The Justice Department filed the redacted affidavit on the FBI’s raid of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

WASHINGTON, Broadcasting news corporation : A Florida federal judge ordered the Justice Department Thursday to make public a redacted version of the affidavit underpinning the FBI raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate by noon Friday. In a two-page order, Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart said he had accepted the government’s redacted version of the affidavit, which it filed under seal Thursday morning ahead of a noon deadline. Reinhart, who approved the search warrant authorizing the Aug. 8 raid and said in a Monday ruling that the government had not justified keeping the full affidavit under wraps, wrote in his Thursday order that the DOJ “has met its burden of showing a compelling reason/good cause to seal portions of the Affidavit” that would reveal information about witnesses, grand jury information, or the “strategy, direction, scope, sources, and methods” of the probe into whether the 45th president illegally retained classified information. The judge also said Thursday that the DOJ’s proposed redactions were “narrowly tailored” and represented “the least onerous alternative to sealing the entire Affidavit.” Reinhart did not elaborate on what he meant by “narrowly tailored.” Search warrant affidavits typically contain vital information from law enforcement officials spelling out why they want to search a particular property and why they believe they are likely to find evidence of a potential crime there. However, the judge had warned earlier this week the extent of the government’s approved redactions could render the document “meaningless.” On Monday, Reinhart cited “the intense public and historical interest in an unprecedented search of a former President’s residence” as grounds for releasing a redacted version of the affidavit. The Justice Department’s top counterintelligence official, Jay Bratt, had argued to Reinhart during a hearing last week that the affidavit should be kept sealed due to the “volatile situation with respect to this search across the political spectrum — but on one side in particular.”“The government is very concerned about the safety of the witnesses in these cases and the impact of all the attention on these witnesses on other witnesses,” he added. Trump has called for the release of the affidavit, and multiple news outlets have submitted filings seeking to make it public. The former president raged against the raid on his Truth Social platform Thursday, saying, “The Justice Department and FBI are ‘leaking’ at levels never seen before – and I did nothing wrong!!!” “They illegally Raided my home, and took things that should not have been taken. They even broke into my safe, an unthinkable act!” he added. Federal agents took 27 boxes from Mar-A-Lago, including 11 sets of classified documents that were labeled top secret, secret, or confidential, according to an inventory list made public by Reinhart on Aug. 12. The warrant, unsealed on the same day, authorized the FBI to seize “all physical documents and records constituting evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed.” The warrant also indicated that Trump was being investigated for potentially violating three federal laws pertaining to official records, including the Espionage Act of 1917 — a law used in recent years to justify harsh sanctions, including against whistleblowers. Trump and his attorneys have both said the former president used his power to declassify the now-seized material before leaving the White House in January 2021.
NEWS COLLECTED FROM NEW YORK POST.