As more details emerge about the shocking federal raid on the Trump family’s private home at Mar-a-Lago, we’re getting a fuller sense of how invasive and offensive the action truly was.
The family had decamped to Trump’s Bedminster, N.J., estate for the summer, leaving Mar-a-Lago closed for the season with only a skeleton staff looking after the 20-acre private golf resort. At 9 a.m. Monday morning, over 30 plainclothes FBI agents arrived at the residence, accompanied by three DOJ attorneys. The DOJ is believed to have coordinated the raid with the U.S. Secret Service, meaning USSS agents would have granted them access to the property.
The DOJ lawyers, whom an eyewitness described as “arrogant,” repeatedly told Trump representatives, “We have full access to everything. We can go everywhere.” Trump’s own lawyers, who hadn’t been advised of the raid, arrived an hour after the FBI.
Once inside the 3,000-square-foot private residence, the feds spread out. They forced Trump’s lawyers to wait outside in the hot summer Florida sun as they spent over nine hours digging through the home of the former president, his wife, and their minor-aged son.
Miranda Devine at the New York Post reported,
FBI agents scoured Melania Trump’s wardrobe and spent several hours combing through Donald Trump’s private office, breaking open his safe and rifling through drawers when they raided the former First Family’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida Monday morning.…
The raid by over 30 plain clothes agents from the Southern District of Florida and the FBI’s Washington Field Office extended through the Trump family’s entire 3,000-square-foot private quarters, as well as to a separate office and safe, and a locked basement storage room in which 15 cardboard boxes of material from the White House were stored.
The feds confiscated all of the boxes, even though FBI agents had already been to Mar-a-Lago to root through the same materials in May. Trump attorney Evan Corcoran had granted them full access to search the materials, and the former president himself even stopped into the storage room to check in with agents at the time.
Additionally, Fox News reports that “A legal source said that the boxes had been packed up by the General Services Administration and shipped to Mar-a-Lago when Trump left office in January 2020.”
It’s obvious that the boxes of mementos weren’t the real target of the invasive creeps who wandered freely through the cherished home of a man they loathe. What “classified materials” could they possibly have hoped to find in Melania’s wardrobe? Did they keep the search professional? Or did they gleefully unleash their TDS and paw their way through the high-end clothing of one of the world’s most beautiful and accomplished women? Did they enjoy defiling her personal items with their touch? If I were Melania, I’d burn everything in the closet.
Did agents sit in former President Trump’s favorite chair? Put their feet on his desk? Handle his personal items?
Fox News reports:
Once inside the air-conditioned, white marble-clad private quarters, agents fanned out to search every room, while shocked staff were instructed by Trump’s lawyers to unlock doors and provide the FBI access to every room, including the sumptuous Versailles Master Bedroom, renovated by Melania two years ago.
It’s impossible to know everything the approximately three dozen hostile actors did inside the private residence of the last president, what they took with them, or what they left behind. “A source close to the former president expressed concern that FBI agents or DOJ lawyers conducting the search could have ‘planted stuff’ because they would not allow Trump’s attorneys inside the 128-room building to observe the operation,” reports Fox News. “An eyewitness to the raid said all of the boxes were confiscated by federal agents Monday, but it is unknown if anything else was taken as no itemized list of items was provided by the FBI.”
There are reports that Trump staff refused to comply with the feds’ demand to switch off the security cameras, so perhaps something useful will come of that. But for the most part, when the family eventually returns, they will be left to shudder through their feelings of violation at the thought of what the people who hate them may have done inside their personal sanctuary, their beloved Mar-a-Lago.
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