The Justice Department has confirmed it authorized a raid on ex-President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and asked for the search warrant to be unsealed – but remained tight-lipped on further details.
Speaking for the Justice Department on Monday’s raid for the first time, Attorney General Merrick Garland said he ‘personally approved’ the decision to seek a warrant for the FBI to execute a search.
‘The department does not take such a decision lightly,’ said Garland on Thursday afternoon. ‘Where possible, it is standard practice to seek less intrusive means as an alternative to a search and to narrowly scope any search that is undertaken.’
Garland added that a federal court authorized the search warrant earlier this week.
‘The search warrant was authorized by a federal court upon the required finding of probable cause,’ he said.
‘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 department filed a motion to unseal a search warrant and property receipt for the Mar-a-Lago search.
‘Just now, the Justice Department has filed a motion in the southern district of Florida to unseal a search warrant and property receipt relating to a court-approved search that the FBI conducted earlier this week,’ Garland said.
‘That search was a premises located in Florida belonging to the former president.’
Garland’s remarks came three days after Trump revealed that federal agents had descended on his Palm Beach home, and hours after reports that the FBI had seized sensitive national security documents from Mar-a-Lago two months prior.The FBI has been looking for classified material Trump may have illegally removed from the White House when he left office.
The Justice Department officially filed in court to unseal the search warrant.
‘At the time the warrant was initially executed, the Department provided notice directly to former President Trump’s counsel. The Department did not make any public statements about the search, and the search apparently attracted little or no public attention as it was taking place,’ the motion states.
‘Later that same day, former President Trump issued a public statement acknowledging the execution of the warrant.
‘In the days since, the search warrant and related materials have been the subject of significant interest and attention from news media organizations and other entities.’
The Justice Department argues for unsealing the warrant amid ‘intense public interest presented by a search of a residence of a former President’.
A federal court in Florida instructed the Justice Department to confer with Trump and report if he opposed the unsealing request by 3pm on Friday.
Trump did not immediately comment on the Justice Department’s latest move. On Monday night when he revealed the raid, he claimed it was a political attack.
‘It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024,’ Trump stated at the time.
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