Questions about the unprecedented search continue to grow, from Democrats seeking answers about security risks from documents found and Republicans asking about justification for the search.
Garland requests Trump’s Mar-a-Lago search warrant to be unsealed
Attorney General Merrick Garland said he personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant on former President Donald Trump’s property.
Ariana Triggs and Patrick Colson-Price, USA TODAY
- The Justice Department said it would return Donald Trump’s passports Tuesday.
- The department opposes unsealing the affidavit justifying the search.
- Lawmakers seek answers about what was found in the search and what justified it.
WASHINGTON – Federal authorities said they would return Donald Trump’s three passports Tuesday, as the Justice Department faced rising pressure to release more details and justification for the unprecedented search of the former president’s Florida estate.
The notification about the passports came Monday in an email made public by Trump’s representatives. Jay Bratt, a top official in the Justice Department’s National Security Division, said in the email agents determined the travel documents were unrelated to the search Aug. 8 for classified documents.
“We are returning them, and they will be ready for pickup at (the Washington Field Office) at 2 pm today,” Bratt wrote of the two expired passports and one active diplomatic passport.
The FBI said in a statement that in executing search warrants, the agency “follows search and seizure procedures ordered by courts, then returns items that do not need to be retained for law enforcement purposes.”
Mar-a-Lago search warrant: What the warrant for Trump’s residence says
Who can classify and declassify?How the government handles sensitive documents
Trump claimed Monday the passports had been stolen. “This is an assault on a political opponent at a level never seen before in our Country,” he said in a post on Truth Social.
Christina Bobb, a Trump lawyer, said the collection of the passports showed there was overreach.
“There’s no room for error,” Bobb told “The Ingraham Angle” on Fox News on Monday. “So I don’t give them a pass as this was a simple mistake.”
The passport dispute came as questions about the search intensify. Congressional committees have asked for briefings on potential national security risks from Trump keeping “secret” and “top secret” records. House Republicans told the Justice Department to preserve documents about the search.
Here are the latest updates on the search:
In the week since the FBI searched former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, new details have trickled out about the unprecedented investigation into a former president.
Here is what we have learned over the past week and what questions remain unanswered.
– Rick Rouan
The Florida federal magistrate who signed off the search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate has set a Thursday hearing to weigh arguments on whether to unseal the government’s affidavit supporting the search.
The Justice Department opposed unsealing the affidavit, saying it could harm its continuing investigation. But Trump called for the “immediate release” of the unredacted affidavit, in a post on Truth Social.
U.S. Magistrate Bruce Reinhart scheduled a hearing at 1 p.m. Thursday, when a consortium of media organizations are expected to argue for the release of the document.
Even before the FBI executed a search warrant on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property, the ex-president’s supporters on the far-right, who had spent a year after the Jan. 6 insurrection quietly stewing, began ramping up threats.
But since Trump announced last week that the FBI had raided him, across the internet, experts on extremism have seen a spike in violent and hateful rhetoric directed towards the federal government in general and the FBI specifically. Given the potentially limitless reach of internet pundits, whose message can connect with even one lone person prone to violence, they worry the possibility of attacks will only increase.
“We haven’t seen this level of real mobilization to potential violence since the mid-90s,” said Javed Ali, associate professor of practice at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan and a former senior counterterrorism official at DHS. “This is really disturbing, and I know firsthand from my colleagues back at the FBI that they’re taking this as seriously as they should be — it’s very upsetting to them.”
The early- to mid-1990s saw violence and angry rhetoric directed at the federal government following two tragic events: the botched raid of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, and a standoff and shooting between federal agents and the Weaver family at Ruby Ridge in Idaho. The two events, which still inspire domestic extremists today, helped fuel an anti-government movement that culminated in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995 — the most deadly domestic terrorism incident in U.S. history.
The Mar-a-Lago search, and the corresponding investigation of Trump, is being viewed as a similar overreach, experts said.
– Will Carless, Ella Lee
DOJ opposes release of affidavit justifying search
Despite releasing the search warrant Friday, the Justice Department on Monday opposed releasing the affidavit that explained to a judge the probable cause that a crime was committed, to justify the search.
News organizations had filed a motion in federal court to make public the affidavit, which would shed new light on the department’s investigation into Trump’s alleged removal of classified documents from the White House.
But the department said unsealing the affidavit “would “irreparably harm the government’s ongoing criminal investigation.” Releasing the information would be “highly likely to compromise future investigative steps” and could “chill future cooperation by witnesses” in this investigation and others in the future, the department argued.
Trump called Monday in a post on Truth Socalfor the “immediate release” of the affidavit, but his lawyers haven’t replied formally to the filing.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart hasn’t ruled on the release yet.
Congress presses for information about search
Two congressional panels –the House Intelligence and Oversight and Reform committees – have asked for a briefing from the director of national security about potential risks from documents stored at Mar-a-Lago.
The head of the Intelligence panel, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said the documents could lead to “extremely grave damage to national security” if disclosed.
Republican lawmakers want to learn more about what justified the search.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., a former FBI agent and federal prosecutor, said the unprecedented search needed unprecedented justification. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said the Justice Department must lay out its case to “show that this was not just a fishing expedition.”
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