A former federal prosecutor says a tidbit in newly unredacted sections of the Justice Department’s warrant to search Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort damages one of the former president’s potential defences.
On Wednesday, a federal magistrate judge unsealed a slightly less redacted version of the affidavit that ultimately allowed the FBI to search Trump’s Florida estate on August 8 last year.
One previously redacted sentence about material found at the property read: “Multiple documents also contained what appears to be FPOTUS’s handwritten notes.”
This was an “interesting” note that has potential implications for Trump’s defence, according to former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, who parsed the document in her latest Substack newsletter.
“This means Trump won’t be able to claim he never saw the documents,” Vance wrote. “At best he could maintain the notes were written while he was in office. But if he resorts to that argument, he still has to explain how the documents ended up at Mar-a-Lago after they were in his hands.”
Though not much new information was unveiled, Vance said: “We’re seeing the depth in the government’s case and learning more about its strength.”
“Perhaps most importantly, the release of these interesting pieces of information underscores just how much more there is that we don’t know,” she wrote.
The affidavit was originally submitted under seal in court last year when investigators sought permission to search Mar-a-Lago to find and retrieve classified documents they believed were improperly taken and stored there.
Other portions had already been unsealed by Judge Bruce Reinhart in response to media requests following the search. Trump was indicted last month on 37 felony counts related to his handling of classified material.