The FBI under the Biden administration questioned whether it had established probable cause to search President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in 2022 but moved forward with the raid anyway after pressure from senior Justice Department officials, according to newly declassified emails released Tuesday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA).
The emailed communications, which Grassley’s office received from the FBI and the DOJ, show that agents in the months leading up to the raid did not believe the legal standard for a search warrant had been met but were overruled by prosecutors during former President Joe Biden‘s time in office.
Received shocking new docs 2day from DOJ & FBI showing FBI DID NOT BELIEVE IT HAD PROBABLE CAUSE to raid Pres Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home but Biden DOJ pushed for it anyway
Based on the records Mar-a-Lago raid was a miscarriage of justice
Read for urself: https://t.co/qbJNT0tcRE pic.twitter.com/ljWdjndhHE
— Chuck Grassley (@ChuckGrassley) December 16, 2025
“Received shocking new docs today from DOJ & FBI showing FBI DID NOT BELIEVE IT HAD PROBABLE CAUSE to raid Pres Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home but Biden DOJ pushed for it anyway,” Grassley wrote on X. “Based on the records Mar-a-Lago raid was a miscarriage of justice.”
The records contained exchanges between FBI agents and DOJ attorneys from June 2022 up until the final days before the raid, which took place on Aug. 8, 2022. FBI officials raised repeated concerns that the evidentiary basis for a warrant was thin, uncorroborated, or outdated. Despite those warnings, DOJ officials concluded the probable cause threshold had been met and pursued a wide-ranging warrant covering the then-former president’s residence, office, and storage areas at the Palm Beach, Florida, property.
“Very little has been developed related to who might be culpable for mishandling the documents,” an FBI official serving as an assistant special agent in charge wrote in one email. The official said information suggesting additional boxes of documents remained at Mar-a-Lago was “single source,” “not corroborated,” and potentially “dated.”
Even so, the official noted that DOJ attorneys believed the draft search warrants met the probable cause standard. FBI personnel continued to urge a less confrontational approach, recommending that investigators first notify Trump’s attorneys that a warrant was being prepared and seek voluntary compliance, which Trump’s attorneys had already offered.
“Even as we continue down the path towards a search warrant, WFO believes that a reasonable conversation with the former president’s attorney … ought not to be discounted,” the official wrote, adding that documents could be secured while classification questions were sorted out.
As the weeks passed, frustration mounted inside the FBI. In another email, an agent complained that investigators were being asked to revise affidavit drafts repeatedly without any new factual developments.
“We haven’t generated any new facts, but keep being given draft after draft after draft,” the agent wrote. “Absent a witness coming forward with recent information about classified [materials] on site, at what point is it fair to table this?”
Another internal message stated that the FBI’s Washington Field Office did “not believe … that we have established probable cause for the search warrant for classified records at Mar-a-Lago,” even as DOJ officials continued to assert otherwise.
Despite those objections, the DOJ ultimately presented the warrant application to a federal magistrate judge in the Southern District of Florida, who approved the search warrant on Aug. 5, 2022, after finding probable cause. The warrant authorized agents to search broad areas of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property, including his residence, office, and storage spaces, for classified records and other government materials.
Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland, an appointee of Biden, later confirmed that he personally approved the decision to seek the warrant and defended the process publicly in rare remarks days after the raid. Garland said the search had been “authorized by a federal court upon the required finding of probable cause” and emphasized that such decisions were not made lightly.
Emails show FBI agents also warned that a raid would likely be “counterproductive” and proposed “alternative, less intrusive and likelier quicker options” to recover any remaining records. Those recommendations were rejected.
By early August 2022, planning for the execution of the warrant was underway. In a message dated Aug. 4, an FBI agent emphasized the bureau’s desire to conduct the search in a “professional, low key manner” and to be “mindful of the optics.”
That message recounted a meeting with senior DOJ officials in which then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General George Toscas was quoted as saying he “frankly doesn’t give a damn about the optics” of the search. The agent warned that DOJ contact with Trump’s attorneys immediately before the raid was unlikely to go smoothly and could inflame tensions.
“I understand that this request may not go well at DOJ,” the agent wrote, “however, it is the FBI serving and executing the search and it will be our personnel who will have to deal with the reaction to that first contact.”
The raid proceeded on Aug. 8, 2022. An FBI operations order authorized agents to carry firearms and use deadly force if necessary. Agents were instructed to bring standard-issue weapons, ammunition, handcuffs, and bolt cutters while wearing unmarked clothing and concealing law enforcement equipment.
During the search, agents seized boxes containing documents that Trump’s legal team later said included materials protected by attorney-client and executive privilege. Trump’s attorneys complained they were barred from observing the search and raised concerns about the use of a filter team.
Trump later challenged the warrant in court. In a June 27, 2024, order, U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon, a Trump appointee, ruled that Trump failed to meet the legal standard required to undermine the finding of probable cause.
“Defendant Trump has not made the requisite ‘substantial preliminary showing’ to warrant a Franks hearing,” Cannon wrote. “He identifies four omissions in the warrant, but none of the omitted information—even if added to the affidavit in support of the warrant—would have defeated a finding of probable cause.” However, it is unclear if she would have altered her decision given the previously unreleased deliberations by DOJ and FBI personnel on Tuesday.
Cannon’s ruling left the warrant intact even as she later dismissed the classified-documents prosecution in July on separate constitutional grounds related to former special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment.
Trump pleaded not guilty to all 37 felony counts from Smith’s case, including willful retention of national defense information, false statements, and conspiracy to obstruct justice. He was also subsequently charged that summer with three additional counts as part of a superseding indictment of the investigation that added his assistant, Walt Nauta, and his property manager, Carlos De Oliveira, to the indictment.
JACK SMITH SUBPOENAED FOR HOUSE GOP INQUIRY OF TRUMP INDICTMENTS AND ARCTIC FROST
The newly released emails surface as Smith prepares to sit for a closed-door deposition with the House Judiciary Committee this week.
Read the declassified communications between FBI and DOJ personnel below:
FBI Production to Chairman Grassley by reportoftheday
