WASHINGTON: Donald Trump has filed a $100 million claim against the US Justice Department alleging the 2022 FBI raid on his Florida home to recover classified documents was “political persecution.”
The claim, which was filed last week but only came to light on Monday, accuses Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray of seeking to “injure” the former president.
Trump was charged in Florida with 31 counts of “willful retention of national defense information” for refusing to return top-secret documents taken from the White House when he left office.
A federal judge dismissed the case last month on the grounds that Special Counsel Jack Smith, who brought the charges, was unlawfully appointed.
FBI agents, acting on a search warrant approved by a federal judge, raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence on August 8, 2022, to recover classified documents, including records from the Pentagon and CIA, which were allegedly being kept unsecured at his home.
Trump, the Republican party’s nominee in the 2024 presidential race, is seeking punitive damages of $100 million and to recover at least $15 million in legal costs, according to his claim.
“Garland and Wray should have never approved a raid and subsequent indictment of President Trump because the well-established protocol with former US presidents is to use non-enforcement means to obtain records of the United States,” the claim alleges.
“Garland and Wray decided to stray from established protocol to injure President Trump,” the claim says, in what it alleged was “a clear intent to engage in political persecution.”
The Justice Department has 180 days to respond to the claim, which was filed under the Federal Tort Claims Act. If the parties are unable to reach a settlement the suit would go to federal court.
Trump has a history of filing civil suits and then withdrawing them at the last minute.
He was convicted in New York in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments made to a porn star.
Trump also faces charges in Washington and Georgia related to efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump files $100 million claim against US Justice Department over raid on his Florida home
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Trump files $100 million claim against US Justice Department over raid on his Florida home
- Trump, the Republican party’s nominee in the 2024 presidential race, is seeking punitive damages of $100 million and to recover at least $15 million in legal costs, according to his claim
Spain fines Airbnb 64 mn euros for posting banned properties
- The fine is final, the consumer affairs ministry said in a statement, adding the US holiday-rental giant must “correct the violations by deleting illegal content“
MADRID: Spain’s leftist government said Monday it had fined Airbnb more than 64 million euros ($75 million), notably for posting listings for banned rental properties, at a time the country faces a housing crisis.
The fine is final, the consumer affairs ministry said in a statement, adding the US holiday-rental giant must “correct the violations by deleting illegal content.”
The ministry said 65,122 adverts on Airbnb breached consumer rules, including the promotion of properties without a license or those whose license number did not match with data in registers.
The fine is equivalent to six times the illegal profit made by Airbnb between the time the company was warned about the offending adverts and before they were taken down, the ministry added.
A tourism boom has driven the buoyant Spanish economy but fueled local concern about increasingly scarce and unaffordable housing, a top priority for the minority coalition government.
The world’s second most-visited country hosted a record 94 million foreign tourists in 2024 and is on course to surpass that figure this year.
But residents of hotspots such as Barcelona blame short-term rentals for the housing crisis and changing their neighborhoods.
In June, the consumer rights ministry also ordered online accommodation giant Booking.com to take down more than 4,000 illegal adverts.
“There are thousands of families who are living on the edge due to housing, while a few get rich with business models that expel people from their homes,” far-left consumer rights minister Pablo Bustinduy said in the ministry statement.
“We’ll prove it as many times as necessary: no company, no matter how big or powerful, is above the law. Even less so when it comes to housing,” he added on social network Bluesky.
