Former President Donald J. Trump said on Monday that the F.B.I. had searched his Palm Beach, Fla., home and had broken open a safe — an account signaling a major escalation in the various investigations into the final stages of his presidency.
The search, according to multiple people familiar with the investigation, appeared to be focused on material that Mr. Trump had brought with him to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence, when he left the White House.
Mr. Trump delayed returning 15 boxes of material requested by officials with the National Archives for many months, only doing so when there became a threat of action to retrieve them. The case was referred to the Justice Department by the archives early this year. The search marked the latest remarkable turn in the long-running investigations into Mr. Trump's actions before, during and after his presidency — and even as he weighs announcing another candidacy for the White House.
Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader in the House, suggested that he intended to investigate Attorney General Merrick B. Garland if Republicans took control of the House in November.
Proceeding with a search on a former president's home would almost surely have required sign-off from top officials at the bureau and the Justice Department. ~ Criminal codes can be used to prosecute anyone who "willfully injures or commits any depredation against any property of the United States" and anyone who "willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates or destroys" government documents.
A national security adviser to President Bill Clinton, pleaded guilty in 2015 to a misdemeanor charge for removing classified material from a government archive. In 2007, an Asia expert and former senior State Department official, was sentenced to prison after he confessed to keeping more than 3,000 sensitive documents in his basement. In 1999, the C.I.A. announced it had suspended the security clearance of its former director, John M. Deutch, after concluding that he had improperly handled national secrets on a desktop computer at his home. ~ Federal prosecutors subsequently began a grand jury investigation, according to two people briefed on the matter. ~ The authorities made interview requests to people who worked in the White House in the final days of Mr. Trump's presidency.
Earlier this year, a former Defense Department senior official and Trump loyalist whom Mr. Trump named as one of his representatives to engage with the National Archives, suggested to the right-wing website Breitbart that Mr. Trump had declassified the documents before leaving the White House and that the proper markings simply had not been adjusted. ~ All were united in their anger over the news that federal authorities had conducted a search of Mar-a-Lago and had even broken into a safe. ~ She and others eventually had to leave because the police told them they were on private property.
Doing so will give you access to the work of over 1,700 journalists whose mission is to cover the world and make sure you have accurate and impartial information on the most important topics of the day. ~ It's unusual for senior government officials to be charged in connection with mishandling classified information.
Those types of investigations typically require the help of the person who has mishandled the information. If individuals refuse to cooperate, the authorities tend to reach for its most extraordinary powers. ~ In Alaska, Gov. Mike Dunleavy wrote on Twitter that the search was evidence of "the politicization of the FBI against Donald Trump that started before he was even elected and continues to this day."
On Fox News on Monday evening, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a close ally of Mr. Trump, demanded answers from Mr. Garland and the F.B.I. director.
Tuesday's virtual interview with Mr. Mastriano is expected to be short, because he plans to object to the panel's rules about video recording. ~ The committee has rejected that option for other witnesses, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump's personal lawyer. ~ "Our only concern is to prevent the committee from releasing misleading and edited portions while keeping the proper context hidden. ~ "Unfortunately the committee has refused to discuss any arrangements other than to demand that they be allowed to exclusively control what portions can be released." ~ A former Army officer, was on the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, though he later explained that "he followed the directions of the Capitol Police and respected all police lines" that day. The committee has said it wants to interview Mr. Mastriano because he spoke directly with Mr. Trump about his "postelection activities."
The emails showed Mr. Mastriano needed assurances to go along with the plan because other Republicans had said "illegal." Mr. Mastriano has turned over documents to the Jan. 6 committee that included information about busing people to Washington for a large rally that preceded the violence, and copies of posts he made on social media.
Top Republicans and prominent conservatives reacted with outrage on Monday night to the news that the F.B.I. had searched the private residence of former President Donald J. Trump, with some suggesting that federal agents should be arrested and others hinting that the court-approved law-enforcement action against Mr. Trump was pushing the country toward political chaos.
"Any FBI agent conducting law enforcement functions outside the purview of our State should be arrested upon sight." In a post last week who served as Mr. Trump's acting director of national intelligence, said that if the former president were to be re-elected, he must "clean out the FBI and DOJ."
The law briefly received a close look in 2015, after it came to light that Hillary Clinton, then widely anticipated to be the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, had used a private email server to conduct government business while secretary of state.
In considering that situation, several legal scholars noted that the Constitution sets eligibility criteria for who can be president, and argued that Supreme Court rulings suggest Congress cannot alter them. The Constitution allows Congress to disqualify people from holding office in impeachment proceedings, but grants no such power for ordinary criminal law. ~ One of the most prominent voices pointing to Section 2071, the Democratic lawyer Marc Elias initially cited the law's disqualification provision in a Twitter post as "the really, really big reason why the raid today is a potential blockbuster in American politics." ~ Justice Department officials are declining to comment on any aspect of the search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago and have declined to say if Attorney General Merrick B. Garland approved of the warrant — or even if he had been briefed on the situation.
Earlier on Monday, federal prosecutors emphatically rejected a request by the conservative lawyer who had advised former President Trump of options to block congressional certification of the 2020 election, to return his cell phone. Eastman's phone was confiscated in New Mexico as part of an investigation into the scheme to put forward false slates of pro-Trump electors in battleground states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020. ~ The intrusion into his inner sanctum is nothing less than an "assault" by a bureau waging a years-long campaign against him based on personal grudges and political animosities. This time, however, the man running the F.B.I., Christopher A. Wray, was Trump's hand-picked choice to replace James Comey, whom he ousted in 2017 and characterized as a "showboat" out to get him.
McCarthy, who has refused a subpoena from the House Jan. 6 committee, said the Justice Department had "reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization" and pledged to investigate if Republicans retook the House in the 2022 midterm elections. ~ The use of such a warrant does indicate a sense of prosecutorial urgency, summons, request, or other less intrusive alternative means of obtaining the materials would substantially jeopardize the availability or usefulness of the materials sought," according to the the department's official guidebook on criminal procedure. ~ Law enforcement agencies must meet certain legal benchmarks, litigated over decades, before a judge can sign off.
If the warrant is found to lack such proof, the search is considered unlawful under a 2004 precedent. In addition, the courts have ruled that a search warrant should describe the location and nature of the search with "particularity" — to prevent agents from misusing a warrant to conduct a search that goes beyond the parameters of what has been specifically requested.
It was one of a series of requests that the Justice Department had made to the agency for records from the Trump administration. The FBI raid on President Trump's home is an unprecedented political weaponization of the Justice Department. ~ He was up north, where he's been spending much of his time at his club in Bedminster, N.J., preparing for a deposition with the New York attorney general in a civil matter related to his finances. ~ The news that the F.B.I. executed a search on Trump's home was a remarkable escalation and a truly stunning turn of events, even by the standard of the Trump years, during which norms were repeatedly shattered. The F.B.I.'s search of Mar-a-Lago came as former President Donald J. Trump weighs an increasingly likely third White House bid. He has considered making an unusually early announcement this year, a move designed in part to shield himself from a stream of damaging revelations emerging from congressional and criminal investigations into his attempts to cling to power after losing the 2020 election.
He's insisted that election fraud should be the top issue in the midterm elections, and that the investigations into his actions to undermine the results were merely a political hoax. "The election was rigged and stolen and now our country is being systematically destroyed".
