Former President Donald Trump said that the FBI raided Mar-A-Lago as it executed a search warrant on the property.
It is unclear exactly why the FBI obtained the search warrant, but the raid comes amid reports that the Justice Department is investigating Trump’s actions surrounding the January 6th siege on the Capitol. But there also have been reports that Trump took documents from the White House rather than turn them over to the National Archives.
The news quickly dominated coverage on cable news. Typically, for a judge to sign off on a search warrant, there has to be probably cause that a crime was committed, senior legal analyst Elie Honig said on CNN.
Trump said in a statement, “These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided and occupied by a large group of FBI agents. Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before.”
He said that “after working and cooperating with the relevant government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate.”
Trump railed against the FBI action, while claiming that “they even broke into my safe.”
“What is the difference between this and Watergate, where operatives broke into the Democratic National Committee? Here, in reverse, Democrats broke into the home of the 45th President of the United States.”
Earlier on Monday, Axios published photos of toilets with torn up messages in the bowl. The pictures were obtained by The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, whose upcoming book will include a detail that White House staff sometimes found the wads of paper in the toilet, believed to be thrown in there by Trump.
(Excerpt) Read more in: Deadline