The FBI was tipped off by an informer close to Trump who guided them to where documents were kept, according to reports

An informant tipped off the authorities about possible documents at Mar-a-Lago and where they could find them, per reports from Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal.

On Monday, the FBI executed a search warrant at former President Donald Trump's home at Mar-a-Lago. And while the FBI and Department of Justice have stayed mum on the reason for the raid, numerous media outlets and the former president's son, Eric Trump, in a Fox News interview have suggested that it was because of material that Trump took from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, which could be in violation of the Presidential Records Act.

In February, the National Archives took 15 boxes of documents from Mar-a-Lago and also asked the Department of Justice to probe whether Trump broke the law in the handling of these documents.

Newsweek spoke to two anonymous senior government officials with knowledge of the FBI's raid of Mar-a-Lago. These officials told Newsweek that an individual revealed to law enforcement what documents Trump still had in his possession and where they were.

According to Newsweek's sources, the raid had been timed for when Trump was away, to avoid giving the former president a photo-op, and to keep the process under wraps for as long as possible. One of the senior Justice Department officials Newsweek spoke to said this was a "spectacular backfire" because of the backlash the raid got.

The report from Newsweek was corroborated by reporting from The Journal.

The Journal spoke to anonymous sources familiar with the matter, who said that an individual who knew where the papers were stored had been in touch with investigators. According to The Journal, this individual told investigators there were more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago that were not among the 15 boxes that the National Archives retrieved from Trump's residence back in February.

The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The idea that investigators could have been tipped off sent Trumpworld into a tailspin. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, for one, raged during a live stream on Wednesday about an "FBI informant at Mar-a-Lago."

Axios reported that Trump allies believe someone may have "flipped" and given information on Trump to the FBI. Rolling Stone also reported, citing anonymous sources close to Trump, that the former president and his advisers are desperately trying to root out this informant, amid Trump's paranoia that people close to him might be wearing wires.

‘His buddies could be wearing a wire’: Mar-A-Lago search shows ‘Trump should be watching his back’

An informant reportedly told the FBI where they could find classified documents Donald Trump had stashed away at Mar-A-Lago, and now the former president is purportedly consumed by mistrust.

The FBI executed a search warrant Monday at Trump's private club in Florida, which was reportedly prompted by a confidential human source, and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said the ex-president is taking a close look around his inner circle.

"Who told the FBI what documents Trump was hiding and where they were located?" the "Morning Joe" host said. "Trump world is reportedly trying to figure out who flipped ... Donald Trump is worried he may have a rat or multiple rats in his midst. He is wondering if his phones are tapped, or even if his buddies could be wearing a wire."

Former U.S. attorney Barbara McQuade agreed that Trump should be concerned about his allies providing information to investigators as multiple cases move forward against him.

"If this is an ongoing investigation, as it appears to be, then it would be appropriate to continue to collect evidence," McQuade said. "So the ways those are done are through listening devices, surveillance techniques, confidential informants, consensual monitoring. To use those techniques requires court oversight. They're not planting bugs on their own, they're not tapping his phones without great scrutiny by a court. So just as we saw for this search, it required a court to review and determine whether there was probable cause to believe that a crime had been committed and that evidence of that crime would be found on the scene."

"To engage in any of the other investigative techniques would also require court oversight," she added, "so I'm sure Merrick Garland is doing this by the book. He has told us so. By all appearances, he is doing so. But I think you're right, if we know there is an informant who shared this information -- which is not surprising. It is often the way that the government learns about misconduct in cases, someone who is close to the wrongdoer shares that information. But i think Donald Trump does need to watch his back. Sound like the rats are fleeing the ship."

Fox News Channel và radio talk show host Sean Hannity nói rằng nước Mỹ là quốc gia đầu tiên trên thế giới sẽ có một người ra tranh cử tổng thống mà đang ngồi trong tù...

Sean Hannity says that Trump could run for president from jail, if he wanted to

On Friday's episode of Premiere Radio Networks' The Sean Hannity Show, the host claims that Trump being sent to jail would not necessarily be a road block of any kind in terms of him deciding to run for president in 2024.

Going over possible scenarios for what's to come, Hannity says "What do you think the next thing that happens here is, do you think that they would try and indict the former president in the hopes of convicting him and having him in jail at the time of the next election to prevent him from running . . . Because a conviction by the way, constitutionally, would not prevent him from running for office."

Following the FBI's raid of Mar-a-Lago to search for sensitive documents that Trump took from the White House, Marc Elias, top lawyer for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, tweeted "The media is missing the really, really big reason why the raid today is a potential blockbuster in American politics." Included with Elias' tweet is the image of a document detailing U.S. Code Title 18, Section 2071, which states that anyone "having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States."

But Hannity seems to have other thoughts on the matter.

"You know, this code that is being cited by Marc Elias and all these other people negates the very enumerated qualifications in the Constitution, and the specific requirements for somebody not to be eligible to run, and that would be impeachment and conviction," Hannity said during Friday's show. "It doesn't mention anything about being, you know, maybe not following every single dotted 'I' and crossed 't' in the Presidential Records Act of the National Archives Act."

Trump nói chuyện cứ như cháu ngoan bác Hồ...

Trump's latest defense for Mar-a-Lago documents is everyone 'brings home their work from time to time' and the files were automatically declassified

Former President Donald Trump said that everyone takes work home sometimes, as he sought to develop a new line to explain why top secret government documents were stored at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.

"As we can all relate to, everyone ends up having to bring home their work from time to time. American presidents are no different," said the statement from Trump's office on Friday night read out on Fox News.

Trump further claimed that he had a "standing order" to declassify documents "the moment" they left the Oval Office.

"President Trump, in order to prepare for work the next day, often took documents, including classified documents, from the Oval Office to the residence. He had a standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office and taken into the residence were deemed to be declassified the moment he removed them," the statement said.

It claimed that the power to classify and declassify documents rests solely with the president and that he did not need approval from a "paper-pushing bureaucrat."

This new defense – portraying Trump as just another hard-working American – contradicts previous statements by Trump and his lawyers that baselessly claimed the FBI could have planted evidence while on site.

While the president has the authority to declassify documents, legal experts say they must follow a defined procedure. It is not clear if Trump ever did.

"He can't just wave a wand and say it's declassified," Richard Immerman, a historian and an assistant deputy director of national intelligence in the Obama administration, told NBC News. "There has to be a formal process. That's the only way the system can work."

Immerman noted that declassified documents are marked with the date they were declassified. It is not the case with some of the documents returned from Mar-a-Lago to the National Archives this year, per NBC.

When reports of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago emerged in May, former Trump administration official Kash Patel claimed that Trump had declassified the files shortly before leaving office but that the classified markings had not been removed.

When searching Mar-a-Lago, FBI agents recovered 11 sets of classified documents, some of which were marked top-secret.

The Department of Justice is investigating whether Trump broke three laws, including the Espionage Act, when he took government records to Mar-a-Lago after he left office, according to the warrant unsealed on Friday.

One of the laws relates to removing information about the US's national defense, and the other two relate to the concealment or destruction of government records.

The possible crimes being investigated do not depend on the classification of the documents.

"Because the Espionage Act speaks in terms of national defense information, it leaves open the possibility that such information could be unclassified as long as an agency is still taking steps to protect it from disclosure,"  Steven Aftergood, who runs the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, told The New York Times.

Trump is rushing to hire seasoned lawyers — but he keeps hearing ‘No’

Former president Donald Trump and close aides have spent the eight days since the FBI searched his Florida home rushing to assemble a team of respected defense lawyers. But the answer they keep hearing is “no.”

The struggle to find expert legal advice puts Trump in a bind as he faces potential criminal exposure from a records dispute with the National Archives that escalated into a federal investigation into possible violations of the Espionage Act and other statutes.

“Everyone is saying no,” said a prominent Republican lawyer, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential conversations.

Trump is no stranger to legal proceedings, and his scramble to hire lawyers in the face of an ominous federal probe recalls his predicament in the summer of 2017, when he was under scrutiny from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III in the Russia probe. Once again, Trump is struggling to find a veteran criminal defense lawyer with a strong track record of dealing with the Justice Department in a sprawling, multipronged investigation.

Longtime confidants and advisers of Trump have grown extremely worried about Trump’s current stable of lawyers, noting that most of them have little to no experience in cases of this type, according to two people familiar with the internal discussions.

Taylor Budowich, a Trump spokesman, defended the quality of the former president’s legal team in a statement Tuesday night, pointing to former federal prosecutors Evan Corcoran and James Trusty.

“The President’s lead counsel in relation to the raid of his home, Jim Trusty and Evan Corcoran, have decades of prosecutorial experience and have litigated some of the most complex cases in American history," Budowich said. “President Trump is represented by some of the strongest attorneys in the country, and any suggestion otherwise is only driven by envy.”

Jon Sale, a prominent Florida defense attorney who worked on the Watergate prosecution team and said he turned down representing Trump last week because he did not have enough time to devote to the case, said “the Trump team needs a first-rate, highly experienced federal criminal practitioner.”

“You have to evaluate whether you want to take it,” Sale said. “It’s not like a DUI. It’s representing the former president of the United States — and maybe the next one — in what’s one of the highest-visibility cases ever.”

Ordinarily, the prestige and publicity of representing a former president, as well as the new and complex legal issues at stake in this case, would attract high-powered attorneys. But Trump’s search is being hampered by his divisiveness, as well as his reputation for stiffing vendors and ignoring advice.
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