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Legal scholars question whether the FBI had to raid former President Donald Trump's Florida home over classified White House documents.
Some experts told Fox News Digital that the grounds for a raid focused on Trump's failure to turn over potentially classified documents to the National Archives were unprecedented. Told.
Republicans accuse DOJ of "weaponization" after President Trump's Marlago was raided by his FBI. DEMS calls it “accountability.”
“Based on what we know now, it was completely unjustified. 's FBI agents would have been too many," Alan said. Dershowitz, a professor at Harvard Law School who served on Trump's legal team in the president's first impeachment proceedings. "The whole process was wrong, and Trump wasn't there at the time, so you can't say he was trying to destroy anything."
When he violated the document law, the Justice Department said it chose not to prosecute or settle for lesser charges.
USA - 05/07/2017: Alan Dar Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Felix Frankfurter at the Jerusalem Post Annual Conference in Showitz, New York City. (Photo by Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) (Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
, even the most egregious cases are not usually subject to criminal prosecution," said Jonathan Turley, a professor of law at the George Washington University School of Law. "These incidents are generally handled administratively."
For example, in 2004, the DOJ identified former Clinton-era National Security Adviser Sandy Berger as Charged with unauthorized removal and destruction of classified material from the National Archives. A former NSA adviser has her five copies of a report detailing the Clinton administration's response to a series of failed al-Qaeda-planned terrorist attacks on him in 2000 removed from the National Archives.
Berger, who carried away a copy of the report stuffed into his pants and socks, was sentenced to two years' probation and stripped of his security clearance for three years.
"These cases as a whole have not been subject to aggressive criminal prosecution in the past," Turley said.
Former Trump Official Michael Caputo Condemns FBI Mar-a-Lago Raid: 'Full-blown Constitutional Crisis'
A group of FBI agents raided Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate Monday with a search warrant. The raid was reportedly related to materials the former president brought into the official residence after leaving the White House in January 2021.
The Presidential Records Act of 1978 and other federal laws prohibit unauthorized removal of classified documents. place. For months, the National Archives has been trying to obtain documents from Mar-a-Lago about Trump's White House tenure. Handed over 15 boxes of documents from the estate, including official correspondence between Trump and foreign heads of state.
"This unannounced raid on my home was neither necessary nor appropriate," the former president said in a statement.
Former President Donald Trump notified the National Archives , told Fox News Digital at CPAC in Texas. (Fox News Digital)
If so, I question the need for a house search. They point out that the National Archives had to refer the matter to the Justice Department.
"To obtain a warrant, the prosecutor must show that a crime has been committed and that the search has probable cause to believe that the search will find evidence or substance of a crime at the location of the search. will need it," he said. Robert Ryder, assistant professor at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia School of Law, said:
Given Trump's status as former head of state, Attorney General Merrick Garland would have to approve the search warrant. It would have been necessary to identify the crime.
Critics say the Justice Department needs to be transparent about the reasons for raids.
President Joe Biden (left) 2021 Attorney General Merrick Garland discusses gun crime prevention strategies at an event held in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, June 23, 2019. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) (AP)
"This is a historic raid on the residence of a presumed presidential candidate. A presidential election,” Turley said. “The public needs to know the reasons for the Justice Department's decision.
Others also criticized the way raids were handled.
"The Department of Justice did not have the right to seize them indiscriminately. Some were not classified. If there are, some are classified above their level," he said. "There is something declassified by the President that the DOJ does not know about."
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Trump has turned over documents to the National Archives in the past, so experts say the federal government should have simply summoned the records when needed. We have created a situation where everything seized by the FBI needs to be reviewed by both sides to ensure Trump's privacy is not violated.
"Trump's lawyers should be demanding in court that no one in government should look inside the box until they have a chance to challenge the grounds of the raid. '” Dershowitz said.
