(Washington) The Justice Department on Monday pushed back efforts to release the affidavit in support of the search warrant for former United States President Donald Trump’s Florida property, saying the investigation “involves highly classified material” and that the document contains sensitive witness information.
Posted at 7:10 p.m.
The government’s opposition came in response to court filings by several news outlets, including the Associated Press, that sought to unseal the underlying affidavit the Justice Department submitted when seeking the warrant for search of Mr. Trump’s estate at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month.
The court filing — from Juan Antonio Gonzalez, the U.S. attorney in Miami, and Jay Bratt, a senior Justice Department national security official — argues that making the affidavit public would “cause significant and irreparable harm. to this ongoing criminal investigation.
The document, according to prosecutors, details “highly sensitive witness information,” including people who were interviewed by the government, and contains classified grand jury information.
The government told a federal judge that prosecutors believe certain additional documents, including the warrant cover page and the government’s request to seal the documents, should now be made public.
A property receipt unsealed on Friday showed the FBI seized 11 sets of classified documents, some of which were not only identified as top secret but also “compartmentalized sensitive information”, a special category intended to protect the most important secrets of the countries that, if publicly disclosed, could cause “exceptionally grave” damage to U.S. interests.
Court records did not provide specific details about what information the documents might contain.
The Justice Department acknowledged on Monday that its ongoing criminal investigation “involved highly classified material.”
The search warrant, also unsealed on Friday, said federal agents were investigating potential violations of three different federal laws, including one that governs the collection, transmission or loss of defense information under the Security Act. ‘spying. Other laws relate to the concealment, mutilation or suppression of documents and the destruction, alteration or falsification of documents in federal investigations.
The search warrant for Mar-a-Lago, executed last Monday, was part of an ongoing Justice Department investigation into the discovery of classified White House documents recovered from Mr. Trump’s home earlier this year. . The National Archives had asked the department to investigate after it said 15 boxes of documents recovered from the estate included classified documents.
It remains unclear whether the Justice Department requested the warrant simply as a way to retrieve the records or as part of a larger criminal investigation or attempt to prosecute the former president. Several federal laws govern the handling of classified information, with criminal and civil penalties, as well as presidential records.
But the Justice Department, in its Monday filing, argued that its investigation was active and ongoing and that releasing additional information could not only jeopardize the investigation, but also subject witnesses to threats or dissuade others from coming forward to cooperate with prosecutors.
“If disclosed, the affidavit would serve as a road map for the government’s ongoing investigation, providing specific details about its direction and likely course, in a manner that is highly likely to jeopardize future stages of the investigation. ‘investigation,’ the government wrote in the court filing.