Former US President Donald Trump said his estate in Palm Beach, Fla., was raided by FBI agents.
Although Trump issued a lengthy statement on Monday saying that agents were searching his Mar-a-Lago estate, a spokesman for the US Justice Department said it had no comment. commented when asked if Attorney General Merrick Garland would authorize the search.
A person familiar with the matter said the move was related to an investigation into whether Trump brought top-secret files from his White House tenure to his Florida residence.
Trump said the FBI broke into a safe on his property, an act he described as “terrorist”.
“After working and cooperating with the relevant government agencies, the unannounced raid on my home was neither necessary nor appropriate,” Trump said in Monday’s statement.
Trump added: “These are dark times for our Nation… Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before.”
The Justice Department has opened a preliminary investigation into Trump’s removal of records to Florida properties, a source familiar with the matter told The Associated Press in April.
That investigation comes after the US National Archives and Records Administration notified Congress in February that it had recovered about 15 boxes of White House documents from Trump’s Florida home, a some of which contain classified documents.
The US House of Representatives Oversight Committee then announced that it was expanding its investigation into Trump’s actions and asked the archives to turn over additional information.
The committee’s January 6 hearing
The alleged attack on Mar-a-Lago comes as Trump is weighing up his third bid for the White House. The action, which the FBI and Justice Department did not immediately confirm, marks a dramatic escalation in Trump’s law enforcement surveillance.
While a search warrant does not indicate that criminal charges are imminent or even expected, federal officials seeking a search warrant must demonstrate that they have a probable cause for the crime. .
All of this comes as a congressional panel continues to probe the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. Its vice president, Liz Cheney, has said that the commission can make multiple referrals to the Department of Justice to look for criminals.
accusations against Trump.
Trump, in turn, accused the panel of conducting a sham investigation.
In a court filing on March 2, the committee detailed Trump’s efforts to persuade then-Vice President Mike Pence to turn down the electorate groups to Democrat Joe Biden, who had election or delay the counting of votes by the National Assembly on those votes.
According to David Carter, the California federal judge overseeing the case, Trump’s attempt may have violated federal law making it illegal to “corrupt” to obstruct any official proceedings or to attempt to do so. France.
Trump could also be charged with “ambitious conspiracy,” a rarely used statute that makes it illegal to overthrow the US government by force.
To prove this, prosecutors need to show that Trump conspired with others to use force, said Barbara McQuade, a law professor at the University of Michigan and a former federal prosecutor.
