Former President Trump on Wednesday claimed that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI had asked his legal team in early June to put an extra lock on the door to the room where boxes of documents reportedly marked as classified were stored.
Trump contended in a statement on Truth Social the feds saw the boxes at his home at Mar-a-Lago in Florida two months before Monday’s dramatic raid. If true, the claim could call into question why the government agents would need to use such heavy-handed tactics to seize documents they knew about.
“They were shown the secured area, and the boxes themselves,” Trump wrote. “Then on Monday, without notification or warning, an army of agents broke into Mar-a-Lago, went to the same storage area, and ripped open the lock that they had asked to be installed. A surprise attack, POLITICS, and all the while our Country is going to HELL!”
Trump was at his Manhattan home in Trump Tower at the time of the raid. FBI agents reportedly examined all offices and his safe at his Mar-a-Lago private residence before removing the boxes and taking them to their local South Florida FBI field office.
According to Trump’s son Eric, the FBI agents who raided his father’s home broke into a safe only to find it empty. The younger Trump told Fox News Channel’s Brian Kilmeade that 30 members of the FBI were involved in the raid, and that it was to find documents that should have gone to the National Archives. It was not known if they retrieved the documents, but whatever they sought was not in the safe, according to the 45th president’s son.
Trump confirmed that FBI agents broke into his safe in a lengthy statement released after the raid Monday.
“After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate,” Trump said. “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 … Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries.”
“Sadly, America has now become one of those Countries, corrupt at a level; not seen before,” he continued. “They even broke into my safe! What is the difference between this and Watergate, where operatives broke into the Democrat National Committee? Here, in reverse, Democrats broke into the home of the 45th President of the United States.”