Saturday 13 August 2022 11:37 PM Donald Trump blasts FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, calling it a hoax and scam trends now
Donald Trump has lashed out once again over the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago that uncovered classified material, calling the court-approved search a 'hoax and scam'.
'Like all of the other Hoaxes and Scams that they've used to try and silence the voice of a vast majority of the American People, I have TRUTH on my side, and when you have TRUTH, you will ultimately be victorious,' Trump wrote Saturday in a post on his Truth Social network.
Trump is under federal investigation for possible violations of the Espionage Act, which makes it unlawful to mishandle classified information, including sharing it with people not authorized to receive it, a search warrant made public on Friday showed.
FBI agents searched Mar-a-Lago earlier this week and removed 11 sets of classified documents, including some marked as top secret, according to the Justice Department.
Trump addressed the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago in a post on his Truth Social website
Donald Trump has lashed out once again over the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago that uncovered classified material, calling the court-approved search a 'hoax and scam'
An aerial view of Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate is seen earlier this week. The FBI searched Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate as part of an investigation into whether he took classified records from the White House to his Florida residence
Earlier on Saturday, a report claimed that Trump's attorney signed a statement in June that said all classified material held at Mar-a-Lago had been already been returned to the government.
Trump's legal team gave the assurance after Jay Bratt, the Department of Justice's counterintelligence chief, visited Trump's South Florida beach club on June 3, the New York Times reported.
Bratt met with two Trump lawyers to discuss the handling of classified information during the visit, the newspaper said.
It appears that in signing a declaration that all classified documents had been removed from Mar-a-Lago, his lawyers sparked the DOJ's decision to conduct the search on Monday.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The former president insisted Friday that everything at Mar-a-Lago was 'declassified' and agents 'didn't need to seize anything.'
Trump returned 15 boxes of material in January this year, with his lawyers telling the DOJ that all material had been returned to the government in June after meeting with officials
Some of the documents were marked 'top secret' and are meant to be kept in specialized government facilities, according to a copy of the warrant.
The FBI would have needed to prove reasonable suspicion that Trump committed a crime in holding on to the documents - criminal statutes cited in the warrant include espionage, removal of records and obstruction of justice.
It appears that in signing the declaration that all of the documents had been removed, his lawyers sparked the DOJ's decision to conduct the search on Monday.
In an attempt to resolve the dispute, Bratt and other officials visited the Florida home and spoke with Trump and two of his lawyers - Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb.
Last year it was discovered that Trump had taken dozens of documents and government material with him when he left office in January 2021.
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