Trump blasts FBI raid as 'playing politics' after release of raid warrant

Former President Donald Trump on Friday blasted the FBI for "playing politics" following the release of the warrant the bureau used to search his Mar-a-Lago estate on Monday.

Attachments to the warrant, which Human Events obtained, show the FBI sought to procure "physical documents with classification markings," communications on the storage or relocation of national defense information, and "any government and/or Presidential Records created between January 20, 2017, and January 20, 2021."

The Washington Post reported on Thursday that the FBI had sought documents related to nuclear weapons information. Trump derided the story as a "hoax," likening it to the now-debunked Russia collusion narrative.

In a series of posts Friday on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump asserted that the raid was entirely unnecessary as the FBI had previously received his cooperation.

"Number one, it was all declassified," he posted, referencing the search for classified documents he may have removed from the White House. "Number two, they didn't need to 'seize' anything. They could have had it anytime they wanted without playing politics and breaking into Mar-a-Lago. It was in secured storage, with an additional lock put on as per their request ..."

In June, Trump secretly received a grand jury subpoena for classified documents, an order with which he fully cooperated. The former president personally escorted FBI agents to view the document storage facility at his estate. He further offered full cooperation in the future.

"…They could have had it anytime they wanted—and that includes LONG ago," Trump posted Friday. "ALL THEY HAD TO DO WAS ASK. The bigger problem is, what are they going to do with the 33 million pages of documents, many of which are classified, that President Obama took to Chicago?"