F.B.I. Searches Trump's HomeSearch of Trump’s Florida Residence Signals Depth of Federal Investigation

The search, according to multiple people familiar with the investigation, appeared to be focused on material that the former president had brought with him to Mar-a-Lago from the White House.

Scenes Following Search of Trump's Home
  1. Palm Beach, Fla.
    Saul Martinez for The New York Times
  2. Palm Beach, Fla.
    Saul Martinez for The New York Times
  3. Palm Beach, Fla.
  4. New York
    Dakota Santiago for The New York Times
  5. Palm Beach, Fla.
  6. New York
    Dakota Santiago for The New York Times
  7. Palm Beach, Fla.
    Saul Martinez for The New York Times

Follow our live updates on the F.B.I. search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.

Luke Broadwater
Aug. 9, 2022, 8:46 p.m. ET

The Jan. 6 committee’s interviews with two key Trump allies yielded few answers.

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Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state under President Donald J. Trump, reportedly discussed with Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office after the Capitol riot.Credit...Scott McIntyre for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol did not get much help Tuesday from two key allies of former President Donald J. Trump — with one providing evasive answers to the committee’s questions and another abruptly ending the interview less than 15 minutes after it began, according to people familiar with the matter.

The committee’s investigators had hoped to get information from Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state under Mr. Trump, about the former president’s state of mind around the time of the attack on Jan. 6, 2021, and his fitness for office. They also wanted answers about discussions that reportedly had taken place between Mr. Pompeo and Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary at the time.

Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Mnuchin discussed the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office after the Capitol riot. Their discussion was reported by Jonathan Karl of ABC News in his book “Betrayal,” and described to The New York Times by a person briefed on the discussion. Mr. Pompeo has denied the exchange took place.

While the full extent of Mr. Pompeo’s testimony is not known, Mr. Pompeo on Tuesday was evasive in response to the committee’s questioning, according to a person familiar with his interview. It came a day after F.B.I. agents searched Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in an unrelated investigation.

He has spent the past two days posting messages to Twitter in defense of Mr. Trump: “If they will go after a former President, they will go after you,” one states.

A spokesman for Mr. Pompeo did not respond to requests for comment.

The other committee interview was quicker, if not friendlier.

Douglas V. Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania who served as a point person in the state for a plan to keep Mr. Trump in power by using slates of “fake” electors, abruptly ended his interview after he objected to the panel’s rules about video recording.

A lawyer for Mr. Mastriano, now a state senator, said Mr. Mastriano believed the committee would selectively edit his testimony, and that he planned to insist on making his own video recording of the interview. The committee has rejected that demand from other witnesses, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer.

“He is more than willing to provide answers to their questions now, as long as there’s some protection against election interference by the committee,” Timothy C. Parlatore, Mr. Mastriano’s lawyer, said in an interview.

Mr. Parlatore said Mr. Mastriano was likely to file a lawsuit against the committee, arguing that the panel has no authority to force him to sit for a deposition without a ranking Republican member appointed by the Republican Party.

A spokesman for the committee declined to comment.

Mr. Mastriano has already turned over documents to the Jan. 6 committee that included information about plans to bus people to Washington for a large rally that preceded the violence, and copies of posts he made on social media.

A former Army officer, he was on the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6. He said in a statement that he had “followed the directions of the Capitol Police and respected all police lines” that day. The committee has said it wants to interview Mr. Mastriano because he spoke directly with Mr. Trump about his “postelection activities.”

Emails reviewed by The New York Times about the scheme to substitute pro-Trump electors in states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. showed that Mr. Mastriano needed assurances to go along with the plan because other Republicans had told him it was “illegal.”

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Luke Broadwater
Aug. 9, 2022, 7:50 p.m. ET

Representative Scott Perry says the F.B.I. seized his cellphone.

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Representative Scott Perry has been issued a subpoena by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, but has refused to appear. Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. on Tuesday seized the cellphone of Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania and the chairman of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, according to the congressman’s office.

Mr. Perry, who has been issued a subpoena by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, said three F.B.I. agents seized his phone Tuesday morning while he was traveling with family.

“They made no attempt to contact my lawyer, who would have made arrangements for them to have my phone if that was their wish,” Mr. Perry said in a statement. “I’m outraged — though not surprised — that the F.B.I., under the direction of Merrick Garland’s D.O.J., would seize the phone of a sitting member of Congress.”

His statement was reported earlier by Fox News.

Mr. Perry compared the seizure of his cellphone to the F.B.I.’s search of former President Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property Monday, in which agents took out boxes of materials after an all-day search related to an investigation into the mishandling of White House documents.

“My phone contains info about my legislative and political activities, and personal/private discussions with my wife, family, constituents and friends. None of this is the government’s business,” Mr. Perry said. “As with President Trump last night, D.O.J. chose this unnecessary and aggressive action instead of simply contacting my attorneys. These kinds of banana republic tactics should concern every citizen.”

It was not immediately clear why the F.B.I. had seized Mr. Perry’s phone. A spokeswoman for the congressman did not respond right away to a follow-up question, and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Perry has refused to appear before the Jan. 6 committee, and his lawyer has argued that there was “nothing improper” about his actions during the buildup to the attack on the Capitol.

In the weeks after the 2020 election, Mr. Perry was among at least 11 members of Congress who were involved in discussions with White House officials about overturning the election, including plans to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to throw out electoral votes from states won by President Biden, according to the committee. Mr. Perry also endorsed the idea of encouraging supporters to march to the Capitol, the committee has said.

A member of Congress since 2013, Mr. Perry also compiled a dossier of voter fraud allegations and coordinated a plan to try to replace the acting attorney general, who was resisting Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the election, with a more compliant official.

Mr. Perry is not the only ally of Mr. Trump whose phone has been seized in recent weeks. In June, federal agents seized the phone of John Eastman, the conservative lawyer who advised Mr. Trump on strategies to overturn the election.

The seizure of Mr. Eastman’s phone was carried out by F.B.I. agents acting on behalf of the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General. It came the same day that federal agents raided the home and seized the electronic devices of Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who was central to Mr. Trump’s attempts to coerce the department’s leaders into backing his false claims of fraud in the election.

The inspector general’s office, which has jurisdiction over investigations of Justice Department employees, also issued the warrant in the search of Mr. Clark’s home. The warrant indicated that prosecutors are investigating Mr. Clark for charges that include conspiracy to obstruct the certification of the presidential election.

Mr. Perry was instrumental in introducing Mr. Clark to Mr. Trump, and pushing for Mr. Clark to be installed as acting attorney general.

Katie BennerGlenn Thrush
Aug. 9, 2022, 7:42 p.m. ET

Merrick Garland has become the target of Trump and his allies after the search.

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Some of Attorney General Merrick B. Garland’s supporters think he should be doing more to defend himself. “We will and we must speak through our work,” Mr. Garland said in a speech this year.Credit...Kenny Holston for The New York Times

The F.B.I. had scarcely decamped from Mar-a-Lago when former President Donald J. Trump’s allies, led by Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, began a bombardment of vitriol and threats against the man they see as a foe and foil: Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.

Mr. Garland, a bookish former judge who during his unsuccessful Supreme Court nomination in 2016 told senators that he did not have “a political bone” in his body, responded, as he so often does, by not responding.

The Justice Department would not acknowledge the execution of a search warrant at Mr. Trump’s home on Monday, nor would Mr. Garland’s aides confirm his involvement in the decision or even whether he knew about the search before it was conducted. They declined to comment on every fact brought to their attention. Mr. Garland’s schedule this week is devoid of any public events where he could be questioned by reporters.

Like a captain trying to keep from drifting out of the eye and into the hurricane, Mr. Garland is hoping to navigate the sprawling and multifaceted investigation into the actions of Mr. Trump and his supporters after the 2020 election without compromising the integrity of the prosecution or wrecking his legacy.

Toward that end, the attorney general is operating with a maximum of stealth and a minimum of public comment, a course similar to the one charted by Robert S. Mueller III, the former special counsel, during his two-year investigation of Mr. Trump’s connections to Russia.

That tight-lipped approach may avoid the pitfalls of the comparatively more public-facing investigations into Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election by James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director at the time. But it comes with its own peril — ceding control of the public narrative to Mr. Trump and his allies, who are not constrained by law, or even fact, in fighting back.

“Garland has said that he wants his investigation to be apolitical, but nothing he does will stop Trump from distorting the perception of the investigation, given the asymmetrical rules,” said Andrew Weissmann, who was one of Mr. Mueller’s top aides in the special counsel’s office.

“Under Justice Department policy, we were not allowed to take on those criticisms,” Mr. Weissmann added. “Playing by the Justice Department rules sadly but necessarily leaves the playing field open to this abuse.”

Mr. Mueller’s refusal to engage with his critics, or even to defend himself against obvious smears and lies, allowed Mr. Trump to fill the political void with reckless accusations of a witch hunt while the special counsel confined his public statements to dense legal jargon. Mr. Trump’s broadsides helped define the Russia investigation as a partisan attack, despite the fact that Mr. Mueller was a Republican.

Some of the most senior Justice Department officials making the decisions now have deep connections to Mr. Mueller and view Mr. Comey’s willingness to openly discuss his 2016 investigations related to Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump as a gross violation of the Justice Manual, the department’s procedural guidebook.

The Mar-a-Lago search warrant was requested by the Justice Department’s national security division, whose head, Matthew G. Olsen, served under Mr. Mueller when he was the F.B.I. director. In 2019, Mr. Olsen expressed astonishment that the publicity-shy Mr. Mueller was even willing to appear at a news conference announcing his decision to lay out Mr. Trump’s conduct but not recommend that he be prosecuted or held accountable for interfering in the Russia investigation.

But people close to Mr. Garland say that while his team respects Mr. Mueller, they have learned from his mistakes. Mr. Garland, despite his silence this week, has made a point of talking publicly about the investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol on many occasions — even if it has only been to explain why he cannot talk publicly about the investigation.

“I understand that this may not be the answer some are looking for,” he said during a speech marking the first anniversary of the Capitol attack. “But we will and we must speak through our work. Anything else jeopardizes the viability of our investigations and the civil liberties of our citizens.”

At the time, that comment was intended to assuage Democrats who wanted him to more aggressively pursue Mr. Trump. Now it is Republican leaders, including Mr. McCarthy, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and former Vice President Mike Pence, who are clamoring for a public explanation of his actions.

Mr. Garland enjoys a significant advantage over Mr. Mueller as he heads into battle. The House committee investigating the assault on the Capitol intends to continue its inquiry into the fall, and its members plan to make the issue of Mr. Trump’s actions a central political theme through the midterm elections and into 2024, providing Mr. Garland with the kind of covering fire Mr. Mueller never had.

Still, some of the attorney general’s supporters think he should be doing more to defend himself.

Even though the Justice Department does not generally talk about cases, guidelines preventing prosecutors from publicly discussing criminal investigations include exceptions to the mum-is-the-word norm. Federal prosecutors sometimes explain why they choose not to bring charges in high-profile matters if it is deemed to be in the public interest.

“In this era, does the public interest require more?” said Tali Farhadian Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor, who believes the department can better educate the public on how the rule of law works — without running afoul of laws governing grand jury material and ethical considerations.

“When you have Trump calling this a raid, why not explain how a search warrant works?” she asked. “Could that kind of information come out of the mouth of a public official, rather than a legal analyst on television?”

But Justice Department officials are painfully aware of the risks they are facing in such a politically sensitive inquiry, and many are bracing for the investigations Republicans have explicitly threatened to conduct if they take back the House in November’s elections.

As a result, Mr. Garland’s aides have been wary about disclosing even basic information, including the attorney general’s role in major decisions or the deployment of key personnel like Thomas P. Windom, who was tapped last fall to lead the investigation out of the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington.

The F.B.I. search at Mar-a-Lago appears to have been focused on Mr. Trump’s handling of materials that he took from the White House residence at the end of his presidency, including many pages of classified documents.

For now, there is no indication that the search, which was approved by a federal judge, is related to the department’s widening investigation into the plan to create slates of electors that falsely said Mr. Trump had won in key swing states in 2020.

Prosecutors have stepped up the Jan. 6 investigation in recent weeks, taking grand jury testimony from two top aides to Mr. Pence and issuing a subpoena to Mr. Trump’s final White House counsel.

However, the information gathered by investigators at Mar-a-Lago could be used in other cases if it proves relevant, according to Norman L. Eisen, who served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during Mr. Trump’s first impeachment.

Nonetheless, by late Monday, the former president and his supporters tried to seize the offensive by filling the rhetorical void left by federal investigators, accusing Mr. Garland of perverting justice for political motives.

In the past, Democrats have been relentless in arguing that Mr. Trump’s behavior as president evoked the actions of dictators in other countries. In a statement on Monday night about the Mar-a-Lago search, Mr. Trump repurposed that line of criticism.

“It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024,” he said in the statement, adding, “Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries.”

As often happens, that argument quickly became a template for his supporters, especially those running for office this year. “The weaponization of Biden’s DOJ against political enemies is unprecedented,” Attorney General Eric Schmitt of Missouri, the Republican nominee for Senate in that state, wrote on Twitter. “This is Banana Republic stuff,” he added.

But no one went quite so far as Mr. McCarthy, the House Republican leader, who has sought to rehabilitate his relationship with the former president after sharply criticizing Mr. Trump’s actions on Jan. 6.

“I’ve seen enough,” Mr. McCarthy said. “The Department of Justice has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization. When Republicans take back the House, we will conduct immediate oversight of this department, follow the facts, and leave no stone unturned.”

A Justice Department spokeswoman had no comment.

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Luke Broadwater
Aug. 9, 2022, 7:40 p.m. ET

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, called on the Justice Department to explain why agents searched the home of former President Donald J. Trump.

“The country deserves a thorough and immediate explanation of what led to the events of Monday,” Mr. McConnell said. “Attorney General Garland and the Department of Justice should already have provided answers to the American people and must do so immediately.”

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Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
Katie Glueck
Aug. 9, 2022, 6:50 p.m. ET

With a few exceptions, Democrats have a far more muted response to the search than Republicans.

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Protesters in front of Trump Tower in New York on Tuesday, a day after the F.B.I. searched Donald J. Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.Credit...Dakota Santiago for The New York Times

As Republicans raged at the news that the F.B.I. had searched former President Donald J. Trump’s home in Florida, many Democratic officials and candidates offered far more muted reactions, seeking instead to focus on a recent spate of legislative achievements following months of gridlock and infighting.

A number of prominent Democratic candidates who are usually prolific on Twitter avoided the subject of Mr. Trump on social media on Tuesday, and some key party organizations refrained from issuing statements. Instead, many Democrats kept their attention on their midterm opponents, promoted the legislation the Senate had just passed covering climate change and prescription drug prices, or highlighted the bill President Biden signed into law on Tuesday that was aimed at bolstering American chip manufacturing.

Some Democrats who did acknowledge the search sought to draw a contrast with Republicans.

“This week House Democrats are lowering prescription drug costs, tackling climate change, protecting our veterans and expanding American manufacturing,” Chris Taylor, a spokesman for the House Democratic campaign arm, said in a statement. “Republicans are tying themselves into knots defending a president who allegedly stole classified information from the White House. Voters will see the difference.”

Neither the F.B.I. nor the Justice Department has publicly commented on the search, in line with their policies of not discussing active investigations.

Still, many Republicans instantly sought to paint the search as political, and some Democrats made clear that they did not want to feed any such perceptions, emphasizing their deference to law enforcement.

“Yesterday’s search of Mar-a-Lago reinforced a fundamental pillar of American democracy — no one is above the law, not even the former president of the United States,” Representative Charlie Crist, Democrat of Florida, said in a statement. “I have great faith in American law enforcement and our justice system to get to the truth.”

Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, declined to comment on any potential political ramifications from the search at Mar-a-Lago during a briefing with the news media on Tuesday.

“The president and the White House learned about this F.B.I. search from public reports,” she said.

Asked if the Justice Department had acted appropriately in searching Mr. Trump’s residence, she replied, “That’s up for the Department of Justice to decide.”

Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, a Democrat who resigned from office amid accusations of sexual harassment, took a notably different tack. On Twitter, he demanded that the Justice Department “immediately explain the reason for its raid & it must be more than a search for inconsequential archives.”

Otherwise, declared Mr. Cuomo, who has faced federal scrutiny himself, “it will be viewed as a political tactic and undermine any future credible investigation & legitimacy of January 6 investigations.”

And Andrew Yang, the former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination who lost a New York City mayoral primary last year and has since helped start a new political party, said that part of Mr. Trump’s appeal “has been that it’s him against a corrupt government establishment. This raid strengthens that case for millions of Americans who will see this as unjust persecution.”

Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting.

Zach MontagueLauren McCarthy
Aug. 9, 2022, 6:10 p.m. ET

Here’s a look at the timeline related to the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago.

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The National Archives has sought to reclaim documents from former President Donald J. Trump since shortly after he left office.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

When F.B.I. agents took the stunning step of searching former President Donald J. Trump’s home in Florida on Monday, the warrant for which may be unsealed as soon as Friday, the focus quickly turned to Mr. Trump’s history of improperly keeping records and documents from his time in the White House at his Florida residence.

Over the past year and a half, Mr. Trump has repeatedly faced questions about the nature of documents he turned over to the government, as well as others he kept after leaving office that by law were required to be handed over to the National Archives and Records Administration.

Here is a timeline of Mr. Trump’s dealings with the National Archives, as well as efforts by lawmakers and Justice Department officials to identify and reclaim a variety of sensitive documents Mr. Trump may have stashed at his home in Florida.

January 2021

On Jan. 19, the day before he left office, Mr. Trump sent a letter to David S. Ferriero, the archivist of the United States, naming seven senior officials as his representatives to handle all future requests for presidential records. They included Mark Meadows, his chief of staff, and several White House lawyers, including Pat A. Cipollone and Patrick F. Philbin.

Through their work in the White House Counsel’s Office, several of Mr. Trump’s representatives had helped fight requests from Congress for White House records during Mr. Trump’s first impeachment in 2019.

Mr. Trump left the White House on the morning of Jan. 20, just hours before President Biden was inaugurated. Accounts of the former president’s departure described a highly disorganized exit with slapdash packing, especially as aides had spent the weeks before focused on contesting the results of the 2020 election and preparing for Mr. Trump’s defense in a second impeachment trial that was held in February.

The National Archives said it received a collection of documents from the White House at the end of the administration. It later said that many had been torn up and taped back together, and that others were handed over in scraps that officials had never reconstructed.

January 2022

It was later revealed that in mid-January, the National Archives had succeeded in retrieving 15 boxes of materials taken from the White House at the end of Mr. Trump’s term and stored at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Palm Beach, Fla. The agency said it had negotiated with Mr. Trump’s lawyers throughout 2021 to have the materials returned.

The boxes included a number of personal letters and gifts Mr. Trump had received, including correspondence with Kim Jong-un and a congratulatory letter that former President Barack Obama left for Mr. Trump.

“These records should have been transferred to NARA from the White House at the end of the Trump administration in January 2021,” the National Archives said in a statement.

February 2022

Sometime after receiving the boxes, the National Archives discovered what appeared to be classified information within the documents Mr. Trump had held onto and flagged the incident to the Justice Department for guidance. The agency publicly confirmed on Feb. 18 that it had found documents marked as containing “classified national security information” among the boxes.

The finding raised concern among lawmakers, who started investigating through the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.

In a letter on Feb. 24, Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, the committee’s chairwoman, requested a detailed accounting from the National Archives of the contents of the boxes found at Mar-a-Lago, including anything that Mr. Trump had shredded or tried to destroy.

“I am deeply concerned that former President Trump may have violated the law through his intentional efforts to remove and destroy records that belong to the American people,” she wrote.

April 2022

In response to the National Archives’ referral to the Justice Department in February, federal authorities apparently began their own investigation into how classified information ended up at Mr. Trump’s Florida home.

In April, the Justice Department instructed the National Archives not to share any further details about the materials found at Mar-a-Lago with the House Oversight Committee, suggesting that the F.B.I. was in the preliminary stages of a criminal investigation.

May 2022

In early May, the Justice Department issued a subpoena to the National Archives to obtain the classified documents found within the boxes recovered from Mar-a-Lago. The authorities also requested interviews with several White House officials present in the final days before Mr. Trump left the White House. These steps appeared to confirm that the Justice Department had begun a grand jury investigation into whether Mr. Trump had mishandled the sensitive documents, and that its investigative efforts were picking up steam.

At some point in the spring, a small group of federal agents, including at least one involved in counterintelligence, also made an unusual visit to Mar-a-Lago to seek out more information about classified documents that might have been stored there. Mr. Trump and at least one of his lawyers were said to have been present for part of the meeting. It was not immediately clear when the visit took place.

August 2022

On Monday, F.B.I. agents descended on Mr. Trump’s home, breaking open a safe as they conducted the search in what seemed to be the latest attempt to obtain information related to his handling of classified materials.

In an interview on “Real America’s Voice” on Tuesday, Christina Bobb, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, appeared to confirm that agents were looking for presidential records, some of which may have contained classified information.

On Wednesday, during a deposition in New York, Mr. Trump refused to answer questions from the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, citing the Fifth Amendment. Since March 2019, Ms. James has been investigating whether the former president fraudulently inflated the value of his assets to secure loans and other benefits.

Shortly after the questioning began, Mr. Trump’s office released a statement that he would invoke his right against self-incrimination and cast the inquiry as part of a grander conspiracy against him, linking it to the F.B.I. search at Mar-a-Lago on Monday.

On Thursday, one of Mr. Trump’s representatives to the National Archives disclosed that the former president had been subpoenaed this spring to return the classified documents months before the F.B.I. searched his Florida residence, suggesting that the Justice Department had tried other methods to account for the materials.

After the disclosure of the subpoena, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland moved to make public the warrant and supporting documents used in the search and said he personally approved the decision after the “less intrusive” attempts had failed.

Late on Thursday night, Mr. Trump said he would not oppose the motion to release the warrant and an inventory of items retrieved in the search on Monday. But his lawyers have until not officially responded to the Justice Department; they have until 3 p.m. Eastern on Friday to formally state whether Mr. Trump has any objection.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that a list of documents removed from Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence include materials marked as top secret and meant to be viewed only in secure government facilities.

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Aug. 9, 2022, 5:32 p.m. ET

Donald Trump will soon face questioning from the New York State attorney general’s office.

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Letitia James, the attorney general of New York State, has pledged to hold Mr. Trump accountable for business practices she said were illegal.Credit...Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Donald J. Trump will face questioning under oath from the New York State attorney general’s office this week, a crucial turning point in a long-running civil investigation into the former president’s business practices.

The stakes for Mr. Trump are uncommonly high. While he has sat for numerous depositions over the years, he fought for months to avoid the testimony, which could shape the outcome of the investigation into the former president and his family real estate business, the Trump Organization.

Since March 2019, the attorney general, Letitia James, and her lawyers have scrutinized whether Mr. Trump and his company fraudulently inflated the value of his hotels, golf clubs and other assets. Early this year, Ms. James said in a court filing that the company’s business practices were “fraudulent or misleading,” but added that her office needed to question Mr. Trump and two of his adult children to determine who was responsible for that conduct.

The deposition of Mr. Trump will follow similar questioning of Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. in recent days. It will represent the final stage of Ms. James’s investigation, which Mr. Trump has dismissed as a politically motivated witch hunt.

Because her investigation is civil, Ms. James can sue Mr. Trump but cannot file criminal charges. Still, the specter of criminal charges hangs over the deposition: The Manhattan district attorney’s office had been conducting a parallel criminal investigation into inflated valuations of Mr. Trump’s properties.

Depending on Mr. Trump’s answers to Ms. James’s questions on Wednesday, his testimony could breathe new life into that investigation, which lost momentum earlier this year. If Mr. Trump stumbles — or incriminates himself — Ms. James’s office could alert the district attorney’s office, which has said that it will closely monitor the interview.

Ms. James’s inquiry could wrap up sooner than those investigations. Rather than file a lawsuit that would take years to resolve, she could first pursue settlement negotiations with the former president’s lawyers to obtain a swifter financial payout. But if she ultimately sues Mr. Trump — and if Ms. James prevails at trial — a judge could impose steep financial penalties on Mr. Trump and restrict his business operations in New York.

In seeking to fend off a lawsuit from Ms. James, Mr. Trump’s lawyers are likely to argue that valuing real estate is a subjective process, and that his company simply estimated the value of his properties, without intending to artificially inflate them. While Ms. James has contended in court papers that the Trump Organization provided bogus valuations to banks to secure favorable loans, Mr. Trump’s lawyers might argue that those were sophisticated financial institutions with the resources to evaluate the business for themselves, and that they turned a hefty profit from their dealings with Mr. Trump.

Isabella Grullón Paz
Aug. 9, 2022, 4:05 p.m. ET

A quick history of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s lavish club and residence.

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Donald Trump speaking to members of the U.S. military from Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, on Thanksgiving Day in 2018.Credit...Sarah Silbiger/The New York Times

Mar-a-Lago, the opulent 20-acre private club and residence at the center of Palm Beach, Fla., was purchased by Donald J. Trump in 1985. It eventually became a symbol of his brand and a central location for his presidency, as a backdrop for meetings with Republican allies and foreign leaders.

On Monday, F.B.I. agents searched the property for 15 boxes of material requested by officials in relation to the various criminal investigations Mr. Trump accumulated during his tenure, putting the club, once again, in national headlines.

The property’s roots go back to a very different wealthy American: It was built in the 1920s by Marjorie Merriweather Post, heiress and then owner of General Foods.

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By The New York Times

Ms. Post created the estate as a vacation home. Its location — on a barrier island, sandwiched between a lagoon and the Atlantic — inspired the name Mar-a-Lago, Spanish for Sea-to-Lake. Construction began in 1923, when the Great Depression was beginning in Florida, according to the Smithsonian Museum.

The 114-room mansion is anchored to a coral reef by concrete and steel to make it hurricane resistant, according to the club’s website, which offers these details about the building’s makeup: The walls are made with Dorian stone brought from Genoa, Italy, and the mansion holds 2,200 square feet of black and white marble from an old castle in Cuba. The floors are lined with 36,000 Spanish tiles, some dating to the 15th century. The roof is constructed of approximately 20,000 Cuban roofing tiles.

Ms. Post threw extravagant parties and hosted philanthropic events at the estate. When she died in 1971, she willed Mar-a-Lago to the federal government, hoping it would become a presidential vacation home. But by 1981, no president had used it that way, and the government returned the property, newly designated a National Historic Monument, to the Post Foundation.

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The card room at Mar-a-Lago.Credit...Eric Thayer for The New York Times
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People playing croquet on the property.Credit...Eric Thayer for The New York Times

Four years later, Mr. Trump bought it, paying less than $10 million for the estate and its furnishings, a small fraction of the original cost. He turned it into a private club a decade later.

The club promises “the highest privileges and an elite lifestyle,” reserved for 500 members, who pay a $200,000 membership fee and $14,000 annual dues. Amenities include a spa and a fitness center, the club’s pool and beach, tennis courts and croquet lawns.

Mar-a-Lago became important for Mr. Trump’s business ventures, and then became central to his time in office, so much so that it was dubbed the Winter White House. Mr. Trump used it as a makeshift situation room in 2017 and hosted and entertained foreign officials there, including the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, in 2019.

Mr. Trump declared Mar-a-Lago his permanent residence in 2019. After he left the White House at the end of his term, in 2020, the estate has served as a shadow G.O.P. headquarters.

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Zolan Kanno-Youngs
Aug. 9, 2022, 3:19 p.m. ET

“The president and the White House learned about this F.B.I. search from public reports,” says Jean-Pierre, who declined to comment on any potential political ramifications.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs
Aug. 9, 2022, 3:16 p.m. ET

Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, says President Biden was not briefed by the Justice Department before the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago, and that he “was not aware of it.”

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Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York Times
Annie Karni
Aug. 9, 2022, 2:49 p.m. ET

The investigation into Trump’s handling of classified material is just one of several inquiries he is facing.

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Trump Tower in New York. One of the handful of investigations former President Donald J. Trump is embroiled in relates to his real estate business. Credit...Dakota Santiago for The New York Times

The F.B.I.’s search of former President Donald J. Trump’s home in Florida on Monday was a stunning step by the Justice Department in its apparent investigation into materials that were improperly taken by the former president, including classified documents, when he left office.

But it is just one of multiple active investigations that Mr. Trump is embroiled in as he dangles the possibility of an imminent announcement of a 2024 presidential campaign.

“I think it’s only going to put more energy behind my father-in-law, should he choose to run for president in 2024,” Lara Trump, his daughter-in-law, said on Fox News in response to news of the search.

Part of the appeal of another presidential run for Mr. Trump, people close to him have said, is that it would double as a defense strategy, allowing him to argue that the investigations are politically motivated and largely carried out by Democrats intent on defeating him in 2024.

Here is a look at the inquiries he is facing, in addition to the investigation into his handling of classified and other government material:

  • In New York, Attorney General Letitia James has been conducting a civil investigation into Mr. Trump and his family business, the outcome of which could result in a lawsuit or fines. The former president and his elder daughter, Ivanka Trump, are expected to be questioned by Ms. James’s office as it looks into whether the Trump Organization fraudulently inflated the value of Mr. Trump’s assets. Mr. Trump’s deposition is expected this week.

    And the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, has said he is continuing to conduct a criminal investigation into Mr. Trump’s business practices, despite the resignations in February of two senior prosecutors who, according to people with knowledge of the situation, cited doubts Mr. Bragg had expressed about moving to prosecute.

  • In Georgia, Fani T. Willis, the Atlanta-area district attorney, has been leading a wide-ranging criminal investigation into the efforts of Mr. Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia. The inquiry appears to be targeting multiple defendants with charges of conspiracy to commit election fraud or racketeering-related charges for engaging in a coordinated scheme to undermine the election.

  • In Washington, the House committee investigating the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, has used eight public hearings to lay out a comprehensive narrative of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The panel is promising more evidence and more hearings in the fall. It has no power to prosecute, but is weighing the largely symbolic step of making a criminal referral to the Justice Department. While there are major legal hurdles to any potential charges, committee members and legal experts have said that Mr. Trump could potentially be investigated for obstructing an official proceeding of Congress, defrauding the United States and seditious conspiracy. They have also repeatedly raised concerns about witness tampering, a crime.

  • The Justice Department is conducting an investigation into Mr. Trump’s effort to remain in office despite his electoral defeat in 2020, with lawyers questioning witnesses directly before a grand jury about the actions of Mr. Trump and some of his top advisers. Most recently, federal prosecutors have directly asked witnesses about his involvement in efforts to reverse his election loss. Prosecutors have been particularly interested in the so-called fake electors plan pursued by Mr. Trump and his allies, in which his supporters in key battleground states presented themselves as alternate slates of electors, hoping to delay or block Electoral College certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.

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Charlie Savage
Aug. 9, 2022, 2:02 p.m. ET

If Trump illegally removed official records, would he be barred from future office?

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Mar-a-Lago a day after F.B.I. agents searched former President Donald J. Trump’s residence there.Credit...Saul Martinez for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. search of former President Donald J. Trump’s residence in Florida has raised the question of whether the criminal investigation could lead to legally blocking him from becoming president again, even if he decides to run in the 2024 election.

Any conviction under one particular criminal law that appears to relate to the investigation includes an unusual penalty: disqualification from holding any federal office. But there is reason for caution before concluding that if Mr. Trump were to be charged and convicted under that law, he could not legally return to the White House even if voters wanted him to.

Here is a closer look at the case, starting with the basics.

What motivated the search warrant?

The Justice Department has declined to comment. But by its nature, the warrant means a criminal investigation is underway. Early reports citing sources familiar with the matter have indicated that the criminal investigation behind the search warrant relates to suspicions that Mr. Trump unlawfully took government files with him when he left the White House.

Earlier this year, the National Archives retrieved 15 boxes that Mr. Trump took with him to his Mar-a-Lago home from the White House residence when his term ended, and said some were found to have contained classified information.

But it is not clear whether Mr. Trump handed over everything. In a statement denouncing the F.B.I.’s action on Monday, Mr. Trump said law enforcement officials “even broke into my safe.”

What laws apply to the removal of documents?

There are several laws that could potentially cover such a situation. For example, the Espionage Act, which criminalizes the unauthorized retention of defense-related information that could be used to harm the United States or aid a foreign adversary, carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison per offense.

But the law that has attracted particular attention is Section 2071 of Title 18 of the United States Code, which makes it a crime if someone who has custody of government documents or records “willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies or destroys” them. Section 2071 is not limited to classified information.

If convicted under that law, defendants can be fined up to $2,000 and sentenced to prison for up to three years. In addition, the statute says, if they are currently in a federal office, they “shall forfeit” that office, and — perhaps most importantly, given widespread expectations that Mr. Trump will seek re-election again — they shall “be disqualified from holding” any federal office.

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Trump supporters on Tuesday in Palm Beach, Fla., not far from Mar-a-Lago.Credit...Saul Martinez for The New York Times

How might a conviction play out in coming elections?

Were Mr. Trump to be charged and convicted under Section 2071, voters or rival candidates in state primary elections for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination could challenge his eligibility for that office, asking that his name be omitted from primary ballots.

Each state administers its own elections, so the exact process would vary. But in general, such a challenge would first go to a state elections board. The board’s decision could be appealed in the state court system, whose outcome could in turn be appealed to the Supreme Court.

How could any ballot disqualification be challenged?

With an argument that the disqualification provision of Section 2071 is unconstitutional as relates to the presidency.

Article II of the United States Constitution establishes three criteria for presidential eligibility: One must be a “natural born citizen,” at least 35 years old and a resident of the United States for at least 14 years.

Since the Constitution prevails when it and a federal statute conflict, the argument would be that Congress lacks the authority to alter that list of criteria — such as by adding a requirement that one has not been convicted of unlawfully taking government documents.

Notably, the Constitution does authorize Congress to render people ineligible to hold federal office as a penalty for convictions in impeachment proceedings. But nothing in the text of the Constitution says lawmakers may use ordinary criminal law to do so.

What have courts said?

The Supreme Court has never ruled on a presidential candidate whose eligibility was challenged based on a conviction under a law whose penalties included disqualification from office. But there have been cases involving Congress that raised analogous disputes.

In a 1969 case, the Supreme Court rejected an attempt by the House of Representatives, by majority vote, to block Adam Clayton Powell Jr. from taking his seat; voters in his district had re-elected him despite allegations of misconduct. The court ruled that, because he met the Constitution’s eligibility criteria to be a House member, “the House was without power to exclude him from its membership.”

Citing Alexander Hamilton, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in that majority opinion that “a fundamental principle of our representative democracy is that “the people should choose whom they please to govern them.”

And in a 1995 case, the Supreme Court struck down an amendment to the Arkansas constitution that had attempted to impose term limits on federal House members and senators elected from that state. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the state had no power to add qualifications to the list of eligibility criteria established by the federal Constitution.

Citing those and other precedents in an aside in a 2000 case before the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, Judge Richard Posner, who has been deemed the most cited American legal scholar of all time, asserted that Congress lacked authority to supplement the eligibility requirements for the presidency listed in the Constitution.

What did people say about Hillary Clinton?

Section 2071 briefly received a close look in 2015, after it came to light that Mrs. Clinton, then widely anticipated to be the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, had used a private email server to conduct government business while secretary of state.

Mrs. Clinton was never charged with any crime related to her use of the server. But many Republicans embraced Donald J. Trump’s criticism of her over the issue during his 2016 presidential campaign, and some were briefly entranced with the idea that the law might be used to keep Mrs. Clinton out of the White House. Among that number was Michael Mukasey, a former attorney general in the administration of George W. Bush. So was at least one conservative think tank.

But in considering that situation, Seth Barrett Tillman, an American and a legal scholar who now teaches at Maynooth University in Ireland, and Eugene Volokh of the University of California, Los Angeles, argued that they were wrong, citing the court rulings and the argument that Congress cannot alter the eligibility criteria set out in the Constitution’s text.

Mr. Volokh later reported an update on his blog that Mr. Mukasey — who is also a former federal judge — had written him a gracious email saying that “upon reflection,” Mr. Mukasey had been mistaken and Mr. Tillman’s analysis was “spot on.”

What are people saying about Trump now?

After the Mar-a-Lago search warrant came to light, one of the most prominent voices pointing to Section 2071 was that of Marc Elias, who served as general counsel for Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 campaign. He initially cited the law’s disqualification provision in a Twitter post as “the really, really big reason why the raid today is a potential blockbuster in American politics.”

But he followed up with another Twitter post acknowledging that any conviction under Section 2071 might not ultimately bar Mr. Trump from seeking the presidency again — but arguing that a legal fight over it would nevertheless be important because of the prospect of legal fights over whether his name could be kept off state ballots.

“Yes, I recognize the legal challenge that application of this law to a president would garner (since qualifications are set in Constitution),” Mr. Elias wrote. “But the idea that a candidate would have to litigate this is during a campaign is in my view a ‘blockbuster in American politics.’”

Charlie Savage
Aug. 9, 2022, 2:00 p.m. ET

A ruling upholding a House panel’s request for Trump tax returns opens the door to a Supreme Court appeal.

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Former President Donald J. Trump speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas on Saturday. His legal team has vowed to fight the effort to gain access to his tax records, and he is virtually certain to appeal to the Supreme Court.Credit...Emil Lippe for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that the House could gain access to former President Donald J. Trump’s tax returns, upholding a district court judge’s decision last year.

In a 28-page ruling, a panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held that a federal law gives a House committee chairman broad authority to request them despite Mr. Trump’s status as a former president.

The Treasury Department refused to turn over the records during his administration. But after President Biden took office last year, the department determined that a renewed request from the House Ways and Means Committee, which said that it was studying a program that audits presidents, was valid.

The appeals court’s ruling does not necessarily mean that Congress will obtain the records. Mr. Trump’s legal team has vowed to fight the congressional effort “tooth and nail,” and he is virtually certain to appeal to the Supreme Court. If at least four justices on the court vote to take any such appeal, that would effectively shield Mr. Trump from a final judgment until next year. If in the meantime Republicans retake the House in the midterm elections, the Ways and Means Committee would be led by a Republican and would most likely drop the request.

The taxes case is rooted in Mr. Trump’s decision — first as a presidential candidate in the 2016 election and then in office — to break with modern precedent by refusing to make his tax returns public.

When Democrats won control of the House in 2018, they began trying to investigate his finances using congressional oversight powers. Mr. Trump’s former lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, testified that the president had boasted about inflating the value of assets when it served him and undervaluing them when it helped to lower his taxes.

But Mr. Trump pursued a strategy of using the slow pace of litigation to run out the clock on congressional oversight efforts. His administration’s Treasury Department refused to comply with the request, and the House filed a lawsuit seeking to enforce it in early July 2019. But the judge to which it was assigned — Trevor N. McFadden of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, whom Mr. Trump appointed in 2017 — was slow to make any ruling.

The stagnant case was reinvigorated after Mr. Trump left office last year. Representative Richard E. Neal of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, issued a new request for the former president’s tax returns from 2015 to 2020. The Biden administration issued a Justice Department memorandum saying the panel was entitled to receive them.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers sought an injunction to block the request, saying it served no legitimate legislative purpose and contending that House Democrats’ real motivation was to expose his financial information for political gain. House lawyers said there were legislative reasons to seek the returns, including studying whether changes were needed to the I.R.S. program that audits presidents.

In December, nearly two and a half years after the House filed the case, Judge McFadden issued a ruling on it. While warning the committee that he did not think it would be wise for it to publish Mr. Trump’s tax returns, the judge ruled that the law entitled the panel to gain access to them.

In the appeals court ruling on Tuesday upholding that decision, Judge David B. Sentelle also wrote that the law that gives the chairman of that panel broad authority to request any person’s tax returns was constitutional on its face. He said the request applying that law for Mr. Trump’s taxes did not violate separation-of-powers principles because it imposed only a minor burden on the executive branch.

Judge Sentelle also rejected an argument by Mr. Trump’s lawyers that the Treasury Department’s decision to comply with the request violated the former president’s First Amendment rights.

In a statement, Mr. Neal praised the decision.

“With great patience, we followed the judicial process, and yet again, our position has been affirmed by the courts,” he said. “I’m pleased that this long-anticipated opinion makes clear the law is on our side. When we receive the returns, we will begin our oversight of the I.R.S.’s mandatory presidential audit program.”

Judge Sentelle is a 1987 Reagan appointee. He was fully joined by Judge Robert L. Wilkins, a 2014 Obama appointee. The third judge on the panel, Karen L. Henderson, who was appointed in 1990 by President George Bush, joined the result and part of the majority reasoning.

But she wrote separately to express greater caution about the potential separation-of-powers issues raised by “Congress’s potential and incentive to threaten a sitting president with a post-presidency” request for tax returns “in order to influence the president while in office.”

Judge Henderson wrote: “Although I agree with my colleagues that the burdens imposed on the presidency by the committee’s request do not rise to the level of a separation-of-powers violation, I conclude that the burdens borne by the executive branch are more severe and warrant much closer scrutiny than my colleagues have given them.”

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Katie Benner
Aug. 9, 2022, 1:09 p.m. ET

The F.B.I. search is separate from the Justice Department’s Jan. 6 investigation.

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Law enforcement officials stationed at the entrance to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on Monday.Credit...Josh Ritchie for The New York Times

The F.B.I.’s search of former President Donald J. Trump’s home on Monday to obtain information related to his handling of classified information is separate from the Justice Department’s investigation into the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, according to multiple people familiar with the investigation.

The search appears to be focused on Mr. Trump’s handling of materials that he took from the White House residence at the end of his presidency, including many pages of classified documents.

For now, there is no indication that the F.B.I. search, which was approved by a federal judge, is related to the Justice Department’s investigation into Jan. 6, which has focused on the plan to create slates of electors that falsely said that the former president had won in key swing states in 2020.

Prosecutors have stepped up the Jan. 6 investigation in recent weeks, taking grand jury testimony from two top aides to former Vice President Mike Pence and issuing a subpoena to the lawyer who served as Mr. Trump’s final White House counsel.

However, the information gathered by investigators at Mar-a-Lago could be used in other cases if it proves relevant, according to Norman L. Eisen, who served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during Mr. Trump’s first impeachment trial and who helped craft rules governing the use of classified information during the Obama administration.

“Whatever is found there, as long as agents comply with the warrant, could be used in other cases,” Mr. Eisen said.

Max Fisher
Aug. 9, 2022, 12:28 p.m. ET

Prosecutions of ex-leaders elsewhere show benefits, but also risks.

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In Brazil, the former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whose sentencing to 12 years in prison for corruption was reversed, is running for president again.Credit...Victor Moriyama for The New York Times

Prosecutions against former heads of state are exceedingly rare in the United States, heightening public shock at the latest development in the escalating federal investigations into former President Donald J. Trump.

But, in many democracies around the world, it is not so unheard-of for a former leader to face criminal investigations or even jail time.

Two recent French presidents, Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, were found guilty of corruption, with Mr. Sarkozy facing a yearlong prison sentence if he loses his appeal.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s former prime minister, is embroiled in a corruption trial. So is Jacob Zuma, the former president of South Africa.

In Brazil, the former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was sentenced to 12 years in prison for corruption and barred from running again for office. The country’s Supreme Court later reversed some charges, freeing Mr. da Silva, who now leads in polls for Brazil’s looming presidential election.

And in South Korea, two of the country’s last three ex-presidents are currently in jail, with a fourth having committed suicide during a corruption investigation.

The record suggests that prosecuting former leaders can be a double-edged sword for democracies.

Such cases send the message that not even heads of state are above the law, discouraging the abuse of office. In new or fragile democracies, this can be an important safeguard against the risks of backsliding into authoritarianism.

Even when justly pursued, though, prosecutions can set a precedent of jailing political rivals that future leaders have sometimes abused. At the same time, declining to investigate can be just as dangerous, establishing de facto impunity for the abuse of power.

“Both sweeping immunity and overzealous prosecutions can undermine democracy,” a team of University of Washington scholars wrote of their research into such cases worldwide.

In healthy democracies like France, prosecutions tend to bring few downsides. Trust in the legal system’s objectivity brings legitimacy to any rulings. And the strength of democratic norms in such countries means neither side fears that the other will abuse prosecutions — or resist them — for partisan gain.

The risks are higher, the scholars found, in fragile democracies, such as those in Latin America, where politicians may treat even a legitimate investigation as the opening shot in an all-or-nothing battle for power. Some may even take extreme steps in response, such as sidelining the judiciary or opening retaliatory investigations on retaking power.

But the need for such cases can also be higher in those countries, as a way to create — or claw back — a norm that leaders will follow the law, deterring would-be strongmen.

Some legal scholars, like Walter Olson of the right-leaning Cato Institute, argue that it is appropriate for prosecutors to, in the interest of “civic peace,” set a high bar for targeting former leaders. Still, Mr. Olson has argued that this does not apply in Mr. Trump’s case, where a precedent of impunity could be even more dangerous.

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Charlie Savage
Aug. 9, 2022, 12:19 p.m. ET

A federal appeals court just ruled that the House of Representatives can gain access to Trump’s tax returns. The ruling upheld a district court judge’s decision last year that the law gives a House committee chairman broad authority to request them, despite Trump’s status as a former president.

Alan Feuer
Aug. 9, 2022, 11:19 a.m. ET

The F.B.I. search ignited the language of violence and civil war on the far right.

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Supporters of former President Donald J. Trump gathered near his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Fla., on Monday, but there were no immediate reports of large-scale protests.Credit...Eva Marie Uzcategui/Getty Images

For the past six years, Donald J. Trump’s most loyal backers have, as though by reflex, attacked federal law-enforcement officials whenever they have sought to investigate the former president or his allies.

But the reaction to the F.B.I.’s court-approved search of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s beachfront residence in Palm Beach, Fla., went far beyond the usual ire and indignation. Pro-Trump influencers, figures in the media and even some Republican candidates for office employed the language of violence to rally opposition.

“Tomorrow is war,” Steven Crowder, a conservative commentator with nearly two million Twitter followers, wrote on the site within hours of the F.B.I.’s search. “Sleep well.”

This aggressive language was pervasive on the right as Monday night turned into Tuesday morning.

“This. Means. War,” a commenter wrote in response to an article on the search by The Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump outlet. The post was quickly amplified by a Telegram account connected to Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s onetime political adviser.

Hours later, on the podcast “Bannon’s War Room,” Joe Kent, a Trump-endorsed House candidate in Washington, was asked by the host for his assessment of the search.

“This just shows everyone what many of us have been saying for a very long time,” Mr. Kent said. “We’re at war.”

The idea that things in the United States had become so dire that violence was required was repeatedly uttered by a range of right-wing figures — such as self-proclaimed extremists and former members of Mr. Trump’s administration — after the F.B.I.’s search at Mar-a-Lago. In the 2016 election cycle, many of them had followed Mr. Trump’s lead in criticizing Hillary Clinton’s practice of maintaining a private email server for government-related messages while she was the secretary of state.

“Country on the verge of CIVIL WAR???” Nicholas J. Fuentes, a prominent white nationalist, asked in a post advertising a livestream of the search.

“This is it,” Monica Crowley, a former public affairs official in Mr. Trump’s Treasury Department, wrote on Twitter around the same time. “This is the hill to die on.”

The New York Young Republican Club issued a statement condemning the “continued persecution” of Mr. Trump by “totalitarian Democrats,” adding that action beyond merely “voting out” the former president’s enemies was required.

“Internationalist forces and their allies intent on undermining the foundation of our Republic have crossed the Rubicon,” the statement concluded, “and it is the express belief of the New York Young Republican Club that, should justice not be carried out swiftly on these matters by ALL our elected officials and leaders, nothing less than the future of the Union in on the line.”

Despite such rhetoric, there were no immediate reports of any violence or even large-scale protests. But there were some indications that activists were planning demonstrations against the F.B.I.

A flier appeared online on Monday night calling for a protest against “F.B.I. tyranny” on Wednesday outside one of the bureau’s field offices in California. The flier was posted by Toni Ringlein, a right-wing organizer and real-estate agent in Palm Springs, Calif., who marched on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In previous social media posts, Ms. Ringlein referred to President Biden as a “traitor,” saying he should be hanged.

The idea that a civil war was drawing near was prevalent in right-wing circles in the days leading up to the Capitol attack. Extremist leaders like Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, and Enrique Tarrio, the chairman of the Proud Boys, often rallied their groups with incendiary references to the cleansing violence of the American Revolution.

On pro-Trump websites, people began sharing tactics and techniques for attacking the Capitol and discussed building gallows and trapping lawmakers in tunnels there.

Something similar took place on Monday night, as Trump supporters on social media apps like Gab and Truth Social brazenly displayed a taste for armed conflict.

A correction was made on 
June 14, 2023

An earlier version of this article described incorrectly The Gateway Pundit’s coverage of the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago. The outlet did not publish an article saying “This. Means. War” in response to the search. Someone who posted a Gateway Pundit article about the search on a social media feed associated with Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s onetime adviser, used those words to comment on the article.

How we handle corrections

Aug. 9, 2022, 11:09 a.m. ET

Questions swirl about what exactly the F.B.I. was looking for, and why.

The F.B.I.’s search of former President Donald J. Trump’s home in Florida on Monday continued to rock Washington and, more broadly, American politics, amid a swirl of questions about what led the Justice Department to take such a stunning step.

The search came after a visit this spring to Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Palm Beach, Fla., by federal agents — including a Justice Department counterintelligence official — to discuss materials that the former president had improperly taken with him when he left the White House.

Mr. Trump was briefly present for that visit, as was at least one of his lawyers, according to people familiar with the situation.

Those materials contained many pages of classified documents, according to a person familiar with their contents. By law, presidential materials must be preserved and sent to the National Archives when a president leaves office. It remained unclear what specific materials agents might have been seeking on Monday or why the Justice Department and the F.B.I. decided to go ahead with the search now.

Mr. Trump had delayed returning 15 boxes of material requested by officials with the National Archives for many months, doing so only in January, when the threat of action to retrieve them grew. The case was referred to the Justice Department by the archives early this year.

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F.B.I. agents searched Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald J. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida. Mr. Trump said they had broken open a safe.Credit...MediaPunch, via Associated Press

In carrying out the search, federal agents broke open a safe, the former president said.

The search was the latest remarkable turn in the long-running investigations into Mr. Trump’s actions before, during and after his presidency — and even as he weighs announcing another candidacy for the White House.

It came as the Justice Department has stepped up its separate inquiry into Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in office after his defeat in the 2020 election and as he also faces an accelerating criminal inquiry in Georgia and civil actions in New York.

Mr. Trump has long cast the F.B.I. as a tool of Democrats who have been out to get him. The search set off a furious reaction among his supporters in the Republican Party and on the far right.

Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader in the House, suggested that he intended to investigate Attorney General Merrick B. Garland if Republicans took control of the chamber in November. A delegation of House Republicans was scheduled to travel to Mr. Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J., for a dinner with him on Tuesday night.

Aggressive language was pervasive on the right as Monday night turned into Tuesday morning.

“This. Means. War,” the Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump outlet, wrote in an online post that was quickly amplified by a Telegram account connected to Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s onetime political adviser.

The F.B.I. would have needed to persuade a judge that it had probable cause that a crime had been committed, and that agents might find evidence at Mar-a-Lago, to get a search warrant. Proceeding with a search on a former president’s home would almost surely have required sign-off from top officials at the bureau and at the Justice Department.

The search, however, does not mean prosecutors have determined that Mr. Trump committed a crime.

Despite the historic and politically incendiary nature of the search, neither the F.B.I. nor the Justice Department has publicly commented or explained the basis for its action, in line with their policies of not discussing active investigations.

Mr. Trump was in the New York area at the time of the search. “Another day in paradise,” he said on Monday night during a telephone rally for Sarah Palin, who is running for a congressional seat in Alaska.

Eric Trump, one of his sons, told Fox News that he was the one who informed his father that the search was taking place, and that the warrant was related to presidential documents.

Mr. Trump campaigned for president in 2016 criticizing Hillary Clinton’s practice of maintaining a private email server for government-related messages while she was the secretary of state. He was known throughout his term to rip up official material that was intended to be held for presidential archives. One person familiar with his habits said that included classified material that was shredded in his bedroom and elsewhere.

The search was at least in part for whether any records remained at Mar-a-Lago, a person familiar with it said. It took place on Monday morning, the person said, although the former president said agents were still there many hours later.

“After working and cooperating with the relevant government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate,” Mr. Trump said, maintaining it was an effort to stop him from running for president in 2024. “Such an assault could only take place in broken, third-world countries.”

“They even broke into my safe!” he wrote.

Mr. Trump did not share any details about what the F.B.I. agents said they were searching for.

The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said on Tuesday that President Biden had not been briefed by the Justice Department before the F.B.I.’s search.

“The president and the White House learned about this F.B.I. search from public reports,” said Ms. Jean-Pierre, who declined to comment on any potential political ramifications.

Aides to Mr. Biden said on Monday they were stunned by the development and had learned of it from Twitter.

The search came as the Justice Department has also been stepping up questioning of former Trump aides who had been witnesses to discussions and planning in the White House of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss.

Mr. Trump has been the focus of questions asked by federal prosecutors in connection with a scheme to send “fake” electors to Congress for the certification of the Electoral College. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol also continues its work and is interviewing witnesses this week.

The law governing the preservation of White House materials, the Presidential Records Act, lacks teeth, but criminal statutes can come into play, especially in the case of classified material.

Criminal codes, which carry jail time, can be used to prosecute anyone who “willfully injures or commits any depredation against any property of the United States” and anyone who “willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates or destroys” government documents.

Samuel R. Berger, a national security adviser to President Bill Clinton, pleaded guilty in 2015 to a misdemeanor charge for removing classified material from a government archive. In 2007, Donald Keyser, an Asia expert and former senior State Department official, was sentenced to prison after he confessed to keeping more than 3,000 sensitive documents — ranging from the classified to the top secret — in his basement.

In 1999, the C.I.A. announced it had suspended the security clearance of its former director, John M. Deutch, after concluding that he had improperly handled national secrets on a desktop computer at his home.

In January of this year, the archives retrieved 15 boxes that Mr. Trump took with him to Mar-a-Lago from the White House residence when his term ended. The boxes included material subject to the Presidential Records Act, which requires that all documents and records pertaining to official business be turned over to the archives.

The items in the boxes included documents, mementos, gifts and letters. The archives did not describe the classified material it found other than to say that it was “classified national security information.”

Because the National Archives “identified classified information in the boxes,” the agency “has been in communication with the Department of Justice,” David S. Ferriero, the national archivist, told Congress at the time.

Federal prosecutors subsequently began a grand jury investigation, according to two people briefed on the matter. Prosecutors issued a subpoena earlier this year to the archives to obtain the boxes of classified documents, according to the two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.

The authorities also made interview requests to people who worked in the White House in the final days of Mr. Trump’s presidency, according to one of the people.

In the spring, a small coterie of federal agents — including at least one involved in counterintelligence — visited Mar-a-Lago in search of some documents, according to a person familiar with the meeting.

The question of how Mr. Trump has handled sensitive material and documents he received as president loomed throughout his time in the White House, and beyond.

He was known to rip up pieces of official paper that he was handed, forcing officials to tape them back together. And an upcoming book by a New York Times reporter reveals that staff members would find clumps of torn-up paper clogging a toilet, and believed he had thrown them in.

The question of how Mr. Trump handled classified material is complicated, because, as president, he had the authority to declassify any government information. It is unclear whether Mr. Trump, before leaving office, had declassified materials the archives discovered in the boxes. Under federal law, he no longer maintains the ability to declassify documents after leaving office.

While in office, he invoked the power to declassify information several times as his administration publicly released materials that helped him politically, particularly on issues like the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia.

Toward the end of the administration, Mr. Trump ripped pictures that intrigued him out of the President’s Daily Brief — a compendium of often classified information about potential national security threats — but it is unclear whether he took them to Florida. In one prominent example of how he dealt with classified material, Mr. Trump in 2019 took a highly classified spy satellite image of an Iranian missile launch site, declassified it and then released the photo on Twitter.

Earlier this year, Kash Patel, a former Defense Department senior official and Trump loyalist whom Mr. Trump named as one of his representatives to engage with the National Archives, suggested to the right-wing website Breitbart that Mr. Trump had declassified the documents before leaving the White House and that the proper markings simply had not been adjusted.

Local television crews showed supporters of Mr. Trump gathered near Mar-a-Lago on Monday night, some of them being aggressive toward reporters.

Mr. Trump made clear in his statement that he saw potential political value in the search, something some of his advisers echoed.

His political team began sending fund-raising solicitations about the search late on Monday evening.

Jonathan Martin, Luke Broadwater, Glenn Thrush and Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting.

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Luke Broadwater
Aug. 9, 2022, 10:56 a.m. ET

Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate for Pennsylvania governor who played a role in President Donald J. Trump’s false elector scheme, ended his interview with the Jan. 6 House committee today within 15 minutes. Mastriano, who was on the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021, insisted on recording the interview himself and then refused to answer the committee’s questions. He pledged to sue the panel.

Annie Karni
Aug. 9, 2022, 10:51 a.m. ET

The House G.O.P. is rallying around Trump after the F.B.I. search.

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“We deserve answers now,” Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, said of the search on Fox News on Monday night.Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York Times

A day after former President Donald J. Trump said the F.B.I. had searched his home in Palm Beach, Fla., and broken into a safe, a group of House Republicans were set to meet with him for dinner at his club in Bedminster, N.J., in a show of solidarity.

Representative Jim Banks, Republican of Indiana and the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, was set to bring a group of the committee’s members to meet with Mr. Trump, a dinner planned before the search, two people familiar with the planning said. But it was seen as an opportunity for some members of the House Republican conference to demonstrate support for Mr. Trump in its wake. The meeting was first reported by Punchbowl News.

The Bedminster dinner was the latest sign of Republicans seizing on the F.B.I. search as a rallying cry just weeks before the midterm elections, portraying the raid as an act of government intrusion and homing in on an easier way to defend Mr. Trump than they ever settled on during the Jan. 6 hearings.

Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and minority leader, promised that if Republicans won back the House in November, they would conduct oversight hearings of the Justice Department. “Attorney General Garland, preserve your documents and clear your calendar,” he said in a statement.

Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, said in a statement that Mr. Trump was “the likely 2024 Republican candidate for President of the United States” and accused the Biden administration of “weaponizing” the Justice Department against a political opponent.

The unified response from House Republicans stood in stark contrast to the lack of any unified pushback to the House Jan. committee’s eight hearings laying out Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Those hearings relied on testimony from former administration officials, Trump family members and Republican elected officials describing events they witnessed firsthand, and left House Republicans with little to offer in terms of a defense for the former president’s actions.

Monday’s search offered them a clearer target for outrage, especially given Mr. Trump’s long-expressed views that the F.B.I. had been out to get him in the Russia investigation. And the reaction echoed, in reverse, the Republican embrace of Mr. Trump’s criticism of Hillary Clinton, his rival in the 2016 presidential campaign, for using a private email server while she was secretary of state.

Representative Mike Turner, Republican of Ohio and the lead Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said he was demanding “an immediate briefing” by Christopher Wray, the F.B.I. director, “regarding the national security risk that allegedly rose to the level of ordering a raid on the residence of a former president.”

The defense of Mr. Trump and the promise to investigate the Justice Department also served as a reminder of how the House will act as Mr. Trump’s instrument next year if Republicans win back the majority and he is a declared presidential candidate.

“Merrick Garland, Chris Wray, come to the House Judiciary this Friday and answer our questions about this action today, which has never happened in American history,” Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, said on Fox News Monday night. “We deserve answers now.”

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