More than two weeks after the FBI launched its surprise raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, the Department of Justice has unsealed a version of the affidavit used to obtain a search warrant on the property.
Over the department’s strong objections, a federal judge in South Florida ordered officials to redact portions of the document that could impact their investigation, and release the rest to the public.
The warrant was issued on Aug. 5 based on claims made in the affidavit, which is a sworn statement often made by an investigator. The document could potentially shine a little more light on why a storm of FBI agents descended on Trump’s golf club, where he now lives, to seize a trove of government documents on Aug. 8.
Trump is believed to have taken more than 700 pages of highly classified documents with him to Mar-a-Lago, according to The New York Times, maintaining the state secrets in a padlocked storage space. But little has been made public about their precise contents, or the potential consequences should they be leaked.
The unsealed version is heavily redacted. As the Justice Department argued in a different court filing, the full document “is replete with further details that would provide a roadmap for anyone intent on obstructing the investigation.”
Mar-A-Lago Search Affidavit: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documen...6178541021.pdf
A redacted FBI affidavit used to convince a judge for a search warrant for former President Trump’s Florida home noted that authorities found 184 classified documents in their initial review of boxes recovered from the home in an effort that began just a few months after he left office.
The 28-page affidavit contains numerous redactions but indicates authorities believed “evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed” would be found at Mar-a-Lago.
In a separate filing explaining the rationale behind its redactions, DOJ said it had to protect “a broad range of civilian witnesses,” warning they would likely face intimidation.
The release of the redact affidavit follows the disclosure of the warrant that allowed for the search of Trump’s home, indicating that storing documents there may have violated the Espionage Act, as well as two other statutes.
One bars concealing, removing and mutilating government documents, and the other prohibits similar actions when done “with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence [an] investigation.”
An inventory released alongside the warrant indicated the FBI recovered 11 different sets of classified documents during the search, along with information about “the president of France” and Trump’s pardon of his ally Roger Stone.