Hell Week: How Trump's Problems All Converged at Once - The Daily Beast

Trump is fighting a number of battles all at the same time: the Mar-a-Lago raid, trouble with the Trump Org, Fulton County, tossed-out NDAs, his tax returns, and the Jan.

With the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago this week, former President Donald Trump is at one of his lowest moments since he left office.

The committee has fired warning shots at Trump himself for engaging in what could be described as witness tampering, threatening to refer him to the Justice Department because he allegedly reached out to at least one former staffer before their congressional testimony.

More than two days later, the raid is still shrouded in mystery, mostly because Trump won’t reveal details about the warrant his lawyers were given.

Anonymous sources told several news outlets the raid was part of an ongoing investigation into Trump’s unauthorized removal of classified documents from the White House and relocation to his private home in South Florida—a clear violation of the Presidential Records Act.

The Palm Beach Police Department said in a statement it “was not aware of the existence of a search warrant nor did [it] assist the FBI in the execution.”.

“The Palm Beach Police Department continues to maintain a good relationship with the FBI; however, we are disappointed by their lack of communication regarding this incident,” Major John Scanlan wrote to The Daily Beast.

The other agency in the area, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, told The Daily Beast it “was not involved.”.

According to three sources, one of the lead defense lawyers representing Trump in the criminal investigation matter that led to the FBI raid is Evan Corcoran, an attorney who recently represented right-wing media personality Steve Bannon at his trial for defying a congressional subpoena and remaining loyal to Trump.

One attorney briefed on the matter said Corcoran had been in talks with the DOJ for at least two months before the raid, discussing the location of classified and sensitive material that remained at Mar-a-Lago—at one point in a locked storage basement room.

“That’s what the Justice Department will use it for: to get rid of a lawyer, to create distrust between a client and their lawyer,” said Alan Dershowitz, a legal scholar who served on Trump’s defense team during his first impeachment trial.

Dershowitz, who criticized the FBI’s historic move as “hard to justify,” said Trump’s criminal defense lawyers should have been more combative and attempted to loudly and publicly halt the search.

There’s a reason why those boxes were taken,” he said of the raid at Mar-a-Lago.

As Archivist, even I couldn’t just walk in and see classified records at a spur-of-the-moment,” he said.