FBI Director Kash Patel on Tuesday confirmed reports that the FBI raided President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in 2022 under the Biden administration, despite internal concerns that probable cause for the search warrant had not been established.
Newly declassified emails released Tuesday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, from the FBI and Department of Justice showed that agents in the months leading up to the raid did not believe the legal standard for a search warrant had been met but were overruled by prosecutors in the Biden administration.
"It's true – we just turned over documents to Capitol Hill to be made public showing the FBI told DOJ they did not have probable cause for raiding President Trump's home in Mar-a-Lago but DOJ 'didn't give a damn' and did it anyway," Patel wrote on X.
The high-profile raid of Trump's home resulted in the seizure of thousands of documents from Trump's first term, some of which were deemed classified. Trump faced 40 federal charges for mishandling classified documents, to which he pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing.
In July 2024, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the indictment against Trump after ruling that special counsel Jack Smith was improperly appointed. Following Trump's re-election, the Biden Justice Department moved to dismiss its appeal of Cannon's ruling, reflecting longstanding DOJ policy that a sitting president generally is not prosecuted.
The emails released by Grassley contained exchanges between FBI agents and DOJ attorneys from June 2022 through shortly before the raid, which occurred on Aug. 8, 2022. FBI officials raised concerns that the evidentiary basis for a warrant was thin, uncorroborated, or outdated.
Despite those warnings, DOJ officials concluded the probable cause threshold was met and pursued a broad warrant covering Trump's residence, office, and storage areas at Mar-a-Lago.
"Very little has been developed related to who might be culpable for mishandling the documents," an FBI official serving as an assistant special agent in charge wrote in an email. The official said information suggesting additional boxes of documents remained at Mar-a-Lago was "single source," "not corroborated," and potentially "dated."
FBI personnel continued to urge a less confrontational approach, recommending that investigators first notify Trump's attorneys that a warrant was being prepared and seek voluntary compliance, which Trump's attorneys had offered.
"Even as we continue down the path toward a search warrant, WFO [Washington, D.C., Field Office] believes that a reasonable conversation with the former president's attorney ... ought not to be discounted," the official wrote, adding that documents could be secured while classification questions were sorted out.
In another email, an agent complained investigators were being asked to revise affidavit drafts repeatedly without any new factual developments.
"We haven't generated any new facts, but keep being given draft after draft after draft," the agent wrote. "Absent a witness coming forward with recent information about classified [materials] on site, at what point is it fair to table this?"
Another internal message stated that the FBI's Washington Field Office did "not believe ... that we have established probable cause for the search warrant for classified records at Mar-a-Lago," even as DOJ officials continued to assert otherwise.
Emails also showed FBI agents warned that a raid would likely be "counterproductive" and proposed "alternative, less intrusive and likelier quicker options" to recover any remaining records. Those recommendations were rejected.
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.