(FreedomBeacon.com)- Newsweek reported last week that the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago was done specifically to recover a personal “stash” of documents that former President Donald Trump had collected throughout his presidency that he did not intend to return to the National Archives.
According to two “high-level” intelligence officials, to protect the source who told the feds about the existence of this “stash,” FBI agents raided Mar-a-Lago on the pretext of retrieving all government documents to return to the National Archives. But in reality, according to one of the sources, the agents were after specific documents that DOJ officials feared the former president might “weaponize.”
The source, who spoke anonymously to Newsweek, said the agents collected everything that “rightfully belonged” to the government. But the actual target of the search was the documents Trump had collected throughout his presidency, including material Trump amassed that he believed exonerated him in the so-called Russian collusion investigation.
Over the last 18 months, the Trump team was engaged in negotiations with the National Archives to return documents taken to Mar-a-Lago after Trump left office. In total, 15 boxes of documents were eventually returned. In early June, officials from the FBI and DOJ served a grand jury subpoena to the Trump team seeking other specific documents.
In the course of these negotiations, the DOJ was made aware of Trump’s private “stash” by a confidential source.
According to Newsweek’s sources, the documents retrieved during the August 8 raid on Mar-a-Lago fall into two categories: the documents sought under the Presidential Records Act and Trump’s private “stash.”
One of the sources told Newsweek that the FBI and DOJ wanted the documents they believed Trump “had no intention” of returning.
According to the sources, the “stash” was not located in the storage room where the other documents were found and may have been kept in Trump’s personal safe.
The former president had accused the FBI of breaking into his safe. And while the DOJ had not confirmed this, the fact that the FBI took and eventually returned Trump’s passports indicates his safe was a specific target.
Read the Newsweek report HERE.
