(West Palm Beach) A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Justice Department to propose redactions to release at least part of the affidavit in support of the search warrant for former President Donald’s home. Trump in Florida.
Posted at 7:49 p.m.
Judge Bruce Reinhart said the onus is on the government by law to show why a redacted version should not be released, adding that prosecutors’ arguments on Thursday failed to convince him of the merits of their position.
He gave them a week to submit a copy of the affidavit offering the information they want to keep secret after the FBI seized classified and top secret information during a search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. last week.
The hearing was called after several news outlets, including the Associated Press, sought to unseal additional documents related to last week’s search, including the affidavit. These materials are likely to contain key details about the Justice Department’s investigation into whether Donald Trump improperly retained and handled classified and sensitive government records.
The Justice Department has adamantly opposed releasing any part of the affidavit, arguing that doing so would compromise its ongoing investigation, expose the identities of witnesses, and may prevent others from coming forward and cooperating with the Justice Department. government.
Lawyers for the news outlets, however, argued that the unprecedented nature of the Justice Department’s investigation warranted public disclosure.
“You can’t trust what you can’t see,” said Chuck Tobin, an attorney representing the AP and several other news outlets.
In addition to ordering the redactions, the judge agreed to release other documents, including the warrant cover sheet, the Justice Department’s request to seal the documents, and the judge’s order requiring that they be sealed.
These documents showed that the FBI was specifically investigating the “deliberate withholding of national defense information”, concealment or suppression of government documents and obstruction of a federal investigation.
Jay Bratt, a senior Justice Department national security prosecutor, had argued that the contents of the affidavit should not be exposed publicly. Unsealing it, he said, would provide a “roadmap” for the investigation – which is in its “early stages” – and lay out the next steps for federal agents and prosecutors to take.
He argued that it was in the public interest that the investigation, including witness interviews, proceed unimpeded.
Donald Trump, in a post on his Truth Social network last week, called for the release of the unredacted affidavit in the interest of transparency.
Justice Reinhart gave the government until next Thursday to submit its version with proposed redactions along with written arguments for each, line by line. He said he would then review the proposal and recommend his own redactions, then could meet with government lawyers to give them a final opportunity to argue why particular information should be redacted.
FBI agents searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate on August 8, removing 11 sets of classified documents.