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 The FBI search of former president Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort has triggered a host of questions with potentially serious legal implications for Trump, legal experts said on Tuesday.

Much is still unknown about what Trump termed a "raid" on his residence, which is part of a federal investigation into whether he improperly took classified materials with him when he left the White House. But the decision to take the unprecedented step of searching an ex-president's home would likely have required the sign off of top officials including Attorney General Merrick Garland as well as a federal judge, and would not have been taken lightly, former prosecutors said.

"These are very careful lawyers who would not take a monumental step like this without carefully thinking through both the legal and political consequences," said Howard Sklamberg, a former Department of Justice official who prosecuted former Clinton administration National Security Adviser Sandy Berger for sneaking copies of highly classified documents out of the National Archives. Berger ultimately pleaded guilty and was fined $50,000 and given two years' probation.

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