during an interview with conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) also said there was an “extremely high probability that the FBI planted ‘evidence'” against Trump.

I think there is an extremely high probability that the FBI planted “evidence” against President Trump.Otherwise WHY would they NOT allow his attorneys or anyone watch them while they conducted their unprecedented raid?

They know the consequences of an empty handed power move. pic.twitter.com/zQ9ptmtFw6

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) August 10, 2022

On Monday, Trump revealed that FBI agents swarmed his Mar-a-Lago home while executing a search warrant. During the raid, they cracked open his safe and spent hours searching his property, per Trump’s statement on the raid. Trump decried the raid as a mark of “dark and dangerous times for America.”

Eric Trump subsequently told Fox News he was informed the raid was tied to a Justice Department investigation of his father’s alleged mishandling of classified material. He also noted that nothing was in the safe that the FBI opened.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

In January, the National Archives and Records Administration collected about 15 boxes of material from his Mar-a-Lago resort it claimed were presidential records. Classified information was found in the document trove, so the National Archives referred the matter to the DOJ, which commenced an inquiry, David Ferriero, the archivist of the United States at the time, told Congress.

Amid the firestorm in Florida, Trump was spotted at Trump Tower in New York City Wednesday morning ahead of his scheduled deposition before the New York Attorney General’s Office. Attorney General Letitia James has been investigating whether the Trump Organization manipulated its financial values for business and tax benefits. She has reportedly already obtained depositions from Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr.

Former President of the United States Donald J. Trump departs Trump Tower in New York, New York to be deposed by lawyers from New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office on August 10, 2022 pic.twitter.com/h5okRgHlFv

— Kyle Mazza (@KyleMazzaWUNF) August 10, 2022

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“Who leaked?” FBI’s Trump insider focus of new Lincoln Project ad

The Lincoln Project has taken shots at Donald Trump over the FBI raid of his Mar-a-Lago estate, suggesting that someone in his inner circle had betrayed him.

As the fallout from the search on Monday of Trump’s family home in Florida continues, the conservative CPAC, whose raison d’etre is to target the former president, released a 60-second video that started by asking: “Who was it Donald? Who gave you up to the Feds?”

Accompanied by a narrator whose whispered tone is drenched in subterfuge, the video shows newsreel footage of the search.

“Who told them what you kept in a safe in Mar-a-Lago,” the female narrator said. “No, not that stuff,” she added.

This referred to images of hand-written notes in a toilet, which relate to claims by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman of how Trump disposed of sensitive documents.

“The classified documents; 15 boxes of top secret files,” the narrator said, “that’s naughty Donald.”

“But who leaked?” the narrator asks, as an image of Trump beside children Donald Trump Jr. and Tiffany Trump flashes up on screen.

These segued into images of son Eric Trump, daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner, as well as the former president walking next to former First Lady Melania Trump.

Each name is mentioned followed by an insult. “Was it Jared?—ungrateful.” “Ivanka?—they’re backing away from you.” “Don Jr?—your own son.” “Eric?—do you even care?”

“Melania?—She wants to escape.”

Former US President Donald Trump

Former US President Donald Trump raises his fist while walking to a vehicle outside of Trump Tower in New York City on August 10, 2022. The Lincoln Project PAC has released a video suggesting that someone in the former president’s inner circle tipped off the FBI ahead of a raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Getty Images

Then the former chief of staff Mark Meadows is mentioned as the narrator notes that “all your old Washington friends are talking” to the Jan. 6 Committee investigating the U.S. Capitol riots.

“Maybe it was someone closer, someone you trusted,” she said. “Someone who you trusted betrayed you,” the ad states. “Now you’re the first president to have his home raided by the FBI.”

“It’s bad Donald, your father would be ashamed and there’s no one you can trust.”

As exclusively reported by Newsweek, two senior government sources have said that the FBI’s warrant to search Mar-a-Lago was based on information from a confidential human source who could “identify what classified documents former President Trump was still hiding.”

Regarding the video, which as of Thursday morning had been seen more than 1.7 million times, Lincoln Project co-founder Reed Galen said: “The rats are jumping ship and Donald is realizing he can’t trust even his own family.”

According to Florida Politics, Galen said “he knows the calls are coming from inside the house and he’s running out of time to figure out who it is.”

Trump’s team, which Newsweek has contacted for comment, has reacted to the raid with anger. The former president suggested on Truth Social on Wednesday that those involved in the search may have planted evidence.

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