DOJ opposes making Mar-a-Lago affidavit public, saying it could harm investigation

WASHINGTON (TND) — Former President Donald Trump and his team are disputing the classification of documents seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate. So what happens next after the Federal Bureau of Investigation's unprecedented raid, and will charges be filed?

The Department of Justice filed a motion trying to block the release of the FBI search warrant affidavit, despite Attorney General Merrick Garland pushing publicly for transparency.

The DOJ said, "if disclosed, the affidavit would serve as a roadmap to the government's ongoing investigation, providing specific details about its direction and likely course, in a manner that is highly likely to compromise future investigative steps."

“There are a number of steps. There's obviously documentary evidence. These are the documents themselves that they obtained during the search word but there also appear to be a number of witness interviews that may also need to be done. So, even though a search warrant reflects a pretty advanced stage of the investigation, they've obviously presented evidence to a judge to get authorization to do the search warrant. That's not the last step,” Vignarajah said.

On Monday, the Justice Department filed a motion trying to block the release of the FBI search warrant affidavit, despite the DOJ saying, “if disclosed, the affidavit would serve as a roadmap to the government's ongoing investigation, providing specific details about its direction and likely course in a manner that is highly likely to compromise future investigative steps.”

“This sounds like there was a critical discussion at the highest levels, where the Justice Department, prosecutors and agents have said look, there are potential witnesses who would be compromised if the affidavit was disclosed to the public. There are future witnesses who may be reluctant to speak with agents and with the grand jury if this affidavit is released to the public. What it reflects, bottom line, is that there's an ongoing investigation and they're not ready to close off additional avenues of investigation before bringing their investigation to a decision point about whether to bring an indictment for it or not,” said Vignarajah.

There are now calls from both sides of the aisle to release the affidavit on specific documents taken from Mar-a-Lago, as many say transparency is needed as the investigation continues.

“There's no question there's such a public appetite for this transparency, for the Justice Department to say ‘not yet,’ is not to say they’re not going to release it. It's a suggestion that if they were to release it at this moment, it would compromise the ongoing investigation and that's a balancing act that has to be struck in a lot of cases,” Vignarajah said. “Even though we all want to read it, we want to know what's going on, I think we have to allow the wheels of justice to turn at the regular pace.”