After the Department of Justice issued a largely blacked-out version of the affidavit justifying the August FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump Jr. had a very straightforward message.
In response to the revelation, 44-year-old Trump Jr. posted a picture of his father playing golf that had a black band covering the former president’s crotch region.
The first son of the former president just wrote, “Redact this!!!”
On Instagram, the post has already received over 300,000 likes, and a number of postings in reaction to the release have already appeared.
Later, he published an animated image of Vice President Joe Biden slipping and falling while climbing a set of stairs that had been censored.
Then, as a capstone, he published a photoshop in which Hunter Biden, the other presidential son of Donald Trump Jr., was seen to snort lines that had been redacted.
Lots of redacting going on, he tweeted to his 6.1 million followers.
The highly censored revelation was also criticised by Trump Jr. on Twitter, who wrote: “Well this definitely clears things up.”
During the Aug. 8 search, the FBI removed 27 boxes from Mar-a-Lago, including 11 sets of classified government documents, some of which were marked “top secret.”
The FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in August was authorised by an affidavit, which the Department of Justice substantially blacked out.
Despite the DOJ’s objections, U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart ordered the affidavit’s unsealing by 12 p.m. on Friday. Reinhart authorised the warrant that led to the Aug. 8 raid.
The affidavit states in a footnote that the law forbids “the unauthorised possession of “information linked to the national security,” as well as the transmission of secret material. The footnote appears to imply that even if Trump had declassified the materials, it would still be unlawful for him to remove them.
Earlier last month, John Solomon, who is representing Trump before the National Archives, said that before bringing any papers to Mar-a-Lago, Trump had them all declassified.
Everyone sometimes has to carry their job home, as we can all attest to. Solomon said in a remark that aired on Fox News on August 14 that “American presidents are no different.”
‘President Trump often brought materials, including secret information, to his home in order to prepare for the job the next day. He had a rule that any document he took out of the Oval Office and put in his personal possession was automatically considered to be declassified.
The Espionage Act, obstruction, and another law that makes it illegal to steal or destroy government materials were the three criminal crimes the FBI mentioned in the warrant as the basis for its inquiry. None of these laws had anything to do with whether the papers were classified or not.
The affidavit raised questions over a cache of secret records that the National Archives and Records Administration had taken from Florida’s Mar-a-Lago in January.
The DOJ claims in the document that a recently revealed breakdown reveals the volume of highly classified material that was held in a basement storage room and other facilities at the president’s club, and that 14 out of the 15 boxes collected in January included classified information.
According to the memo that claims the FBI had “probable cause to think evidence of obstruction will be discovered” at Trump’s Florida property, “Trump had 184 classified papers, 67 confidential, 25 top secret, and handwritten notes in boxes sent to the National Archives.”
For removing the records, Trump is being investigated for possible criminal activity.
On page one of the affidavit, an unnamed FBI agent said, “The government is pursuing a criminal investigation into the inappropriate removal and storage of classified material in unapproved areas, as well as the unlawful hiding or removal of government documents.”
The FBI also conducted the search out of concern that the disclosure of sensitive information may jeopardise “clandestine human sources.”
The signing agent’s declaration uses the abbreviation for National Defense Information and states, “Based on my training and experience, I know that papers classified at these levels frequently include NDI.” The agent said, “Several of the papers also included what looks to be FPOTUS’s handwritten notes.”
In the affidavit, classification marks are described that agents saw following a protracted correspondence dispute with Trump’s attorneys to get access to the 15 boxes of documents.
According to the document, the FBI said it had “probable cause to think evidence of obstruction will be uncovered” at Mar-a-Lago.
While waiting for a special master to be appointed to independently evaluate the records for information that could be covered by presidential privilege, Trump filed a second civil lawsuit seeking a different court to halt the FBI’s study of the documents.