We’ve brought you some of what happened in regard to the FBI raid at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home from Trump’s statement, the family reaction, and what his attorneys have said. Now there are more details about the nature of what was searched as well.
According to the NY Post’s Miranda Devine, they arrived Monday morning around 9 a.m. and searched until 6:30 p.m., so they were there for nine and a half hours.
.@mirandadevine gives an update on what happened during the raid on Mar-a-Lago, including how the FBI reportedly scoured through Melania Trump's wardrobe. pic.twitter.com/mXfio4ivXJ
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) August 10, 2022
The raid by over 30 plain clothes agents from the Southern District of Florida and the FBI’s Washington Field Office extended through the Trump family’s entire 3,000-square-foot private quarters, as well as to a separate office and safe, and a locked basement storage room in which 15 cardboard boxes of material from the White House were stored.
They had a professional safecracker open up the safe. They demanded access to every room, including Trump’s bedroom and they even searched Melania Trump’s wardrobe.
Trump’s attorneys noted that they were not allowed to watch the search and they expressed concerns that something could have been planted because of that.
The boxes contain documents and mementos from Trump’s presidency, reportedly including letters from Barack Obama and Kim Jong Un, and other correspondence with world leaders.
A legal source said that the boxes had been packed up by the General Services Administration and shipped to Mar-a-Lago when Trump left office in January 2020.
So it wasn’t even Trump who packed up the documents, but the GSA.
The Trump attorneys had been cooperating with the National Archives and had previously let people in, a couple of months ago, to go through the boxes.
Trump wasn’t present in the home during the raid because he and his family are in New Jersey for the summer. Mar-a-Lago only had a skeleton staff on hand when the FBI arrived.
The demeanor of the three DOJ lawyers who accompanied the FBI was described by one eyewitness as “arrogant,” and they repeatedly told Trump representatives: “We have full access to everything. We can go everywhere.”
Despite the sweltering 91 degrees temperature Monday, Trump’s lawyers were forbidden by the feds to shelter inside the cool lobby, or to observe the search in any way, but were left outside in the baking sun near a parking lot.
The feds instructed Trump’s representatives to switch off the security cameras but they refused.
According to Devine’s report, they did not leave an inventory list of what they took, which is also a problem, if true.
If they knew where the records were kept in the secure room that authorities had already looked through, why were they going through every other room, even searching Melania Trump’s clothes? That does scream fishing expedition. They could have gotten the documents by just asking voluntarily months ago or with a subpoena rather than this kind of raid that has raised the hackles of so many Americans. When they’re searching through the former president’s wife’s clothing, something is very wrong with what they are doing.
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