FBI documents remain classified
Justice Department balks at Trump demands
8/16/2022 4:57 am
After the house search at ex-President Trump, he and his followers continue to put pressure on the US Department of Justice. This is to publish further documents related to the raid. The ministry is against it: the texts would contain so much “highly sensitive information” that most of it would have to be blacked out anyway.
After the raid on ex-US President Donald Trump’s home, the Justice Department is resisting calls for the release of the document the authorities used to obtain the search warrant. The ministry said the document must remain classified to protect “an ongoing investigation,” which also involves national security.
The affidavit of the investigating authorities contains “extremely important and detailed investigative facts” as well as “highly sensitive information about witnesses”. If a court orders the document to be made public, so many passages would have to be redacted that the text would no longer have any meaningful content, the Justice Department said.
FBI agents searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last Monday. The search warrant and a list of documents seized at Mar-a-Lago were subsequently released. Accordingly, the documents also included those that were classified as “top secret”. It is therefore determined because of possible violations of an anti-espionage law.
Several US media and politicians from Trump’s Republican Party are now also demanding publication of the document with which the search warrant was requested. This affidavit of the investigators to the address of the responsible judge should contain a lot of information about the investigation.
Trump suspects conspiracy
The investigation is about documents that Trump took from the White House to Mar-a-Lago after the end of his term in January 2021. US Presidents are required to hand over all official documents, including e-mails and letters, to the National Archives upon leaving office.
Trump describes the search of his property as politically motivated. He accuses President Joe Biden’s Democrats of using the judiciary to prevent him from running for president again in 2024.
The right-wing populist said on Monday that the FBI also took his passports with him during the raid. “Wow! During the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, they stole my three passports (one expired) along with everything else,” Trump wrote on the online network he founded, Truth Social. “This is an attack on a political opponent on a scale never before seen in our country. Third World!”