Few people never find themselves receiving an FBI search warrant — even fewer people escape criminal charges.
The fact that Donald Trump is now ranked among the former provides the strongest indication that he may soon face the latter.
Monday’s search of the former president’s Mar-a-Lago property in Florida is undoubtedly one of the most politically explosive, sensitive, and important acts the US Department of Justice and the FBI have ever undertaken. It was one of the very few times the DOJ has ever investigated a president. And it was an act that could show that the FBI and prosecutors had specific knowledge of both the identifiable crime and the evidence to back it up.
The actual search warrant, which lists specific crimes under investigation, has yet to be released. However, according to the news reports Monday night, the search focused on questions about a categorical document box number that Trump took from the White House to his Florida mansion after leaving the presidency.
While it may take months to learn more about the underlying investigation, having the FBI conduct such a high-profile search tells us a lot about the state of the Justice Department’s case.
Here are five big lessons learned.
The cause may already be obvious
Federal search warrants are not designed for fishing expeditions. The FBI’s legally authorized search of the former president’s primary residence will be approved and monitored at the highest levels by both the FBI and the Department of Justice, which may include the deputy attorney general and the attorney general. physical. It is difficult to imagine the high degree of probable cause for the Bureau to initiate such a politically sensitive search. Ironically, the scandals that the FBI overcame from previous Trump investigations could raise a higher level of probable cause and order by departmental superiors.
One of the biggest scandals the FBI and Department of Justice have endured in recent years has been the sloppy (and ultimately illegal) paperwork surrounding a FISA subpoena filed amid 2016 presidential campaign targeting Trump aide Page Carter. Two of the four warrants used in that case are then invalid statementand an FBI attorney pleaded guilty to falsify part of the underlying evidence and possible paperwork. One the inspector general report is nearly 500 pages long dodge the Bureau’s handling of FISA subpoenas, which has long been thought to be one of the most careful and thorough court filings and is expected to be stymied by the careful examination of evidence known as the “procedure.” Woods customs”. As it turned out, the FBI ignored key questions about the underlying evidence from Page’s warrant application and made misleading descriptions of other pieces of evidence.
That scandal led to internal reforms by the FBI and the Department of Justice that made the Mar-a-Lago search warrant even more closely scrutinized – and ensured that the bar for probable cause would be very high. The evidence was so clear it was likely that the Justice Department felt it had enough information to bring criminal charges.
A judge signed on the search
A legally authorized search warrant is an important part of the U.S. Constitution’s system of checks and balances. It requires the consent of two of the three branches of government, whereby the executive branch (DOJ and FBI) is allowed to sign from the judicial branch. In the case of a search of Trump’s property, after agents and prosecutors gather their evidence, an independent federal magistrate judge needs to agree that a crime may have been committed and that there is concrete evidence at Mar-a-Lago that there will be guilt. .
Notably, this is the least the second time This year a federal judge agreed that Trump was at least close to a criminal. As the January 6 congressional committee has repeatedly pointed out, a federal judge agreed with their assessment this spring that Trump “more likely?“Had committed a crime in the midst of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
This is not just about Trump taking classified material
One of the most important questions in the investigation was about the setting of motives, summarized by the Latin phrase good luckor Who benefits? Sure, Trump bringing home classified documents is technically a crime. But as national security reporter Zach Dorfman shownhardly an offense serious enough to prompt the FBI to raid the home of a former president.
An entire security classification system exists to serve the president. The President is the only official in the United States government who has the ability to unilaterally declassify any information. (Trump famously exercised this power while in office by posting a highly classified satellite images of an establishment in Iran). In addition, while classified documents theoretically include highly sensitive information that could compromise national security if released, the reality is that many classified documents are not so sensitive.
