Why did the FBI raid Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, when there already existed cooperation during a previous investigation?
Host Roman Balmakov of Facts Matter jumped right into the discussion about the FBI raid that occurred on the Monday morning of August 8, at former president Trump’s property in Mar-a-Lago. His guest, Christina Bobb, is probably one of the best people to talk with about what happened during that day, as she was the first lawyer who arrived at the Mar-a-Lago residence on behalf of President Trump.
The FBI was already conducting the search when Bobb, an attorney for Save America—as well as a lawyer for Trump, got to the location around 10:30 a.m. She assumed that the FBI must have shown a search warrant to the Secret Service that was guarding the residence, but they were reluctant to show it to her. Only after discussion did they agree to present the warrant to her and offer a copy after the search’s conclusion. The warrant was signed by Bruce Edward Reinhart, one of three federal magistrates in West Palm Beach.
Bobb also requested to know the probable cause that the investigators needed to have for obtaining the search warrant. The probable cause for a search is the proof that there is sufficient reason to believe that the property is connected to a crime, or that a crime was committed. Regarding this, the FBI officers requested that it be sealed with the court, so they didn’t give anything to the lawyers. The legal procedure of sealing records allows civil or criminal records to be stored away from public access. Bobb said they will have to start the procedure of requesting the probable cause from the court and ask the magistrate who agreed to seal it to unseal it for limited purposes at least. She can’t tell how long this would take, or if the magistrate will grant their application.
The raid came to an end around 6 p.m. that day. There were over two dozen federal law enforcement officers. The search was conducted in a peaceful way, keeping the place clean. The lawyer for Trump said she can’t confirm what they did. She, like everybody else, was not allowed to accompany them to oversee the search. She knows approximately what rooms were searched, and that they left with only a “handful of boxes of documents.” The FBI officers provided an inventory, but it’s still unclear at this time what documents were taken. According to Bobb, they were looking for presidential records and anything that could potentially be classified.
Bobb says this drastic action taken by the FBI isn’t justified, as the former president and his lawyers were already very cooperative with the federal law enforcement officers back in June, when they requested to search the residence and came to investigate. Bobb considers President Trump was too nice back then, as he even stopped by when the agents were conducting the search and let them know they were welcome there.
“They had access to it anyway, nothing had been hidden or kept secret from them which makes this all the more ridiculous,” said Bobb, while explaining why she sees all this as just another performance done with the purpose of discrediting the former president. Even more, she can see how it is convenient to present these actions as a national security matter since what they’re doing is wrong. They don’t want to disclose what they’re doing or why they’re doing it.
The attorney for Save America isn’t concerned though, as she can’t think of anything incriminating in the files the federal law enforcement officers took, but she is waiting to see what they’ll come up with. There’s not actually any crime that has been committed, and it will be very hard to find the former president at fault under the U.S. Code Title 18 Section 2071 since they will need to prove that he intentionally acted in a malicious way towards the documents that they want to consider incriminating. Bobb is confident that this will not disqualify Trump from running again in 2024 to be the president of the United States once again.
Bobb’s point of view came as a reinforcement that the former president’s legal team will remain strong and withstand any new attempt of diminishing Trump or subverting his stance in the current political arena and that they’re here in the fight to protect the United States of America.
