Trump, who a source close to him told The Independent was not present at his Florida residence, said the mansion-turned-private-club where he spends his winters was “currently under siege, raided and occupied by a large group of FBI agents” who, among other things, “broke” a safe belonging to him. The former president, whose push to overturn the 2020 election is currently under investigation by several federal courts in the District of Columbia, claims he “worked and cooperated with relevant government agencies” and called the raid “unnecessary or appropriate . “. He also argued, without offering evidence, that the raid on his Palm Beach residence was “prosecutorial misconduct” and “weaponizing the judicial system” was intended to prevent him from running for president in 2024. “Such an attack could only be carried out in devastated Third World countries. Unfortunately, America has now become one of those countries, corrupt on a level it has never seen before,” said the twice-impeached former president, who asked what the difference was between the FBI executing a search warrant at his home (which requires the approval of a federal judge after finding probable cause to believe evidence of a crime will be found at the site to be searched) and the 1972 burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters by a group of burglars working for then-President Richard H. Nixon’s re-election campaign. The news that FBI agents executed search warrants at the former president’s residences comes after a series of developments in the Justice Department’s investigation into Mr Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election and the events leading up to the attack on 6 January 2021. the US Capitol by a mob of Mr Trump’s supporters. In June, federal agents searched the home of Jeffrey Clark, the former head of the Justice Department’s political division, whom Trump briefly considered installing as deputy attorney general so that Clark could throw the department’s weight behind the false allegations. of for electoral fraud. Multiple former Trump administration officials have also testified before Washington grand juries investigating the Jan. 6 attack and a scheme by Trump allies to submit fake electoral college certificates to the National Archives. However, according to the New York Times, the raid on Mr Trump’s part-time home took place as part of an ongoing investigation into the former president’s alleged theft of classified material during the presidential transition. In February, then-U.S. Archivist David Ferriero told the House Oversight Committee that the National Archives and Records Administration had “identified items marked as classified national security information” inside 15 boxes recovered from Mar-a-Lago nearly a year after Mr. Trump’s term as president ended. At the time, Mr. Ferriero said Nara officials were “in communication with the Department of Justice” because unauthorized possession of classified material violates US criminal law. More to come…
