According to records that Senator Chuck Grassley (R‑Iowa) released on Tuesday, the FBI had no solid probable‑cause finding for the August 2022 search of President Trump’s Mar‑a‑Lago estate.
One document, signed by an unnamed assistant special agent, shows the Washington Field Office saying “does not believe (and has articulated to DOJ [counterintelligence]) that we have established probable cause for the search warrant for classified records at Mar‑a‑Lago.”
The same paper also notes that “DOJ has opined that they do have probable cause,” and that a broader scope—covering the residence, office, and storage areas—had been requested. An FBI officer added that six weeks of effort to pin down probable cause turned out to be “counterproductive.”
Interviews with witnesses yielded nothing that sensitive intelligence files were still lurking in the former president’s property, especially after a bulk of such documents was returned on June 3 2022.
Grassley, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, posted on X that the documents were “shocking,” emphasizing that the “FBI DID NOT BELIEVE IT HAD PROBABLE CAUSE to raid Pres Trump’s Mar‑a‑Lago home but Biden DOJ pushed for it anyway.”
He also called the information proof of a “miscarriage of justice” against Trump. A memo from a week before the Aug. 8 raid revealed that the FBI was looking for “a second path” to secure a warrant, as described by Washington Field Office’s Special Agent in Charge of Counterintelligence, Tony Riedlinger.
Both Riedlinger and headquarters chief Steven D’Antuono appear in an email that expressed hopes the raid would go “in a professional, low‑key manner … mindful of the optics of the search,” despite the expectation that a request for cooperation from one of Trump’s attorneys might not go smoothly with DOJ.
In June 2023, Special Counsel Jack Smith charged Trump with dozens of counts over his alleged hoarding of classified files at Mar‑a‑Lago, but South Florida U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon later dismissed the case, ruling that Smith had been appointed without proper congressional approval.
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