JACKSON, Miss. (WJTV) – On Monday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) executed a search warrant on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. The warrant appears to be focused on whether Trump possessed government documents after leaving the White House.
Mississippi’s Republican senators and congressmen took to social media to voice their criticism of the FBI raid.
Rep. Michael Guest (R-Miss.) called for a congressional investigation. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who is the chair of the Jan. 6th committee, has a different point of view.
“I got accused of sending the FBI to Trump’s house. I didn’t, but if you asked me, if they did the right thing, I’d say yes,” said Thompson.
He continued, “Well obviously, the FBI is doing something that a judge has approved. They’re just not going and doing something on their own. The way the process works, they have to present their information to a judge.”
The search warrant is expected to be part of an ongoing Department of Justice investigation looking into the former president’s handling of potentially classified documents after he left the White House.
Per the Presidential Records Act, all records of presidents and vice presidents are preserved and given to the National Archives.
While a search warrant does not imply a crime has been committed, it is still significant.
“For the Department of Justice to sign off on this, presumably approval would have had to go all the way up to the highest levels of the attorney general’s office,” said Matt Steffey, a law professor at Mississippi College.
Neither the FBI nor the Department of Justice has released an official statement on the search warrant.
“There must have been probable cause to believe that some of the records were still be held unlawfully or held back because they contain evidence of a crime,” said Steffey.
Trump is facing another lawsuit regarding his behavior leading up to the 2020 election.
A grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, is investigating whether Trump and others tried to influence the 2020 election.