WASHINGTON — A federal magistrate judge in Florida has ordered the Justice Department to release a redacted version of the affidavit laying out the government’s case for executing a search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home earlier this month.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart accepted the Justice Department’s request to keep secret the identities of witnesses, law enforcement agents, people who haven’t been charged, grand jury information as well as details about “the investigation’s strategy, direction, scope, sources, and methods.”
The judge gave DOJ until Friday at noon Eastern time to file the redacted affidavit on the court’s public docket.
Reinhart wrote that the government had “met its burden of showing that its proposed redactions are narrowly tailored to serve the government’s legitimate interest in the integrity of the ongoing investigation” and that they were the “least onerous alternative” to keeping the entire document sealed.
Earlier in the day, a coalition of media organizations that had pushed for the release of the affidavit and also asked the judge for a redacted version of a brief DOJ filed offering its legal reasoning for keeping parts of the affidavit secret. Reinhart’s order did not address that request.
The Justice Department had originally opposed releasing any part of the affidavit, arguing that it could jeopardize the ongoing investigation, put witnesses at risk, and scare off other potential cooperators.
After hearing arguments last week, Reinhart found that DOJ had failed to make the case for keeping the entire document secret at this stage. He ordered the government to propose a redacted version of the affidavit that could be shared with the public, and to file a brief explaining why specific pieces of information should stay blacked out.
