FBI seizes documents at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home – live | US news

House speaker Nancy Pelosi went on the Today Show to respond to the criticism from Republicans over the FBI search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.

In particular, she took aim at House minority leader Kevin McCarthy and his threats to create some sort of special committee to investigate the justice department if he becomes leader of the House in January.

“Whatever the leader is saying is probably idle,” she said, adding that she believes Democrats will win the House in the 2022 election.

“But nonetheless, we believe in the rule of law. That’s what our country is about,” Pelosi said. “And no person is above the law. Not even the president of the United States. Not even a former president of the United States.”

House minority leader Kevin McCarthy has been furious in the hours since the FBI search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.

McCarthy told Punchbowl News that Republicans take back the House, he’s considering creating some sort of special investigative committee to probe the justice department and other governmental agencies. “I’ve got to talk to my members and see where we go,” McCarthy said. “We have to follow it wherever it goes.”

Punchbowl News noted that a select committee could exclude Democrats – running an inquiry through the judiciary committee or the committee on oversight and reform would require participation from both parties. But on Fox News, Republican congressman Jim Jordan, a ranking member of the judiciary committee, called for attorney general Merrick Garland and Trump-appointed FBI director Christopher Wray to meet with lawmakers when the House is in session Friday to vote on the reconciliation bill.

“Merrick Garland, Chris Wray, come to the House Judiciary Committee this Friday and answer our questions about this action today, which has never happened in American history,” Jordan said. “What was on the warrant? What were you really doing? What are you looking for? Why not talk to President Trump and have him give you the information you’re after? This is unbelievable.”

Reminder that the FBI search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home took place the same day as Washington’s great poop scoop: the Axios publication of an excerpt from Confidence Man, a book by the Trump White House correspondent for the New York Times, Maggie Haberman.

The excerpt included photos of folded-up paper, marked with Trump’s telltale handwriting in his favored pen, a Sharpie, submerged at the bottom of various toilet bowls, and purportedly backed up the claims that Trump periodically blocked up White House and other drains by flushing documents.

The Guardian’s David Smith has a great roundup of how Republicans have reacted to the FBI search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy claimed that the justice department had reached “an intolerable state of weaponized politicization” while Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, accused Democrats of “weaponiz(ing) the bureaucracy against Republicans”.

Here are some other reactions:

Far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has gone on a tear, posting a photo of an upside-down American flag and calling for the impeachment of Joe Biden. Bear in mind that the FBI is currently directed by Christopher Wray, a Trump appointee.

Texas senator Ted Cruz invoked Hunter Biden and Hillary Clinton, arguing that the justice department ignored allegations against them but focused on Trump. Reminder that the justice department never found enough evidence to bring a case against either one of those individuals.

Greetings, live blog readers. Vivian Ho here, taking over a different sort of live blog today from my colleague, Martin.

Donald Trump has taken to comparing the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home to Watergate, the infamous political scandal of 1972 that led to the resignation of Republican president Richard Nixon. Interestingly enough, the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago took place on the anniversary of Nixon announcing his resignation from the presidency, which happened as a consequence of Watergate. But the similarities pretty much end there.

Watergate, if you’ll recall, was when five individuals with cash ties to the Committee for the Re-Election of the President – Nixon – broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office building in Washington. Those individuals were not working under an official capacity for the federal government, sanctioned by the federal government, whatsoever.

Barbara McQuade at USA Today explains quite why the FBI and Justice Department might be concerned about White House documents being left lying around a Trump residence like Mar-a-Lago. It isn’t just a matter of wanting to retain a complete record of Trump’s time in office for the sake of it. She writes:

Mishandling classified information is a serious crime because it puts at risk sources and methods of information relating to national security. If the content of the documents were to end up in the wrong hands, the identity of government sources could become known and their lives put at risk. Or our methods of collecting information, such as technological capabilities, could become known, undermining their utility. You can’t leave boxes lying around when they contain the kinds of government secrets that can get people killed, even if you’re the former president.

Richard Wolffe has written is column for us today on the topic of Donald Trump. He argues that, finally, Donald Trump’s misdeeds are catching up with him:

Sources close to the FBI (normally the secret code for the FBI press office) say that Monday’s raid was concerned with finding any more of those rogue records that mysteriously accompanied Trump to Florida. Trump somehow purloined 15 boxes of materials requested by the National Archives.

In the hands of any other president, these records might have helped with the writing of those all-important presidential memoirs. But in the tiny hands of Donald Trump, they are unlikely to be intended for book-writing purposes.

That leads us to speculate what kind of probable cause the FBI has to seek a warrant to bust open Trump’s safe. The pressing needs of the National Archives are almost certainly not the foundation for this particular exercise of law enforcement powers.

We obviously could speculate about the kind of papers the FBI might be looking for. There has been a singular tear in the time-space continuum around the person of Donald Trump on January 6 of last year. Secret service texts have disappeared down digital wormholes, along with Pentagon records. Presidential call logs appear mysteriously blank.

Read more of Richard Wolffe’s column here: Finally, Donald Trump’s misdeeds are catching up with him

George Conway, a lawyer and a Washington Post contributing columnist, has appeared on CNN early this morning in the US from Ventnor City in New Jersey, questioning what could have made US Attorney General Merrick Garland sign off a search like this. Conway said:

You have to meet the basic standard of any search warrant. You have to show probable cause that someone – might not be Donald Trump – committed a crime and probable cause that there is evidence of that crime in the location being searched. And you have to particularise exactly what it is that you’re looking for. And you have to put that all in an affidavit that a federal judge reviews and then makes a determination that there is sufficient cause to invade someone’s privacy and to come into someone’s home and to do this.

That’s one thing, but this is a former president, and the political consequences, the national consequences, of going over your skis on this are just too huge for anything. But [it would take] the most significant evidence I think, that would justify Merrick Garland, who is a cautious person, to authorise this, and it had to be authorised by him personally.

And so you have to ask, what is it about this particular circumstance that has led the Justice Department to this step? Obviously, they don’t quite trust him [Trump], because they obviously don’t think that subpoenaing or requesting documents from him, will get them the answers they want, but what is it that they want?

Over at the Washington Post, in his analysis piece, Aaron Blake goes straight for what he sees as a weakness in Republican arguments that the FBI executing a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago is an unprecedented politically motivated abuse of the justice system. He writes this morning:

Trump has marshalled his army of supporters to declare, in knee-jerk fashion, any legal scrutiny of him a deep-state operation. It’s also an army that, it bears noting, was once quite consumed with the import of document security by would-be presidential candidates — and quite happy to promote the idea that their preferred candidate ought to “lock” such an opponent “up.”

Trump’s handling of government documents has long been a focal point. The question from there is whether this is a matter that merits a search warrant. That the Justice Department would go this route would seem to suggest it sees something potentially incriminating beyond merely shoddy record-keeping and document retention. The department knows this decision will be harshly scrutinized; going down this path only for its destination to be a minor finding, ending in a slap on the wrist, isn’t worth the blowback it’ll get from 40 to 45 percent of the country.

It also bears noting that this portion of the country was once quite laser-focused on keeping tabs on potentially sensitive government documents. Trump’s best attack on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign was her private email server. Many of those who raised alarm bells about that were very quiet when we learned that government documents had made their way to Mar-a-Lago.

You may recall Alexander Vindman, the retired United States Army lieutenant colonel who retired claiming he had been bullied by President Trump and administration officials after he responded to a subpoena and testified in front of Congress during the hearings for Trump’s first impeachment.

Vindman has clearly woken up with a zing in his step today, and has fired off this tweet:

Hey GOP/MAGA/Fox News , if Trump and his henchmen can launch a campaign of harassment, intimidation, and retaliation against a serving Army Officer for testifying before Congress, it can happen to anyone.

Overnight Donald Trump launched a new campaign video on his Truth Social network, just hours after he had complained bitterly about his Mar-a-Lago residence being searched by the FBI.

The nearly four minute video paints a bleak picture of life in the United States during a lengthy black and white section which opens “we are a nation in decline, we are a failing nation”, then bursts into colour later on with a promise from Trump that “the best is yet to come”.

The video stops short of saying that Trump will run for 2024, but is as close as you can get to an election campaign video.

Clearly filmed before the FBI executed their search warrant, nevertheless at one point in the video Trump tells viewers “We’re a nation that has weaponized its law enforcement against the opposing political party like never before. We’ve never seen anything like this. We’re a nation that no longer has a free and fair press. Fake news is about all you get. We are a nation where free speech is no longer allowed.”

After news broke that the FBI executed a search warrant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, some of his supporters gathered outside the resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

The scene also drew protestors.

Here is a video clip of what it all looked like.

If you need a quick catch-up, then here is a handy list of the current lawsuits and investigations that former US President Donald Trump is facing. They include missing national records, which appears to have been the aim of the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, as well as investigations over the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January, election tampering in Georgia, E Jean Carroll’s defamation case and a criminal inquiry in the state of New York.

You can find them all here: What lawsuits and investigations is Donald Trump facing?

Summary and welcome