8 Aug 2022″‘SOURCE: AL JAZEERA
A “large group” of federal agents has entered Donald Trump’s Florida residence in an “unannounced raid”, the former US president said on his social media channel on Monday.
Officials from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) entered the property in a move that “was not necessary or appropriate”, Trump wrote in a statement
The circumstances surrounding the raid were not clear.
Trump was not at Mar a Lago when the officers arrived. He was seen leaving Trump Tower in New York City on Monday, where he also has a home.
The search, which the FBI and Justice Department did not immediately confirm, marks a dramatic escalation in a months-long investigation into how classified documents ended up in more than a dozen boxes located at Mar-a-Lago earlier this year. It occurred amid a separate but intensifying investigation into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and added to the potential legal peril for Trump as he prepares to run again for the presidency in 2024.
In February, classified materials were found in 15 boxes of official documents related to the Trump presidency that were retrieved at Mar-a-Lago by the US National Archives. Under US law, all communication regarding presidential duties has to be preserved. The National Archives had referred the incident to the US Justice Department
Justice Department spokesperson Dena Iverson declined to comment on the raid, including about whether Attorney General Merrick Garland had personally authorised the search, the Associated Press reported.
Trump claimed his home, the Mar-a-Lago estate, was “under siege, raided and occupied” calling it a “weaponization of the Justice System” that could only happen in “broken, Third-World Countries”.
He alleged in his statement the FBI move was backed by Democrats who “desperately” do not want him to run for reelection in 2024
Photographs made public on Monday morning reportedly showed handwritten notes by Trump ripped apart at the bottom of a toilet bowl. Axios first reported the allegations it said are included in an upcoming book by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman.
The former president is also connected with investigations over potentially illegal business practices, his efforts to overturn the 2020 US elections, and his role in the January 6, 2021 assault on the US Capitol.
Several former advisers and staff have testified in the congressional inquiry over the origins of the riot on the Capitol, with much of the focus on the former president, his actions leading up to it and his refusal for hours to rein in his mob of supporters as they stormed the Capitol.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA