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No portions of the redacted search warrant affidavit supported the Biden administration taking the unprecedented step of raiding a former president’s home, a former top intelligence official says.
“I think it provided a general recitation of the fact that the FBI and the Department of Justice believed that there were classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. But I didn’t really see anything in the affidavit that justified what still seems like an extreme approach by the FBI and the Department of Justice to retrieve those documents if in fact they were classified,” John Ratcliffe, a director of national intelligence during the Trump administration, said during an interview aired on CBS News on Aug. 26.
The affidavit, authored by an FBI agent, convinced U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart on Aug. 5 to approve a warrant. The warrant was executed three days later at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. The affidavit was released with redactions earlier Friday.
Officials said they had reason to believe Trump violated federal laws, including laws that bar destroying, falsifying, or altering certain records and transmitting or losing defense information.
The core discovery driving the investigation, according to the unredacted portions, was the identification of classified information in 15 boxes transferred from Mar-a-Lago to the National Archives and Records Administration earlier in 2022.
