On August 8, 2022, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, the residence of then-former U.S. president Donald Trump in Palm Beach, Florida.

The search warrant application was authorized by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and approved by Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, following a criminal referral by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

[75] In April 2022, the DOJ opened a criminal investigation and initiated a grand jury process[60][55][40] and instructed NARA not to share further details about the materials recovered from Mar-a-Lago with the House Oversight Committee.

[47] The FBI interviewed Trump administration officials and aides at Mar-a-Lago about the handling of presidential records,[40] including former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and his former deputy Patrick Philbin.

[86] On May 12, the DOJ issued a grand jury subpoena to the National Archives for the classified documents they had provided to the House select committee investigating the January 6 United States Capitol attack.

[94] At midday, before Corcoran's arrival, Mar-a-Lago maintenance chief Carlos de Oliveira together with Nauta[95][96][97] moved about 30 boxes[98] into the storage room,[82] as shown on security footage.

[59] The New York Times reported: "Two people briefed on the classified documents that investigators believe remained at Mar-a-Lago indicated that they were so sensitive in nature, and related to national security, that the Justice Department had to act".

[130][131] Will Hurd, a former CIA agent and former Texas Republican congressman, said: "Trump and his lawyers admitted to and then handed over presidential documents improperly taken from and stored outside the White House.

[176] On September 6, The Washington Post reported that some of the seized documents contained details of special-access programs requiring special clearances on a need-to-know basis that could only be granted by "the president, some members of his Cabinet or a near-Cabinet-level official".

He argued that releasing the affidavit could reveal investigative techniques, jeopardize the identities of "several witnesses" from their specific accounts of events, as well as expose federal agents to threats.

"[206] On May 3, 2024, Politico.com reported that, "[Jack] Smith's team acknowledged Friday that some evidence in the prosecution of former President Donald Trump for hoarding classified documents at his Florida home may not be in the same sequence FBI agents found it when they swept into the Mar-a-Lago compound with a search warrant in August 2022.

The concession from prosecutors in a court filing ... came after attorneys for one of Trump’s co-defendants asked for a delay in the case because the defense lawyers were having trouble determining precisely where particular documents had come from in the 33 boxes the FBI [had] seized almost two years [earlier].

"[207] On August 22, two weeks after the search, Trump filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of Florida, seeking the appointment of a special master to review the seized materials for potential attorney-client or executive privilege.

[241] NARA's revaluation of presidential records retrieved from Mar-a-Lago raised concern within Congress; the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, chaired by U.S. Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, began an investigation.

[47][242] In a February 24 letter to NARA, Maloney wrote, "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".

[265][266] On September 13, Rep. Carolyn Maloney of the House Oversight and Reform Committee wrote a letter to NARA,[267] requesting an "urgent review" of all recovered documents and an assessment regarding any and all "presidential records [that] remain unaccounted for and potentially in the possession of the former president".

[296] On August 11, Trump made the unsubstantiated claim that the FBI might have doctored evidence to support its search warrant and might have planted incriminating materials and recording devices at Mar-a-Lago.

[129] On August 12, Trump falsely claimed that former president Barack Obama had taken "33 million pages of documents, much of them classified" to Chicago;[298][299] the falsehoods were amplified by conservative commentators on Fox News.

Trump's comment was in reaction to a standard law enforcement policy statement, attached to the FBI's description of the planned search of Mar-a-Lago, that officers may use lethal force only to counter "imminent danger of death or serious physical injury".

[305][306] On May 24, Jack Smith's office asked Judge Cannon to place a gag order on Trump related to this "repeated mischaracterization" of the actions of law enforcement officials.

[30] Speaking to Breitbart in May 2022, discussing the documents that NARA had recovered the previous January, Kash Patel blamed White House lawyers for not having done the paperwork to remove the classification markings to conform to Trump's order.

[349][350] On August 19, lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee contacted social media companies and requested information about recent threats made against law enforcement officials by users of their platforms.

[352][353] The letter expressed concern because "reckless statements by the former president and Republican Members of Congress have unleashed a flood of violent threats on social media" and they urged platforms to take immediate, concrete action to limit incitement of violence against law enforcement agencies.

[360] Republicans said that the search made the U.S. into a "third-world country" or "banana republic", although democracies such as France, South Korea, and Israel have all investigated and prosecuted former leaders for criminal offenses.

[372][373][187] Mike Turner, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said that he was "very concerned about the method that was used in raiding Mar-a-Lago"; Brian Fitzpatrick questioned whether "the law is being enforced equally" and with "parity".

[378] Following the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, Reuters and Al Jazeera cited scholars and former officials, who said the way Trump used the residence presented a highly unique security "nightmare".

[382] Experts considered Trump "the perfect profile of a security risk: He was like a disgruntled former employee, with access to sensitive government secrets, dead set on tearing down what he believed was a deep state out to get him".

[383] Columbia University political scientist David Rothkopf viewed the Mar-a-Lago search as a reminder that Trump "was, and is, a national security risk unlike any the United States has ever faced".

[384] Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Michael Sallah of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette discovered that a Ukrainian-born Russian speaker using a fake name who claimed to be a Rothschild family heiress had frequented the residence over a year's time, even posing there for photos with Trump and Senator Lindsey Graham.

[389][390] Jeffrey Smith, former general counsel to the CIA, and David Laufman, former chief of the counterespionage section at the DOJ's National Security Division, warned of the investigation not having strong enough evidence to have a conviction at trial.