Judge gives DOJ a week to prepare redactions for Mar-a-Lago Warrant Affidavit

U.S. Magistrate Bruce Reinhart authorized searches at former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence at Mar-a-Lago. On Thursday, the Department of Justice ordered that a redacted copy of the search warrant be prepared by the Department of Justice (DOJ). This is presumably in order to allow the public to see at most a portion of the affidavit.

Reinhart won the ruling after several media outlets, including the New York Times ,, the Washington Post , and CNN filed a motion to unseal the document. Reinhart has now agreed to unseal the affidavit, giving the Justice Department one week — until August 25 — to propose redactions, WPTV reported.

The purpose of this affidavit is to determine probable cause for Mar-a-Lago’s raid. As many observers (including multiple members of Congress) speculate that the raid resulted from political bias in the DOJ, there have been calls to release its contents to the public.

“The media companies argue the affidavit’s release would help the public determine if the Justice Department had legitimate reasons for the search or if it was part of a Biden administration vendetta against Trump,” according to the Associated Press (AP), noting that Trump has called for the release of a full, unredacted version of the affidavit, citing the need for transparency.

“[ “In the interests of TRANSPARENCY I request the immediate release the totally Unredacted Affidavit pertaining this terrible and shocking BREAKIN,” Trump stated in a tweet.

While Trump claims he was in possession sensitive classified material, Breitbart News obtained a copy the warrant and discovered that the DOJ took three days before conducting the raid. This cast doubt on Trump’s claim of urgency.

Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz, writing in the Hill, argues that “Searches and seizures should only be used when subpoenas are inappropriate because of the risk of evidence destruction,” a remote possibility in this case because an attempt on Trump’s part to destroy evidence under subpoena would have been “a far more serious crime than what the search warrant seems to have alleged.”

The Justice Department, for its part, had asked Reinhart to keep the affidavit sealed, arguing that releasing it would “cause significant and irreparable damage to this ongoing criminal investigation.”

You can follow Michael Foster on Twitter at @realmfoster.

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