The article warranted its' own thread.
For someone who claims they were cooperating previously, it took months and threats for Trump to actually cooperate and return at least some of the documents he took without authority.
Anyway, don't let a chance go by to fleece the gullible, the "
fund-raising solicitations" have already gone out.
F.B.I. Searches Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Residence in FloridaThe 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.
The search appears to be focused on materials Trump took from the White House.
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.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.
The search, however, does not mean prosecutors have determined that Mr. Trump committed a crime.
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 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.”
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.
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.Read more:-
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/08/08/us/trump-fbi-raid#trump-fbi-mar-a-lago
