Twice impeached Donald Trump and his legal team have no plans to release a copy of the search warrant used to raid Mar-a-Lago on Monday, leaving it up to the Department of Justice to detail the reasons for the unprecedented operation, according to a new report.
“No, we’re not releasing a copy of the warrant,” NBC News quoted a source close to the 45th president as saying.
Trump attorney Christina Bobb did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation from The Post.
The report comes one day after Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray requesting details on the evidence used to justify the raid.
“I would assume that an escalation of this magnitude — for the Bureau to obtain a court-ordered search warrant and conduct an unannounced search, for the first time in our country’s history, to seize documents stored at a former president’s residence — would indicate that the Federal government perceived something in those documents posed a serious, ongoing threat to our national security,” Turner wrote.
“As such, the evidentiary basis presented to the court to justify the necessity of this warrant is of keen interest to the investigative and legislative activities of this Committee.”
US Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart signed off on the warrant that allowed federal agents to search the resort earlier this week, though the document’s contents have not been made public. Some have called for Trump’s side of the legal dispute to release any court documents they received concerning the raid to tamp down speculation.
Two recent warrant applications assigned to Reinhart entered the court system on Monday, according to the Miami Herald, though the warrants themselves and information on what they targeted remained under seal. Another warrant was issued by the judge Friday, though its contents also are sealed.
Neither the Justice Department nor the FBI have commented since the raid, while the White House has insisted no one there had advanced knowledge of what was happening.
“The Justice Department conducts investigations independently, and we leave any law enforcement matters to them,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday. “It would not be appropriate for us to comment on any ongoing investigations.”
Federal agents spent approximately nine hours searching Trump’s Florida estate Monday, breaking into his safe and scouring former first lady Melania Trump’s wardrobe. The agents were focused on presidential records and evidence of classified information being stored on the premises.
They also searched a locked basement storage room, where reportedly 15 boxes of documents from the White House were being kept. The documents reportedly included letters to Trump from former President Barack Obama and North Korea leader Kim Jong Un.
While removing classified documents to unauthorized locations is barred under federal law, Trump had the ultimate authority while in office to declassify documents.
An eyewitness to the raid said all of the boxes were confiscated.
Trump blasted the FBI agents who conducted the search on Wednesday for allegedly refusing to allow his attorneys to watch the raid.
“Everyone was asked to leave the premises, they wanted to be left alone, without any witnesses to see what they were doing, taking or, hopefully not, ‘planting,’” Trump said. “Why did they STRONGLY insist on having nobody watching them, everybody out?”
“Obama and Clinton were never ‘raided,’ despite big disputes!” he added.
A source close to Trump later told The Post there was some concern the FBI agents or DOJ lawyers overseeing the raid could have “planted stuff” due to the lack of observation.
