FBI Director Kash Patel said Tuesday that internal communications confirm long-standing reports that agents warned against the 2022 search of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate because they believed probable cause had not been established.
According to a batch of newly declassified emails released by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa, FBI personnel repeatedly raised red flags with Justice Department officials in the weeks leading up to the search, arguing that the evidentiary foundation for a warrant was weak. Those concerns, the emails show, were ultimately brushed aside by prosecutors in the Biden administration.
“It’s true – we just turned over documents to Capitol Hill to be made public showing the FBI told DOJ they did not have probable cause for raiding President Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago but DOJ ‘didn’t give a damn’ and did it anyway,” Patel wrote on X.
The internal correspondence spans from June 2022 until shortly before the Aug. 8, 2022 raid and includes exchanges between FBI agents and DOJ attorneys. In multiple messages, agents described the information supporting a search as thin, outdated, or unverified.
“Very little has been developed related to who might be culpable for mishandling the documents,” an FBI official serving as an assistant special agent in charge wrote in one email. The official added that claims about additional boxes of documents still being stored at Mar-a-Lago were based on a “single source,” were “not corroborated,” and might be “dated.”
Other emails show frustration within the bureau over the drafting of the warrant application. One agent objected to being asked to repeatedly revise affidavit drafts without any new evidence emerging.
“We haven’t generated any new facts, but keep being given draft after draft after draft,” the agent wrote. “Absent a witness coming forward with recent information about classified [materials] on site, at what point is it fair to table this?”
Despite those internal objections, DOJ officials concluded that the legal threshold had been met and pressed forward with a sweeping warrant authorizing searches of Trump’s residence, office, and storage areas at the Florida property.
At the same time, FBI personnel advocated for a less aggressive course. Agents suggested notifying Trump’s legal team that a warrant was being prepared and pursuing voluntary compliance, which Trump’s attorneys had already offered.
“Even as we continue down the path toward a search warrant, WFO [Washington, D.C., Field Office] believes that a reasonable conversation with the former president’s attorney … ought not to be discounted,” the official wrote, noting that the documents could be secured while classification issues were resolved.
In another internal assessment, the FBI’s Washington Field Office stated it did “not believe … that we have established probable cause for the search warrant for classified records at Mar-a-Lago,” even as DOJ leadership maintained the opposite view.
Emails also reflected concerns that executing a raid would backfire. Agents warned it could be “counterproductive” and urged consideration of “alternative, less intrusive and likelier quicker options” for retrieving any remaining records. Those proposals were rejected.
The search resulted in the seizure of thousands of documents from Trump’s first term, including materials labeled classified. Prosecutors later brought 40 federal charges accusing Trump of mishandling classified documents, all of which he denied, pleading not guilty and disputing any wrongdoing.
In July 2024, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the indictment after ruling that special counsel Jack Smith had been improperly appointed. After Trump’s re-election, the Biden Justice Department dropped its appeal of Cannon’s decision, citing longstanding DOJ policy against prosecuting a sitting president.
{Matzav.com}
