He says he’s confidence the FBI had reason to serve the search warrant.
Washington DC. (KM) – The search and seizure operation conducted by the FBI at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Largo home took a lot of people off guard. “I was very surprised and didn’t expect that,” says Sixth District Representative David Trone (D-Md) He called the operation “unprecedented.” “To serve a warrant on an ex-president–whether you supported him or not–that’s a big deal,” he continues.
According to an account in Newsweek, the FBI received a tip from a “confidential human source” that the former President was still holding classified national security documents. This source also told the Bureau what documents Trump was hiding and where they could be found.
Trone says he’s confident the FBI was acting on good information. “My belief is confidence in the FBI that they wouldn’t have served that if they didn’t have clear evidence that there was something that shouldn’t have been there there,” he says.
If that was not the case with the FBI, “shame on them,:” says Trone.
He says those documents should have turned over to the National Archives as Trump was leaving office. “It was absolutely not legal to take presidential documents and documents that are classified out of the executive branch,” Trone continues. “A president doesn’t own those documents. They’re owned by the United States of America, not any president.”
The Newsweek account says the FBI and a local Assistant US Attorney approached Florida Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart to seek approval of a warrant to search Trump’s residence. The magazine says the judge asked numerous questions before signing the warrant. The director of the Secret Service was given advance warning, and later told about the specifics of the raid, according to the Newsweek account. Ex-presidents still have some Secret Service protection.
By Kevin McManus
Update:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department has asked a court to unseal the federal warrant the FBI used to search the Florida estate of former President Donald Trump. Announcing the action Thursday, Attorney General Merrick Garland cited the “substantial public interest in this matter.” Garland also said he personally approved the search warrant, which was part of an ongoing Justice Department investigation into the discovery of classified White House records recovered from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, earlier this year. Trump criticized the search anew, as did his allies who have demanded that the warrant be made public.
