Posted on 08/13/22
| News Source: Washington Post
As FBI agents pulled up to Donald Trump’s Florida club Monday morning to conduct a search for top-secret government documents – approved by a federal judge and requested by the attorney general of the United States – the former president was by chance already huddled with his lawyers in Trump Tower in New York, a thousand miles to the north.
They were supposed to be preparing Trump to be deposed later in the week in an entirely different matter, a civil probe of Trump’s family business. But the session was interrupted by a phone call informing the former president of the extraordinary events unfolding at his Mar-a-Lago Club, said Ron Fischetti, his New York attorney.
Trump and his close allies quickly became transfixed by the events unfolding in Palm Beach, people familiar with the day said. Some monitored the agents via CCTV security cameras as they searched Trump’s office and personal quarters and a first-floor storage facility, another of his lawyers, Christina Bobb, told Fox News. Distracted, Trump kept jumping on the phone, Fischetti said, trying to figure out why the agents, casually dressed in khakis and polo shirts to cause less of a scene, were roaming the seaside facility he had tried to brand “the winter White House,” which was mostly closed for the summer.
So distressing was the search that the usually loquacious Trump team stayed mum for much of the day – until 6:51 p.m., when Trump himself confirmed the raid in a bombastic statement that declared it unjustified and politically motivated. “They even broke into my safe!” he announced.