WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI’s search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate has already reverberated across the country, even as new details emerge about what agents were looking for in the investigation into whether he took records. White’s classifieds. House to his residence in Florida.
Here’s a look at how the months-long investigation unfolded, and the rapid pace of what’s happened since then:
Mid-January 2022: The National Archives and Records Administration retrieves fifteen boxes of presidential records from Mar-a-Lago. The transfer came after a Trump representative told the agency in December 2021 that there were records in Florida nearly a year after he left office. The agency says that under federal law, all records must be preserved, a process that is “critical to our democracy.”
Trump calls the discussions “collaborative and respectful” and says it was a “great honor” to work with the National Archives. His representatives told the agency they would continue to search for more presidential records.
Jan. 31, 2022: The agency says in a statement that Trump had torn up some paper records of Trump’s time in office. During his tenure in office, White House records management officials recovered and taped up some of the destroyed presidential records and turned them over to the archives when he left office, along with other destroyed records that had not been reconstructed. .
February 18, 2022: C classified information it was found in the 15 boxes of White House records that had been stored at Mar-a-Lago, the National Archives and Records Administration says. The revelation came in a letter in response to a congressional oversight committee. He also confirmed that the matter had been referred to the Justice Department.
Federal law prohibits moving classified documents to unauthorized locations, though Trump could argue that as president he had ultimate authority over whether documents were classified.
Trump, for his part, says the National Archives received the requested presidential records “in an ordinary and routine process.”
Feb. 25: The House Oversight and Reform Committee look for additional documents from the National Archives as part of its investigation into Trump’s handling of White House records.
The committee chaired by Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York submitted a series of documents it needed to determine whether the former president violated federal records laws when he brought the boxes to Florida.
Spring 2022: Investigators from the Department of Justice and the FBI visit Mar-a-Lago to learn more about classified materials brought to Florida, according to a source familiar with the matter. Federal officials also served a subpoena for some documents believed to be in the estate.
August 5 – US Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart in South Florida approves a search warrant application and determines that the FBI had probable cause to search Mar-a-Lago. The search warrant is sealed, as is customary in any pending investigation. Attorney General Merrick Garland then say he personally approved the decision to apply for the search warrant.
August 8: The FBI runs the search at Mar-a-Lago in a unprecedented escalation of police scrutiny of the former president. Trump was not at the estate at the time, which was closed for the season, but he revealed the search in a fiery public statement. He claimed that officers had opened a safe in his home in what he called an “unannounced raid” that he likened to “prosecutorial misconduct.”
Trump and his allies present the search as a weapon of the criminal justice system aimed at preventing him from potentially winning another term if he decides to formally run for president in 2024. President Joe Biden’s White House said he had no prior knowledge of the search. , and the current director of the FBI was originally appointed by Trump.
August 10: The director of the FBI speak against a proliferation of threats and calls to arms in corners of the Internet favored by right-wing extremists in the wake of the search. Speaking during a previously scheduled visit to the FBI field office in Omaha, Nebraska, Christopher Wray says that the rhetoric directed at federal agents and the Justice Department is “deplorable and dangerous” and that “violence against law enforcement is not the answer, no matter who it is.” you’re upset with.
Aug. 11: After days of public silence, Garland holds a brief news conference making a major announcement: He will ask the court to unseal the search warrant, a striking and unusual step for a pending investigation. Garland said the public had a right to know what sparked the extraordinary search of a former president’s home.
Triumph respond with a statement calling for “immediate” release from the order. His lawyers are not immediately making public the records they have that the government tried to reveal.
Meanwhile, in Ohio, a gunman in a bulletproof vest attempts to breach a security checkpoint at an FBI field office. He fled and was later killed after a confrontation with police. A law enforcement official briefed on the matter identified him as Ricky Shiffer and said he is believed to have been in Washington just before the attack on Capitol Hill and that he may have been there on January 6.
August 12: Judge Reinhart is expected make the final court decision on whether to open the warrant that authorized the FBI to search Mar-a-Lago.
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Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.
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More on the investigations related to Donald Trump: https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump
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