More On: FBI raid
Who is Raymond Dearie? The special master in DOJ case against Trump
DOJ gives one of Trump's picks permission to look at Mar-a-Lago documents
In the investigation of Mar-a-Lago, Trump and the DOJ come up with their own ideas
The deal for Trump's Truth Social to merge with SPAC is in danger of falling through
Trump's lawyers say that the discovery of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago is 'no cause for alarm'
Monday morning, FBI agents raided the former First Family's Mar-a-Lago home in Florida. They went through Melania Trump's closet and spent several hours going through Donald Trump's private office, breaking open his safe and going through his drawers.
The Post has found out that the search warrant the FBI used to get into the palatial Palm Beach property was only about presidential records and proof that classified information was being kept there.
A person close to the former president was worried that FBI agents or DOJ lawyers doing the search could have "planted stuff" because they wouldn't let Trump's lawyers into the 128-room building to watch the operation, which took more than nine hours.
Over 30 undercover agents from the Southern District of Florida and the FBI's Washington Field Office raided the Trump family's 3,000-square-foot private quarters. They also searched a separate office and safe, as well as a locked basement storage room where 15 cardboard boxes of White House materials were kept.
The feds came at 9 a.m. and stayed until 6:30 p.m.
An eyewitness to the raid said that all of the boxes were taken by federal agents on Monday. The FBI did not give an itemized list of what was taken, so it is not known if anything else was taken.
The boxes have papers and mementos from Trump's time as president. They are said to include letters from Barack Obama and Kim Jong Un, as well as other letters from world leaders.
A legal source said that the General Services Administration had packed up the boxes and sent them to Mar-a-Lago before Trump left office in January 2020.
Sources say that Trump's lawyers, led by Evan Corcoran, have been working with the government to get the documents back to the National Archives and Records Administration.
In May, Corcoran let FBI agents into a storage room at Mar-a-Lago that didn't have any windows. The agents spent several hours looking through the boxes. Someone who was there says that Trump stopped by the basement at one point to say hello.
Since then, the Trump family has moved to his golf estate in Bedminster, New Jersey, for the summer.
Mar-a-Lago is closed for the season, so only a small number of people, like groundskeepers, were there when the raid happened on Monday.
People think that heavily armed US Secret Service (USSS) agents with M4 carbines stood at the front gates and let people into the 20-acre private country club. The former president's lawyers didn't know about the raid until an hour later.
A retired USSS agent with a high rank said that the FBI would not have carried out a warrant without first telling the Secret Service.
"USSS legal counsel would have probably told [them] to look at a copy of the warrant and then back off."
Once inside the private quarters, which were air-conditioned and made of white marble, agents spread out to search every room. Trump's lawyers told the shocked staff to unlock doors and let the FBI into every room, including the luxurious Versailles Master Bedroom that Melania renovated two years ago.
Agents, including a professional safe cracker, went to a different part of the huge Spanish stucco building from 1924 to search Trump's office and safe.
One eyewitness said that the three DOJ lawyers who went with the FBI were "arrogant," and that they kept telling Trump's people, "We have full access to everything. We're free to go anywhere."
Even though it was 91 degrees outside on Monday, Trump's lawyers were not allowed to stay in the lobby or watch the search in any way. Instead, they were left out in the hot sun near a parking lot.
The government told Trump's people to turn off the security cameras, but they didn't.