“My beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” Trump posted on Truth Social, his preferred social network, on Monday evening. He added that “they even broke into my safe.” Agents appear to be focused on the area of the sprawling estate where Trump’s living quarters and offices are located.
It was not immediately clear what the FBI was after — or what, specifically, the agents were looking for. Boxes of items were taken during the search, a source familiar with the investigation told CNN.
“Three former White House officials told CNN they saw Trump, on numerous occasions, manually destroy papers he was no longer interested in or had finished reviewing — a practice that made it difficult for White House staff secretaries to preserve presidential records. Those officials said the former President sorted through file boxes in a rather methodical way — tearing up newspaper clippings or drafts of tweets that he had rejected and tossing them to the floor, or stacking papers he wished to hang on to in a disorderly stack atop his desk.”
“The talks revolve around whether Trump would be able to shield conversations he had while he was president from federal investigators.
“In recent weeks, investigators have moved aggressively into Trump’s orbit, subpoenaing top former White House officials, focusing on efforts to overturn the 2020 election and executing searches of lawyers who sought to aid those efforts.”
Trump, CNN has also reported, has quizzed his legal team of late as to whether he might be indicted, although he himself is skeptical it will come to that. (Worth noting: Trump is not a lawyer.)
The series of developments — culminating with the high-profile search of Trump’s home on Monday — reinforce a fundamental fact of Trump’s situation: He is far more likely to see a 2024 run for president curtailed by legal problems than political ones.
Trump’s mounting legal woes — or at least the clear sense that this variety of investigations is getting closer and closer to him — complicate all of that. Trump under legal fire is one thing for Republicans to accept. Trump under indictment is something else entirely.
We are, of course, not there yet. But, Monday’s FBI activity suggests that Trump’s legal problems are likely to get worse before they get better. And they may get way, way worse.
