Judge orders redacted release of Mar-a-Lago affidavit

Source: Politico | August 25, 2022 | Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein

The Justice Department is instructed to release documentation behind the search of Trump property by noon Friday, but could appeal.

A federal magistrate judge has ordered the unsealing of a redacted affidavit laying out the Justice Department’s evidence for the Aug. 8 search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate as part of an investigation into mishandling of classified information, theft of government records and obstruction of justice.

Judge Bruce Reinhart instructed prosecutors to make the partially-obscured document public on the court’s docket by noon Friday.

The Justice Department resisted making even a redacted version of the affidavit public, warning that any acceptable redactions would be so extensive as to render the document meaningless. It’s unclear whether the department will seek to appeal the order, which could produce further delays.

Reinhart’s order came after Justice Department attorneys proposed redactions earlier Thursday to the secret document that prompted him to approve the FBI search of the waterside Palm Beach property that serves both as a home for the former president and a private club for members.

Reinhart emphasized that prosecutors had shown “good cause” to redact elements of the affidavit that would reveal “the identities of witnesses, law enforcement agents, and uncharged parties,” “the investigation’s strategy, direction, scope, sources, and methods” and “grand jury information.”

The judge appeared to approve all of the deletions the Justice Department proposed, some of which are intended to shield investigators’ sources and methods for collecting evidence as part of their criminal probe into the “highly classified” documents the FBI discovered at Mar-a-Lago.

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