Three years ago, the FBI raided former President Donald Trump‘s Mar-a-Lago home, taking away 26 boxes that officials said included documents with classified markings.
“This is a stark reminder of a dark time in our country’s history when political enemies of President Trump disgustingly weaponized the justice system to go after him,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said as the anniversary arrived. “The American people saw right through the lies and President Trump was completely vindicated as he overwhelmingly won the 2024 election in historic fashion.”
The Aug. 8, 2022, raid of Mar-a-Lago was one of many events that Trump described as lawfare in between his first and second terms, including the prosecution of hundreds of Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot participants, numerous court cases in multiple states against Trump himself, and even a conviction on 34 felony counts in New York.
While some of those later events, in particular Trump’s first indictment in Manhattan in April 2023, were credited with fueling his comeback over GOP rivals such as Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), the raid came before he announced he was running again.
Republican strategist Dave Carney said that Trump was going to be a force to be reckoned with, no matter what, in the 2024 election cycle, but the raid jump-started his incredible comeback.
“It was a catalyst for the validation of the entire argument that Trump had been making up to that point about criminalization, politicization, and lawfare,” Carney said. “It just proved how desperate [President Joe] Biden’s team was.”
Trump had already returned some records to the National Archives in January of 2022, after the agency identified records from his first term that were not in its possession.
But the raid came unannounced, while Trump was in another state, leading to outrage among the then-former president and his supporters.
“These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” Trump said in a statement that night, claiming agents even “broke into [his] safe.”
“Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before,” Trump continued. “After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate. It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024.”
Requests for comment sent to the FBI and Justice Department were not returned.
Three months after the raid, Trump announced his third run for president at the same Mar-a-Lago mansion where the FBI executed its search warrant. Initially, there was some doubt about Trump’s viability against younger upstarts, but he quickly showed his strength and was boosted by the continuation of various court cases against him.
“The decline of America is being forced upon us by Biden and the radical left lunatics running our government right into the ground,” Trump said the night he announced his third run. “This decline is not a fate we must accept.”
According to the FBI’s search warrant, agents were directed to seize from the resort “any government and/or Presidential Records created between January 20, 2017, and January 20, 2021,” as well as “any evidence of the knowing alteration, destruction, or concealment of any government and/or Presidential Records, or of any documents with classification markings.”
Among the items that the FBI reportedly obtained were Trump’s executive grant of clemency for Roger Stone, information pertaining to the “President of France,” two binders of photos, a handwritten note, and other documents marked confidential, secret, or top secret.
Biden’s staff insisted that he was not aware of the raid and “not briefed” beforehand, but that didn’t stop Trump from attacking him over the issue, especially when classified documents were later foundat Biden’s own Delaware home.
“[The raid] was a hugely gigantic political blunder by the Democrats,” Carney said.
Trump later sued the Justice Department for $100 million in damages in August of 2024, arguing that the search was an “intrusion upon seclusion, malicious prosecution, and abuse of process.”
In the end, the raid was not enough to keep Trump from re-entering the White House, while Biden was forced to drop out of his own reelection bid in favor of then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
After retaking office, Trump had all of the documents flown back to Mar-a-Lago on Feb. 28, 2025, the same day as his famous blowup with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office.
The boxes were loaded onto Air Force One that evening in full view of reporters ahead of a flight from Washington to Palm Beach, Florida, where Trump spent the weekend playing golf.
During the flight, Counselor to the President Alina Habba told reporters that the search was never justified and that items were taken from Barron Trump’s closet and from first lady Melania Trump’s closet.
“It is truly an honor and full circle to be on this trip,” Habba said. “The boxes are going back, and frankly, this was a hoax, as we knew. … They went into drawers they shouldn’t have. They made a mockery of our justice system, and this is a perfect example.”
Habba said the raid looked like something from a “third world country,” adding that, “In America, you do not get to go to somebody’s home, raid their children’s, their wife’s, their personal belongings… we don’t operate that way in this country.”
Now, with Kash Patel installed as FBI director, many agents involved in the raid have been let go as Trump reworks the federal bureaucracy to fit his vision.
The Mar-a-Lago raid also led to the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith, who led the investigation into the Trump classified documents case and into the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. But Smith himself is now under investigation, with the tables of power now turned against him and Trump ready to bring what he sees as accountability to the people who engaged in lawfare between his presidential terms.
Other examples of that phenomenon include the Biden autopen investigation, a grand jury investigation to weigh “Russiagate” conspiracy charges against former Obama administration officials, and even subpoenas for Bill and Hillary Clinton as part of an investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Ironically, Trump’s own court victories could now help shield Clinton and Obama, as the Supreme Court ruled that presidents enjoy some immunity from prosecution related to their official acts, a fact now weighing in favor of Trump’s Democratic predecessors.
In any case, the Mar-a-Lago boxes are back in Florida, and Trump now says that they will eventually be displayed in his presidential library. And while it appears that Trump will have the last laugh in the matter, that doesn’t mean that Trump and his team will ever let it go lightly.
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In a recent interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller said that the raiders themselves were trying to cover up evidence of their own wrongdoing.
“The Mar-a-Lago raid was a perpetuation and continuation of this same conspiracy,” Miller said. “They went and searched in hopes of trying to recover the documents that would implicate their own criminal conduct. The entire raid was a perpetuation of this same criminal scheme.”
