In it, he said that during his closed-door interview, Mr. D’Antuono had testified that he believed a search conducted with the consent of the former president — rather than a surprise search — would have been “the best thing for all parties involved,” including for “the F.B.I., for former President Trump and for the country.”
Mr. D’Antuono declined to comment about his interview.
Among the other concerns Mr. Jordan said Mr. D’Antuono had listed were that Washington officials, not the Miami field office, had conducted the search and that the F.B.I. did not wait until one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers was present to begin it.
But Mr. Jordan omitted several facts from his letter in an apparent effort to place Mr. D’Antuono’s account in the worst possible light. According to associates of Mr. D’Antuono and Democrats who reviewed the interview transcript, the former F.B.I. official said that while he believed the Miami office should have been more involved in the investigation because of its proximity to Mar-a-Lago, he also understood that his counterintelligence agents should play a part because of their expertise on the matter.
His concerns about the search had to do with the optics of F.B.I. agents entering the club in raid jackets, given Mr. Trump’s vilification of the agency, and with his desire to give the former president’s lawyers one final chance to produce the documents voluntarily before going in. But prosecutors believed that they had already given ample opportunity to Mr. Trump and his lawyers, who had misled them.
House Republican leaders have closely aligned themselves with Mr. Trump for years, and are under more intense pressure than ever from their right flank to defend him as they struggle to hold together a governing majority.
Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, the No. 3 House G.O.P. leader, suggested that the charges, which were brought by a special counsel who for months has examined Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents, were timed to distract from House Republicans’ investigation into Mr. Biden’s family.
“The exact same day that the F.B.I. is forced to turn over to Congress absolutely damning and credible allegations regarding Joe Biden’s illegal, egregious and treasonous corruption, Joe Biden weaponizes his Department of Justice to indict Donald Trump,” Ms. Stefanik said on Friday.