Donald Trump complained that FBI agents didn’t remove their shoes when conducting a search of his Mar-a-Lago estate and said his Florida residence will ‘never be the same’.
The former president revealed shortly after the raid on August 8 that agents ‘rummaged’ through his wife Melania’s closet and said earlier this month that they also did ‘a deep and ugly search’ of his 16-year-old son Barron’s bedroom.
Coming back to his Florida home Sunday evening, Trump said the changes were noticeable from nearly two months prior when it was searched by approximately 30 FBI agents.
‘Arrived in Florida last night and had a long and detailed chance to check out the scene of yet another government ‘crime,’ the FBI’s Raid and Break-In of my home, Mar-a-Lago,’ Trump posted to his social media site Truth Social. ‘I guess they don’t think there is a Fourth Amendment anymore, and to them, there isn’t.’
‘In any event, after what they have done, the place will never be the same,’ he lamented. ‘It was ‘ransacked,’ and in far different condition than the way I left it.’
‘Many Agents – And they didn’t even take off their shoes in my bedroom. Nice!!!’
The post came after President Joe Biden for the first time gave an expansive reaction to Trump’s handling of classified documents in a wide-range 60 Minutes interview that aired Sunday.
Biden branded his predecessor as ‘totally irresponsible’ after top-secret documents were found at his Mar-a-Lago estate during the FBI raid.
Donald Trump complained that FBI agents didn’t take their shoes off when they searched his bedroom during the raid of his Mar-a-Lago home on August 8
President Joe Biden said in an interview that aired Sunday that he had not received a classified briefing on the contents of those documents found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate
Trump posted to Truth Social on Monday morning that after he ‘had a long and detailed chance to check out the scene’ of the raid, he felt ‘the place will never be the same. It was ‘ransacked,’ and in far different condition than the way I left it’
The sit-down with Scott Pelley was the first interview in more than 200 days – and aired while the president and first lady Jill Biden were in London for Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral.
His condemnation of Trump’s handling of classified documents amounted to more than the mere scoff he gave when asked about the incident in August.
Seeing the classified documents turn up following an August 8 FBI search of Trump’s Florida residence at Mar-a-Lago caused Biden to wonder ‘how anyone can be that irresponsible.’
‘I thought, what data was in there that may compromise sources and methods? And by that, I mean, names of people who help etc., and it’s just totally irresponsible,’ he added.
Biden’s one-on-one with the CBS program was the first ’60 Minutes’ interview he did as president – and his first sit-down interview since February with Lester Holt.
The interview was conducted in Detroit last week when Biden was there touring the auto show.
The remarks about the probe into his predecessor broke with Biden’s pattern of avoiding commenting on the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into Trump taking sensitive material to his Florida residence after his term ended in January 2021.
Biden branded his predecessor’s handling of classified documents as ‘totally irresponsible’ after top-secret documents were found at his Mar-a-Lago estate during a FBI raid
Biden defeated Republican Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
Trump, who has weighed another run for office, has described the court-approved search as politically motivated.
Biden said he had not received a classified briefing on the contents of those documents.
‘I have not asked for the specifics of those documents because I don’t want to get myself in the middle of whether or not the Justice Department should move or not move on certain actions they can take,’ Biden said. ‘I agreed I would not tell them what to do and not, in fact, engage in telling them how to prosecute or not.’
The Justice Department has said it was investigating Trump for removing White House records because it believed he illegally held documents including some involving intelligence-gathering and clandestine human sources – among America’s most closely held secrets.
The FBI says it took about 11,000 documents, including roughly 100 with classification markings found in a storage room and an office, while serving a court-authorized search warrant at the home on August 8.
The vast majority of the documents and materials seized in the raid did not have any classification markings on them, according to an inventory list released earlier this month.
Weeks after the search, Trump lawyers asked a judge to appoint a special master to conduct an independent review of the records, which was granted.
The warrant says federal agents were investigating potential violations of three different federal laws, including one that governs gathering, transmitting or losing defense information under the Espionage Act.
Biden’s intelligence chief is also investigating whether the disclosure of information in those documents presented national security risks.
The FBI says it took about 11,000 documents, including roughly 100 with classification markings found in a storage room and an office, while serving a court-authorized search warrant at the home on August 8
In the interview ranging several topics, the president wouldn’t commit to running for reelection in 2024, though he’s said in the past that he intends to do so.
‘My intention, as I said to begin with, is that I would run again,’ he said. ‘But it’s just an intention. But is it a firm decision that I run again? That remains to be seen.’
Biden was asked about growing concerns that Russia’s efforts to seize Ukraine could inspire China’s leader Xi Jinping to attack Taiwan. The island has been recognized by the U.S. as part of China but has its own democratic government. Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin met last week.
He said the U.S. forces would respond ‘if in fact there was an unprecedented attack.’
White House officials later said the official U.S. policy had not changed, and would not say whether American forces would be called to defend Taiwan. Biden has made the claim before, but the statements come at an increasingly tense time for U.S.-China relations, particularly after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip there last month.
Beijing sees official American contact with Taiwan as encouragement to make the island’s decades-old de facto independence permanent, a step Biden and other U.S. leaders say they don’t support.
The president said the U.S. commitment to Ukraine was ‘ironclad’ and would remain so ‘as long as it takes.’ Ukrainian troops are engaged in a counteroffensive that has reclaimed towns and cities from Russian troops. But the toll the war has taken is vast, and fresh atrocities are being revealed, including torture chambers and mass graves. Since January 2021, the U.S. has given more than $13.5 billion in security assistance to Ukraine.
