Posted on 08/11/22
| News Source: The Hill
The Justice Department on Thursday moved to unseal a warrant authorizing a search of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate this week following escalating demands for answers about the unprecedented investigation.
“The public’s clear and powerful interest in understanding what occurred under these circumstances weighs heavily in favor of unsealing,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in a court filing submitted Thursday afternoon.
The move is a departure from the department’s typical practice of staying silent about ongoing investigations, underscoring the significance of the first overt sign of an escalating criminal probe with a former president at the center.
The filing coincided with a public statement from Attorney General Merrick Garland, his first since FBI agents executed the search warrant on Monday.
Garland said he personally signed off on the decision to apply for and execute that search warrant, and that the decision was not made “lightly.”
“All Americans are entitled to the even-handed application of the law, to due process of law and to the presumption of innocence,” Garland said in remarks at DOJ headquarters. “Much of our work is by necessity conducted out of the public eye. We do that to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans and to protect the integrity of our investigations. Federal law, long standing department rules and our ethical obligations prevent me from providing further details as to the basis of the search at this time.”
Trump’s attorneys were provided a copy of the warrant and a receipt listing the seized materials, the Justice Department said in its court filing. The former president’s legal team has not publicly released those documents but his lawyer Christina Bobb has said during media appearances this week that the search concerned potentially classified information being stored at the Florida property.