Spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday that “no one is above the law,” noting that the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home had legal justification.
Pelosi, who has repeatedly feuded with Trump when she was spokesperson and he was president, said she had no particular knowledge of Monday’s raid.
“Everything I know about it is in the public domain. I was surprised when it lit up on my phone last night,” the announcer said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
“You’ll need a search warrant for a visit like that. To get a search warrant, you need a reason. And that says no one is above the law — not even a President or former President of the United States.”
The raid was reportedly part of an investigation into whether the former president took classified documents when he left the White House.
Spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi said that “no one is above the law,” noting that the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home would have had legal justification
The FBI raid was reportedly part of an investigation into whether the former president took classified documents as he exited the White House through Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday
Trump didn’t say exactly what federal agents were looking for in his dramatic announcement of Monday night’s raid, only that his Florida home was “besieged, ransacked and occupied by a large group of FBI agents.”
“They even broke into my safe!” complained the former president.
Pelosi said she expects more details to be released soon.
“All of this will surely become known to us over time. But I have no knowledge of that. I know there was gossip or something – more than gossip about the President’s documents and how they must be preserved for history. And we’ll see what the justification for the raid was. I just do not know. I think everyone was surprised by that,” she said.
FBI agents broke into Trump’s Florida residence Monday and spent hours searching his private office.
The raid is said to have been court-authorized, and the FBI notified US Secret Service agents in Mar-a-Lago in advance and they cooperated to let them onto the property, NBC News reported.
Donald Trump was spotted leaving Trump Tower in New York on Monday night after announcing that his home in Mar-a-Lago had been searched by the FBI
Trump took 15 boxes of supplies in January 2021 after leaving Washington DC. The boxes were returned to the National Archives a year later in January 2022, but agents Monday searched whether Trump had additional material; Above Workers move boxes out of the Trump White House on January 14, 2021
Eric Trump said he was the one who got the call in the raid and told his father about it.
“I was the guy who got the call this morning and I called my dad and let him know it happened and I was involved all day,” he told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “Welcome to the politics of the 2020s.”
“For 30 FBI agents — actually more than that — to come to Mar-a-Lago, absolutely, you know, not take notice, walk through the gates, ransack an office, ransack a closet — you know, they in broke into a safe. He didn’t even have anything in the safe. I mean give me a break.’
He blamed President Joe Biden’s White House as the driving force behind the crackdown.
“This isn’t from a local FBI field office in Palm Beach, Florida. Do you know where that came from? This came from a place and a building, and that is the White House in Washington, DC. They want to attack a guy they see as his number one threat, Biden’s number one threat,” Eric Trump said.
Biden’s White House had no advance warning on the matter. Senior White House officials learned about it via Twitter, the New York Times reported.
The investigation is focused on material Trump brought to Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House, the New York Times reported, particularly if he has classified information in his private possession, which would violate federal law.
Trump took 15 boxes of supplies in January 2021 after leaving Washington DC. The boxes were returned to the National Archives a year later in January 2022, but agents Monday wanted to see if Trump had any additional presidential records or classified documents with him at South Florida properties, the AP reported.
The search focused on the area of the club that houses Trump’s offices and personal quarters, CNN reported, noting that Trump’s personal attorney, Christinia Bobb, was present during the search.
And during a meeting in Mar-a-Lago earlier this year, Trump’s attorney showed federal investigators documents held at the scene, including some marked classified, the network noted.
The Justice Department would not say whether Attorney General Merrick Garland personally authorized the search, but it is highly unlikely that a raid on a former president would take place without the AG giving it the stamp of approval.
In February, the National Archives and Records Administration asked the US Department of Justice to investigate whether the former president had violated federal laws. There are several laws governing classified information, including a law punishable by up to five years in prison that makes it a crime to remove such records and keep them in an unauthorized location.
National Archives officials recovered 15 boxes of White House materials from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in mid-January.
Among the items Trump had to return were a correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that Trump has described as “beautiful letters” and a handwritten letter that former President Barack Obama left in the Oval Office for his successor.