The Justice Department, on Friday, made a redacted version of the documents supporting the raid at Mar-a-Lago, public. They put forth the affidavit based on which the FBI search was carried out at former US President Donald Trump’s Florida residence. 

A magistrate judge, after going through the DOJ’s proposed redactions, had ordered the redacted affidavit to be filed in the public docket by Friday noon. 

Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart had said that he was inclined to not keep the entire affidavit sealed. While many of Trump’s supporters have called for a complete unredacted version of the document, the former president’s own team of lawyers hasn’t pursued this path following the search at Mar-a-Lago, where the Republican alleged the feds had broken into a safe to seize documents. 

The recently released affidavit highlights how the FBI got involved in the investigation and what they hoped to uncover by searching Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. There were concerns about classified documents being stored in unauthorized locations and that there would be evidence of obstruction found at the Florida address. 

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“The government is conducting a criminal investigation concerning the improper removal and storage of classified information in unauthorized spaces, as well as the unlawful concealment or removal of government records”, the affidavit states, and the FBI agent who came up with the affidavit specialized in counterintelligence and espionage investigations during his academy training at Quantico, Virginia. 

Over half the pages of the affidavit remain redacted but Trump has still slammed the decision to make the document public. 

Apart from outlining the timeline of events of the DOJ investigation, the document also speaks of a letter from one of Trump’s top attorneys, Evan Corcoran, who claimed that the president had “absolute authority to declassify documents”.