The affidavit was submitted on Thursday.
QUICK FACTS:
- The Department of Justice submitted their affidavit on the raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.
- The judge ordered that the Justice Department not only unseal the records but make public a redacted version of the affidavit for the public to read by Friday at noon.
- The file was under seal and submitted to the court “addressing possible redactions and providing any additional evidence or legal argument that the Government believes relevant to the pending Motions to Unseal.”
- Justice Bruce Reinhart previously rejected the Justice Department’s argument that the documents should be kept sealed, giving the department just days to unseal the papers.
- The judge ordered that the department unseal the probable cause portion of the document, calling the raid on Mar-a-Lago, “unprecedented.”
ON THE DOJ’S ATTEMPT TO KEEP THE DOCUMENTS SEALED :
- Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton issued a statement in response to the DOJ’s attempt to keep the documents sealed, saying that the department was essentially “telling the court what to do.”
- “Respectfully, the court should make its own independent assessment of the compelling public interest in transparency about this abusive raid,” Fitton said.
- “The ‘criminal investigation’ the Biden administration is covering up reeks of corruption and dishonesty – and is based on a reinvention of law about presidential records that is at odds with the U.S. Constitution, court rulings, federal statutes, and prior government legal positions and practice. No administration should be able to raid the home of a former president and putative presidential candidate based on ‘secret’ reasons,” the Judicial Watch representative went on to say.
- “The U.S. Constitution and federal law give unreviewable authority to President Trump to take whatever records he wishes at the end of his presidency. The Biden administration’s dishonest depiction of personal records of President Trump it illicitly seized during the raid as “classified” is further demonstration that the raid was a brazen act of raw political abuse.”
BACKGROUND:
- Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago was raided just weeks ago, while the former president was away in New York City.
- The FBI agents asked his representatives to leave the room and for cameras to be turned off, according to Trump’s statement of the events surrounding the raid.
- The requests were declined, however, and later reports indicated that Trump and his family watched the raid on security footage.
