A newly surfaced memo reveals that one of the Biden Justice Department's own senior officials raised serious legal concerns about the FBI's infamous raid on Mar-a-Lago — just two days after agents ransacked President Trump's home and rifled through Melania's underwear drawers. The official warned that Trump may have actually declassified the seized documents. They raided a former president's home knowing their own people thought it was wrong.

But sure, it was totally a by-the-book operation. Nothing to see here.

The bombshell comes from Just The News, which obtained an August 10, 2022, email from Patty Stemler, a DOJ veteran who had been with the department since 1976 and served for 30 years as the DOJ's top criminal appellate attorney. Stemler wasn't some low-level paper-pusher — she was hand-picked by Attorney General Merrick Garland himself in 2022 to consult on Trump-related cases. In 2023, the Federal Bar Association gave her its 56th Annual Justice Tom C. Clark Award. This was one of their most respected lawyers.

And here's what she wrote, just 48 hours after agents kicked in the door on August 8, 2022: "I didn't know about this search in advance, but I have been worrying about it ever since."

Worrying. Their own handpicked consultant was worrying about what they'd just done.

But Stemler didn't stop there. She asked the question that the entire DOJ apparently didn't want to hear: "Doesn't Trump maintain that he had the authority to declassify documents while he was still President?" She then asked directly, "Has anyone in NSD or OLC looked at that?" — referring to the DOJ's National Security Division and the Office of Legal Counsel.

Let that sink in. Garland's own trusted advisor was asking whether anyone had even bothered to check if Trump's declassification claims had legal merit before they sent armed agents storming into his home. The answer, apparently, was nobody wanted to look too hard.

And Stemler wasn't alone in her doubts. Previously released emails showed FBI agents themselves questioned whether they had probable cause for the raid but were overruled by senior DOJ officials. Agents warned the raid would likely be "counterproductive" and proposed "alternative, less intrusive and likelier quicker options" to recover any remaining records. The DOJ brass didn't care.

The email went to Sophia Brill, a DOJ National Security Division attorney who later landed a cushy job as a Biden White House lawyer. Also involved was Jay Bratt, the chief of the DOJ's counterintelligence and export control section, who helped drive the prosecution. Meanwhile, Garland personally approved the search warrant that sent agents into Mar-a-Lago.

Trump's team had been saying it all along. His office stated plainly that "the very fact that these documents were present at Mar-a-Lago means they couldn't have been classified." Current FBI Director Kash Patel backed that up, saying on his podcast that "the president of the United States has universal declassification authority" and that "Trump declassified whole sets of materials in anticipation of leaving government."

We all remember the spectacle. The FBI photographed documents spread out on the floor for maximum media impact. Special Counsel Jack Smith charged Trump in June 2023. The whole machine was cranking at full speed to stop one man from running for president again.

It didn't work. Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed Smith's classified documents case in July 2024. Judge Tanya Chutkan tossed the January 6 case in November 2024. Smith quietly released his report in January 2025 and slunk away. And Trump won the 2024 presidential election.

Now we have the receipts proving what we always knew — Biden's DOJ had people inside the building waving red flags, and Garland's team blew right past them. They weaponized the justice system against a political opponent, and their own people knew it stank.

History is going to be brutal to these people. And they earned every word of it.