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Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Tuesday that ‘no one is above the law’ and noted the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home would have had some legal justification.
Pelosi, who repeatedly sparred with Trump when she was speaker and he was president, said she had no special knowledge of the Monday raid.
‘All I know about that is what is in the public domain. I was surprised that it flashed on my phone last evening,’ the speaker said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
‘A visit like that you need a warrant. To have a warrant you need justification. And that says that no one is above the law — not even a president or a former President of the United States.’
The raid was reported to be part of an investigation into whether the former president took classified documents with him when he left the White House.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that ‘no one is above the law’ and noted the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home would have had some legal justification
The FBI raid was reported to be part of an investigation into whether the former president took classified documents with him when he left the White House – above Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday
Trump, in his dramatic announcement of the raid on Monday night, didn’t say specifically what the federal agents were looking for, just that his Florida home was ‘under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents.’
‘They even broke into my safe!’ the former president complained.
Pelosi said she expected more details would become public soon.
‘All of this will, I’m sure, be made known to us over time. But I have no knowledge of it. I do know that there has been chatter or what — more than chatter about the president’s documents and how they must be preserved for history. And we’ll see what the justification was for the raid. I just don’t know. I think everybody was surprised by it,’ she said.
FBI agents entered Trump’s Florida residence on Monday and spent hours there going through his private office.
The raid was said to be court authorized and the FBI gave US Secret Service agents at Mar-a-Lago advance notice and they cooperated letting them into the property, NBC News reported.
Donald Trump was spotted leaving Trump Tower in New York on Monday night after announcing his Mar-a-Lago home had been raided by the FBI
Trump took 15 boxes of material with him in January 2021 after he left Washington D.C. The boxes were returned to the National Archives a year later in January 2022 but agents on Monday were looking to see if 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 that got the call on the raid and told his father about it.
‘I was the guy who got the call this morning and I called my father and let him know it happened, and I was involved all day,’ he told Fox News host Sean Hannity. ‘Welcome to politics in the 2020s.’
‘To have 30 FBI agents — actually more than that — descend on Mar-a-Lago, give absolutely, you know, no notice, go through the gates, start ransacking an office, ransacking a closet — you know, they broke into a safe. He didn’t even have anything in the safe. I mean, give me a break.’
He charged President Joe Biden’s White House as the force behind the raid.
‘This didn’t come from a local FBI field office in Palm beach, Florida. You know this came from? This came from one place and one building, and that is the White House in Washington, D.C. They want to attack a guy who they view as his greatest threat, Biden’s greatest threat,’ Eric Trump said.
Biden’s White House had no heads up on the matter. Senior White House officials found out about it via Twitter, the New York Times reported.
The investigation is focused on material that Trump brought with him to Mar-a-Lago after he left the White House, the New York Times reported, specifically if he has classified information in his private possession, which would be a violation of federal law.
Trump took 15 boxes of material with him in January 2021 after he left Washington D.C. The boxes were returned to the National Archives a year later in January 2022 but agents on Monday were looking to see if Trump had additional presidential records or any classified documents at his South Florida estate, the AP reported.
The search focused on the area of the club where Trump’s offices and personal quarters are, CNN reported, noting Trump’s personal attorney Christinia Bobb was present during the search.
And, during a meeting at Mar-a-Lago earlier this year, Trump’s attorney showed federal investigators documents that were being kept on site, including some that were marked classified, the network noted.
The Justice Department wouldn’t say whether Attorney General Merrick Garland had personally authorized the search but it’s highly unlikely 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 DoJ to examine whether the former president violated federal law. There are multiple statutes governing classified information, including a law punishable by up to five years in prison that makes it a crime to remove such records and retain them at 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 correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that Trump has described as ‘beautiful letters’ and a handwritten letter that former President Barack Obama had left behind in the Oval Office for his successor.