by WorldTribune Staff / 247 Real News August 17, 2022

A federal judge in Florida has scheduled a hearing for Thursday on whether to unseal the affidavit that the Department of Justice used to justify a search warrant for former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.

Trump, the government watchdog group Judicial Watch, and several news organizations have called on Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart to make public the affidavit that convinced him to sign off on the warrant allowing FBI agents to raid Trump’s Florida residence.

Related: Who is Bruce Reinhart? Magistrate judge who issued Trump search warrant worked for Team Epstein, August 9, 2022

Trump is demanding the “immediate release” of the “completely unredacted affidavit” behind what he calls the “horrible and shocking BREAK-IN” at Mar-a-Lago.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said: “No administration should be able to raid the home of a former president and putative presidential candidate based on ‘secret’ reasons.”

Judicial Watch announced on Wednesday that it filed its reply to the DOJ’s filing to keep the affidavit under seal. Citing Trump’s support for the release of the affidavit, Judicial Watch argued:

“The public interest in the contents of the affidavit cannot be understated. The secrecy surrounding the search warrant, and the affidavit that led to its issuance, has caused the nation to convulse with intrigue and harmful speculation that will only increase the longer the truth is kept from the public. The heat must be replaced with light, and soon. Maintaining the seal will only fuel more speculation, uncertainty, leaks, and political intrigue and it will also serve to undermine public confidence in the fair administration of justice and equal protection of the law. Considering the gravity of this unprecedented action by the government, at a minimum, the Court should review the affidavit line-by-line to determine what information may be disclosed and what information may be redacted to balance the competing concerns at issue.”

Fitton added: “The Biden administration is compounding the obvious abuse of the raid on Trump’s home with an arrogant assertion of secrecy about its unprecedented action. The Biden administration has created a crisis of confidence in its ability to fairly administer justice which requires, in the least, basic transparency about its extraordinary targeting of President Trump.”

In demanding the release of the affidavit, Trump said in a Truth Social post on Monday: “There is no way to justify the unannounced RAID of Mar-a-Lago, the home of the 45th President of the United States (who got more votes, by far, than any sitting President in the history of our Country!), by a very large number of gun-toting FBI Agents, and the Department of ‘Justice.’ ”

Trump added: “But, in the interest of TRANSPARENCY, I call for the immediate release of the completely Unredacted Affidavit pertaining to this horrible and shocking BREAK-IN.”

“Also, the Judge on this case should recuse!” Trump said of Reinhart, who had mysteriously recused himself in a case surrounding Trump’s 2016 presidential opponent, Hillary Clinton, in June.

Trump and his lawyers said they have not seen the affidavit.

DOJ lawyers said in a court filing Monday that they are open to releasing more documents about the investigation, but not the affidavit. The filing stated that releasing the affidavit would “cause significant and irreparable damage to this ongoing criminal investigation.”

“If disclosed, the affidavit would serve as a roadmap to the government’s ongoing investigation, providing specific details about its direction and likely course, in a manner that is highly likely to compromise future investigative steps,” the lawyers wrote in the filing.

The Judicial Watch filing states as follows:

1. There is no dispute that the Court “must balance the presumptive right of access against important competing interests and then weigh[] the Government’s asserted reasons for continued sealing against Petitioner’s interest in access.”

2. The government’s opposition is devoid of any balancing of the interests at stake even though, in its motion to unseal the warrant and the inventory list, the government recognized that “[t]his matter plainly concerns public officials or public concerns as it involves a law enforcement action taken at the property of the 45th President of the United States. The public’s clear and powerful interest in understanding what occurred under these circumstances weighs heavily in favor of unsealing.” The government’s argument for keeping the search warrant affidavit under wraps is little more than the assertion that the affidavit should remain sealed because of what the government says is important. Movant does not dispute the importance of preserving the integrity of criminal investigations and protecting the country’s national security interests. However, the public may be forgiven for not taking the government at its word as to what information would jeopardize such interests. Indeed, that is precisely why the Constitution inveighs this Court with the heavy responsibility of balancing the government’s and the public’s competing interests in disclosure.

3. The Court must give searching review to the government’s claimed reasons for keeping the affidavit under seal. (“[T]he decision to seal the papers must be made by the judicial officer; he cannot abdicate this function.”). And while the government asserts that movants’ case law is “readily distinguishable,” the government identifies no analogous case law concerning the execution of a search warrant at the home of a sitting president’s immediate predecessor and election opponent and potential future election opponent. It is the government’s case law that is readily distinguishable.

4. The public interest in the contents of the affidavit cannot be understated. The secrecy surrounding the search warrant, and the affidavit that led to its issuance, has caused the nation to convulse with intrigue and harmful speculation that will only increase the longer the truth is kept from the public. The heat must be replaced with light, and soon. Maintaining the seal will only fuel more speculation, uncertainty, leaks, and political intrigue and it will also serve to undermine public confidence in the fair administration of justice and equal protection of the law. Considering the gravity of this unprecedented action by the government, at a minimum, the Court should review the affidavit line-by-line to determine what information may be disclosed and what information may be redacted to balance the competing concerns at issue.

5. The unsealing of the warrant and inventory list has not satisfied the public interest. If anything, disclosure of the inventory of records seized during the search has only further inflamed public debate about the search and increased public interest in the disclosure of as much of the affidavit as possible.

6. Relatedly, and as has been widely reported, President Trump has also called for the immediate release of the completely unredacted search warrant affidavit.

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  ‘Public interest’ vs DOJ’s ‘secret’ reasons: Thursday hearing set for Mar-a-Lago raid affidavit, WorldTribune.com