A redacted affidavit used by the FBI to obtain a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago on August 8 has been made public by Florida Magistrate Judge Bruce E. Reinhart on Friday.
About 20 pages of the redacted, 38-page affidavit that the FBI used to get a search warrant for former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property on August 8 are completely or significantly redacted. The affidavit was unsealed by a federal judge in Florida on Friday.
According to the unsealed and heavily redacted affidavit used to support the raid, the FBI stated that it had “probable cause to believe” that additional records containing classified information, including National Defense Information, would be discovered on the premises of the former president Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in addition to what he had already turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration.
The affidavit states that the government is conducting a criminal investigation into the improper removal and storage of classified information in unapproved locations, as well as the illegal concealment or removal of government records.
The search warrant for Mar-a-Lago was approved by Attorney General Merrick Garland and then by Reinhart on August 5.
Reinhart, a magistrate judge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, reviewed the affidavit and its references to evidence from investigations and stated last week that “all of the information that the court relied on is in the affidavit.”
The Justice Department had argued that the affidavit should be kept sealed in order to “protect the integrity of an ongoing law enforcement investigation involving national security.”
Prosecutors told the judge that the investigation’s methods and the identities of FBI agents and witnesses were at stake and that releasing the affidavit risked chilling future cooperation.
After U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart approved the DOJ’s proposed redactions to the affidavit, it was made public on Friday.
You can read the redacted affidavit here.
