A team of FBI agents raided Donald Trump’s oceanside Mar-a-Lago estate on Monday, as part of an investigation into the former president’s handling of White House records.
Trump himself confirmed the news in a statement on his social media network, Truth Social.
“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,” his account posted. “After working and cooperating with the relevant government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate.”
“They even broke into my safe!” he added.
An FBI spokesman from the bureau’s Miami field office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. And no publicly available federal search warrants filed in South Florida recently shed light on why agents were there.
However, Trump has been the target of an ongoing Justice Department investigation probing how he illegally made off with dozens of classified and sensitive records when he left the White House in 2021. Prosecutors have been reviewing whether his conduct violated the Presidential Records Act.
According to CNN, the raid on Mar-a-Lago began early Monday morning and law enforcement focused on searching Trump's offices and personal quarters in his Palm Beach club.
And according to Politico, the search was related to documents Trump may have improperly removed at the end of his presidential term—a potential violation of the Presidential Records Act, as well as laws about the handling of classified materials.
That may not sound like the biggest issue the Department of Justice could take up against Trump, but violating the PRA is a felony that could subject Trump to up to 10 years in jail—and it could turn up other evidence related to other crimes.
The raid is the clearest sign yet that there may actually be movement toward charging Trump with a crime. Although there's been little evidence of imminent charges against Trump—the former president's underlings have mostly avoided any repercussions for their actions with Jan. 6, Trump's pressure campaign to reverse the election, or his involvement with fake electors—Attorney General Merrick Garland has insisted the Justice Department has been hard at work on a number of cases.
Republicans were quick Monday night to dismiss the investigation as a partisan witch-hunt, even if Trump's mishandling of classified material and the preservation of official documents is famous.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) tweeted that the DOJ had "reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization."
"When Republicans take back the House, we will conduct immediate oversight of this department, follow the facts, and leave no stone unturned."
Without a shred of irony, McCarthy advised Garland to "preserve your documents."
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) tweeted that Congress ought to simply "DEFUND THE FBI!"
And Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) had a similar, if not even more disturbing message:
In February, The Washington Post reported that the National Archives and Records Administration retrieved 15 boxes of documents from Mar-a-Lago that Trump allegedly should have turned over. And The New York Times reported two days later that there was classified information among the documents archivists seized.
In his statement, Trump—seemingly without any self-awareness—referenced the last time a president engaged in criminal behavior that took him down: Richard Nixon.
“What is the difference between this and Watergate, where operatives broke into the Democrat national committee?” Trump asked on Truth Social.
