The lawsuit comes after a Trump-appointed judge dismissed the criminal charges against Trump for allegedly withholding White House documents.
Topline
Former President Donald Trump intends to file a lawsuit against the Justice Department for the August 2022 search it carried out at his Mar-a-Lago estate, after a Trump-appointed judge threw out criminal charges brought against the ex-president for allegedly unlawfully withholding White House documents at his Florida property.Key Facts
Trump filed a notice saying he intends to sue the DOJ for $100 million, according to a copy of the memo obtained by Forbes, alleging the search was carried out with “clear intent to engage in political persecution.”
The FBI searched Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, recovering more than 11,000 White House documents, including 103 classified ones, after it previously subpoenaed Trump for his remaining classified documents but had reason to believe he didn’t turn all of them over.
Investigators obtained a warrant for their search, but Trump alleges the search was “inconsistent with protocols used in routine searches of an investigative target’s premises,” and the FBI’s conduct was “a severe and unacceptable intrusion that is highly offensive to a reasonable person.”
The lawsuit comes weeks after U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the DOJ’s criminal charges against Trump for keeping White House materials at Mar-a-Lago and allegedly obstructing the investigation into those documents, which came out of the Mar-a-Lago search.
