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A federal judge’s decision to order the release of an affidavit used in the FBI search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort likely spells more bad news for the former president, legal experts say.
Judge Bruce Reinhart on Thursday ordered the document, which will contain Justice Department redactions, to be released by midday ET on Friday.
The document, in its unredacted form, describes the evidence underpinning the warrant used in the August 8 search, but the DOJ successfully argued that making all of the evidence public could compromise its ongoing investigation.
The warrant itself revealed that agents believed that Trump may have breached the Espionage Act — which outlaws mishandling information sensitive to US national security — but does not detail why.
But even in a redacted form, the document will be damaging to Trump, legal experts say.
The former president has sought to portray the search as part of a plot by his political enemies based on scant evidence, but the document will likely indicate the strength of the evidence on which the FBI acted, they said.
“I can’t imagine that Trump is going to be happy with this document, given the fact it was an advocacy document written to persuade the judge to find probable cause to undertake a search,” John Dean, an attorney and the key witness in the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon, told CNN Thursday.
