It wasn't even an hour before Donald Trump wrote again about a "witch hunt" against him on his online network "Truth Social" on Friday, in capital letters and with three exclamation marks.
Shortly before, the Justice Department in Washington had published a document on the basis of which the raid on Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate was approved almost three weeks ago.
Much of the FBI's affidavit has been redacted to avoid endangering witnesses and the investigation.
The document says there is "reason to believe" Trump improperly and "unauthorized" stored classified documents and that a search would likely find "evidence of interference" in recovering the documents.
Sofia Dreisbach
North American political correspondent based in Washington.
Follow I follow
Out of 184 documents, 25 were classified as "Top Secret", 92 as "Secret" and 67 as "Confidential".
It goes on to say: "Some documents also appeared to contain handwritten notes by the President." Such documents can usually only be viewed and processed by government agencies.
Trump states that he had the documents declassified before leaving the White House - this is possible, but according to lawyers it is a complex and lengthy process.
New timing details
The document that has now been published offers new insights into the timing of the investigations.
From May last year, the National Archives, where the documents were to be stored, asked Trump about missing documents, which were finally answered in December: They had found twelve boxes ready for collection.
In January 2022, Trump turned over 15 boxes of documents to the National Archives, and in February the archives alerted the Department of Justice to the documents containing "many classified records."
There is great concern that highly classified records (...) have been "commingled with other records" and not properly identified.
In May, the FBI determined in a preliminary investigation how many of the documents are classified - said 184. There are no non-redacted text passages for the suspicion of obstruction in the recovery of the documents mentioned at the beginning of the document.
On June 8, two months before the raid, federal investigators wrote to Trump that his premises were "not authorized" to hold classified information.
The released document quotes the letter: "Accordingly, we request that the room at Mar-a-Lago in which the documents are held be secured and that all boxes transported from the White House to Mar-a-Lago Lago (along with all other items in this room) are to be kept in this room in their current state until further notice.”
"Total PR ploy by the FBI"
Trump criticized the "heavily edited" document and wrote of a "total PR ploy by the FBI" and the Justice Department.
He also attacked Judge Bruce Reinhart, who authorized the search warrant.
He felt "hatred" and "hostility" towards him.
He was never allowed to authorize the "burglary" in Mar-a-Lago.
"We gave them a lot," Trump wrote, again in capital letters.
He repeatedly emphasizes that he worked with the investigators.
However, a recent letter from one of his lawyers suggested that false information was given to investigators in June when it said all classified documents taken from the White House had been returned.
The Justice Department had been under a lot of pressure over the extraordinary move of a search of a former president since the raid.
Trump repeatedly accuses the Joe Biden administration of using the FBI for political ends;
Biden, on the other hand, claims to have only learned about the raid from the media.
Attorney General Merrick Garland had recently ordered the publication of the search warrant and a list of the items confiscated, citing the broad public interest.
The document also stresses that the protection of witnesses is particularly important.
If the identities are revealed, the witnesses could face “retaliation, intimidation or harassment” and even their physical integrity.
These concerns are "not hypothetical" in this case.
For example, FBI agents who were publicly linked to the search were threatened with violence.