On August 8, 2022, the Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted an aggressive raid of former president Donald Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago. Under the context of stolen documents, the agents found 33 boxes of confidential material according to the BBC. Of these files, varying classification levels and legal procedures characterize the logistical issues of the situation. However, perhaps even more important than small technicalities, this event has and will continue to serve as a divisive political topic. As such, in order to evaluate the raid, we must ask ourselves: what is truly legal and relevant to the case?

Now, a key aspect of the conversation is understanding the causes of the FBI’s actions. In general, any president leaving the Oval Office must immediately hand over all forms of documents and emails to the National Archives. Donald Trump, however, was reported to have sent 15 boxes of papers directly from his Mar-a-Lago house. This would mean that, instead of submitting all of the necessary information, he potentially deliberately held on to and possibly manipulated evidence. Consequently, prosecutors were able to convince a judge for a search warrant due to probable cause. This directly enabled and led to the raid on Trump’s home in Florida.

According to the BBC, Donald Trump is being investigated on three possible charges: willful retention of national defense information, obstruction of a federal investigation, and the concealment or removal of government records. As he maintains his total innocence, his legal team has argued that the documents were declassified. Unfortunately, the aforementioned laws do not necessarily depend on classification status. This could serve as an important factor in the case of a future hearing.

Based on all of this information, political debates and outrage have been omnipresent in American society. Some argue that he needs to be arrested immediately, whereas others claim that the FBI raid was a liberal attack. Regardless of your beliefs, this back-and-forth is admittedly hostile and pointless. Alternatively, however, we can analyze the objective situation in order to establish a more realistic outlook. Due to the search warrant and the reported mishandled documents, there was clearly a legal justification and a conceptual precedent for the raid. Even if there was political involvement or propaganda related to the event (which is not disproved by any means), it would not detract from the empirical evidence and according actions. As such, instead of wasting our time scrutinizing the exact undertones of the raid, we must accept that the Federal Bureau of Investigation searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.