FBI and DOJ concerns on Mar-a-Lago raid bolster Florida-based anti-Trump ‘grand conspiracy’ inquiry

Recently-unearthed concerns by key members of the FBI and DOJ about the wisdom and legality of the Biden Justice Department’s raid of Mar-a-Lago could bolster the grand jury inquiry into allegations of a decades-long anti-Trump “grand conspiracy” which is being run out of the Southern District of Florida.

Just the News reported in December that FBI agents raised repeated concerns about whether there was sufficient probable cause to search and raid then-former President Donald Trump’s Florida resort home. Just the News further reported earlier this week that a key DOJ figure and ally of then-Attorney General Merrick Garland raised her own concerns about the raid, including whether Trump had in fact declassified the documents which the bureau sought to seize.

The current grand jury investigation, based out of Fort Pierce, Florida, is looking into whether Obama and Biden-era government officials engaged in a conspiracy to weaponize law enforcement and intelligence tools to harm Trump and his followers.

The probe is being led by Jason A. Reding Quiñones, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and is being overseen by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon. This same district was linked to the unprecedented raid of Mar-a-Lago back in August 2022.

Patel: DOJ "didn’t give a damn and did it anyway.”

FBI Director Kash Patel reacted in December to the revelations about bureau agents having concerns about the Trump raid’s probable cause, with Patel tweeting, “It’s true - we just turned over documents to Capitol Hill to be made public showing the FBI told DOJ they did not have probable cause for raiding President Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago but DOJ ‘didn’t give a damn’ and did it anyway.”

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley also said on X at the time that he “received shocking new docs 2day from DOJ & FBI showing FBI DID NOT BELIEVE IT HAD PROBABLE CAUSE to raid Pres Trump's Mar-a-Lago home but Biden DOJ pushed for it anyway” and that “based on the records Mar-a-Lago raid was a miscarriage of justice.”

This week, Trump twice shared on Truth Social the new bombshell email from a Biden DOJ official sent just days after the August 2022 raid, where the longtime DOJ veteran said she had worries and concerns over the search of Trump’s Florida home.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has been ramping up resources in both Florida and the nation’s capital to help develop the weaponization conspiracy case.

Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe diGenova also took a leadership role on the team in Florida in April, and he and the team are exploring whether a decade-long pursuit of Trump by Obama and Biden officials amounted to a criminal conspiracy to violate the civil rights of the president and his followers.

The FBI in the summer of 2022 raised repeated objections to raiding Trump's Mar-a-Lago home, warning agents did not believe the Biden Justice Department had enough evidence to establish "probable cause" that the then-former president had broken the law in handling classified documents, according to bombshell memos turned over to Congress in December and analyzed by Just the News.

FBI had concerns about the legality of searching Trump's personal residence

"WFO [FBI's Washington Field Office] has conducted approximately [Redacted] interviews related to this matter. Very little has been developed related to who might be culpable for mishandling the documents," a June 1, 2022 FBI memo declared. "From the interviews, WFO has gathered information suggesting that there may be additional boxes (presumably of the same type as were sent back to NARA [National Archives] in January) at Mar-a-Lago."

"WFO has been drafting a Search Warrant affidavit related to these potential boxes, but has some concerns that the information is single source, has not been corroborated, and may be dated. DOJ CES [Counterintelligence and Export Control Section] opines, however, that the SWs [search warrants] meet the probable cause standard," that memo read.

Over a month later, FBI agents raised more concerns, including about the legality of searching Trump's personal residence at the Mar-a-Lago residence, the memos show.

"DOJ has inquired as to an Ops Plan for a SW of MAL [Mar-a-Lago]. I let them know we are not in agreement for PC [probable cause] on the SW [search warrant] and that we already had an Ops Plan in place that will [sic] can be quickly updated between FBI/MM [Miami Field Office] and FBI/WF [Washington Field Office]," a redacted FBI agent in the nation's capital wrote in a July 12, 2022 email. "However, WF-[Redacted] does not believe we have PC for the 45 Office or the bedroom due to recency and issues of boxes versus classified information. Therefore, as we are in disagreement on the SW and its scope, we are not yet finalizing a SW as we are missing relevant logistics and details."

It had long been rumored that some FBI agents disagreed with the decision to raid Trump's home to look for classified documents at the request of the National Archives.

But the declassified emails chronicled the specific concerns that the DOJ under President Joe Biden had not met the standard for a search warrant, but proceeded anyway.

Jay Bratt, at the time the chief of the DOJ’s CES and a future member of future special counsel Jack Smith’s team, was a key player in pushing for the Mar-a-Lago raid. An FBI official sent an email on June 2, 2022 stating that “we learned from Jay Bratt that he did not intend to ‘negotiate’ with [Trump lawyer Evan] Corcoran, or have any further discussions with him.”

The FBI raided Trump’s Florida resort home of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 with the authorization of Garland, who quickly said he “personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant” for the raid.

The Biden attorney general picked Smith in November 2022 to lead the twin criminal investigations into Trump related to classified documents and the Capitol riot.

In the immediate wake of the raid, a top Biden Justice Department official and key Garland ally quickly raised legal “concerns” about the FBI's raid on Mar-Lago, warning that Trump may have actually declassified the records seized by agents, a recently-unearthed email obtained by Just the News also shows.

Patty Stemler, a decades-long DOJ veteran who was reportedly picked by Garland in 2022 to help consult on Trump-related cases, sent an email just two days after the bureau’s Aug. 8, 2022 raid of Trump’s Florida resort home, where Stemler said she had “a few concerns.” Stemler sent the email to Sophia Brill, a future Biden White House lawyer and then an attorney inside DOJ’s National Security Division, which played a central role in the anti-Trump inquiry.

The memo was recently discovered by the Justice Department as part of its investigation into the weaponization of federal law enforcement.

“I didn’t know about this search in advance, but I have been worrying about it ever since and worrying more now,” Stemler wrote to Brill on Aug. 10, 2022. “Doesn’t Trump maintain that he had the authority to declassify documents while he was still President?

"Has anyone in NSD or OLC [Office of Legal Counsel] looked at that? I know we have procedures for declassifying, but is the President as Commander in Chief bound by those procedures? We also have procedures for granting pardons, but the President doesn’t have to follow them," she added.

Stemler also wrote that “I don’t know if we intend to charge anyone with respect to the classified documents seized yesterday, but if we disclose that we found X classified documents before we seek an indictment, will that trench on any fair trial rights or violate the ethical obligations of a prosecutor?"

Corcoran, Trump’s lawyer at the time, had sent a May 2022 letter addressed to Bratt at the DOJ’s National Security Division, suggesting that Trump had declassified the documents at Mar-a-Lago being pursued by the Biden DOJ.

Corcoran pointed to “a few bedrock principles” in his letter, including that “A President Has Absolute Authority To Declassify Documents.”

Trump's office had told Just the News in mid-August 2022 that the materials with classified markings which the FBI seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate had actually been declassified under a "standing order" while he was president that allowed him to take sensitive materials to the White House residence at night to continue his work.

Smith and the Biden DOJ charged Trump in June 2023 over allegations related to the improper retention of classified documents, followed by a superseding indictment the next month. The charging documents alleged that “the unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States.”

Judge Cannon dismissed Smith’s classified documents case against Trump in July 2024, ruling that Smith had been “unlawfully appointed” as special counsel. Smith attempted to appeal the ruling but soon dropped it after Trump won the 2024 election against then-Vice President Kamala Harris.

Judge Tanya Chutkan dismissed the Jan. 6-related case against Trump in November 2024 after Trump’s win, pointing to the Office of Legal Counsel’s position that a sitting president could not be prosecuted by his own DOJ. Smith released his report on the Jan. 6 portion of his inquiry in January 2025, a couple of weeks before Trump’s second inauguration.

A federal prosecutor in the DOJ office, Carmen Mercedes Lineberger, who assisted in Smith’s classified documents case was charged last week for allegedly illegally emailing herself a copy of the sealed portion of Smith’s report on the classified documents element of Smith’s inquiry, with the prosecutor attempting to disguise the non-public materials as cake recipes. Lineberger has pleaded not guilty.

Quiñones — whose office is leading the grand conspiracy case out of southern Florida — made the referral against Lineberger to the Florida District of the U.S. Attorney's Office and let them secure the indictment to avoid a conflict of interest, but he made it clear that a message was being sent.

“It’s not only a message to any prosecutor, it's a message to any government employee that you have an obligation, you take an oath to work for the government, and you take that oath to support and defend the Constitution, and to do your duties well and faithfully, and we take that here in the Southern District of Florida very seriously,” Quinones told Just the News.