On Monday night, as rumours about their exact search swirled, it was revealed that the FBI agents who raided Donald Trump’s Florida residence had been in contact with his legal team since June over a cache of presidential records on the site.
The Monday raid was carried out, and Trump himself confirmed it. It is thought that the White House was not alerted in advance and learned about the operation at the same time as the rest of the globe.
When Trump left the White House in January 2021, it was discovered in February that he had taken some sensitive documents with him. Some of these materials were later given to the National Archives.
Although the reason for the FBI’s estate search on Monday is still unknown, it is believed that it has something to do with the last few boxes of documents.
Trump was in New York City at the time and was seen leaving Trump Tower in Manhattan on Monday night.
On Monday night, CNN reported that on June 8, investigators met with Trump’s attorneys at Mar-a-Lago to pore over the records.
According to the network, Trump was not questioned; instead, he visited and wished the investigators and his two attorneys well.
The detectives were then led by the two attorneys to a basement room where they were shown where the documents were kept.
A letter urging Trump’s attorneys to strengthen the security of the store room was delivered five days later, and the door was subsequently secured with a padlock.
The FBI’s subsequent decision to raid the property is unknown.
Former federal prosecutor Shawn Wu said, “Something has happened, and they are no longer convinced that those documents are protected.”
Following the publication of images showing shreds of paper being flushed down the toilet, word of the raid spread.
The reports of the records being burned were initially brought up by New York Times writer Maggie Haberman in February, but on Monday she tweeted images.
Trump himself vehemently denied deleting and dumping records.
The raid takes place as Donald Trump considers making another run for the presidency and as legislators on Capitol Hill look into his post-2020 actions, in which he attempted to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.
It started on Monday morning and lasted for a number of hours.
It is quite uncommon for a federal raid to occur at the home of a former chief executive.
“These are grave times for our Nation,” Trump declared on Monday night, “as my magnificent house, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, invaded, and occupied by a big group of FBI agents.”
“A President of the United States has never experienced anything like this before.”
“This surprise raid on my residence was not necessary or appropriate,” I told the relevant government agencies after working with them.
In a lengthy statement condemning the raid, President Trump claimed that it was the result of “prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024, especially based on recent polls, and who will similarly do anything to stop Republicans and Conservatives in the upcoming Midterm Elections.”
Whether Attorney General Merrick Garland personally approved the search was not made clear by the Justice Department, but it is exceedingly improbable that a raid on a former president would happen without the AG’s approval.
The FBI informed US Secret Service officials at Mar-a-Lago beforehand, and they complied by allowing them access to the property, according to NBC News.
The search and investigation were not conducted by Secret Service operatives.
This prevented the FBI from needing to enter the building or break down any doors.
A search warrant would need to be granted by a judge and does not imply that criminal charges are imminent or even expected.
It was originally discovered in February that Trump had taken confidential documents, including some marked “top secret,” from the White House and brought them to his Mar-a-Lago club.
After Trump denied flushing federal documents down the toilet and said he gave boxes to the National Archives voluntarily, Congress started an inquiry into his management of White House materials.
In a statement, he said that “another phoney story” about him flushing papers and documents down a White House toilet was “completely wrong” and “just made up by a reporter in order to generate exposure for a totally fictitious book.”
In apparent violation of the federal records acts, National Archives officials earlier this year found 15 boxes of White House materials at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. In addition, reports surfaced in February that the former president frequently tore official documents and sent others to be burned at the Pentagon.
‘Openly and freely,’ according to Trump, the boxes were transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration.
The House Oversight and Reform Committee launched an investigation into Trump’s unlawful removal or destruction of White House records in reaction to the material’s seizure.
According to a legislative letter addressed to NARA Archivist David Ferriero, “Removing or obscuring government records is a criminal crime punishable by up to three years in jail.”
The investigation was also denied by Trump, who asserted: “The media’s portrayal of my relationship with NARA is fake news.” The whole opposite was true! Working with NARA to formally preserve the Trump Legacy was a great pleasure.
According to an Axios story, New York Times writer Maggie Haberman claims that White House personnel discovered wads of printed paper clogging a toilet and assumed Trump was the culprit in her soon-to-be-released book Confidence Man.
As I was researching this book, I discovered that the White House personnel occasionally discovered a clogged toilet.
It would need to be fixed by the engineer.
The engineer would discover wads of clumped-up, moist, printed paper, indicating that the object was not toilet paper.
The paper they think he flushed down the toilet was either notes or another type of paper.
She did not make any more assumptions about what was written on the sheets, suggesting that it might even be post-it notes to himself.
When complaining about the water pressure in Washington, D.C., Trump frequently created questions by saying his administration was considering loosening water-saving rules for toilets, sinks, and showers.
“Instead of just flushing once, people are doing it ten, fifteen times.” Trump stated this in a December 2019 meeting with company owners. “They wind up consuming more water.”
“The EPA is looking into that at my request very strongly,” I suggested.
Trump would recite at rallies that people use more water when they flush more than once or take longer showers than usual.
The former president questioned why his competitor Hillary Clinton wasn’t required to turn up her 32,000 emails in his remarks, pointing out the irony of the probe into his management of records and preservation of souvenirs.
According to different legal decisions that have been made over the years, I was instructed that I was under no obligation to provide this information, Trump claimed.
He continued, “As an example, corrupt Hillary Clinton erased and acid washed 32,000 emails and never handed that to the government.”
Then they removed a significant amount of furnishings from the White House. Additionally, Bill Clinton preserved many audio recordings that the archives desired but were unable to obtain even after filing a lawsuit.
We won’t even bring up the current or previous administrations’ problems with the White House.
“Unfortunately, there are now two legal standards in the United States: one for Republicans and one for Democrats. That shouldn’t be the case!
The removal of White House records by the former president as he left office is being investigated by the Justice Department, creating a new area of potential legal exposure for Trump.
It would be unprecedented to accuse a former president of breaking the Presidential Records Act if any wrongdoing were ever discovered, and Trump has already escaped two attempts at impeachment while fending off inquiries into his Manhattan firm and battling with an election probe in Georgia.
Trump’s propensity for destroying paperwork while in office has also come to light thanks to the House January 6th Committee’s investigation, which just got a wealth of Trump White House papers.
Documents that are legally the property of the United States government, not the president who makes or receives them, have been taped together by archival officials in an effort to preserve them.
NARA is being questioned by the House Oversight Committee, which is presided by by New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney, on what was discovered in the 15 boxes that were taken from Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
One of the demands in the letter to Ferriero is, “Please provide a full account of the contents of the recovered boxes.”
Another queries whether NARA is aware of any presidential records that President Trump attempted to destroy or destroyed without NARA’s consent.
If so, ‘please provide a thorough description of such records, the steps President Trump took to delete or attempt to destroy them, and any steps NARA has taken to retrieve or preserve these documents.’
Trump “certainly broke criminal statutes forbidding the destruction of official records,” according to the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive, who urged for the DOJ to look into the matter.
According to CREW President Noah Bookbinder, “Donald Trump’s repeated and seemingly intentional destruction of his presidential records threatens to deny the American people a full historical record of his presidency and the chance to hold him and his administration fully accountable for their actions while in power.”
There is never a justification for keeping crucial information from the public.
The Department of Justice must take action to launch an investigation and hold Trump responsible for his careless actions.
The infamous hurricane map that the president allegedly scrawled on with a Sharpie pen to expand its potential path is one of the items that the National Archives retrieved from Mar-a-Lago.
Another memento that, according to a source who spoke to the Washington Post, was taken out of the Oval Office was a miniature version of Air Force One that Trump had proudly displayed there after taking part in every aspect of its redesign, right down to the paint job.
According to a former staffer, Trump presented a “mini model of one of the black border-wall slats” that he co-designed for his border wall at Mar-a-Lago.
His “love letters” with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un are among the vast amount of evidence Trump neglected to turn up when he departed the White House in January 2021.
It also contained the original copy of the letter that the outgoing president Obama wrote to Trump and hid in the top drawer of the Resolute Desk, in which he informed him that he and he alone would be occupying the office only temporarily.
The structures and practises of democracy, such as the rule of law, the separation of powers, equal protection, and civil freedoms, are now under our protection.
For individuals found guilty of significant crimes, federal record-keeping requirements impose jail time and the possibility of office forfeiture.
After Watergate, when Congress intervened and “seized Richard Nixon’s documents as if they were in a crime scene,” the Presidential Record Act was passed by Congress, according to Dr. Timothy Naftali, the former director of the Nixon Library.
According to the New York University professor, record-keeping regulations are intended to control conduct as well as aid historians and scholars.
And I believe that the knowledge that those in positions of authority have that we will know what they did in the future is what has a useful and healthy constraining effect on them.
That accountability will eventually exist,” he said.
They are aware that any acts they might take in support of a dictator may harm them in the long run and undermine the constitutional republic.
The retrieval comes amid claims that Trump tore up documents in his office, habitually destroyed documents, and ordered that they be placed in “burn bags” and transported to the Pentagon for incineration. As a result, the National Archives had to tape the documents back together.
According to a senior Trump White House employee, the president frequently ordered White House staffers to place documents in “burn bags” so they might be burned at the Pentagon rather than preserved.
The White House complex as well as businesses that deal with top-secret material, like the CIA and NSA, as well as other locations frequently stock so-called burn bags, which resemble a paper grocery bag.
Shredding is inferior to using burn bags.
The controversial map, which was put on a poster to indicate the storm track of Hurricane Dorian in 2019 during a live broadcast briefing, is among the wealth of material, according to The New York Times.
South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, in addition to Florida, “will most likely be slammed (much) worse than predicted,” Trump had earlier tweeted.
Even though Alabama’s national weather service had stated that “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian,” the black lines quickly added to the chart seemed to support Trump’s assertion. In his post-election remarks, Trump predicted that Alabama would be’very badly’ impacted.
Archivist David S. Ferriero stated in the statement that “the Presidential Records Act demands that all Presidential records must be properly kept by each Administration so that a complete set of Presidential records is delivered to the National Archives at the end of the Administration.”
When it becomes known that records have been unlawfully deleted or inappropriately transferred to official accounts, the agency, according to him, “pursues the return of records.”
Without directly criticising Trump, he said the records act as “essential to our democracy” and defended its intentions.
Ferriero emphasised the significance of all Presidents abiding by the PRA.
“There should be no doubt as to the need for both diligence and vigilance, whether through the creation of adequate and proper documentation, sound records management practises, the preservation of records, or the timely transfer of them to the National Archives at the end of an Administration. Records are important,’ he said.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), chair of the House Oversight Committee, stated that she intends to ‘thoroughly investigate’ the situation to ensure that the papers are indeed with the Archives and not “stashed away in Trump’s golf clubs.”
Trump’s records stash reportedly included unidentified “gifts,” according to The Washington Post, which broke the news of the transfer.
The U.S. Code now contains a section on the hiding or destruction of documents as a result of the post-Watergate records statute.
It states that: “Anyone who willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, destroys, or attempts to do so, or who takes and carries away with the intent to do so any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States, shall be fined under this title or
‘Whoever, having custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned for not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States,’ the rest of the clause reads. The term “office” as used in this subsection does not include the office held by any individual who is a retired officer of the United States Armed Forces.
Letters from Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, were among the documents in the 15 boxes that had been wrongfully removed by the former commander in chief.
Memos, notes, letters, emails, faxes, and other written correspondence pertaining to the president’s official duties must be given to the National Archives for preservation in accordance with the Presidential Records Act.
In reference to his cordial correspondence with Kim, Trump once claimed that after finally meeting, the two “fell in love.” Some describe the back-and-forth of the U.S. president and North Korean dictator as ‘love letters’.
One former Trump adviser claimed they don’t think the ex-president acted with criminal intent, adding that the boxes of papers contained letters from international leaders as well as presents and memories.
The person said to The Washington Post, “I don’t think he did this with malicious intent to avoid complying with the Presidential Records Act.”
“He’s been very transactional for as long as he’s been in business, and it was likely his longtime practise. I don’t think his habits changed when he got to the White House.”
While the National Archives has limited enforcement authority over this, the law requires presidents to preserve records related to administration activity.
According to a representative of the Archives, the Act functions more like a “gentlemen’s agreement.”
The Supreme Court had determined that the records, including presidential diaries, visitor logs, speech draughts, and handwritten notes pertaining to January 6 from the files of former chief of staff Mark Meadows, could be released by the archives.
Trump’s attorneys wanted to drag out the legal battle and postpone the release of the documents.
The panel first requested the documents in August, and they will be added to the tens of thousands the committee has already gathered as it looks into the attack by a violent crowd of Trump supporters and what the former president and his advisers were doing as it happened.
The Washington Post quoted presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky as saying, “The only way that a president can really be held accountable long term is to preserve a record about who said what, who did what, what policies were encouraged or adopted, and that is such an important part of the long-term scope of accountability — beyond just elections and campaigns.”
Chervinksy noted that it would also impact U.S. national security if records and documents are not given. ‘That might represent a serious worry if the next administration is flying blind without that information,’ she added.
The general records situation, according to Representative Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), represented the “unconventional character of how this White House operated,” according to the January 6 House panel.
She continued by saying she was unaware of the transfer of papers from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.
It’s hardly shocking that they disregarded the guidelines, Murphy added.
“As for how the committee’s work relates to this development, we have various sources and means for getting the papers and information that we need.”
Some of the papers handed over to the select committee were taped together by National Archives staff because they had been ripped up, the agency revealed in a statement.
Without elaborating on how it was determined that Trump was the person who vandalised the records, the National Archives and Records Administration told CNN that “some of the Trump presidential records received by the National Archives and Records Administration included paper records that had been torn up by former President Trump.”
A number of torn-up records that the White House had not repaired were also given to the National Archives at the end of the Trump Administration, according to the Archives.
‘The Presidential Records Act requires that all records created by presidents be given up to the National Archives at the end of their administrations.’
The Archives has grappled with Trump’s lack of retention of documents and his propensity of ripping papers when he was done with them.
The ex-president routinely ripped up official documents so hundreds of pages that arrived to the Archives were taped back together while others came to them still in bits.
Charles Tiefer, former counsel to the House of Representatives, said if there is ‘willful and unlawful intent’ to violate the Act by anyone concealing or destroying public information, they would face up to three years in prison.
‘You can’t prosecute for just tearing up paperwork,’ he remarked.
‘You would have to show him being exceedingly selective and have proof that he sought to behave unlawfully.’