When the FBI took away his passports, among other things, during a search of the property of ex-US President Trump, the 76-year-old was loudly incensed. Reports now suggest that Trump knew at this point that he would get the documents back soon – which has since happened.
According to media reports, the FBI has returned ex-President Donald Trump’s confiscated passports. This was reported by the broadcasters NBC and CBS, citing employees of the Department of Justice and law enforcement agencies. The passports were taken away by federal police last week in connection with the searches at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Trump accused the FBI of “stealing” his passports during the raid. “Wow! During the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, they stole my three passports (one of them expired) along with everything else,” Trump wrote on the online network Truth Social, which he co-founded. According to CBS, a team of investigators had checked the confiscated material for important and irrelevant and discovered the passports. The broadcaster reported that Trump was informed on Monday before his social media post that the passports had turned up and would be returned.
The FBI said Monday it will “follow court-ordered search and seizure procedures” when executing search warrants and will return items that do not need to be kept for law enforcement purposes. A Florida court released the receipt for the confiscated items as well as the search warrant on Friday at the request of US Attorney General Merrick Garland.
The list of confiscated items includes documents and several boxes. Passports were not explicitly listed there. The FBI had found secret documents in Trump’s home. The basis of the operation was the suspicion that Trump might have violated the Espionage Act and other laws, as the search warrant showed.
