Stunning development and the ongoing legal battles involving former President Trump. For the first time in history, a search warrant executed at the home of a former president, and let's find out more this morning, joined by Joe Matthew, the host of Bloomberg's Sound On. Joe, thanks for me with us. There are a couple of ways that the law enforcement can get stuff that they want, either through a subpoena
or a search warrant. In the distinction is important here, well, it is, and this is you know, we want to be careful here in the way we're framing this. People are using the word raid because that's what Donald Trump called it in his statement to the media last night. This was a search warrant facilitated by the Secret Service, So I just want to be clear. They weren't knocking down doors, there were no battering rams. People were not
taken into custody. And this brings us back to January when the National Archives first went in to retrieve fifteen boxes at that point of documents and items from mar A Lago that should have been turned over when Trump left the White House. At that time, they said they were continuing to search for additional records, and they have been asking the Trump former White House, the former administration
to hand these over ever since. So what we saw yesterday, just to be clear, was was a very deliberate search facilitated by the Secret Service, approved by a judge. And you cannot get a search warrant like this unless you not only make the case of probable cause, but you
also have to be specific about what you are looking for. Now, granted they took a lot of boxes out of there, they got into the safe, they could be looking for as little as one document, as far as we know, if it is top secret, that's all it would take to trigger that search yesterday. Is it implicit that not going the root of a subpoena, Uh, they thought that they wouldn't get it. Otherwise that's possible. We don't know this.
We have to remember, of course, that there have been a lot of reports about Donald Trump disposing of documents, tearing them up, flushing them down the toilet, and in fact, some of the documents that were provided to the National Archives at the beginning of the or as I mentioned in January uh, in fact had been taped back together. They were torn up, thrown away and they had to be reconstructed at the White House. All of that violates the Presidential Records Act. Do we know what the documents
they were looking for possibly relate to? We We really don't. And this is where it gets interesting here, Like, look, just about every administration people should also understand this have had some violation of the Presidential Records Act. The Washington Post reminds us this morning, Bill and Hillary Clinton had to return twenty eight thousand dollars in furnishings that they said we're gifts were actually property of the White House. We've just never seen anything on this scale. So it
does imply that this is important. This is a top secret memo, It could be a series of documents, and it also John could be tied potentially to the Department of Justices January six investigation. That remains completely unclear to us. And we have to be honest about how little we know. Okay, so what is the former president and what are his supporters saying at this point? Well, it's you know, it's
a doom scroll. This morning on Twitter, Kevin McCarthy was quick to tweet, this is the Minority leader that he promises an investigation into this. He will be specifically investigating Merrick Garland. He tweeted to him, he said, put the date on your calendar, assuming that he becomes speaker after the mid terms. New oversight to the FBI Marjorie Taylor Green among others. Uh, in Trump's uh ecosphere, if you will, are calling for defunding the FBI, not unlike defund the police.
Now this is the new defund the FBI. Uh. Matt Gates, another Trump supporter congressman, refers to January six as the FED surrection. So this really reinforces this allergy that Trump supporters have to federal law enforcement. Well, can the former president metaphorically sent fire to the Justice Department with his supporters to evade responsibility? Could I ask the question again, could he do what? Could he metaphorically set fire to
the Justice Department at this point? Well, if he got reelected, I suppose, but I'm not sure if you mean Donald Trump, I'm not sure what's way he would have over the Justice Department right now. If Republicans take the majority in the House, you're gonna see a lot of hearings. But that does not necessarily do anything to change the case for Donald Trump. And what does it do to change
the case, possibly for the general election. That's a great question, and it's pretty difficult to roll out more than two years at the moment. Here. I would remind you, though, that Christopher Ray, the FBI director, was selected by President Trump after he fired director Come and uh, although you would not necessarily expect, you know, such a bold move a hundred days before the midterm elections for violating the Presidential Records Act, never mind elections. All right, Joe, thanks
very much. Well, before you go, what do we look for next? Well, gosh, that's a great question. Look, Donald Trump would also, it strikes me have a copy of that warrant. I think that we will. We will have to learn at some point what it is they were looking for. But knowing that they have laptops, hard drives, documents and so forth, there's gonna be weeks, if not months, of download and ingesting data, could be some time before we understand, unless, of course, the FBI is a little leaky,
and that we might know as soon as today. Joe, always a pleasure, appreciate it. Joe Matthew hosts a Boomberg sound on on