Washington: In an unprecedented search conducted on the premises of former US President Donald Trump earlier this week in Florida, the FBI agents were looking for documents relating to nuclear weapons, according to The Washington Post report, which was neither denied or confirmed by the US Justice Department, which oversees the FBI. The newspaper sourced the report to multiple officials “all unidentified” involved in the investigation but gave no further details of the kind of nuclear weapons` documents sought by the agents.
Government officials are reportedly worried that these documents could fall in the wrong hands at Trump`s Florida home that is also a club frequented by members. The report say that Donald Trump has held on to an undisclosed volume of documents from his presidency that he is required to have turned in for archiving by the government. The National Archive, which is the repository of these documents, has been following up with him and his aides for months.
The FBI agents searched Trump`s home in an unprecedented first for a US President on Monday, according to a statement from Trump, who called it a “raid” in a political ploy to both discredit it and rile up his base with a familiar story of victimhood he had used against the Russia investigation and his double impeachment.
As allies and followers predictably poured scorn and outrage on the “raid”, Trump and his lawyers did not tell them and the country the details that were available to them by way of the search warrant issued by a federal judge, which would have contained the grounds for it, or the itemized list of articles taken by the FBI “at least 15 boxes” that were duly provided to them.
For US president was once again the hounded hero for his followers “including many lawmakers” who had no idea why his premises were searched. US Attorney General Merrick Garland, who heads the Justice Department that has oversight of the FBI, called the former President`s bluff.
Court asked to unseal search warrant for Mar-a-Lago raid
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a motion to unseal the search warrant for former President Donald Trump`s Mar-a-Lago residence earlier this week. Attorney General Merrick Garland made the announcement on Thursday after Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents raided the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on Monday, said Xinhua news agency report.
Addressing the press at the DOJ headquarter, Garland said he personally “approved the decision to seek a search warrant in this matter,” adding “The Department does not take such a decision lightly. Where possible, it is standard practice to seek less intrusive means as an alternative to a search and to narrowly scope any search that is undertaken.”
Trump and his allies have denounced the operation as a political attack orchestrated by Democrats while calling out the FBI and the DOJ. The raid was said to have involved classified materials that Trump allegedly took with him from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, when he left office in January 2021. The Presidential Records Act requires that all records created by Presidents be turned over to the National Archives at the end of their administrations.
Some of the Trump presidential records received by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) included paper records that had been torn up by Trump, according to the federal agency. In January, the NARA also arranged for the transport from the Mar-a-Lago to the National Archives of 15 boxes that contained presidential records.
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