Politics- The FBI searched Donald Trump's Mar-A-Lago home Monday evening.
- Despite being present at the scene, Trump's attorney says she was barred from observing the search.
Donald Trump's attorney, Christina Bobb, said she was "not allowed" to observe FBI agents as they searched the former president's Palm Beach estate, Mar-A-Lago. She made the comments to Real America's Voice, a conservative news network, Tuesday. The FBI, however, is not under any obligation to allow attorneys to oversee a search, a retired FBI agent told Insider.
FBI protocol requires agents to show a copy of the search warrant — as well as provide an itemized list of what was taken after it is finished — but it has discretion on whether to allow the attorney to be present while the search is conducted.
Bobby Chacon, another retired FBI agent and former attorney, told Insider that the agency can "keep them out."
"In a nutshell, no, they don't have a right to be there," Chacon said. "If we want to keep them out, we can keep what we want out while we conduct the search."
—David Edwards (@DavidEdwards) August 9, 2022
Depending on the circumstance, the agents can have the attorney in the room as long as they don't interfere. Chacon said this includes talking to the agents, questioning them, or telling them they can't look in certain places.
"The warrants allow us to seize the place to be searched and to have total control over it. And that's mainly for our own safety," Chacon said. "There is zero tolerance for allowance for interference in the search."
The search has sparked a baseless conspiracy theory that agents may have planted evidence at the scene. However, Trump's own attorney, Christina Bobb, cast doubt on these claims, even while claiming without evidence that FBI agents "just make stuff up."
Chacon said this is a "fallacy" defense attorneys often use to get access to overseeing the agents while they search a property.
"It's a common ploy of defense attorneys to say stuff like that," Chacon said.
This was not the FBI's first time at Mar-A-Lago, but the first time the resort had been "raided" according to Bobb, saying they were previously "cooperative" with agents.
She called the FBI's actions on Monday a "weird flex," and suggested the raid was an attempt to "prevent" Trump from running for president again.
Trump himself suggested on Truth Social that he may believe the evidence-planting conspiracy theory and questioned why the search was closed off from people watching.
"Everyone was asked to leave the premises, they wanted to be left alone, without any witnesses to see what they were doing, taking or, hopefully not, 'planting,'" he wrote. "Why did they STRONGLY insist on having nobody watching them, everybody out?"
Chacon said if Trump were to be prosecuted for this, "we wouldn't have to plant evidence" because the FBI already found 15 boxes of evidence earlier this year.
"When you can't attack the facts, you attack the integrity of the investigation," Chacon said.
The FBI has yet to release all of the details that led to the search warrant, but it has been widely reported that the National Archives requested the FBI look for classified documents the former president may have taken from the White House before he left office.