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The FBI’s decision to execute a search warrant at former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on Monday is "unprecedented" – especially for a non-sitting commander-in-chief and one who has indicated he might run again, a former special-agent-in-charge told Fox News Digital on Monday.
"We just haven’t investigated presidents after they’ve served their term," Michael Tabman, former head of the FBI’s Minneapolis Field Office, said. "But it is a huge move by the FBI in that the political sensitivities are clear. It's obvious that they're dealing on a very, sort of tenuous political climate when you go out and you investigate a president, especially one who says he may run for office again."
Trump announced on Monday that his palatial Florida residence had been raided early in the morning. Sources told Fox News Digital the search was in connection with materials that Trump took with him from his time as president. Sources also said National Archives and Records Administration referred the case to the Justice Department, which recovered 15 boxes of classified materials from the home.
Legal scholars are questioning whether the FBI's raid on former President Donald Trump's Florida home over classified White House documents was necessary.
Some experts told Fox News Digital the basis for the raid, which centers on Trump's purported failure to hand over potentially classified documents to the National Archives, is unprecedented.
"Based on what we now know, it was totally unjustified, even one FBI agent would have been too many," said Alan Dershowitz, a professor at Harvard Law School who served on Trump's legal team for the president's first impeachment case. "The whole process was wrong and Trump was away at the time, so they can't say he was going to destroy anything."
Legal scholars note that when individuals previously violated the law regarding classified documents, the Justice Department has opted to either not prosecute or settle for lesser charges.