America First Legal has obtained documents that purport to show that the White House and National Archives lied about the Mar-a-Lago raid. That’s reopened a discussion into what the actual pretext for the FBI action was and whether it was politically motivated to harm Donald Trump’s 2024 chances.

(see Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Home Raided By FBI; DOJ Declines to Comment)

The infamous raid, which occurred in August of 2022, became the centerpiece of a DOJ investigation into whether Trump illegally possessed classified documents at his Florida home and if he obstructed justice in refusing to return them prior to their seizure. The former president has long claimed that he declassified everything he took while the NARA has maintained that it has a legal right to the materials, which included personal mementos such as a letter from Kim Jung-Un.

At the time, the White House claimed to be blind-sided, having no idea about the raid nor the pretense that supposedly justified it. Yet, in the documents obtained by America First Legal, it is revealed that the White House made a “special access request” that appears to have been the pretext for the raid.

/2 On August 8, 2022, the FBI conducted an unprecedented raid of Mar-a-Lago on the ground that potentially classified records existed there.

According to press reports, Biden Administration aides were surprised to hear of this development. pic.twitter.com/d951QcbUY8

— America First Legal (@America1stLegal) April 10, 2023

/4 What this means is that there are substantial discrepancies between what the Archives has told Congress and what appears in its internal communications…

— America First Legal (@America1stLegal) April 10, 2023

/6 This stunning revelation suggests that NARA was misleading Congress about the White House's role in the shocking raid of President Trump's home, and the fact that the Biden White House was acting "on behalf of" the DOJ raises significant legal concerns.

— America First Legal (@America1stLegal) April 10, 2023

The summary of this is that the FBI and DOJ, as corrupt as they appear to be at times, didn’t just raid Trump’s home out of the blue. The documents in question were requested by the White House under a provision that allows special access to materials needed in the “conduct of current business” of the administration. Yet, it’s hard to come up with a reason that the documents at Mar-a-Lago were somehow needed to conduct “current business,” meaning the provision may have been abused for political reasons.

The questions are obvious. Why did the Biden administration request these documents in the first place, and was the request even legal? Further, did the president and his handlers do so in order to create a pretext for the raid to target a political opponent? There are still some dots left to be connected, but it certainly looks like White House claims of being in the dark are simply not true. Whether the president knew the exact time and place of the raid or not, he clearly knew of the investigation and actively pushed it forward via executive maneuvering. That’s a long way from being “surprised” about the ordeal.

House Republicans should take the next step and dig deep into whether NARA officials, AG Merrick Garland, and others lied to Congress. Obviously, the DOJ isn’t going to take action given it’s controlled by the Biden administration, but there is still a public interest in uncovering what happened here.

With that said, the GOP has to be careful not to make this the only thing it focuses on going into 2024. A walk-and-chew-gum strategy is necessary to show voters that the party exists to better their lives, not just protect politicians, even if those politicians were wrongly targeted. It’s a fine line to toe in order to be forward-looking while also not allowing corruption to occur without investigation.