Newsweek first reported Wednesday that a confidential source provided the information to federal authorities, citing two senior government officials. Monday’s raid, which was authorized by Attorney General Merrick Garland, was aimed at seizing top secret and other classified documents kept by the former president at his Florida residence. In an interview on The Dean Obeidallah Show on Friday, Mary Trump was asked who the whistleblower could be. He said it was “hard to choose,” but pointed to Kushner, husband of Trump’s oldest daughter, Ivanka Trump. Kushner and Ivanka served as senior White House advisers in the Trump administration. Mary Trump, the niece of former President Donald Trump, suggested on Friday that Jared Kushner tipped off the FBI where agents could locate classified documents at Mar-a-Lago during a raid on Monday. Above, Kushner looks on as Trump speaks in the Oval Office in Washington, DC Anna Moneymaker-Pool/Getty Images “I think we have to look very carefully at why Jared got $2 billion. We have to look very carefully at why he’s been so quiet for so many months now. And we have to think about who, if he is, who could also be involved in what it would take as big a game as putting Donald in to get them out of trouble or at least to mitigate the trouble they’re in,” Mary Trump said. “He sounds like someone in Jared’s shoes. I’m not saying it’s Jared, but it could be,” he added. Mary Trump appeared to be referring to the $2 billion investment Kushner secured from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund about six months after his father-in-law’s tenure in the White House ended. In particular, Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen also said that the informant could have been one of the former president’s children or his son-in-law. “He is definitely a member of it [Trump’s] in the inner circle,” Cohen told Insider on Thursday. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s Jared or one of his kids.” Others speculate that Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, may have provided the information to the FBI. News first broke in early February that the former president had improperly moved classified documents to Mar-a-Lago, with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) confirming it was looking for 15 boxes of records. The former president did not deny the story at the time, saying it was a mix-up as his staff rushed him out of the White House. After the boxes were returned to NARA, the collection led to additional concern that the former president still had additional classified material. Federal investigators began interviewing Trump’s staff to determine what had been taken from the White House. The interviews, and a broader investigation overseen by the U.S. attorney, led to a grand jury subpoena served against Trump in late May to produce specific documents. When the documents were not turned over, the FBI and Justice Department chose to take the unprecedented step of executing a search warrant against a former president. A federal judge, as required by due process, approved the warrant — believing the FBI had established probable cause. Newsweek has reached out to Trump’s press office for comment. The former president claimed the raid was part of a “fraud” and a “witch hunt”. “Like all the other Hoaxes and Scams they have used to silence the voice of the vast majority of the American people, I have the TRUTH on my side, and when you have the TRUTH, you will ultimately be victorious!” wrote Saturday on Truth Social. The former president also said he had declassified the documents and was cooperating with authorities to hand them over. “Number one, it was all declassified. Number two, they didn’t have to ‘grab’ anything. They could have it whenever they wanted without playing politics and breaking into Mar-a-Lago,” he wrote in a Friday post. . His office said in a statement Friday that there was a “standing order” to declassify documents Trump wanted to take to Mar-a-Lago while serving as president. Some legal experts have described the argument that Trump “declassified” the documents as “dumb” and “stupid.” Another legal expert said the laws cited by the FBI in the warrant would not require the documents to be discarded in order to make their improper retention at Mar-a-Lago illegal. Presidents do have broad latitude to declassify information, though that power expires when their term ends. But there are also specific federal regulations that describe a process for declassifying information. Despite Trump’s claims, it is unclear whether any such process was followed. Newsweek has reached out to Trump’s press office for comment.
