Magistrate Judge to Release Redacted Affidavit on Mar-a-Lago Search
PALM BEACH, Fla. — A federal magistrate judge on Thursday said he would release a heavily redacted version of the affidavit the FBI used to convince him to green light a search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida home.
“I find that the government has met its burden of showing a compelling reason/good cause to seal portions of the affidavit,” Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart wrote just hours after the proposed redactions were submitted for his approval by the Justice Department.
The redacted document must be released by noon Friday, the judge said.
During a hearing last week, he acknowledged that the redaction might be so great as to effectively render the document “gibberish.”
On Thursday he reminded the interested parties — including the news organizations that had asked for the affidavit’s release — that the redactions would likely black out the identities of witnesses and law enforcement agents, as well as any details about the investigators strategy and what they were looking for.
Disclosing even a partial version of the affidavit would be highly unusual, and last week the Justice Department argued strenuously that doing so could compromise its ongoing investigation.
In its most complete form, the document would disclose important details about the government’s justification for taking the extraordinary step of searching Trump’s home at the Mar-a-Lago Club on Aug. 8.
In the end, for both the judge and the Justice Department, the situation is a tough balancing act: On the one hand, there’s the need to protect the investigation until and if charges are filed in the case.
On the other, given the involvement of a former president, the public interest in the case is extraordinarily high and demands that Attorney General Merrick Garland explain his department’s action at a near fever pitch.
After the search at Mar-a-Lago, the FBI reported a surge in threats against its agents. Also, an armed man tried to breach the bureau’s Cincinnati field office before being killed in a shootout with local police.
Trump’s legal team reportedly was not given a chance to see the redacted affidavit before Reinhart handed down his decision. To date they have not taken a position on whether or not it should be released.
However, they do have something of a big, related decision pending in a courtroom several miles north of Reinhart’s chambers.
U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, presiding in Fort Pierce, Florida, has been asked by Trump’s team to limit the Justice Department’s review of the records seized from Mar-a-Lago and appoint a special master to look at the documents.
On Monday, Cannon, a Trump appointee, asked the former president’s attorneys to clarify several aspects of their request. She asked them to submit their answers to her by Friday.
Dan can be reached at [email protected] and @DanMcCue
