FBI's raid on Trump's resort was sparked by information from a 'confidential human source': report

The FBI's raid on Donald Trump's Palm Beach resort was based on information garnered from an informant, according to an exclusive report from Newsweek.

The informant was reportedly able to identify which "classified" documents were in Trump's possession and where to find them. The FBI raid was reportedly timed to take place while Trump was away.

"FBI decision-makers in Washington and Miami thought that denying the former president a photo opportunity or a platform from which to grandstand (or to attempt to thwart the raid) would lower the profile of the event, says one of the sources, a senior Justice Department official who is a 30-year veteran of the FBI," Newsweek's report stated.

An FBI official speaking to Newsweek says the effort to keep the raid under the radar failed, calling the resulting fallout from GOP lawmakers and conservative pundits a "spectacular backfire."

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"I know that there is much speculation out there that this is political persecution, but it is really the best and the worst of the bureaucracy in action," the official said. "They wanted to punctuate the fact that this was a routine law enforcement action, stripped of any political overtones, and yet [they] got exactly the opposite."

A second source speaking to Newsweek, a senior intelligence official who was briefed on the investigation and the operation, said the FBI was trying to avoid a "media circus."

"So even though everything made sense bureaucratically and the FBI feared that the documents might be destroyed, they also created the very firestorm they sought to avoid, in ignoring the fallout," the source said.

Trump on Monday complained that his Mar-A-Lago residence in Florida was being "raided" by FBI agents in what he called an act of "prosecutorial misconduct."

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"These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents," he said in a statement posted on his Truth Social network.

"It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don't want me to run for President in 2024," Trump said.

"They even broke into my safe!"