Former President Donald Trump on Thursday called for the immediate release of the search warrant from the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago even though he could release it himself, The Associated Press reports.
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday announced that the Justice Department filed a motion to unseal the search warrant amid attacks from Trump and his allies.
“The former president publicly confirmed the search that evening, as is his right. Copies of both the warrant and the FBI property receipt were provided on the day of the search to the former president's counsel, who was on site during the search,” Garland said.
“The search warrant was authorized by a federal court upon the required finding of probable cause,” he continued. “The property receipt is a document that federal law requires law enforcement agents to leave with the property owner. The department filed the motion to make public the warrant and receipt in light of the former president's public confirmation with the search, the surrounding circumstances and the substantial public interest in this matter.”
Trump responds:
Despite Garland’s confirmation that Trump has a copy of the search warrant, Trump on Truth Social called for the release of the documents.
"Not only will I not oppose the release of documents related to the unAmerican, unwarranted, and unnecessary raid and break-in of my home in Palm Beach, Florida, Mar-a-Lago, I am going a step further by ENCOURAGING the immediate release of those documents, even though they have been drawn up by radical left Democrats and possible future political opponents, who have a strong and powerful vested interest in attacking me, much as they have done for the last 6 years," Trump said.
Raid focused on nuclear secrets:
The FBI searched for highly classified documents related to nuclear weapons, according to the Washington Post.
It’s unclear if such documents were recovered in the raid.
"If that is true, it would suggest that material residing unlawfully at Mar-a-Lago may have been classified at the highest classification level," David Laufman, the former chief of the Justice Department's counterintelligence section, told the outlet. "If the FBI and the Department of Justice believed there were top secret materials still at Mar-a-Lago, that would lend itself to greater 'hair-on-fire' motivation to recover that material as quickly as possible."
