Documents seized by FBI in Mar-a-Lago raid returned to Trump, White House says – live | Trump administration

Writing on his social-media platform, Truth Social, Trump has confirmed that “the boxes” at the center of the classified documents case against him have been returned to him and transported back to Florida.

“The Department of Justice has just returned the boxes that Deranged Jack Smith made such a big deal about. They are being brought down to Florida and will someday be part of the Trump Presidential Library. Justice finally won out”, Trump posted. “I did absolutely nothing wrong. This was merely an attack on a political opponent that, obviously, did not work well. Justice in our Country will now be restored.”

A Reuters photographer caught Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, overseeing the loading of the boxes on to Air Force One in Maryland on Friday afternoon.

A reporter for the pro-Trump Daily Wire, who was selected by the White House to cover the president’s trip to Mar-a-Lago, shared video online of what she said were those boxes being unloaded from Air Force One after the flight arrived in Florida Friday night.

Speaking to reporters on Friday night in Washington, the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that Trump had “asked Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians to depart the White House” after their contentious exchange in the Oval ffice.

She also noted, with disapproval, that Zelenskyy had refused Fox anchor Bret Baier’s invitation to apologize to Trump on the air.

“He feels President Zelenskyy is not in the right mindset to negotiate peace. And I think, frankly, that was reinforced with his comments on Bret Baier, refusing to apologize for disrespecting the president and the American people in the Oval office,” she said.

Leavitt also elaborated on Trump’s repeated statements earlier in the day that Zelenskyy was not in a strong negotiating position. “As President Trump said today, he doesn’t have any cards,” Leavitt said. “The cards are not in his favor. They’re in President Trump’s favor.”

It was striking that Leavitt seemed to suggest that the person Zelenskyy had to negotiate with from a position of weakness was Trump, not Putin, as though the American president’s primary concern was a deal to secure Ukraine’s mineral wealth, not a deal to end the war.

The defense secretary Pete Hegseth ordered US Cyber Command to stand down from all planning against Russia last week, according to a new report from the Record.

“Hegseth gave the instruction to Cyber Command chief Gen Timothy Haugh, who then informed the organization’s outgoing director of operations, Marine Corps Maj Gen Ryan Heritage, of the new guidance, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity,” the outlet reports.

The publication notes that, even before Friday’s extraordinary events, Trump “has made a series of false statements and demands that align him with Russian President Vladimir Putin, including blaming Ukraine for the war and calling the country’s leader a dictator”.

At one stage during the Oval Office press availability, Trump responded to a question from a reporter who asked what would happen if Russia broke a ceasefire he negotiated. Trump replied by scoffing at the question and defending Putin’s reputation, while sitting next to the leader of a country whose people are being killed by Putin’s forces. “Putin went through a hell of a lot with me. He went through a phony witch-hunt, where they used him and Russia – Russia, Russia, Russia, you ever hear of that deal?” Trump said. “The whole thing was a scam, and he had to put up with that, he was being accused of all that stuff.”

As our colleague Stephanie Kirchgaessner reported earlier on Friday, the Trump administration “has publicly and privately signaled that it does not believe Russia represents a cyber threat against US national security or critical infrastructure, marking a radical departure from longstanding intelligence assessments”.

Read Stephanie’s reporting here on what that could mean:

Zelenskyy stands his ground in Fox interview, but admits Trump meeting ‘was not good’

Lauren Gambino

In an interview with Fox News, Volodymyr Zelenskyy was asked by host Bret Baier whether he regretted what took place in the tense Oval Office exchange with Donald Trump and JD Vance.

“Yes, I think it was not good,” Zelenskyy replied.

“I’m not hearing from you, Mr President, a thought that you owe the president an apology,” Baier said at one stage.

“No, I respect president and I respect American people,” Zelenskyy said, speaking in English, which is his third language, after his native Russian and Ukrainian. “I think that we have to be very open and very honest, and I’m not sure that we did something bad.

“I think maybe sometimes, some things we have to discuss out of media, with all respect to democracy and to free media,” he added.

Throughout the interview, the Ukrainian leader stood his ground as he insisted that his relationship with Trump could be salvaged and brushed aside a call by the Republican senator Lindsey Graham to resign.

Asked about Trump’s claim that Zelenskyy wasn’t interested in peace, the Ukrainian president said that nobody wants an end to the grueling three-year war more than Ukrainians. But, he said, Ukraine needed security guarantees from the US before entering peace talks with Russia.

Zelenskyy insisted that even if he were to give the order for his troops to stop fighting, “nobody will just stop” because everyone is afraid “Putin will come back tomorrow”.

“We want just and lasting peace,” he said.

Brian Glenn, an ardent Trump supporter who covers the president for the rightwing network Real America’s Voice and was selected by the White House to attend the Oval Office meeting with Zelenskyy, played an important role in turning the mood sour.

Glenn, whose questions to Trump are often invitations for the president to attack his political enemies, was called on by Trump early in the meeting, before it got contentious, and he chose to confront Zelenskyy for not wearing a suit.

As Winston Churchill did during the second world war, Zelenskyy visited the White House in a military outfit, a black sweater with a Ukrainian trident. That has been Zelenskyy’s choice since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of his country.

“Why don’t you wear a suit?” Glenn asked Zelenskyy. “You’re at the highest level in this country’s office, and you refuse to wear a suit. Just wanted to see if, do you own a suit?”

“You have problems?” Zelenskyy asked.

“A lot of Americans have problems with you not respecting the dignity of this office,” Glenn replied.

“Really?” Zelensky replied. “I will wear a costume after this war will finish,” Zelensky added, using the Ukrainian word for suit.

“Maybe something like this?” Glenn said, pointing to his own suit.

“Maybe something like yours, yes,” Zelensky replied. “Maybe something better, I don’t know,” he added, with a touch of the former comedian’s humor coming out.

“We will see. Maybe something cheaper,” he concluded.

Video of the exchange was shared on X by the representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who wrote that she was “so proud” of Glenn, whom she is dating, “for pointing out that Zelensky has so much disrespect for America that he can’t even wear a suit in the Oval Office when he comes to beg for money from our President!!”

Trump himself had earlier drawn attention to Zelenskyy’s clothing as soon as he arrived at the White House, when he pointed at him and said to reporters, with obvious sarcasm: “He’s all dressed up today.” Video of that comment was immediately posted on X by a senior member of the White House communications team.

While Reuters and the Associated Press, wire services that were previously always allowed to attend such meetings, were blocked from the Oval Office, Dmitry Kirsanov, a correspondent for Russia’s state-owned news agency Tass, was initially allowed into the room with Trump and Zelenskyy.

After the presence of the Russian government media representative in the Oval Office was reported on social media by Reuters correspondents who were barred from the room by the same White House officials, Kirsanov was asked to leave. The White House has offered no explanation for why he was permitted to come so close to the leader of a nation his own country is currently attacking.

“Tass was not on the approved list of media for today’s pool,” a White House official told Reuters. “As soon as it came to the attention of press office staff that he was in the Oval, he was escorted out by the Press Secretary.”

Kirsanov declined to comment to the Guardian.

Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, told reporters traveling with Trump to Florida on Friday that classified documents seized by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago in 2022 had been returned to Trump and were loaded on to Air Force One for the trip.

“The FBl is giving the president his property back that was taken during the unlawful and illegal raids. We are taking possession of the boxes today and loading them on to Air Force One,” Cheung said in a statement to reporters chosen by the White House to report on the journey.

According to a reporter for the conservative Washington Examiner, there were no seats on the plane for journalists from the Associated Press, or anyone chosen by the White House Correspondents Association, but the Daily Wire and Real America’s Voice, two pro-Trump rightwing outlets, were on hand to cover the president they support.

On his way out of the White House, Donald Trump was just asked by Nancy Cordes of CBS News, “What does Zelenskyy need to do to re-start talks with you”?

“He’s gotta say ‘I want to make peace,’” Trump replied. “He doesn’t have to stand there and say about, ‘Putin this, Putin that’, all negative things.”

“He’s gotta say: ‘I want to make peace. I don’t want to fight a war any longer,’” Trump continued. “His people are dying. He doesn’t have the cards, just so you understand it, OK.”

When another reporter asked, “Did you tell Zelenskyy, ‘Leave the White House,’?” Trump at first refused to say, before adding: “I think you know the answer.”

Democrats, and European leaders, are voicing support for Zelenskyy after his public dispute with Trump and Vance in the Oval office.

“Trump and Vance didn’t say a single bad word about Putin—a bloodthirsty dictator who invaded Ukraine, poisons his opposition, steals from his people, rigs elections, and murders those who speak out,”a Democratic representative from Massachusetts, Jim McGovern, posted on X. “They spent the entire meeting lying and yelling like maniacs at Zelenskyy—the leader of a democratic country defending itself against Russian imperialism and aggression. I am so disgusted and embarrassed. Trump and Vance are pathetic, lazy, lying, bottom-feeding grifters. Thank God Zelenskyy has the balls to fact check these bullies to their face.”

Other Democratic lawmakers sounded similar themes in their comments on the meeting, and a host of European leaders did the same.

“In Washington, by refusing to bend, Volodymyr Zelensky was the honor of Europe” the French prime minister, François Bayrou wrote. “It remains for us to decide what we Europeans want to be. And if we want to be at all”.

Following years of strong support from both sides of the aisle in Washington, Trump’s apparent decision to side with Putin instead of Zelenskyy could soon make Ukraine a more partisan issue in the US.

While recent polling suggests that Americans support maintaining or increasing military aid to Ukraine to help defend its territory from Russia’s full-scale invasion, important context for what unfolded in the White House today is that the Maga base of the Republican party has been exposed to intense anti-Zelenskyy disinformation for years now, on social media and on rightwing news channels and podcasts.

To take one example, Elon Musk recently shared a fake news report linked to Russia that promoted the false claim that leading Hollywood celebrities who visited Ukraine to meet Zelenskyy were paid millions of dollar to do so.

And, as the BBC reported in 2023, a fake story that Zelenskyy had purchased two luxury yachts with American aid money, created by a former US marine who now lives in Russia, was accepted as fact by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican.

The White House communications team just sent reporters a lengthy round up of statements of support for Donald Trump and JD Vance from Republican lawmakers and cabinet members after what Ukrainians see as their ambush of Zelesnkyy.

Perhaps concerned that the press corps is not closely following Republicans on X, the social-media platform that has tilted right since Elon Musk’s takeover, or Fox, the email includes quotes praising Trump and Vance from 45 Republican lawmakers and eight cabinet secretaries.

Among them was this, from Senator Lindsey Graham: “I’ve never been more proud of President Trump for showing the American people — and the world — you don’t trifle with this man … He wanted to get a ceasefire. He wants to end the war and Zelenskyy felt like he needed to bait Trump in the Oval Office.”

Graham’s comment, made to Fox, is curious because he told reporters earlier that he had spoken with Zelenskyy this morning, before the meeting, and warned him, “don’t take the bait”. That seems to suggest that he had cautioned Zelenskyy against being baited into an argument. Then, after Zelenskyy did respond to insults from Vance and Trump by arguing back, Graham accused him of “baiting” Trump.

Graham then said that he was proud of both Trump and Vance.

“What I saw in the Oval Office was disrespectful, and I don’t know if we can ever do business with Zelenskyy again,” Graham said. “He either needs to resign and send somebody over that we can do business with or he needs to change.”

Here is video of Graham’s earlier comments, to a group of non-partisan reporters outside the White House after the meeting.

David Smith, the Guardian’s Washington DC bureau chief, in his ‘US politics sketch’, has more on the historic and histrionic Trump-Zelenskyy Oval office showdown.

For American readers unfamiliar with the term, political sketch writing is a British newspaper genre, described as “a form of verbal cartooning” akin to the kind of satirical truth-telling we more commonly get from late-night comedians.

Here is how David’s latest sketch begins, but please do read it all:

This is going to be great television,” Donald Trump remarked at the end. Sure. And the captain of the Titanic probably assured his passengers that this would make a great movie some day.

Trump has just presided over one of the greatest diplomatic disasters in modern history. Tempers flared, voices were raised and protocol was shredded in the once hallowed Oval Office. As Trump got into a shouting match Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a horrified Europe watched the post-second world war order crumble before its eyes.

Never before has a US president bullied and berated an adversary, never mind an ally, in such a public way. Of course reality TV star and wrestling fan turned US president had it all play out on television for the benefit of his populist support base – and a certain bare-chested chum in the Kremlin.

Zelenskyy had come to the White House to sign a deal for US involvement in Ukraine’s mineral industry to pave the way for an end to three-year war in Russia. There was a hint of trouble to come when he arrived at the West Wing, wearing black – not a suit – and Trump greeted him with a handshake and sarcasm: “Wow, look, you’re all dressed up!”