A federal grand jury in Fort Pierce, Florida, is building a case that the Biden-era Justice Department pushed ahead with the unprecedented August 2022 raid on Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home even after FBI agents warned they lacked probable cause, and newly declassified memos and emails are giving that investigation fresh ammunition.
The internal documents, turned over to Congress and now public, show a pattern of dissent inside the FBI that was overridden by DOJ leadership. They also reveal a senior DOJ official raising pointed legal questions about the raid just two days after it happened, questions that, by all available evidence, were never satisfactorily answered before prosecutors charged Trump the following year.
Together, the records bolster a sweeping inquiry led by U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones in the Southern District of Florida. That probe, overseen by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, is examining whether Obama- and Biden-era officials engaged in a years-long conspiracy to weaponize law enforcement and intelligence tools against Trump and his supporters, Just the News reported.
The timeline laid bare in the documents is damning for the Biden Justice Department. On June 1, 2022, the FBI's Washington Field Office issued an internal memo acknowledging that its agents had conducted numerous interviews but developed "very little" evidence about "who might be culpable for mishandling the documents." The memo noted the office had been drafting a search warrant affidavit but raised a critical caveat:
"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."
Despite those concerns from the FBI's own investigators, the DOJ's Counterintelligence and Export Control Section overruled them, opining that the search warrants met the probable cause standard.
Six weeks later, on July 12, 2022, an FBI agent sent an email making the disagreement even more explicit. The agent wrote that the bureau had informed DOJ "we are not in agreement for PC [probable cause] on the SW [search warrant]." The email specified that agents did not believe they had probable cause to search Trump's office or 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."
Less than a month later, on August 8, 2022, the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago anyway. Attorney General Merrick Garland later stated he "personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant."
The pattern of FBI investigative activities surrounding Trump has drawn scrutiny for years. But the newly released documents put the internal dissent in black and white.
Perhaps the most striking document is an email sent on August 10, 2022, just two days after the Mar-a-Lago search, by Patty Stemler, a DOJ veteran whom Garland had personally selected to consult on Trump-related cases. Stemler wrote to Sophia Brill, an attorney in the DOJ's National Security Division who later became a Biden White House lawyer.
"I didn't know about this search in advance, but I have been worrying about it ever since and worrying more now. 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."
Stemler went further, raising a question that any first-year law student would recognize as fundamental to due process:
"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?"
These were not the musings of a Trump loyalist. Stemler was Garland's own pick. And her questions, about declassification authority, about fair trial rights, about prosecutorial ethics, went to the legal foundation of the entire case.
Trump's lawyer Evan Corcoran had raised the declassification issue months earlier. In a May 2022 letter to Jay Bratt, chief of the DOJ's Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, Corcoran wrote plainly: "A President Has Absolute Authority To Declassify Documents." An FBI email from June 2, 2022, indicated Bratt did not intend to "negotiate" with Corcoran, a posture that looks less like prosecutorial diligence and more like a predetermined outcome.
Despite the FBI's internal warnings and Stemler's concerns, the Biden DOJ charged ahead. In June 2023, Special Counsel Jack Smith, appointed by Garland in November 2022, charged Trump on classified documents allegations, claiming "the unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States." A superseding indictment followed in July 2023.
At the time, legal experts characterized the charges as "earth-shattering," with former federal prosecutors describing the case as potentially carrying decades of prison time. The indictment alleged Trump retained records about the U.S. nuclear weapons program, defense vulnerabilities, and military plans. Prosecutors pointed to a July 2021 recording of Trump discussing classified documents about a potential military strike on Iran.
But the case never reached trial. In July 2024, Judge Cannon dismissed Smith's classified documents case, ruling that Smith had been "unlawfully appointed" as special counsel. Smith attempted to appeal but dropped the effort after Trump won the 2024 presidential election. Judge Tanya Chutkan separately dismissed the Jan. 6-related case against Trump in November 2024, citing the Office of Legal Counsel's position that a sitting president could not be prosecuted by his own DOJ.
Trump's defense team had long argued the Mar-a-Lago search warrant lacked probable cause and violated constitutional rights. His attorneys also contended the search was overbroad, noting that agents photographed areas including Melania Trump's bedroom and Barron Trump's room that were not supposed to be searched. Federal prosecutors at the time dismissed those arguments as a "conspiracy theory" and said Trump's team fell "woefully" short of the legal standard to challenge the warrant.
The newly released documents suggest the "conspiracy theory" label was, at minimum, premature. The FBI's own agents shared those same concerns about probable cause, in writing, months before the raid.
The Fort Pierce grand jury investigation is now examining whether the full arc of government action against Trump, not just the Mar-a-Lago raid, amounted to a criminal conspiracy to violate civil rights. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has been ramping up resources in both Florida and Washington to develop the case.
In April, Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe diGenova took a leadership role on the weaponization team in Florida. The probe is exploring whether a decade-long pursuit of Trump by government officials constituted a coordinated effort to use law enforcement and intelligence tools against a political opponent.
The Trump administration has backed the broader anti-weaponization effort with significant resources. The president has stood behind a $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund even as some Senate Republicans have pushed back.
FBI Director Kash Patel framed the document release in stark terms, posting on X:
"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 was equally direct. He said his committee had "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." Grassley concluded: "based on the records Mar-a-Lago raid was a miscarriage of justice."
The investigation has already produced its first criminal defendant from within the government's own ranks. Carmen Mercedes Lineberger, a federal prosecutor who assisted in Smith's classified documents case, was indicted in the week before May 28, 2026, for allegedly emailing herself a copy of a sealed portion of Smith's classified documents report and attempting to disguise the non-public materials as cake recipes. Lineberger pleaded not guilty.
The FBI has shown a willingness to pursue federal officials who abuse their positions, and U.S. Attorney Reding Quiñones made clear the Lineberger case was meant to send a broader message.
"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."
The indictment was secured by the Florida U.S. Attorney's Office to avoid a conflict of interest, given the case's connection to Smith's team.
The emerging picture is one of a Justice Department that treated internal dissent as an obstacle rather than a safeguard. FBI field agents flagged weak, single-source evidence. A Garland-appointed consultant raised fundamental constitutional questions about declassification authority and fair trial rights. Trump's own lawyer put the declassification argument on the record months before the raid. And the DOJ's response, at every stage, was to press forward.
Concerns about aggressive FBI field operations have surfaced in other contexts as well. But the Mar-a-Lago case stands apart because the internal warnings were so explicit, and were overridden at the highest levels of the department.
Trump himself shared the Stemler email on Truth Social twice, calling attention to the DOJ official's own doubts. His office had maintained since mid-August 2022 that the materials with classified markings seized from Mar-a-Lago "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."
The grand jury investigation is far from over, and several questions remain unanswered. Whether anyone within the Biden DOJ responded to Stemler's concerns, or simply ignored them, is not clear from the available records. The full scope of the FBI's internal dissent, including redacted portions of the June 2022 memo, has not been made public. And the question of whether the decade-long pattern of government action against Trump meets the legal threshold for a criminal conspiracy to violate civil rights is one the grand jury will ultimately have to resolve.
What is clear is that the FBI's own agents told DOJ they did not have probable cause. DOJ pushed ahead. Garland personally approved the warrant. And the case that followed, billed as airtight, described as earth-shattering, was dismissed before it ever reached a jury.
When the government's own people raise the alarm and the government's own leaders ignore it, the question stops being whether the system worked. The question becomes who broke it, and whether anyone will be held accountable.
