Former President Trump has claimed on social media platform Truth Social that his passports were taken during the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago. NBC News’ Ryan Reilly reports on the significance of his claim.
Donald Trump stated three of his passports were taken by the FBI when they executed a search warrant on Mar-a-Lago, indicating that he may be a flight risk. Also, Donald Trump should no longer have a special diplomatic passport, so if indeed one of the passports taken was the diplomatic passport that Trump should have returned, Trump may have just admitted to another crime.
August 15, 2022 3:10pm
Video shows FBI raid on the Mar-a-Lago mansion of Donald TrumpShare
https://nypost.com/2022/08/15/donald-trump-claims-fbi-stole-his-passports-during-mar-a-lago-raid/
Former President Donald Trump said Monday that FBI agents “stole” his passports last week when they raided his residence at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla — his latest explosive allegation against federal law enforcement.
“Wow! In the raid by the FBI of Mar-a-Lago, they stole my three Passports (one expired), along with everything else,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
“This is an assault on a political opponent at a level never seen before in our Country. Third World!” the 45th president added.
FBI agents searched Trump’s residence within his ritzy Mar-a-Lago club Aug. 8 in connection to records that were removed from the White House when Trump left office in January 2021.
Documents unsealed Friday say the Justice Department is investigating whether Trump broke three laws pertaining to official records, including the Espionage Act of 1917 — a law used in recent years to justify harsh sanctions, including against whistleblowers.
Typically, the seizure of a person’s passports indicates that authorities believe them to be a flight risk — or that they could face criminal charges preventing them from traveling outside the US.
An inventory of property that was taken from the resort made no mention of passports, though it did note that agents seized 27 boxes — some of which contained classified documents — two binders of photographs, and a handwritten note, among other items.
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Trump and his allies slammed the FBI and said the raid is the latest phase of a long-running “witch hunt” that dates back to the bureau’s investigation into whether he colluded with Russia’s government during the 2016 campaign.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, whose 2016 Supreme Court nomination was nixed by Trump after his upset election win, said last week that he personally signed off on pursuing the search.
Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray otherwise have said little publicly to defend the raid.
It’s unclear what exactly prompted the unusual FBI operation, which reportedly followed months of talks between Trump reps and the government about the whereabouts and possible return of certain records.
A Washington Post report suggested that the raid may have been spurred by concern about nuclear-related documents, but Trump denied it Friday, saying in a statement: “Nuclear weapons is a hoax, just like Russia, Russia, Russia was a hoax.”
After the search warrant and inventory were unsealed Friday, Trump claimed that the documents in question had already been declassified and that the FBI search was unnecessary.
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“They could have had it anytime they wanted without playing politics and breaking into Mar-a-Lago,” he wrote on Truth Social. “It was in secured storage, with an additional lock put on as per their request. They could have had it anytime they wanted—and that includes LONG ago. ALL THEY HAD TO DO WAS ASK.”
The Russia probe failed to find evidence that Trump worked with the Kremlin to win the 2016 election. The investigation was marred by FBI misconduct, including the falsification of court documents by FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith and revelations that FBI employees leading the probe — including Peter Stzrok, who opened the investigation — trashed Trump in private messages.
Donald Trump Labeled a ‘Flight’ Risk After Saying FBI Took His Passports
BY ZOE STROZEWSKI ON 8/15/22 AT 4:08 PM EDT00:22
Russian Expert Weighs In On Fox: Did Trump Try To Sell Classified Material?
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Social media users began labeling former President Donald Trump a “flight risk” after he said Monday that the FBI seized three of his passports during their raid at his Mar-a-Lago home last week.
Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform that the FBI “stole” the passports, one of which he said was expired, during the search on August 8. “This is an assault on a political opponent at a level never seen before in our Country. Third World!” he wrote.
While Trump did not offer any details on why the FBI may have wanted the passports, some Twitter users suggested that it was because the ex-president was viewed as a flight risk. Attorney Seth Abramson wrote in a Twitter thread on Monday that if the news was true, “the FBI is acknowledging what I’ve long said, which is that as a factual matter Trump is a flight risk.”
When the warrant authorizing the FBI’s raid became public days after the search, it listed three potential violations of federal law, including one part of the Espionage Act. Collectively, those violations could result in Trump seeing fines and decades of prison time if he was ever indicted, prosecuted and convicted.
The warrant showed that agents were authorized to search Trump’s residence and seize any governmental and presidential records created during his presidency, physical documents with classification markings, and information related to the “retrieval, storage, or transmission of national defense information or classified material.” It also allowed for the seizure of any evidence that government or presidential records and documents marked as classified were altered, destroyed or concealed.
The property receipt describes the various items seized during the raid as secret documents, top secret documents, a potential presidential record, various boxes, and something referred to as “Info re: President of France.” The receipt did not list any passports, though it was not immediately clear if they could have been included in the various boxes whose contents were not described.
U.S. Legal defines a “flight risk” as a term used by courts to describe someone likely to flee the country, state or area to avoid criminal prosecution.
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While no charges have been announced against the former president and there have been no official indications yet that Trump has been designated a flight risk by a court, the news that the FBI allegedly seized the passports left some wondering why.
Independent journalist Aaron Rupar tweeted a picture of Trump’s Truth Social post and asked: “Is the former president a flight risk?”
Mike Sington, a former senior executive at NBCUniversal, also responded to Trump’s post by tweeting: “FBI just doing their job, you’re a flight risk.”
Last Thursday, days before Trump said that his passports had been seized, human-rights activist and attorney Qasim Rashid had already labeled Trump with the term.
“Frankly speaking, Trump is a flight risk,” he tweeted. “The judge should require he surrender his passport and his jet should be grounded.”
Newsweek reached out to the FBI for comment and confirmation that Trump’s passports were seized in the raid. A Trump spokesperson was contacted for comment as well.
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