Donald Trump has demanded the “immediate release” of the “completely unredacted affidavit” behind what the former president calls the “horrible and shocking BREAK-IN” at his estate at Mar-a-Lago.
“There is no way to justify the unannounced RAID of Mar-a-Lago, the home of the 45th President of the United States (who got more votes, by far, than any sitting President in the history of our Country!), by a very large number of gun-toting FBI Agents, and the Department of ‘Justice,’” Trump wrote.
“But, in the interest of TRANSPARENCY, I call for the immediate release of the completely Unredacted Affidavit pertaining to this horrible and shocking BREAK-IN,” he said about the Fed’s invasive search of his home.
Federal Judge Magistrate Bruce Reinhart is expected to rule on Thursday that the Department of Justice’s request that the search warrant affidavit used for the FBI’s unprecedented raid on former President Donald remains sealed.
“An Order on the Motion to Unseal the affidavit backing the search warrant used in the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago has been filed, and a hearing will take place on August 18,” the Post Millennial reported.
The court hearing flies in the face of the Department of Justice’s wishes that the judge magistrate would simply consent to the attorney general’s desire to keep the search warrant affidavit secret.
“The Justice Department intends to unseal additional documents connected to the FBI search at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate but is urging a federal court to maintain the secrecy of the sworn affidavit describing the basis for the search,” Politico’s Kyle Cheney reported.
“The DOJ is particularly concerned that the release of details from the affidavit might harm ongoing efforts to interview witnesses, given the threats to federal agents in wake of the Mar-a-Lago search,” the report claimed.
“If disclosed, the affidavit would serve as a roadmap to the government’s ongoing investigation, providing specific details about its direction and likely course, in a manner that is highly likely to compromise future investigative steps,” U.S. Attorney Juan Gonzalez and Justice Department counterintelligence chief Jay Bratt said in a filing urging the continued secrecy of the affidavit.
“The fact that this investigation implicates highly classified materials further underscores the need to protect the integrity of the investigation and exacerbates the potential for harm if information is disclosed to the public prematurely or improperly,” the DOJ officials wrote.
The FBI agents, however, swept up “any government and/or Presidential Records created between January 20, 2017, and January 20, 2021.” This included the president’s passports, as the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman noted.
FBI returned Trump’s one expired passport today. The email to his lawyers references a “filter team,” which means there is a team weeding out privileged and other material, per email released by Trump spokesman earlier pic.twitter.com/Re5OfgwcHO
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) August 16, 2022
“Wow! In the raid by the FBI of Mar-a-Lago, they stole my three Passports (one expired), along with everything else,” Trump recently said on Truth Social. “This is an assault on a political opponent at a level never seen before in our Country. Third World!”
Any fair-minded American citizen aware of the rule of law in the United States for over two centuries would be hard-pressed to disagree with the former president.
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