Everything we know so far about the FBI's Mar-a-Lago raid

What's in the box?

Donald Trump.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images)

FBI agents executed a search warrant at Donald Trump's Florida mansion on Monday, sending the former president and his allies into a rage. The search is a "major escalation" into the myriad investigations into Trump's presidency, The New York Times reports, and it certainly escalated the always-intense rhetoric surrounding Trump. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) vowed to investigate the Department of Justice, while Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) likened the search to the methods of "3rd world Marxist dictatorships."

What the FBI was searching for hasn't been publicly revealed, but it appeared to be part of an inquiry into whether classified government documents were taken to Mar-a-Lago "instead of being sent to the National Archives when Trump left office," John Wagner reports for The Washington Post. Trump has reportedly been ignoring the requirements of the Presidential Records Act for years — repeatedly tearing up official documents and even (allegedly) flushing them down White House toilets during his presidency.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.