Department of Justice and FBI officials believed they had no choice but to search former President Donald Trump's Florida home for classified documents when they conducted their operation in August, The Washington Post reported.
The Post spoke with people familiar with the internal workings of the case, and described previously unreported moments concerning the search at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump had been suspected of taking highly classified documents when he left the White House — an apparent violation of the most basic standards of handling national security secrets, the Post reported Wednesday.
The newspaper said DOJ and FBI authorities attempted to minimize legal risk and avoid mistakes while conducting a criminal probe involving a former president.
For example, FBI officials had two concerns in late July when they discussed whether to search Mar-a-Lago.
First, they felt any search warrant should be authorized by Attorney General Merrick Garland himself, and second, they did not want Trump to be present when the search occurred, the Post reported.
"Executing a search like that is sensational enough. Doing it without the former president there is probably the best good-faith effort you can make to reducing the probability of it becoming even more sensationalized," said Jeffrey Cortese, a former FBI supervisor, told the Post.
"They would want to get in and get out without any complications."
The bureau also was concerned about a potential "blue on blue" confrontation, consisting of federal agents searching the location and Secret Service agents guarding the former president, the Post reported.
In mid- and late-July, DOJ national security division lawyers were frustrated with FBI agents at the Washington Field Office. Some agents weren't certain there was enough legal justification to conduct a search, the Post said.
Garland, who had vowed to keep partisan politics out of DOJ decisions, relied on senior deputies to stay informed on what the FBI was doing.
The DOJ and FBI probe stemmed from a concern expressed by National Archives and Records Administration officials after they could not find certain records – such as correspondence from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un — in May 2021.
The Post said the FBI was skeptical when Archives officials called them on Feb. 7, 2022, and appeared reluctant to get pulled into a dispute about historical records.
However, within a few days, FBI officials became concerned that the Kim letters presented obvious national security implications if direct communications from foreign leaders are lost or wrongly circulated, the Post reported.
The FBI knew "as early as the end of February that there were documents at the secret level that were designated as formerly restricted data," one person familiar with the matter told the Post.
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