Former President Donald Trump tore into the FBI raid at his Mar-a-Lago home following the U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s speech.
The former president said Thursday in a statement that his attorneys and representatives fully cooperated with the Justice Department’s investigation into a handful of reportedly classified White House documents sent to his private residence.
“My attorneys and representatives were cooperating fully, and very good relationships had been established. The government could have had whatever they wanted, if we had it,” Trump said. “They asked us to put an additional lock on a certain area—DONE! Everything was fine, better than that of most previous Presidents, and then, out of nowhere and with no warning, Mar-a-Lago was raided, at 6:30 in the morning, by VERY large numbers of agents, and even “safecrackers.” They got way ahead of themselves. Crazy!”
New Trump Statement after Garland’s presser—> He defends the documents that they turned over as part of the subpoena cooperation in June — he does not answer whether his team will fight the motion to unseal the warrant and property receipt. pic.twitter.com/KwMvFisEQZ
— Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) August 11, 2022
The statement followed Garland’s speech where he announced that he “personally approved” the decision to seek the warrant for raiding the former president’s private residence. (RELATED: Merrick Garland Says He ‘Personally Approved’ Mar-A-Lago Raid)
“Just now, the Justice Department has filed a motion in the Southern District of Florida to unseal a search warrant and property receipt relating to a court approved search that the FBI conducted earlier this week,” Garland said earlier Thursday. “That search was a premises located in Florida, belonging to the former president.”
The search warrant, issued by Judge Bruce Reinhart, revolved around a request the National Archives and Records Administration made to retrieve 15 boxes filled with White House documents, some of which contained classified information, that had been stored at Mar-a-Lago.
In a previous statement, the former president accused the raid of being politically motivated by the FBI and DOJ to prevent his possible re-election in 2024.
“It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024, especially based on recent polls, and who will likewise do anything to stop Republicans and Conservatives in the upcoming Midterm Elections,” Trump said in a Monday statement announcing the raid.
Former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told CNN Thursday that a person “very close” to Trump told the FBI about possible classified materials located inside Trump’s home.
“I didn’t even know there was a safe at Mar-a-Lago and I was the chief of staff for 15 months,” Mulvaney said. “So this had to be someone who was handling things on [the] day to day, who knew where the documents were. It would be somebody very close to the president. My guess is there’s probably six or eight people who had that kind of information.”