Noah Feldman, Columnist

Three Major Takeaways From the FBI Search on Trump’s Home

Don’t assume that executing a search warrant means the federal government will prosecute the former president. Getting a conviction would seem to be very tricky.

August 9, 2022 at 3:51 PM UTC

By Noah Feldman

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Ex-president, FBI target.
Photographer: Brandon Bell/Getty Images

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Based on what we know, there are three major legal takeaways from the FBI’s search of Donald Trump’s Florida home on Monday.

First, this is a big deal, historically and constitutionally speaking. As far as I can tell, a criminal search warrant has never been executed against a former president.