Why Did the FBI Spend 9 Hours Searching Mar-a-Lago?

CLAY: One thing that I don’t think we talked about enough, this was an all-day search of Mar-a-Lago. Mar-a-Lago, the private quarters, are around 3,000 square feet, is the reports that I have seen. Now, the overall Mar-a-Lago sort of expanse is massive. It’s a large property. But the private quarter footprint is around 3,000 square feet.

There have been reports that they felt they needed to have this warrant because there were specific documents that they needed to find, and Trump himself even said, “Hey, they searched my safe.” If you had specific, actionable knowledge about documents or objects that you were intending to seize and it was part of a criminal investigation, isn’t it pretty strong evidence that you didn’t find it if you spent nine hours there?

BUCK: Absolutely. Also, Clay, if this were just… The storyline we’re being told — and I want to remind everybody — a couple days ago it was, “Just wait for the facts; there’s a bombshell coming!”

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: “It’s no big deal. Why is Trump making such a big deal out of it?” The usual suspects. We know what they’re doing. But if this were just a routine, showing up, “Hey, guys, we got get those docs,” to your point, why were they in Melania’s wardrobe? What are they doing there for nine hours, folks? You know, this is why people say we should see the warrant. There should be some specificity. If this was about documents that they had already seen with where they were stored, they had already said, add a lock, what’s with all the extra time?

CLAY: Yeah. And if they had been told particularly new, actionable information that necessitated suddenly a warrant and an operation to a large extent from cooperative behavior to antagonistic behavior by the warrant, wouldn’t they have been able to find it immediately? If I told you, Buck, “Hey, I’ve gotta go get this warrant. There’s two things that are clear crimes inside of a 3,000-square-foot home,” how would it take you nine hours?

Like, wouldn’t you go right in, grab those documents if they’re so important, if you have good, actionable intelligence on where they are? Boom, you’ve got them, you certainly don’t end up rifling through Melania Trump’s dresses and shoes and her — maybe — I don’t know — lingerie? I mean this is super weird behavior, right, when you really think about it. And they’re going through everything Trump related too.

That, to me, is an indication that they didn’t find it. Just take it outside of a warrant. My wife just ran out of the house to take our son to school. She was running around like crazy looking for her keys before she left. I’m sure that happens at your house all the time. If you know exactly where the keys are, you just say, “Hey, they’re on the counter by the exit; they’re always there.” You go grab ’em and you’re gone. If you keep looking —

BUCK: I say, I’ve got an ugly yellow bowl by the front door — bright yellow, goes with nothing — keys in automatically every time. I will tell you it has saved me hours. Pro tip for everybody: You get hours and hours and hours of your life back.

CLAY: Every single time, right? But if you can’t find them, then you spend way more time looking. So nine hours, nine-plus hours in Mar-a-Lago executing this warrant?

BUCK: So what do you think they were doing there? What were they really doing?

CLAY: I think -what happened is they may well have gotten snookered. Somebody said, “Hey, the great white whale has got these two things that are gonna get him dead to rights. One of them’s in the safe and the other one is hidden,” you know, wherever. “You’ve gotta get these documents right now. He’s gonna destroy them! Get in now and get them!”

BUCK: I can buy this. I can buy this story because this looks like a huge, huge blunder, Clay.

CLAY: They rush in, Buck, they don’t find them where they’re supposed to, they start to panic, next thing you know they’re going through Melania Trump’s underwear drawer like, “It’s gotta be here somewhere!” It doesn’t sound like a very well-organized raid if you spend over nine hours doing it.