The search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate is prompting speculation about what drove federal authorities to use unprecedented tactics against a former president whose rocky relationship with the Department of Justice and FBI dates back to before he took office.
Trump has equated the search of his property to Watergate and claims Democrats have weaponized the “justice system” against him. But with the search warrant under seal, much is still unknown about the nature of the investigation.
“It’s never happened, and it never would happen if it weren’t Trump,” constitutional rights attorney Alan Dershowitz told the Washington Examiner. Dershowitz charged that “of course” the raid was politically motivated, equating it to the government’s pursuit of a Chicago mobster on federal income tax evasion or the tactics waged by Joseph Stalin’s longest-serving secret police chief.
DOJ ORDERED TO RESPOND AFTER REQUESTS TO UNSEAL FBI’S TRUMP RAID WARRANT
“This is an Al Capone prosecution. They couldn’t get Capone on what [they] really wanted to get him on, so they got him on tax evasion,” he said. “This is a Lavrentiy Beria prosecution. Beria said to Stalin, ‘Show me the man, and I’ll find you the crime.’ They’re looking too hard for crimes with which to charge Trump. Their goal is to get him.”
Dershowitz said he believed federal agents might have been searching for materials that could strengthen the investigation into Trump over Jan. 6. However, he said the measures reveal a double standard.
“I think the raid itself was pretextual. That is, they said they were looking for evidence of classified material. There was probably probable cause for that. But they were certainly hoping and expecting that they would find material relevant to the Jan. 6 investigation,” he said.
In the case of Sandy Berger, former President Bill Clinton’s national security adviser who was arrested in 2003 for smuggling documents out of the National Archives, the former official was given a fine and had his security clearance suspended.
A yearslong investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server found classified data among her State Department emails and that thousands of emails had been deleted.
Senior government officials told Newsweek that the Mar-a-Lago warrant was not politically motivated. The warrant was based on information from a confidential source who identified what classified documents Trump was still holding and the location of those documents, according to the outlet.
Eric Trump told Fox News on Monday that he was informed the raid was related to a DOJ probe of his father’s alleged mishandling of classified material.
The National Archives said in a statement in February that it had removed 15 boxes containing presidential records from Mar-a-Lago in early 2022.
An inventory of recovered unclassified items includes “a cocktail napkin, a phone list, charts, slide decks, letters, memos, maps, talking points, a birthday dinner menu, schedules and more,” a person familiar with the 100-page document told Washington Post.
According to reports, some officials believe the former president had held on to additional documents covered by the Presidential Records Act and became uncooperative during negotiations over how to retrieve them.
Despite calls to do so, the former president has not released the warrant for the search, which would reveal what the agents were looking for.
The raid is unprecedented, leaving legal analysts to speculate about the reason for the tactics.
“They’ve crossed the Rubicon here. Not even Richard Nixon’s house in San Clemente was searched by the FBI, as far as I know. … You have to conclude there’s something behind the curtain that would surprise us,” George Conway, an anti-Trump lawyer, said on CNN.
Backlash to the raid was almost immediate, with current and former officials calling on federal authorities to justify the search. Trump has not been charged with a crime and has denied wrongdoing.
The raid “raises grave questions of propriety and politicization,” Rep. Peter Meijer (R-MI), one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after Jan. 6, said in a tweet. “I will not add to baseless speculation, but Director Wray and AG Garland owe transparency on the justification for setting such a striking precedent.”
Andrew Cuomo, the former Democratic New York governor, said the Justice Department “must immediately explain the reason for its raid & it must be more than a search for inconsequential archive or it will be viewed as a political tactic.” Failure to do so would undermine future investigations, including into the events of Jan. 6, he wrote.
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After the raid, a source said Trump was hunkered down at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf course weighing his options.
But the silence from the DOJ and FBI has kept people guessing.
“The fact that nobody has tried to justify this — we haven’t heard from Merrick Garland, we haven’t heard from the head of the FBI,” Dershowitz said. “I think they’re afraid to face the press on this.”
