In the past, political investigations that have threatened Trump have only increased his superpower appeal to supporters. But federal agents acted Monday with a judge-approved warrant suggesting they had probable cause to believe a crime had been committed. They focused on Trump’s offices and personal quarters at his Mar-a-Lago winter residence while the former president was away in New York.
The news was one of the most surprising U-turns yet in the history of Trump, who has been impeached twice, incited a mob riot to try to overturn his 2020 election defeat and has consistently broken the railings of the his office and democracy during his one term, and then, like no other president.
It threatened to inject new toxins into the political life of a nation that is desperately divided — with millions of Trump supporters already buying his lies that the 2020 election was stolen — and on many issues no longer has a common understanding of truth itself. .
It also comes with the former president looking to launch a 2024 campaign rooted in his false claims of electoral fraud, which his authoritarian rhetoric suggests would pose a profound challenge to democracy. This looming campaign will likely be fed the political rocket fuel of a perception among Trump supporters — which he himself created in his statement announcing Monday’s search — that he is being unfairly persecuted.
Trump uses the search to fire his supporters
Trump was quick to put a political spin on the operation, claiming his “beautiful home” was “under siege, raided and occupied” while complaining that he was a victim of the “weaponization of the justice system” by the Democrats who wanted to stop. to become president after the 2024 election. His statement used the same explosive language and sense of grievance that motivated some of his supporters to violence in Washington on January 6, 2021.
“This assault could only take place in broken Third World countries. Sadly, America has become one of those countries, corrupt on a level never seen before. They even broke into my safe!” Trump said. He did not mention that the search was conducted on the basis of a legally authorized warrant.
Early Tuesday morning, Trump shared a new campaign-style video on his Truth Social website declaring that “the best is yet to come” and has also been fundraising for the search.
In some ways, his reaction, in itself, read as the opening salvo of a new presidential campaign built around a narrative of persecution by deep state forces, familiar from the approach from other strongman leaders around the world.
The FBI and Justice Department declined to comment on the search. President Joe Biden was not aware of the Mar-a-Lago search until it was reported in the news, according to a senior administration official.
Unsure whether Trump had broken any laws, many Republicans took Trump’s lead, reacting furiously, demanding an explanation from the Justice Department and claiming the former president was the victim of a political vendetta. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, whose hopes of becoming speaker depend on Trump’s sponsorship, immediately pledged to investigate Attorney General Merrick Garland if Republicans win the House of Representatives in the election November half term.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who faces voters this fall, tweeted: “Using the power of government to persecute political opponents is something we’ve seen many times since Third World Marxist dictatorships, but never before in America.” Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who chairs the Senate GOP campaign arm, wrote on Twitter: “We need answers NOW. The FBI needs to explain what they were doing today and why.”
The instant reactions of support for the former president, further testament to his enduring power within the Republican Party, were also an early sign of how this investigation will face extreme political pressure. Those responses may also show that the former president’s potential 2024 campaign could benefit from the concentration effect of a government investigation that he may describe as politicized and unfair, and that potential GOP challengers may have little option to meet as well.
But the magnitude of Monday’s events should not be underestimated, even if the question of whether the former president was in real danger of being charged with a crime — in what would be a historic and stunning step — is not it was immediately clear Monday night. . The exact parameters of the search order were also not available. Presidents have the ability to declassify sensitive information, and it was unclear whether Trump could have taken those steps with the material involved. Former presidents do not have these powers, however. CNN reported that the FBI took boxes of items after Monday’s search. And Trump’s lawyer, Christina Bobb, said the office seized “paper” after what she said was “an unannounced raid.”
A most sensitive decision
Taking such actions against any major political figure would be very delicate. Given Trump’s status as former commander-in-chief, it’s especially serious. And the former president’s history of inciting anger and violence makes this about as sensitive a move as it gets.
It is clear that the upper echelons of the Justice Department and the FBI would have signed off on the decision to search Trump’s resort, fully aware of the explosive political reverberations that would surely ensue.
“I can’t overstate … how big a problem this would have been within the Justice Department and within the FBI,” former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe told CNN Monday evening.
“This is something that would have been planned and re-evaluated and legally scrutinized from every possible angle by the entire leadership structure of both organizations,” said McCabe, a CNN law enforcement analyst. .
Given the political implications, there is no margin for error for the Justice Department or the FBI, whose director, Christopher Wray, is a Trump appointee. There was never any doubt that Trump would react to the search by igniting a political touchstone. His false claims that the 2020 election was stolen have already helped incite an insurgency.
The bet for researchers and for the political future of the country is therefore enormous. These implications would only become more critical if it were later learned that the FBI’s search was not conducted by the book or was not critical to the nation’s national security. Political sensitivities are so acute that it’s easy to see how not prosecuting Trump after taking such a public step would raise questions about whether the search was warranted. That said, in order to get a warrant to search Trump’s property, FBI officials would have had to show a judge that there was probable cause to believe a federal crime had been committed and that it could get evidence at the complex.
Trump faces multiple investigations
The Justice Department has two known active investigations related to Trump, one into the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and the events surrounding January 6, 2021, and the other into the handling of classified documents.
This research seems to be related to the latter research. The National Archives, which is responsible for collecting and sorting presidential records, has previously said at least 15 boxes of documents were recovered from the White House at Mar-a-Lago, including some that were classified. Members of Trump’s former White House team have often said he was careless or dismissive of the legal requirement to file all presidential documents and cavalier with classified information. Earlier Monday, the newly revealed photos, which New York Times reporter and CNN contributor Maggie Haberman is publishing in her upcoming book, showed documents apparently written in Trump’s hand that he allegedly tried to flush down the toilet.News of the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search comes after CNN first reported last week that the former president’s lawyers were in talks with the Justice Department in connection with its investigation into the events in Washington around the Capitol insurrection. Trump may also face some legal jeopardy in a separate investigation in Georgia into attempts by the former president and his aides to overturn Biden’s election victory in a critical swing state.
Monday’s search at Mar-a-Lago also comes against the backdrop of the House Select Committee’s investigation into the Capitol insurgency, which has uncovered new evidence of Trump’s attempts to steal the 2020 election and his failure to try to stop the violent assault on the Capitol once it was underway. The committee has not yet said whether it will recommend criminal action against the former president by the Justice Department.
While Democrats might take comfort in the sense that legal trouble is piling up for the former president and that serious criminal investigations are closing in on a GOP presidential front-runner, they might do well to remember the history of attempts to hold him accountable.
The then-president managed to deflect from Robert Mueller’s investigation, even as the special counsel noted multiple strange ties between his 2016 campaign and Russia and compiled a list of occasions when many outside observers considered that he tried to obstruct justice.
Trump’s two impeachments in the US House, for trying to coerce Ukraine to investigate Biden ahead of the 2020 election and for the insurgency, did not result in convictions in Senate trials or any efforts to bar him from a future federal charge His extraordinary support among grassroots Republicans makes it nearly impossible for politicians who want a political future to oppose him. And it doesn’t seem like anything short of a clear criminal case against the former president could turn his supporters against him, and even that might not change their opinion of him if he responds with the right rhetoric.
That’s even more true after FBI agents crossed a Rubicon Monday into Trump’s pride-and-joy residence in a move that will have massive political implications, but the investigation eventually pans out.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, Katelyn Polantz, Zachary Cohen, Evan Perez, Sara Murray, Kevin Liptak, Dan Berman, Whitney Wild and Gabby Orr contributed to this report.
