OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Former President Donald Trump has taken full stock of what the FBI confiscated from him after raiding his Mar-a-Lago home a week ago.
After discovering that agents confiscated a lot of materials he believes the government should not have, the 45th president is now demanding that those items be returned.
Fox News reported exclusively on Saturday that records covered by attorney-client privilege and/or executive privilege were among other covered materials seized by agents last Monday. Since then, Trump has taken to his Truth Social platform to demand they be returned.
“Oh great! It has just been learned that the FBI, in its now famous raid of Mar-a-Lago, took boxes of privileged ‘attorney-client’ material, and also ‘executive’ privileged material, which they knowingly should not have taken,” he wrote. “By copy of this TRUTH, I respectfully request that these documents be immediately returned to the location from which they were taken. Thank you!”
Fox News noted:
Sources familiar with the investigation told Fox News Saturday that the former president’s team was informed that boxes labeled A-14, A-26, A-43, A-13, A-33, and a set of documents—all seen on the final page of the FBI’s property receipt —contained information covered by the attorney-client privilege.
The FBI seized classified records from Trump’s Palm Beach home during its unprecedented Monday morning raid, including some marked as top secret. But the former president is disputing the classification, saying the records have been declassified.
“Sources told Fox News that some records could be covered by executive privilege, which gives the president of the United States and other officials within the executive branch the authority to withhold certain sensitive forms of advice and consultation between the president and senior advisors,” the outlet added.
Trump followed up his post with by taking a verbal shot at Democrats’ double standards.
“Just left a large gathering of people and all they could talk about was the complete and total stranglehold that the Radical Left Democrats have over the DOJ & FBI. It shouldn’t be that way. Nobody goes after BLM, ANTIFA, or the rest, despite murder, beatings, and burning down large sections of cities, a very unfair double standard,” Trump wrote. “They definitely won’t attack the home of a former Democrat President, nor should they. It is all so out of control, great simmering anger!” he posted.
Devin Nunes, the CEO of Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns Truth Social, lashed out at former Democratic colleagues and the Biden administration over the unprecedented raid.
“We have been following these charges of entrapment and bad behavior by the FBI for so many years now,” Fox News host Maria Bartiromo said as she brought in the former California congressman and others during her Sunday morning program, Mediaite reported.
Former Trump administration official Kash Patel, who served as chief of staff to the acting defense secretary, spoke first, saying that “Trump, as a sitting president, has the unilateral authority for declassification.”
“He can literally stand over a set of documents and say these are now declassified and that is done with definitive action immediately,” he said.
Bartiromo then talked about reports that a grand jury has been convened and espionage charges against the former president have been discussed.
“Yeah, I think that’s another really important point that shouldn’t be lost on the American people today, and that is that they convened a grand jury against the former president of the United States,” Nunes responded.
“And they went into the grand jury looking at the president for treason as if he’s, And look, if that was the case, if he really was holding these these these documents, these so-called classified documents and documents, we even heard, you know, leaks of nuclear secrets that the president was holding. Well, that’s preposterous. And if that was true, you should have sent, they should have immediately sent and made this public and sent FBI agents around Mar-a-Lago if the nuclear secrets were really there,” he said.
“But the fact that they convened a grand jury to accuse a president, again, this look, this is the second time, this never stopped. Remember, back in 15 and 16 is when they started first saying that he was colluding with Russians and Vladimir Putin and Republicans were all colluding with the Russians. They went to a grand jury with that,” he argued.
“So so once again, this is a continued investigation of Trump and the Republican Party. It’s basically an investigation in search of a crime. And then conveniently, they brought back the Mueller witch hunt argument that ‘Oh, my God, he’s he’s obstructing justice,’” said Nunes, declaring: “Obstructing justice on what? you jerks!”
