FBI's Mar-a-Lago raid documents returned to Trump, claims political witch hunt

US President Donald Trump announced on Friday that boxes of sensitive papers confiscated by the FBI from his Mar-a-Lago house during an investigation into suspected misconduct had been returned to him, and that he planned to display them in his presidential library.

Trump said that the boxes containing top secret papers, which he had faced prosecution for inappropriately taking with him when he left the White House after his first term, had been returned by the Justice Department, which his appointees now manage.

The department “just returned the boxes that Deranged Jack Smith made such a big deal about,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, referring to the special counsel who had led the case over the documents.

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“They are being brought down to Florida and will someday be part of the Trump Presidential Library,” he wrote, without clarifying if all the documents that had originally been kept in the boxes had also been returned.

Trump reiterated his assertion that he “did absolutely nothing wrong” and said that the case against him was a political witch hunt.

The FBI stormed Mar-a-Lago in 2022 in an attempt to recover the confidential materials, which Smith accused Trump of stashing at the Florida golf club after leaving the White House the previous year.

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Photographs showed top-secret documents, including information from the Pentagon and the CIA, heaped carelessly and unattended in a pristine toilet at the bustling club.

Trump allegedly obstructed several efforts by Joe Biden’s former government to collect them.

The prosecution was still moving through the legal system when Trump returned to power on January 20.

Nine days later, Smith dropped the case, citing a Justice Department policy of not indicting or prosecuting a sitting president. He also resigned from the department.