The big question about the legal legitimacy of this move comes down to this.

As Alan Dershowitz had pointed out, “Searches and seizures should only be used when subpoenas are inappropriate because of the risk of evidence destruction.”

The feds had already gone in and asked Trump’s people to secure the room. A padlock was put on. The feds didn’t think it was secure enough. 

In June, they retrieved documents using a subpoena. 

The FBI search at Mar-a-Lago this week came months after federal investigators served an earlier grand jury subpoena and took away sensitive national security documents from former President Donald Trump’s property during a June meeting, people familiar with the matter tell CNN.

Investigators executed Monday’s search in part because they had developed evidence, including from at least one witness, that there were potentially classified documents still remaining at the Palm Beach, Florida, property months after the National Archives arranged for the retrieval of 15 boxes of documents that included classified information in January of this year, a person briefed on the matter said.

Authorities also believed the documents remaining at Mar-a-Lago had national security implications, CNN reported earlier this week.

So why not go through the subpoena process? If nothing else it would have provided a veneer of legitimacy. 

CNN claims that negotiations turned “confrontational”. So what? Get s subpoena. But that’s the same reason the search warrant is being kept secret. Biden’s DOJ specifically did not want to list what they were after in order to freely conduct a fishing expedition.

Now I suspect this will be backed up by some sort of informant who will claim that the feds couldn’t go through proper channels because of some sort of threat to the documents which had sat at Mar-a-Lago for years without being harmed. And the informant will likely be of the same caliber we’ve seen thus far.

The FBI is being used to conduct raids of Trump and of Republicans. That’s not a coincidence. It’s not about the documents, it’s about the election.