Court Unseals Redacted Version Of Affidavit Used To Justify Search Of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Property
UPDATED: A redacted version of the affidavit used to justify the August 8 search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property was unsealed Friday.
The heavily blacked-out document nevertheless showed that, in the 15 boxes that Trump’s team initially sent to the National Archives, 184 documents had classification markings, including 25 marked as top secret. Ninety two were marked secret and 67 were labeled as confidential.
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The Justice Department also said in a court filing, also unsealed on Friday, that their investigation of the records included information from “a significant number of civilian witnesses” who would face safety issues if their names were disclosed.
The affidavit was used by federal prosecutors to convince Judge Bruce Reinhardt to sign off on a search warrant of Mar-a-Lago.
The affidavit is here.
Trump blasted Reinhardt in a post on Truth Social, writing, “Nothing mentioned on ‘Nuclear,’ a total public relations subterfuge by the FBI & DOJ, or our close working relationship regarding document turnover – WE GAVE THEM MUCH. Judge Bruce Reinhart should NEVER have allowed the Break-In of my home.: The reference to nuclear information was a reference to a report that some of the documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago included classified nuclear information.
But the affidavit, signed by a FBI special agent whose name was redacted, states that “the FBI’s investigation has established that documents bearing classification markings, which appear to contain National Defense Information (NDI), were among the materials contained in the FIFTEEN BOXES and were stored at the PREMISES in an unauthorized location.”
The special agent wrote that there was “probable cause” to believe that additional classified documents and presidential records were still on the Mar-a-Lago property. “There is also probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found at the PREMISES,” the agent wrote.
After Trump left office, the National Archives contacted his team after concluding that presidential records were missing. When the archives received the 15 boxes, what they found was that “highly classified records were unfoldered, intermixed with other records, and otherwise unproperly [sic] identified,” according to the affidavit. In February, the archives referred the matter to the Justice Department.
In May, FBI agents conducted a review of the boxes, and found documents with classified markings in 14 of the 15 boxes. “Several of the documents also contained what appears to be FPOTUS ‘s handwritten notes,” the special agent wrote.
The affidavit also refers to Trump’s claim that he had declassified the documents, and included a letter from one of Trump’s lawyers making that case.
In a redacted portion of the transcript, prosecutors outline why they believed that Trump continued to have classified documents and other presidential records at Mar-a-Lago.
“Based upon this investigation, I believe that the STORAGE ROOM, FPOTUS’s residential suite, Pine Hall, the ’45 Office,’ and other spaces within the PREMISES are not currently authorized locations for the storage of classified information or NDI,” the special agent wrote. “Similarly, based upon this investigation, I do not believe that any spaces within the PRE1,1ISES have been authorized for the storage of classified information at least since the end of FPOTUS ‘s Presidential Administration on January 20, 2021.”
The unsealing drew intense interest, covered by cable news networks and, given journalists’ desire to see the document, for a time overloaded PACER, the database used by federal courts.
PREVIOUSLY: A judge on Thursday ordered the release of a redacted version of the FBI affidavit used to justify the Aug. 8 search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property, in which FBI agents retrieved 11 sets of classified documents.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart’s ruling came after the Justice Department submitted a proposed redacted version of the affidavit, which was used to justify to the court why a search warrant was needed of the Trump property.
Reinhart wrote that the DOJ had “met its burden” of showing why portions of the affidavit should be redacted, including that the disclosure would reveal identities of witnesses, law enforcement agents and uncharged parties, and that it also would reveal protected grand jury information and the investigation’s “strategy, scope, sources and methods.”
The release was ordered by noon on Friday. The Justice Department, who opposed release of the affidavit at all, can still appeal.
Earlier this month, Reinhart ordered the unsealing of the search warrant and property receipt, which showed what was collected from the Trump property.
Trump claimed on his Truth Social platform that he did “nothing wrong” and that the search of his home was illegal. The action followed months of dispute between Trump’s team, the Justice Department and the National Archives over his complaints with the Presidential Records Act, which mandates that presidential records belong to the government, not the former president. DOJ attorneys issued a subpoena for additional records last spring, as well as security footage, but reportedly had reason to believe that additional boxes were being held at Mar-a-Lago.
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