Why the redacted affidavit for the search of Trump’s home is so concerning – By Ryan McCarthy (VOX) / Aug 26, 2022
The newly released affidavit sheds light on the classified documents at the center of Trump’s growing legal problems.
The Department of Justice released an affidavit Friday that is central to the FBI’s search of President Donald J. Trump’s Florida home in Mar-a-Lago.
As expected, the document is heavily redacted. Or, rather, almost entirely redacted, after the DOJ asked the judge to conceal any parts of it that would hinder its investigation or compromise participants in it.
Still, the affidavit does shed new light on federal investigators’ fight to retrieve classified documents from Trump’s home in Florida, and includes several new bits of information:
- It notes that, among the 15 boxes that Trump returned to the National Archives earlier this year, there were “184 unique documents bearing classification markings, including 67 documents marked as CONFIDENTIAL, 92 documents marked as SECRET, and 25 documents marked as TOP SECRET.”
- The FBI believed there were additional documents at Mar-a-Lago, but that they’d also find evidence of obstruction of justice there as well: “Further, there is probable cause to believe that additional documents that contain classified NDI [National Defense Information] or that are Presidential records subject to record retention requirements currently remain at the PREMISES [Mar-a-Lago]. There is also probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found at the PREMISES.”
