by Sharon Rondeau
(Aug. 11, 2022) — In a newsletter issued early Thursday evening, former personal attorney to then-President Donald J. Trump, former New York City Mayor and former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Rudy Giuliani wrote that Trump’s Florida Mar-a-Lago residence was the subject of an FBI “raid” prior to Monday, when between a reported 30 and 40 federal agents descended at approximately 6:30 AM and rifled through personal items, including a safe of whose contents Giuliani said the agents were aware, and former First Lady Melania Trump’s clothing.
According to Trump on his TruthSocial platform Thursday, his legal team was given no warning of the impending Monday FBI visit. At approximately 4:30 p.m. EDT, Trump wrote, “My attorneys and representatives were cooperating fully, and very good relationships had been established. The government could have had whatever they wanted, if we had it. They asked us to put an additional lock on a certain area – DONE! Everything was fine, better than that of most previous Presidents, and then, out of nowhere and with no warning, Mar-a-Lago was raided, at 6:30 in the morning, by VERY large numbers of agents, and even ‘safecrackers.’ They got way ahead of themselves. Crazy!”
At approximately the same time, Trump wrote in a separate post, “….Just learned that agents went through the First Lady’s closets and rummaged through her clothing and personal items. Surprisingly, left area in a relative mess. Wow!”
On Wednesday, Trump posted, “In early June, the DOJ and FBI asked my legal representatives to put an extra lock on the door leading to the place where boxes were stored in Mar-a-Lago – We agreed. They were shown the secured area, and the boxes themselves. Then on Monday, without notification or warning, an army of agents broke into Mar-a-Lago, went to the same storage area, and ripped open the lock that they had asked to be installed. A surprise attack, POLITICS, and all the while our Country is going to HELL!”
A DOJ document filed Thursday with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida whose magistrate judge, Bruce E. Reinhart, signed the search warrant, appears to claim otherwise. “Former President Trump, through counsel, was provided copies of each of these documents on August 8, 2022, as part of the execution of the search,” the Justice Department’s Motion to Unseal Limited Warrant Materials states.
In public remarks Thursday, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland confirmed it is the Justice Department’s custom to use “less intrusive means” to obtain items it seeks and that he personally approved the search warrant.
Trump’s attorneys claim they were provided no notification and were not permitted to remain on the Mar-a-Lago premises as the raid unfolded.
Giuliani began Thursday’s newsletter with:
On Monday, August 8, 2022, the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) participated in the unprecedented action of executing a search and seizure warrant at Mar-a-Lago, the private residence of former President Donald Trump. This behavior has been typical throughout history of tyrannical “banana republic” governments all over the world. Never in the history of the United States had a sitting President attempted to malign the previous Presidential administration in an attempt to crush the perceived opponent in an upcoming Presidential election. In fact, no President in our nation’s history has ever undergone the scrutiny and harassment of President Trump and members of his Administration to include his family as well as me.
Further, he claimed that “President Biden’s FBI and DOJ are acting as his own private police agency.” “This breaks my heart,” he continued, “as I often fondly reminisce about interactions with FBI during my career with DOJ which included roles as an Assistant United States Attorney, Associate Attorney General under President Reagan, Chief of Narcotics in the Southern District of New York’s United States Attorney’s Office (USAO) and culminating as The United States Attorney in New York’s Southern District in the USAO.”
Giuliani further recounted that “in 2014, FBI named me as ‘G-Man of the Year’ due to our mutual longstanding and successful partnership as crime fighters.” In the same breath, however, he wrote, “Today, the FBI has become unrecognizable to me. The agency I once considered to be our premier law enforcement agency had slowly and methodically become an agency tasked with doing the Biden Administration’s bidding against their political opponents. It’s as if the Bill of Rights had ceased to exist and we now exist under a tyrannical government.”
On Thursday evening’s edition of Fox News’s Primetime,” Lindsey Halloran, an attorney for Trump, told host Jesse Watters that federal agents and representatives had previously visited Mar-a-Lago and Trump had provided them with the materials they requested in what she described as “an open-door policy.”
Trump’s cooperation was corroborated by two eyewitnesses to the events, according to JusttheNews Editor-in-Chief John Solomon’s reporting Thursday.
Giuliani concluded the newsletter by stating that the FBI “executed a raid on Mar-a-Lago months ago in which President Trump was compliant and cooperative.”
“At that time,” he asserted, “the FBI simply provided him with an additional pad lock to a safe which may or may not have contained classified materials from his time in office and left.” [sic] Giuliani also recounted the FBI “raid” on his home and office purportedly as part of an investigation into his “ties to Ukraine and whether he violated a federal law that governs lobbying on behalf of foreign countries or entities,” according to PBS.
“This past Monday over forty heavily armed FBI agents and DOJ attorneys proceeded to remove the safe they provided the pad lock for despite the fact that President Trump had previously offered the contents to them during prior visits,” Giuliani’s newsletter continued.
He closed by inviting readers to subscribe to his Rumble channel and listen to his latest podcast regarding Monday’s events titled, “The Democrats Secret Police Target the People’s President.”
Also on Primetime, Solomon told Watters he was able to confirm, through six sources, that the documents the FBI sought on Monday were related to the Presidential Records Act and the handling of classified information as opposed to anything relating to the January 6, 2021 “insurrection” at the U.S. Capitol which the “Select Committee” investigating the incident claim Trump instigated that day.
To register for Giuliani’s newsletter, see his website.
The motion filed by the DOJ states it is now Trump’s legal team’s prerogative to agree or object to the release of the warrant and underlying documentation. On Thursday night, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” guest host Brian Kilmeade reported that Trump’s legal advisers say “Trump is not worried at all” and is in no hurry to make that decision.