OPINION: This article contains commentary which may reflect the author’s opinion
A Retired FBI agent has reported that there was likely an informant who gave the FBI some type of evidence that the law enforcement agency used as the final excuse to storm the Florida home of the former President of the US and the likely frontrunner for the Presidency in 2024- Donald J. Trump.
“We just haven’t investigated presidents after they’ve served their term,” Michael Tabman, former head of the FBI’s Minneapolis Field Office, said.
“But it is a huge move by the FBI in that the political sensitivities are clear. It’s obvious that they’re dealing on a very, sort of tenuous political climate when you go out and you investigate a president, especially one who says he may run for office again,” he said.
Trump announced on Monday that his palatial Florida residence had been raided early in the morning. Sources told Fox News Digital the search was in connection with materials that Trump took with him during his time as president. Sources also said National Archives and Records Administration referred the case to the Justice Department, which recovered 15 boxes of classified materials from the home, Fox News reported.
Tabman, who served the agency for 24 years, told media outlets that the informant, ‘the rat, ‘ most likely would have given the FBI some sort of evidence that the information they wanted was about to disappear.
‘I think somebody gave them information indicating that these documents are there,’ Tabman said. “But it will become public, as will the return, which is what the found. So, the affidavit will be laid bare.”
The FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate on Monday for about 9 hours, apparently in a probe into him taking official White House documents to Florida.
Trump reported that he had been in cooperation with the FBI, and there had already been a visit to his Florida home over the documents in question.
Tabman said there was likely a breakdown in cooperation between Trump and the FBI that led to the raid and explained what may have been said: ‘You got evidence that you need to get before it disappears or it moves and you can’t see it anymore’.
The FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence on Monday was likely sparked by new information from an ‘informant’ and a breakdown in cooperation between the agency and the former president, a former agent told DailyMail.com.
Tabman said a raid of this level of sensitivity would need to be approved by Attorney General Merrick Garland, while the White House denies any involvement.
‘I think somebody gave them information indicating that these documents are there,’ Tabman said, adding two hypothetical ‘insider’ revelations: ‘You have not been told the truth about their existence. You’re not getting them unless you come get them.’
Trump’s Florida residence was raided by the FBI Monday. It was most likely in relation to seizing official documents reportedly taken from the White House to his Palm Beach home upon leaving office last year.
Tabman claimed while there was cooperation between Trump and the FBI at one point, the agency may have gotten a sense that the former president and his team were ‘telling you what they want to tell you with limited information.’
FBI protocol, according to Tabman, is to move forward with seizing information once they feel that ‘voluntarily’ obtaining it is no longer viable.
‘You know, everything could disappear,’ Tabman said. ‘You got evidence that you need to get before it disappears or it moves and you can’t see it anymore.’
n order to obtain the warrant for a raid, the FBI would need to prove probable cause and conduct the search in a timely manner. Agents can’t just ‘poke around’ someone’s home in a case like this, Tabman said.
Supporters of the former president gathered outside Mar-a-Lago Monday evening in protest of the raid and ongoing investigations into Trump.
Tabman said that while it doesn’t appear any protocols were broken in conducting the raid, it’s still an ‘unprecedented’ move in the sense that the FBI has never raided a former president’s home before.
‘I can’t think of this having happened to a former president,’ Tabman noted.
Republican lawmakers immediately bashed the FBI, President Joe Biden, the Justice Department and its head Merrick Garland for conducting the raid.
Biden and his staff, however, had no heads up on the matter. Senior White House officials found out about the raid via Twitter, according to The New York Times.
Tabman told DailyMail.com: ‘I believe the Attorney General approved it himself given the sensitivity.’
‘You know, maybe he delegated to a Deputy Attorney General again, maybe in order to avoid perceptions since he is a political appointee,’ he added.
This radical move by the FBI and the lack of transparency by the Biden administration is sending shock waves around America as citizens are coming face to face with what real- third-world style- tyranny looks like, where citizens have no protections from the government and where law enforcement agency and power politicians don’t have to answer questions when they destroy their political opponents.
Source: The Republic Brief