By NBC News staff
A different sort of research took place at the Detroit Public Library on Tuesday, as FBI officials armed with search warrants entered the library’s main offices and scoured through records, according to local news reports.
Nine FBI agents were at the library’s main offices in Detroit on Tuesday morning, The Detroit News reported. They arrived at 8 a.m. and left around 11 a.m., with three cardboard boxes and “what appeared to be computer equipment,” according to the newspaper.
“I don’t know how many (search) warrants,” library spokesperson A.J. Funchess told The Detroit News. “They aren’t really sharing a lot of information right now.”
While Funchess acknowledged the library raid, he declined to provide any further comment to NBC News.
The Detroit News reported that authorities spent much of their time in the offices of the library’s chief administrative officer, Tim Cromer, who according to the newspaper has been the center of several spending controversies.
The FBI also reportedly raided Cromer’s house Tuesday, a source told The Detroit News. A spokesperson for the FBI in Detroit, Simon Shaykhet, declined to comment.
The president of the Detroit Library Commission, Jonathan Kinloch, told Detroit NBC affiliate WDIV that the FBI’s action is justified.