The affidavit supporting the warrant allowing FBI agents to search former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate last week will be made public on Thursday afternoon, according to attorneys for many of the country’s largest media companies.
The U.S. Justice Department opposes the release of the affidavit, claiming that doing so would jeopardise its investigation into Trump’s handling of “highly classified material.” However, The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CBS and other broadcast TV networks, CNN, and other media outlets are pleading with U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce E. Reinhart to do so.
The media companies contend that releasing the affidavit would enable the public to decide whether the Justice Department’s justifications for the search were sound or whether they were motivated by a vendetta against Trump on the part of the Biden administration, as the former president and his supporters allege.
Trump requested the release of the unredacted document in a Truth Social post last week in the sake of openness.
Attorney Carol Jean LoCiero, who is defending the Times and other parties, stated that the case “involves the actions of current and former government officials and is one of utmost public interest.” President Trump criticised the search, claiming it amounted to a “assault that could only occur in Third World Countries,” claimed agents “even broke into my safe,” and made other objections to its legality.
In a court filing, attorneys for the Justice Department argued that the document contains sensitive information about witnesses and that their investigation into Trump’s handling of “highly classified material” is still ongoing.
Making the affidavit public would “cause significant and irreparable damage to this ongoing criminal investigation,” according to a filing by Juan Antonio Gonzalez, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and Jay Bratt, a senior national security official with the Justice Department.
The affidavit, if made public, would act as a roadmap for the government’s ongoing investigation, providing specific information about its direction and likely course in a way that is very likely to jeopardise subsequent investigative steps, the authors wrote.
The Justice Department added, “The Government respectfully requests an opportunity to provide the Court with proposed redactions should the Court order partial unsealing of the affidavit.”
Trump’s legal team had not yet indicated on the court’s docket that they intend to attend the hearing as of Wednesday afternoon.
According to a receipt of what was taken that was made public on Friday, FBI agents searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate on August 8 and removed 11 sets of classified documents, some of which were not only top secret but also contained “sensitive compartmented information.” That is a unique classification intended to safeguard the most vital national secrets that, if made known to the public, could harm U.S. interests “exceptionally gravely.” There were no specifics in the court records about what information might be in the documents.
15 boxes of presidential records, some of which contained classified information, were removed from Mar-a-Lago by National Archives employees in January. A Trump attorney confirmed to investigators in July that the National Archives had received all classified information.
Last Monday, Trump said that while he was still in office, he had declassified all the information found at Mar-a-Lago. Rep. Adam Schiff, a member of the House intelligence committee, said on “Face the Nation” Sunday that he had not seen any proof that Trump declassified the information while in office, despite the fact that a sitting president does have wide declassification powers.
Furthermore, Trump’s assertion that he had retrospectively declassified the records he brought to Mar-a-Lago was deemed “absurd” by Schiff, who said that a past president does not have the ability to declassify anything.
John Bolton, Trump’s former national security advisor, told CBS News’ Robert Costa that the way Trump handled sensitive information “worried” him.
Bolton said that the intelligence briefers would offer the president images or graphs to see.
“The president would often ask, “Well, can I keep this?” Well, sir, we’d love to take it back, the intelligence briefers would most often respond, in my experience “Bolton declared. “But sometimes they forget,”
The National Archives requested that the Justice Department look into Trump’s treatment of documents earlier this year. Additionally, the National Archives revealed at the time that some of the papers Trump gave them had been torn apart and put back together.
On Monday, senior Biden administration officials received letters from Trump’s friends on the House Judiciary Committee requesting that they submit records and correspondence about the FBI search of Trump’s home to Congress.