The impetus for the raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort Monday was largely based on a confidential informant, according to a report.
A confidential source identified classified materials that were still stored at Mar-a-Lago, and the FBI intentionally opted to execute a search warrant of the property while Trump was away from the resort, two officials told Newsweek.
TRUMP PONDERS WHETHER FBI ‘PLANTED’ EVIDENCE DURING RAID
“They were seeking to avoid any media circus,” one of the sources said. “So even though everything made sense bureaucratically and the FBI feared that the documents might be destroyed, they also created the very firestorm they sought to avoid in ignoring the fallout.”
Officials began mulling the search weeks ago and eyed Trump’s schedule before the raid, per the report. Trump was in Trump Tower in New York City on Monday evening, according to a CNN reporter.
Trump’s team is believed to possess a copy of the search warrant but has no plans to release it to the public, according to NBC. Christina Bobb, a Trump attorney who claims to have been on the scene during the raid, said she saw the warrant and underscored that it was “very thin.”
“The affidavit, the supporting documentation of what the probable cause was to obtain the warrant, has been sealed, so we’re not allowed to see that. We have to go to court to request the judge to release that,” she explained in an interview Tuesday on Real America’s Voice.
On Monday, dozens of FBI agents converged upon Mar-a-Lago donning plain clothes to carry out the search from roughly 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., NewsNation correspondent Brian Entin reported. Trump’s son Eric later confirmed to Fox News that the raid was related to the Justice Department’s inquiry about Trump’s handling of classified material.
The former president suggested Wednesday that FBI agents may have “planted” evidence during the raid.
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“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.’ Why did they STRONGLY insist on having nobody watching them, everybody out,” Trump pondered on his Truth Social platform.
Back in January, the National Archives and Records Administration obtained about 15 boxes of documents and other material from Mar-a-Lago it claimed were presidential records. Staffers uncovered classified material in the stash of documents and informed the DOJ, which opened an investigation, according to David Ferriero, who was the archivist of the United States at the time.
