FBI agents stole Trump's passports, attorney says
Passports belonging to Donald Trump have been returned to the former president after the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home last week, a Justice Department official told NBC News on Monday.
The FBI admitted it had had the passports the same day Trump said on his social media platform that FBI agents who conducted the search on Aug. 8 took them.
Trump said in a statement on Truth Social that agents stole my three Passports one expired, along with everything else. He didn't say anything about the travel documents, or whether they were personal or government passports. Presidents get diplomatic passports when they take office. A Justice Department official said Trump's passports had been returned.
A representative for Trump didn't respond immediately to a request for comment.
Trump attorney Christina Bobb blasted federal law enforcement on Monday night and told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that she refused to give them a pass for removing the passports.
Bobb said that this goes to show the level of courage that they have. It goes to show how aggressive they were, how overreaching they were, that they were willing to go past the four corners of the warrant and take whatever they felt was appropriate or they felt that they could take. An FBI spokesman said the search warrant was carried out.
The FBI follows search and seizure procedures ordered by courts, then returns items that need not be retained for law enforcement purposes, a statement that did not mention the passports, said a spokeswoman for the FBI in executing search warrants.
A property receipt from the FBI search of Trump's estate in Palm Beach, Florida, shows federal investigators recovered a trove of top secret and other heavily classified documents, but did not mention any passports.
In court documents that were made public with the property receipt, investigators said they were looking for evidence of crimes that included withholding any government and presidential records from Trump's time in office.