“They’re looking for presidential records, what they deemed to be presidential records, and anything that could potentially be classified,” attorney Christina Bobb told The Epoch Times on Aug. 9.
“We had been very cooperative with them before. And it’s unclear to me why they went to such drastic measures to do this. But they did. And as far as the probable cause goes, they wouldn’t give that to us.”
In mid-January, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) arranged for the transport of 15 boxes from Mar-a-Lago that the archives said contained presidential records. Under the Presidential Records Act, the records should have been transferred in January 2021 as Trump left office, and some of the boxes contained classified information, the archives said in a statement at the time.
NARA officials didn’t respond to an Aug. 9 inquiry by The Epoch Times.
About two dozen FBI agents arrived around 9 a.m. on Aug. 8 and remained at Mar-a-Lago, which is in Palm Beach, for about 10 hours.
Trump’s legal team plans to ask the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida to unseal the search warrant affidavit, which would outline why authorities asked for the warrant.
“We don’t know what the probable cause is,” Bobb said. “I don’t think there is a good cause to do such a drastic thing. But they did.”
‘Peaceful’
Agents kept Mar-a-Lago neat while they were searching for documents, with one even picking up trash, according to Bobb. The agents “took a handful of boxes of documents,” she said.“I don’t think that there was anything incriminating. I don’t think there was anything of substance. So I’m sure that they will say otherwise. But we'll have to wait and see what they come up with, but it was all paper. I hear the conspiracy theories and the rumors that there were other artifacts or something taken—it was all paper,” she said.
Agents previously had visited the resort in June, and were given access to a storage facility there, according to Bobb.
“Nothing had been hidden and nothing had been kept secret from them, which makes this all more all the more ridiculous,” she said.
“Donald Trump didn’t commit a crime,” she said, adding that prosecutors wouldn’t be able to show that the former president knew about the boxes taken by the FBI.
“They would have to lay the foundation that Donald Trump actually packed up his own office, and Donald Trump was actually the custodian of these records, and that he actually moved them.”
If the DOJ decides to press charges against Trump, the effort won’t get very far, she predicted.
“I just don’t see it making a bit of difference. I think President Trump is going to most likely run for reelection,” she said. “I can’t wait until he does. And he will be the next president of the United States.”
