House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday demanding documentation related to the FBI’s raid of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last year.
The raid — which took place on Aug. 8, 2022 — was reportedly aimed at retrieving “any document Trump ever saw, read, or created for the entirety of his four years as commander-in-chief.” Due to the unprecedented nature of the Biden DOJ conducting a raid on a former president and a potential 2024 rival, House Judiciary Republicans sent letters to Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and then-White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain demanding records pertaining to “the execution of a search warrant” and “the decision to seek a search warrant” for Trump’s estate. The affidavit released by the FBI later that month justifying the agency’s warrant application to raid Trump’s Florida residence was nearly all redacted.
In November, the DOJ appointed U.S. Attorney Jack Smith as a special counsel to investigate whether Trump violated federal laws related to the handling of presidential records.
The Judiciary Committee “previously requested information and documents related to the FBI’s raid on President Trump’s residence and its subsequent investigation,” Jordan’s letter to Garland reads. “Because you have not provided this information, and in light of your appointment of Jack Smith as special counsel, we write to request an unredacted copy of the memorandum outlining the scope of Mr. Smith’s probes regarding President Trump and any supporting documentation related to his appointment as special counsel.”
In addition to the unredacted memo “outlining the scope of Special Counsel Smith’s investigations,” Jordan is also seeking “any other document describing, listing, or delineating the authority and jurisdiction of the special counsel.” Garland’s deadline for forfeiting such records to the House Judiciary Committee is June 20, according to the letter.
Jordan’s Tuesday letter to the DOJ is his second within the past week requesting additional information related to the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid. On Thursday, Jordan sent a separate memo to Garland expressing concerns about the FBI’s track record of “bias and reckless disregard for truth,” with the House Judiciary chair specifically referencing the report released by U.S. Attorney John Durham. Released last month, the bombshell report found the FBI possessed no real evidence that then-candidate Trump colluded with Russian government officials when it launched its investigation into the Trump campaign leading up to the 2016 election.
Meanwhile, House Republicans recently announced plans to hold contempt hearings for Wray later this week for allegedly violating a congressional subpoena over an unclassified document that “purportedly implicates President Joe Biden in a $5 million bribery scheme with a ‘foreign national’ from Biden’s time in the Obama administration.”
