Cerabino: Dear Mar-a-Lago Club members, this FBI raid is going to cost you

Secret service agents stand at the gate of Mar-a-Lago after the FBI issued warrants Monday.
Secret service agents stand at the gate of Mar-a-Lago after the FBI issued warrants Monday.
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Dear Mar-a-Lago Club member:

It’s me again, your President.

I’m sure that you, too, are outraged at the assault on your club by the Radical Left Democrats in the FBI.

Federal agents viciously showed up at Mar-a-Lago during the off-season, when it could not be mightily defended by the many foreign workers employed there during its operational months.

It’s a disgrace. Who comes to South Florida in August? So unfair. There weren’t even any valet parkers available for the FBI vehicles.

What sort of self-parking Third World country have we become?

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Since when are we a country where presidents who leave office with classified documents they treat as personal mementos and fail to return after months of prodding, get those documents removed by the federal agency led by the director they appointed?

Sad. So sad. People are saying that even Frederick Douglass is upset about this.

Former President Donald Trump's home at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla.
Former President Donald Trump's home at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla.

We’ll never know what these agents took, other than the detailed inventory of seized items they left with me. So, it’s a mystery.

The bad news for you is that this means I will be forced to raise your annual fees for next season at the club. So unfair for all of you.

You can blame the totally corrupt, George Soros-directed FBI, who broke into my safe at Mar-a-Lago.

Secrets in the safe

It was a very expensive safe. Nobody knows safes like me, and trust me, this was the most beautiful, powerful safe you could ever imagine. I call it “The Trump Safe.”

And it contained all sorts of precious Trump things, such as Barack Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate, my plans for infrastructure week in 2025, my actual health records, and non-disclosure agreements from enough women to fill a party bus.

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Unfortunately, it’s going to take a rather large special assessment on your annual fees to replace that safe, and I feel very sorry for you, the true American patriots who must bear the brunt of this.

And it was so unnecessary. Instead of breaking into the safe, the FBI could have just asked me for the combination.

Even if I would have strongly told them the wrong number, they could have easily guessed the correct combination.

Trump supporters carry flags near Mar-a-Lago  in Palm Beach, Florida on August 9 2022.Former president Donald Trump says the FBI conducted a search of his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Trump supporters carry flags near Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida on August 9 2022.Former president Donald Trump says the FBI conducted a search of his Mar-a-Lago estate.

It’s “1-2020” of course. So true that I won that election. Everybody knows it. Everybody says It was a national disgrace that the legislators in the states that I lost weren’t able to just ignore the larger number of Biden ballots cast and declare me the winner.

And now this is another disgrace. No other president has had to endure such a violation of their total and complete right to treat national secrets as their own private property.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) promotes his “Plan to Rescue America” at an event at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, on Thursday, March 31, 2022. The divisive plan among the Republican party calls to impose income taxes on more than half of Americans who pay none now, and to sunset all legislation after five years, presumably including Social Security and Medicare. (T.J. Kirkpatrick/The New York Times)

Florida’s U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, a good guy who knows more about Medicare than Jesse James knew about banks, put it perfectly:

“The way our federal government has gone, it’s like what we have thought about the Gestapo and people like that, that they just go after people,” Scott said.

Yes, on one side, you had the Nazis hauling millions of people to extermination camps based solely on their ethnicity, and on the other, you had the U.S. Department of Justice enforcing a law over an ongoing year-long violation of national security.

Perfect comparison, Senator Scott. Thank you for that important, very powerful historical perspective.

The real culprit is Hillary Clinton

Like so many things, this is all Hillary Clinton’s fault.

If she didn’t put government emails on her private server, I wouldn’t have signed a law in 2018 to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to enhance the criminal penalties for the unlawful appropriation of classified information.

I made violations a felony and increased the maximum prison time from one year to five years in prison.

As I said when running for office in 2016: “In my administration, I'm going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law."

I was talking about Hillary, who’s a real “no one,”, not me. I’m somebody, that you can be sure. The crooked, corrupt fake news doesn’t tell you that.

When it came to Hillary, my very valid attempts to “lock her up” were never intended to be used against me. That would be so unfair and un-American.

A video plays showing an image from Jan. 6, 2021 of a gallows in front of the U.S. Capitol on a large screen during the opening moments of the House select committee to investigate the Jan.6th attack on the Capitol on June 16, 2022.
A video plays showing an image from Jan. 6, 2021 of a gallows in front of the U.S. Capitol on a large screen during the opening moments of the House select committee to investigate the Jan.6th attack on the Capitol on June 16, 2022.

Even Mike Pence, who is so weak, so incredibly weak, is hanging with me on this.

Pence said the FBI raid “undermines” Americans’ faith in the justice system.

And if anybody is an expert on undermining, it’s Pence.

Way to hang in there, Mike. It’s good to see you doing your part to rope in my supporters by joining other courageous Republicans who are doing their part to make law enforcers feel the noose tightening.

"Planted" evidence suggested

As I said in a message since the raid on our club, I suspect the FBI may have been up to no good during the raid.

“Everyone was asked to leave the premises, they wanted to be left alone, without any witnesses to see what they were doing, taking or, hopefully not, ‘planting’” I wrote. “Why did they STRONGLY insist on having nobody watching them, everybody out?”

(And by "everybody", I am not counting my two lawyers who were there during the raid to make sure that nobody touched that beautiful, 1989 oil paint portrait of me in tennis whites.)

Portrait of Trump inside the bar, December 12, 2005.
Portrait of Trump inside the bar, December 12, 2005.

Was I saying that the FBI planted incriminating evidence against me at Mar-a-Lago? That’s what I’m hearing. People are saying this.

What’s clear is that I will need the boat dock that the Town of Palm Beach has so far failed to grant me along the Intracoastal seawall beyond the back lawn of Mar-a-Lago.

The boat dock will be vital for me and my family, should we have to make a speedboat exit from Mar-a-Lago during any future unannounced, in-season raids by the FBI.

There’s no telling what sort of evidence the FBI planted at Mar-a-Lago during their raid — secret business contracts with foreign dictators, incriminating tax documents, Putin’s private cell number, kilos of Don Junior’s medicine.

Former President Donald Trump interacts with the crowd after the Bedminster Invitational LIV Golf tournament in Bedminster, N.J., Sunday, July 31, 2022. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Former President Donald Trump interacts with the crowd after the Bedminster Invitational LIV Golf tournament in Bedminster, N.J., Sunday, July 31, 2022. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

The agents may already be planning to show up again during the season when I am back in Florida. If so, I may have to make a sudden departure from Mar-a-Lago by a perfectly legal water exit on TrumpBoat 1.

Getting the boat dock won’t be cheap. It will take some lawyering with the Town, and then it will have to be constructed in a way that meets the architectural review standards.

Once again, this will further add to your annual dues next season. It’s going to be an expensive year for you, club members.

You can thank the totally corrupt FBI and the Department of Injustice, as I like to call it.

But we have to take action, and fight with powerful strength, not weakness, or we’ll wake up one day and discover we don’t have a country club anymore.

See enclosed invoice.

Frank Cerabino is a columnist at the Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at fcerabino@gannett.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: FBI search of Mar-a-Lago will be a money-making opportunity for Donald Trump