F.B.I. Searches Trump's HomeF.B.I. Searches Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Residence in Florida

The former president called the search an “assault” and complained that the authorities had broken into a safe. The news appeared to come as a surprise to top aides at the White House.

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Former President Donald J. Trump said that the F.B.I. had searched Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach, Fla., home, and had broken open a safe.CreditCredit...Josh Ritchie for The New York Times

Follow our live updates on the F.B.I. search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.

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The former president said the Mar-a-Lago search was ‘unannounced.’

Former President Donald J. Trump said on Monday that the F.B.I. had searched his Palm Beach, Fla., home and had broken open a safe — an account signaling a major escalation in the various investigations into the final stages of his presidency.

The search, according to multiple people familiar with the investigation, appeared to be focused on material that Mr. Trump had brought with him to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence, when he left the White House. Those boxes contained many pages of classified documents, according to a person familiar with their contents.

Mr. Trump delayed returning 15 boxes of material requested by officials with the National Archives for many months, only doing so when there became a threat of action to retrieve them. The case was referred to the Justice Department by the archives early this year.

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F.B.I. agents searched Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald J. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida. Mr. Trump said they had broken open a safe.Credit...MediaPunch, via Associated Press

The search marked the latest remarkable turn in the long-running investigations into Mr. Trump’s actions before, during and after his presidency — and even as he weighs announcing another candidacy for the White House.

It came as the Justice Department has stepped up its separate inquiry into Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in office after his defeat at the polls in the 2020 election and as the former president also faces an accelerating criminal inquiry in Georgia and civil actions in New York.

Mr. Trump has long cast the F.B.I. as a tool of Democrats who have been out to get him, and the search set off a furious reaction among his supporters in the Republican Party and on the far right of American politics. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader in the House, suggested that he intended to investigate Attorney General Merrick B. Garland if Republicans took control of the House in November.

The F.B.I. would have needed to convince a judge that it had probable cause that a crime had been committed, and that agents might find evidence at Mar-a-Lago, to get a search warrant. Proceeding with a search on a former president’s home would almost surely have required sign-off from top officials at the bureau and the Justice Department.

The search, however, does not mean prosecutors have determined that Mr. Trump committed a crime.

An F.B.I. representative declined to comment, as did Justice Department officials. The F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, was appointed by Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump was in the New York area at the time of the search. “Another day in paradise,” he said Monday night during a telephone rally for Sarah Palin, who is running for a congressional seat in Alaska.

Eric Trump, one of his sons, told Fox News that he was the one who informed his father that the search was taking place, and he said the search warrant was related to presidential documents.

Mr. Trump, who campaigned for president in 2016 criticizing Hillary Clinton’s practice of maintaining a private email server for government-related messages while she was secretary of state, was known throughout his term to rip up official material that was intended to be held for presidential archives. One person familiar with his habits said that included classified material that was shredded in his bedroom and elsewhere.

The search was at least in part for whether any records remained at the club, a person familiar with it said. It took place on Monday morning, the person said, although Mr. Trump said agents were still there many hours later.

“After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate,” Mr. Trump said, maintaining it was an effort to stop him from running for president in 2024. “Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries.”

“They even broke into my safe!” he wrote.

Mr. Trump did not share any details about what the F.B.I. agents said they were searching for.

Aides to President Biden said they were stunned by the development and learned of it from Twitter.

The search came as the Justice Department has also been stepping up questioning of former Trump aides who had been witnesses to discussions and planning in the White House of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss.

Mr. Trump has been the focus of questions asked by federal prosecutors in connection with a scheme to send “fake” electors to Congress for the certification of the Electoral College. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol also continues its work and is interviewing witnesses this week.

The law governing the preservation of White House materials, the Presidential Records Act, lacks teeth, but criminal statutes can come into play, especially in the case of classified material.

Criminal codes, which carry jail time, can be used to prosecute anyone who “willfully injures or commits any depredation against any property of the United States” and anyone who “willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates or destroys” government documents.

Samuel R. Berger, a national security adviser to President Bill Clinton, pleaded guilty in 2015 to a misdemeanor charge for removing classified material from a government archive. In 2007, Donald Keyser, an Asia expert and former senior State Department official, was sentenced to prison after he confessed to keeping more than 3,000 sensitive documents — ranging from the classified to the top secret — in his basement.

In 1999, the C.I.A. announced it had suspended the security clearance of its former director, John M. Deutch, after concluding that he had improperly handled national secrets on a desktop computer at his home.

In January of this year, the archives retrieved 15 boxes that Mr. Trump took with him to Mar-a-Lago from the White House residence when his term ended. The boxes included material subject to the Presidential Records Act, which requires that all documents and records pertaining to official business be turned over to the archives.

The items in the boxes included documents, mementos, gifts and letters. The archives did not describe the classified material it found other than to say that it was “classified national security information.”

Because the National Archives “identified classified information in the boxes,” the agency “has been in communication with the Department of Justice,” David S. Ferriero, the national archivist, told Congress at the time.

Federal prosecutors subsequently began a grand jury investigation, according to two people briefed on the matter. Prosecutors issued a subpoena earlier this year to the archives to obtain the boxes of classified documents, according to the two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.

The authorities also made interview requests to people who worked in the White House in the final days of Mr. Trump’s presidency, according to one of the people.

In the spring, a small coterie of federal agents visited Mar-a-Lago in search of some documents, according to a person familiar with the meeting. At least one of the agents was involved in counterintelligence, according to the person.

The question of how Mr. Trump has handled sensitive material and documents he received as president loomed throughout his time in the White House, and beyond.

He was known to rip up pieces of official paper that he was handed, forcing officials to tape them back together. And an upcoming book by a New York Times reporter reveals that staff members would find clumps of torn-up paper clogging a toilet, and believed he had thrown them in.

The question of how Mr. Trump handled classified material is complicated because as president he had the authority to declassify any government information. It is unclear whether Mr. Trump, before leaving office, had declassified materials the archives discovered in the boxes. Under federal law, he no longer maintains the ability to declassify documents after leaving office.

While in office, he invoked the power to declassify information several times as his administration publicly released materials that helped him politically, particularly on issues like the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia.

Toward the end of the administration, Mr. Trump ripped pictures that intrigued him out of the President’s Daily Brief — a compendium of often classified information about potential national security threats — but it is unclear whether he took them to the residence with him. In one prominent example of how he dealt with classified material, Mr. Trump in 2019 took a highly classified spy satellite image of an Iranian missile launch site, declassified it and then released the photo on Twitter.

Earlier this year, Kash Patel, a former Defense Department senior official and Trump loyalist whom Mr. Trump named as one of his representatives to engage with the National Archives, suggested to the right-wing website Breitbart that Mr. Trump had declassified the documents before leaving the White House and that the proper markings simply had not been adjusted.

“Trump declassified whole sets of materials in anticipation of leaving government that he thought the American public should have the right to read themselves,” he said, according to Breitbart.

Local television crews showed supporters of Mr. Trump gathering near Mar-a-Lago, some of them being aggressive toward reporters.

Mr. Trump made clear in his statement that he sees potential political value in the search, something some of his advisers echoed, depending on what any investigation produces.

His political team began sending fund-raising solicitations about the search late on Monday evening.

Jonathan Martin, Luke Broadwater and Glenn Thrush contributed reporting.

Neil Reisner
Aug. 9, 2022, 12:30 a.m. ET

Outside Trump’s residence, his defenders were making some noise.

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Supporters of former President Donald J. Trump along South Ocean Boulevard in Palm Beach, Fla., on Monday.Credit...Josh Ritchie for The New York Times

By Monday night, a couple dozen supporters of former President Donald J. Trump had gathered across the street from his private residence in Palm Beach, Fla., some holding Trump-Pence flags from their 2020 campaign, others wearing red Make America Great Again caps. But all were united in their anger over the news that federal authorities had conducted a search of Mar-a-Lago and, according to Mr. Trump, had even broken into a safe.

Vehicles of Trump supporters lined South Ocean Boulevard, and people had gotten out of their cars to express their support — some rather loudly.

One vehicle was blasting, “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” the ’80s rock ’n’ roll anthem by Twisted Sister.

Elina Fandino, who lives across the Intracoastal Waterway in West Palm Beach, said she was there to support the former president.

As soon as she heard about the F.B.I.’s search at Mar-a-Lago, “I looked at my husband and said, ‘This can’t be,’ ” said Ms. Fandino. She and others eventually had to leave because the police told them they were on private property.

Jo Campbell, a neighbor of Mr. Trump’s in Palm Beach, was standing in her street where vehicles were making U-turns. She was asking them to turn down the volume of the music they were blasting. Some did; others cursed at her and refused.

“I have zero issues with people having their opinions,” she said, pointing to the Mar-a-Lago emblem on her sweatshirt and indicating that she’s a member of the club. She said she was mainly concerned for some of her other neighbors. “We have people on this street who are stroke victims, families with children, cancer victims going through treatment.”

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Michael S. Schmidt
Aug. 8, 2022, 11:16 p.m. ET

When a search warrant might be issued on a senior government official.

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Law enforcement officials outside Mar-a-Lago in Florida late Monday.Credit...Jim Rassol/EPA, via Shutterstock

It’s unusual for senior government officials to be charged in connection with mishandling classified information.

There have been some high-profile exceptions, like Gen. David H. Petraeus and President Bill Clinton’s national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger.

But in most instances, when the Justice Department or the F.B.I. learns that classified information is being kept in an unsecure way, it conducts what’s known as a “spill investigation” to determine where the materials are. As part of that investigation, F.B.I. agents determine whether any sensitive national security information has been revealed so the intelligence community can take countermeasures to protect sources and methods.

The investigators typically move the materials to a secure area or wipe them off electronics. Those types of investigations typically require the help of the person who has mishandled the information. If individuals refuse to cooperate, the authorities tend to reach for its most extraordinary powers, like search warrants.

Eliza Fawcett
Aug. 8, 2022, 11:12 p.m. ET

Republican governors criticize the Mar-a-Lago search as ‘unprecedented’ and ‘un-American.’

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Trump supporters standing outside his Mar-a-Lago home on Monday evening.Credit...Josh Ritchie for The New York Times

The F.B.I.’s search of former President Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida drew swift condemnation on Monday evening from some Republican governors who quickly backed Mr. Trump’s message that the Justice Department was being used against him.

Mr. Trump decried the search — which appears to be focused on potentially classified material he took from the White House to his Palm Beach home — in a statement as a “weaponization of the justice system” and an effort to prevent him from running for president again in 2024.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, both Republicans, doubled down on Mr. Trump’s language in statements of their own, denouncing the “weaponization” of the federal government.

“They’ve been after President Trump as a candidate, as President, and now as a former President,” Governor Noem wrote on Twitter, referring to the Justice Department. “Using the criminal justice system in this manner is un-American.”

Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, a former U.S. attorney, said on Twitter that the search was “unprecedented & alarming” and that the probable cause affidavit authorizing the search should be publicly released.

“Normally that would be under seal but since Trump announced the raid then the probable cause should be made public,” he wrote.

In Alaska, Gov. Mike Dunleavy wrote on Twitter that the search was evidence of “the politicization of the FBI against Donald Trump that started before he was even elected and continues to this day.”

House Republicans loyal to Mr. Trump directed their ire at the leadership of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department.

Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House minority leader, threatened “immediate oversight” of the Justice Department if Republicans retook the House in the November midterm elections — and warned that Attorney General Merrick B. Garland would be targeted.

“Attorney General Garland, preserve your documents and clear your calendar,” he wrote in a statement.

On Fox News on Monday evening, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a close ally of Mr. Trump, demanded answers from Mr. Garland and Christopher Wray, the F.B.I. director.

“What were you really doing? What were you looking for?” he said. “Why not talk to President Trump and have him give the information you’re after? This is unbelievable.”

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Lauren Hard
Aug. 8, 2022, 11:09 p.m. ET

The entrance to Trump's golf club in Bedminster, N.J. — his "summer White House" when he was in office — was quiet on Monday night. The club is located in a rural area near a number of horse farms and does not have a gate. A black S.U.V. was parked there, apparently as a makeshift barrier.

Luke Broadwater
Aug. 8, 2022, 11:07 p.m. ET

The House Jan. 6 panel is scheduled to interview Pompeo and Mastriano on Tuesday.

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The House select committee on Jan. 6 is continuing its investigation of Mr. Trump even as the Justice Department carries out multiple inquiries of its own.Credit...Kenny Holston for The New York Times

In the wake of the F.B.I. search of former President Donald J. Trump’s property in Florida, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is gearing up to meet with two potentially key witnesses in its separate inquiry on Tuesday.

The committee is expected to meet with Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state under Mr. Trump, and Douglas V. Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania who served as a point person in the state for a plan to keep Mr. Trump in power by using slates of “alternative” or “fake” electors.

Mr. Pompeo has been in talks with the committee about his appearance for weeks, according to a person familiar with the matter, and could provide testimony about discussions within Mr. Trump’s cabinet about the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office after the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

Mr. Pompeo’s discussion regarding the 25th Amendment was reported by Jonathan Karl of ABC News in his book “Betrayal.”

A spokesman for the Jan. 6 committee declined to comment. A spokesman for Mr. Pompeo did not respond to a request for comment.

Tuesday’s virtual interview with Mr. Mastriano is expected to be short, because he plans to object to the panel’s rules about video recording. A lawyer for Mr. Mastriano, currently a state senator, said Mr. Mastriano believed the committee would selectively edit his testimony, and planned to insist on making his own video recording of the interview. The committee has rejected that option for other witnesses, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer.

“Senator Mastriano has nothing to hide and would be happy to answer their questions. Our only concern is to prevent the committee from releasing misleading and edited portions while keeping the proper context hidden. Either release the entirety or let me make a copy and we have no issue,” Timothy C. Parlatore, Mr. Mastriano’s lawyer, said in a text message. “Unfortunately the committee has refused to discuss any arrangements other than to demand that they be allowed to exclusively control what portions can be released.”

It is unclear what the committee’s response will be if Mr. Mastriano ends the interview abruptly.

Mr. Mastriano, a former Army officer, was on the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, though he later explained in a statement that “he followed the directions of the Capitol Police and respected all police lines” that day. The committee has said it wants to interview Mr. Mastriano because he spoke directly with Mr. Trump about his “postelection activities.”

Emails reviewed by The New York Times also show that Mr. Mastriano served as a point person for the Trump campaign as it assembled groups of pro-Trump electors in states won by President Biden. The emails showed Mr. Mastriano needed assurances to go along with the plan because other Republicans had told him it was “illegal.”

Mr. Mastriano has turned over documents to the Jan. 6 committee that included information about busing people to Washington for a large rally that preceded the violence, and copies of posts he made on social media.

Alan Feuer
Aug. 8, 2022, 10:54 p.m. ET

Republican officials reacted with fury to news of the search.

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Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, said, “The Department of Justice has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization.”Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

Top Republicans and prominent conservatives reacted with outrage on Monday night to the news that the F.B.I. had searched the private residence of former President Donald J. Trump, with some suggesting that federal agents should be arrested and others hinting that the court-approved law-enforcement action against Mr. Trump was pushing the country toward political chaos.

“I’ve seen enough,” Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, wrote in a statement that he posted online. “The Department of Justice has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization.”

Hinting at a possible congressional investigation into the sitting attorney general if Republicans take control of the House in the midterm elections, Mr. McCarthy added, “Attorney General Garland, preserve your documents and clear your calendar.”

The attacks on the search of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s beachfront domain in southern Florida, continued a longstanding reflex among his supporters to assail federal law-enforcement officials as biased and corrupt — just as they had amplified Mr. Trump’s criticism in his 2016 presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton for having maintained a private email server for government-related messages while she was secretary of state.

Mr. Trump and his allies have relentlessly disparaged the F.B.I. for taking the lead in the investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. And more recently, the former president’s allies in Congress and the media have sought to deflect blame from him by baselessly depicting the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol as a “false flag” operation run by the bureau and abetted by the Justice Department.

One of the most strident attacks on federal law-enforcement on Monday night came from the Florida state lawmaker Anthony Sabatini, who is running for Congress as a Republican in a district near Orlando.

“It’s time for us in the Florida Legislature to call an emergency legislative session & amend our laws regarding federal agencies,” Mr. Sabatini wrote on Twitter. “Sever all ties with DOJ immediately. Any FBI agent conducting law enforcement functions outside the purview of our State should be arrested upon sight.”

In a post last week, Ric Grenell, who served as Mr. Trump’s acting director of national intelligence, said that if the former president were to be re-elected, he must “clean out the FBI and DOJ.”

The Republican response to the search also sought to instill fear in ordinary people by suggesting that they too could be targeted by federal agents.

“If they can do it to a former President, imagine what they can do to you,” the Twitter account for the House Republican caucus wrote.

On Fox News, the host Jesse Watters described the search of Mr. Trump’s property as “insane” and called for Christopher A. Wray, the director of the F.B.I., to be fired for being “corrupt.”

Other right-wing pundits took an even darker view, hinting that the search of Mar-a-Lago could lead to unrest in the streets.

“There is suddenly a very real risk of violent political instability in this country for the first time in more than 150 years,” Joel B. Pollak, a senior editor at the right-wing outlet Breitbart News, wrote on Twitter.

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Charlie Savage
Aug. 8, 2022, 10:52 p.m. ET

If Trump broke a law on the removal of official records, would he be barred from future office?

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Boxes were moved out of the Eisenhower Executive Office building inside the White House complex near the end of President Donald J. Trump’s term. Credit...Gerald Herbert/Associated Press

Early reports that the F.B.I. search of former President Donald J. Trump’s residence in Florida related to an investigation into whether he had unlawfully taken government files when he left the White House focused attention on an obscure criminal law barring removal of official records. The penalties for breaking that law include disqualification from holding any federal office.

Because Mr. Trump is widely believed to be preparing to run for president again in 2024, that unusual penalty raised the prospect that he might be legally barred from returning to the White House.

Specifically, the law in question — Section 2071 of Title 18 of the United States Code — makes it a crime if someone who has custody of government documents or records “willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies or destroys” them.

If convicted, defendants can be fined or sentenced to prison for up to three years. In addition, the statute says, if they are currently in a federal office, they “shall forfeit” that office, and they shall “be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.”

On its face, then, if Mr. Trump were to be charged and convicted of removing, concealing or destroying government records under that law, he would seem to be ineligible to become president again.

But there was reason for caution: The law briefly received a close look in 2015, after it came to light that Hillary Clinton, then widely anticipated to be the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, had used a private email server to conduct government business while secretary of state.

Some Republicans were briefly entranced with whether the law could keep Mrs. Clinton out of the White House, including Michael Mukasey, a former attorney general in the administration of George W. Bush. So was at least one conservative think tank.

But in considering that situation, several legal scholars — including Seth B. Tillman of Maynooth University in Ireland and Eugene Volokh of the University of California, Los Angeles — noted that the Constitution sets eligibility criteria for who can be president, and argued that Supreme Court rulings suggest Congress cannot alter them. The Constitution allows Congress to disqualify people from holding office in impeachment proceedings, but grants no such power for ordinary criminal law.

Mr. Volokh later reported on his blog that Mr. Mukasey — who is also a former federal judge — wrote that “upon reflection,” Mr. Mukasey had been mistaken and Mr. Tillman’s analysis was “spot on.” (Mrs. Clinton was never charged with any crime related to her use of the server.)

On Monday, one of the most prominent voices pointing to Section 2071, the Democratic lawyer Marc Elias — who served as general counsel for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign — initially cited the law’s disqualification provision in a Twitter post as “the really, really big reason why the raid today is a potential blockbuster in American politics.”

He followed up with another Twitter post acknowledging that any conviction under Section 2071 might not ultimately bar Mr. Trump from seeking the presidency again — but arguing that a legal fight over it would still be important.

“Yes, I recognize the legal challenge that application of this law to a president would garner (since qualifications are set in Constitution),” he wrote. “But the idea that a candidate would have to litigate this is during a campaign is in my view a ‘blockbuster in American politics.’”

Josh Ritchie
Aug. 8, 2022, 10:25 p.m. ET

reporting from Mar-a-Lago

Television journalists and two Trump supporters holding flags stood on a bridge across the water from Mar-a-Lago late Monday. Closer to the resort, a few police vehicles were sitting on South Ocean Blvd. Federal agents, including one holding a long rifle, were nearby with their vehicles guarding the entrance.

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Credit...Josh Ritchie for The New York Times
Maggie Haberman
Aug. 8, 2022, 10:22 p.m. ET

Trump went ahead with a previously scheduled tele-rally on behalf of Sarah Palin's bid for Alaska's sole congressional seat. He opened by alluding to the F.B.I. search. “Another day in paradise,” he said, chuckling. “This was a strange day.” That was all he said about the events, other than mentioning that people might have read about what happened.

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Glenn Thrush
Aug. 8, 2022, 9:52 p.m. ET

Justice Department officials are declining to comment on any aspect of the search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago and have declined to say if Attorney General Merrick B. Garland approved of the warrant — or even if he had been briefed on the situation.

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Credit...Sarah Silbiger for The New York Times
Glenn Thrush
Aug. 8, 2022, 9:51 p.m. ET

Earlier on Monday, federal prosecutors emphatically rejected a request by John Eastman, the conservative lawyer who had advised former President Trump of options to block congressional certification of the 2020 election, to return his cell phone. Eastman's phone was confiscated in New Mexico as part of an investigation into the scheme to put forward false slates of pro-Trump electors in battleground states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020.

Luke Broadwater
Aug. 8, 2022, 9:46 p.m. ET

The House Oversight Committee, which is leading the congressional investigation into mishandled documents, released a statement from its chairwoman, Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York, in which she said: “Presidents have a solemn duty to protect America’s national security, and allegations that former President Trump put our security at risk by mishandling classified information warrant the utmost scrutiny.”

Maggie Haberman
Aug. 8, 2022, 9:41 p.m. ET

Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist and former Defense Department appointee, made a claim in May on the right-wing website Breitbart that Trump had previously declassified the material that was at Mar-a-Lago. Trump had designated Patel as a representative with the National Archives.

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Michael C. Bender
Aug. 8, 2022, 9:40 p.m. ET

A Florida political website lands a scoop.

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Peter Schorsch, the publisher of FloridaPolitics.com, first reported the news that the F.B.I. had searched Mar-a-Lago.Credit...Allison Davis

News that the F.B.I. had searched Mar-a-Lago appeared to have been first reported Monday by Peter Schorsch, the publisher of FloridaPolitics.com.

Mr. Schorsch, a former political operative, started blogging years ago as a way to trade political gossip and help clients. But as viewership grew along with revenues, he has hired veteran political reporters in the state and gained credibility for his website, which identifies itself as a new media platform covering campaigns, elections, government, policy and lobbying in Florida.

He’s also frank about his journalistic limitations.

In a tweet reporting the search, Mr. Schorsch acknowledged that he wasn’t certain why, exactly, the F.B.I. had obtained a search warrant.

“TBH, Im not a strong enough reporter to hunt this down, but its real,” he wrote.

Glenn Thrush
Aug. 8, 2022, 9:33 p.m. ET

To Trump, the intrusion into his inner sanctum is nothing less than an “assault” by a bureau waging a years-long campaign against him based on personal grudges and political animosities. This time, however, the man running the F.B.I., Christopher A. Wray, was Trump's hand-picked choice to replace James Comey, whom he ousted in 2017 and characterized as a “showboat” out to get him.

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Credit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times
Luke Broadwater
Aug. 8, 2022, 9:24 p.m. ET

The top House Republican, Kevin McCarthy of California, warned Attorney General Merrick B. Garland of payback for the search of Trump’s property. McCarthy, who has refused a subpoena from the House Jan. 6 committee, said the Justice Department had “reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization” and pledged to investigate if Republicans retook the House in the 2022 midterm elections.

“Attorney General Garland, preserve your documents and clear your calendar,” he wrote in a statement.

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Glenn Thrush
Aug. 8, 2022, 9:05 p.m. ET

What is a federal search warrant?

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Outside Mar-a-Lago, former president Donald J. Trump’s residence in Palm Beach, Fla., during an F.B.I. search on Monday.Credit...Jim Rassol/EPA, via Shutterstock

Federal law enforcement officials obtain search warrants when they need to move quickly on a criminal investigation, or are concerned that sensitive materials they need might be in danger of being moved, concealed, altered or destroyed.

The request for a search warrant is made by a federal law enforcement agency if officials conclude that information, often documents or electronic devices, related to a criminal investigation can be found at someone’s residence, business, car or other property.

A search warrant is not in itself an indication or accusation of the subject’s guilt.

Nonetheless, the use of such a warrant does indicate a sense of prosecutorial urgency — and is used only when “it appears that the use of a subpoena, summons, request, or other less intrusive alternative means of obtaining the materials would substantially jeopardize the availability or usefulness of the materials sought,” according to the Justice Manual, the department’s official guidebook on criminal procedure.

Neither the Justice Department nor the F.B.I. has the authority to act unilaterally. A federal judge or magistrate must approve of the request, and jurists often demand highly specific limitations on the search to protect a person’s Fourth Amendment rights against unlawful search and seizure before granting a warrant.

Law enforcement agencies must meet certain legal benchmarks, litigated over decades, before a judge can sign off.

First, they must prove “probable cause,” evidence that the search is likely to find evidence of illegality; if the warrant is found to lack such proof, the search is considered unlawful under a 2004 precedent.

In addition, the courts have ruled that a search warrant should describe the location and nature of the search with “particularity” — to prevent agents from misusing a warrant to conduct a search that goes beyond the parameters of what has been specifically requested.

Jonathan Martin
Aug. 8, 2022, 8:57 p.m. ET

President Biden’s top aides found out about the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago from reports on Twitter and had no advance notice, according to a Democratic source familiar with the matter. Senior White House officials saw the news via former President Trump’s statement, released shortly before 7 p.m. Eastern.

Maggie HabermanMichael S. Schmidt
Aug. 8, 2022, 8:49 p.m. ET

From the archives: A look at the inquiry that led to the F.B.I. search of Trump’s Florida home.

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National Archives workers loading boxes outside the White House five days before President Donald J. Trump left office in January 2021. The Presidential Records Act requires that all documents and records pertaining to official business be turned over to the archives.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

The National Archives discovered in January that at the end of his term, former President Donald J. Trump had taken to his home at the Mar-a-Lago resort 15 boxes from the White House that contained government documents, mementos, gifts and letters. The boxes included material subject to the Presidential Records Act, which requires that all documents and records pertaining to official business be turned over to the archives.

After Mr. Trump returned the boxes to the National Archives, its archivists found documents containing “items marked as classified national security information,” the agency told Congress in February.

In April, federal authorities appeared to be in the preliminary stages of investigating the handling of the classified documents. They began a grand jury investigation and issued a subpoena to the National Archives and Records Administration for the boxes, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity. It was one of a series of requests that the Justice Department had made to the agency for records from the Trump administration, the two people said.

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Sean Plambeck
Aug. 8, 2022, 8:46 p.m. ET

Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, a staunch Trump ally, described the F.B.I. search of Mar-a-Lago as an “unprecedented political weaponization of the Justice Department” in a post on Twitter. “Using the criminal justice system in this manner is un-American,” she wrote.

Luke Broadwater
Aug. 8, 2022, 8:42 p.m. ET

Members of the House Jan. 6 committee, who have publicly pressed the Justice Department to investigate Trump, declined to comment on Monday, citing a need to learn more about the F.B.I.’s latest action.

Maggie Haberman
Aug. 8, 2022, 8:39 p.m. ET

Trump was not at Mar-a-Lago when the search took place. Instead, he was up north, where he’s been spending much of his time at his club in Bedminster, N.J., preparing for a deposition with the New York attorney general in a civil matter related to his finances.

Maggie Haberman
Aug. 8, 2022, 8:36 p.m. ET

Trump’s advisers have been sending reporters messages saying they believe the Department of Justice overreached. But it was unclear if they know exactly why the search warrant was issued.

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Credit...Emil Lippe for The New York Times

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Maggie Haberman
Aug. 8, 2022, 8:34 p.m. ET

The news that the F.B.I. executed a search on Trump’s home was a remarkable escalation and a truly stunning turn of events, even by the standard of the Trump years, during which norms were repeatedly shattered.

Michael C. Bender
Aug. 8, 2022, 8:04 p.m. ET

The search came as Trump is weighing another run for the presidency.

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Former President Donald J. Trump, at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, has been weighing an increasingly likely third White House bid.Credit...Emil Lippe for The New York Times

The F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago came as former President Donald J. Trump weighs an increasingly likely third White House bid. He has considered making an unusually early announcement this year, a move designed in part to shield himself from a stream of damaging revelations emerging from congressional and criminal investigations into his attempts to cling to power after losing the 2020 election.

But there have been increasing doubts about his viability as a candidate in 2024. A New York Times/Siena poll last month showed that while Mr. Trump maintained his primacy in the party, a significant number of Republicans said they would not support him in a rematch with President Biden. In that hypothetical matchup, Mr. Trump trailed President Biden, 41 percent to 44 percent.

During campaign rallies and speeches this year, Mr. Trump has continued to use the 2020 election as a political cudgel. He’s insisted that election fraud should be the top issue in the midterm elections, and that the investigations into his actions to undermine the results were merely a political hoax.

“The election was rigged and stolen and now our country is being systematically destroyed,” Mr. Trump said during a speech on Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas.

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