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On August 9, the FBI entered Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. The Department of Justice says that the investigation contains “highly classified material”, so it will not reveal the text that motivated the search. For his part, the former president assures that the FBI “stole” his passports.
This Monday, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) said that it opposes the release of the affidavit that prosecutors used to obtain the approval of a federal judge, in order to search the Mar-a-Lago vacation home. of former President Donald Trump, where classified documents were seized.
“If disclosed, the affidavit would serve as a roadmap for the government’s ongoing investigation, providing specific details about its address, in a way that is highly likely to compromise future steps of the investigation,” prosecutors wrote in their statement. presentation.
For their part, Trump-allied Republicans have intensified their calls in recent days for Attorney General Merrick Garland to release the document containing the evidence prosecutors produced to show they had just cause to secure the search warrant.
Publishing the affidavit “would cause irreparable damage to the investigation”
At the request of the Justice Department, a federal court in South Florida on Friday unsealed the search warrant and several legal documents showing FBI agents collected 11 sets of classified documents from the Palm Beach luxury resort.
The search warrant shows that federal agents are investigating alleged violations of three separate federal laws, including a provision of the Espionage Act, which prohibits the possession of national defense information.
The agency said it is not opposed to releasing other sealed documents related to the raid, but refuses to release the affidavit. Miami federal prosecutor Juan Antonio González and a senior DOJ national security official, Jay Bratt, say publishing it “would cause significant and irreparable damage to this ongoing criminal investigation.”
According to the two officials, the document contains the cover page of the order and the government’s request to seal the documents. The records raided by the FBI have been marked as top secret and “compartmentalized sensitive information,” a category used to protect the nation’s top secrets, since their release could harm the nation’s interests, according to the DOJ.
Trump has stated on several occasions that he had a permanent order to declassify all the materials that were raided in his house, however, he has not presented any evidence to confirm this.
Trump says his passports were ‘stolen’
Prosecutors cited ongoing threats and violence against the FBI as another reason for not releasing the affidavit, referring to the incident last Friday after the warrant was disclosed. An armed man attempted to enter an FBI office in Cincinnati, Ohio, and was immediately shot dead by police.
The DOJ also reported that a 46-year-old man was arrested after making threats via social media against FBI agents.
“Information about witnesses is particularly sensitive given the high-profile nature of this matter and the risk that disclosure of witness identities will affect their willingness to cooperate with the investigation,” prosecutors wrote.
For his part, this Monday, former President Donald Trump assured that his passports, the staff and the diplomat, were “stolen” during the raid carried out by the FBI at his mansion in Florida, in addition, he asked the organization to return the documents seized during the raid.
“I just learned that the FBI, now famous for the Mar-a-Lago search, took boxes of attorney-client privilege material and other executive material as well, which they realize should not have been taken,” Trump said through his Truth Social account.
With Reuters and AP
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