On Monday, August 8th, the FBI raided former president Donald Trump’s Florida resort home, Mar-a-Lago. In conclusion of their search, they found over 700 pages of classified documents taken from the White House. According to an inventory made by the FBI, 28 documents were marked confidential, 37 were marked secret, some weren’t even given the classified label, and there were even “clothing and gift items” found in the same boxes. What’s actually in these documents is not known to the public, but there is speculation that some of the government’s top secrets are written in them. 

 Trump did not state to the public why the FBI raided his home, but he did say, “These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents. Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before.” This statement sent shock to not just his supporters but the rest of America. A small number of his republican supporters gathered outside the Mar-a-Lago home and rallied against the raid. Some of them even said to defund the FBI because they did Trump “wrong”. Even though months earlier, during the Black Lives Matter movement they strongly did not agree with defunding the police or FBI.  

More recently, Trump’s legal team has asked the Department of Justice(DOJ) to discontinue the search of the documents. His argument to support this is that former presidents should have rights and access to presidential documents no matter the classification. The DOJ and federal judges do not believe this is a right of a former president. 

After the initial raid, Mike Lindell, the creator of My Pillow and a pro-Trump supporter, has come out saying that the FBI seized his cellphone at a fast food restaurant in Minnesota. Trump is in full support of his claim and even posted this on the Truth Social app, “Breaking News: Mike Lindell, ‘THE Pillow Guy,’ was just raided by the FBI. We are now officially living in a Weaponized Police State, Rigged Elections and all. Our Country is a laughing stock all over the World.” Now, Lindell is not the only acquaintance of Trump that has had their devices confiscated. The Truth Social app is made by Trump’s media team, which allows Trump to post whatever he wants. The app was made because Trump was banned from most social media platforms. The DOJ is doing this to narrow down the reason as to why Trump took these documents and to find any leading evidence that could help the investigation.

In response to the raid and all the events in the past month, Trump’s legal team has called the investigation ” both unprecedented and misguided.” They also claim that the documents were there just for storage and that the situation has “spiraled out of control.” Some political candidates are using the situation to promote their own interests, like Republican Steve Chabot. He sent out this via email, “If, like me, you are deeply concerned by this raid and want to uncover the truth behind how this happened, will you donate $15 to my campaign TODAY?”. They might be doing this to manipulate Trump supporters to make them think they’re helping Trump and fellow Republicans. Democrats also are not happy with this email because it’s promoting an inappropriate cause. The Governor of Florida, Ron Desantis, is currently under fire for comments he made regarding the raid. He tweeted this after the raid, “The raid of MAL (Mar-a-Lago) is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents, while people like Hunter Biden get treated with kid gloves.”. The Republicans that agree with Trump are clearly not in support of the investigation. 

The future is not clear for Trump, but he has returned to the Mar-a-lago home. This time with no classified documents. Although Trump did try to get an appeal for the DOJ not to use the documents in the investigation, it was overruled and the DOJ is allowed to use the documents in the investigation against Trump. This is all we know for now, but the investigation will progress within the next couple months.