The statement that served to justify the search of Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump's mansion in Florida, is already public, but the released version has practically half of the content crossed out.
In that affidavit are the indications of a crime against the former president, but none of the sources or the concrete evidence have been revealed.
There are only a few novel notes, including that the FBI feared that Trump's withholding of the documents was endangering the identity of an intelligence source.
The statement is signed by an FBI special agent whose identity is not disclosed.
Allusions to the course of the investigation have also been crossed out.
Yes, the origin of the case is reconstructed, with the give and take by the National Archives so that Trump would return the documentation required by law, first, and with the surprise that when he delivered the boxes there were 184 classified documents .
Of those, 67 documents were marked as confidential;
92, as secret, and 25, as top secret.
The FBI had indications that Trump kept more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and so requested the search.
But the bulk of these indications are crossed out in the document made public this Friday.
These kinds of attestations are not published when a case is still in progress.
The Department of Justice argued that its dissemination could compromise the investigation and that if the document was published only partially it would be incomprehensible and meaningless, so it was opposed to it.
"The omissions necessary to mitigate damage to the integrity of the investigation would be so extensive as to render the remaining text without meaningful content," he said in a brief filed in court last week.
Federal judge Bruce E. Reinhart, however, decided that it should be published, accepting that substantial parts be withheld.
Whether or not what remains is of public interest, relevant and significant is not up to him to say, he argued at the hearing held last Thursday in the South Florida court of which he is the owner.
The Department of Justice delivered this Thursday the non-confidential version.
After receiving it, Judge Reinhart, who was the one who approved the search warrant, approved the proposed cross-outs and decided that the document should be published this Friday.
Both the Prosecutor's Office and Trump agreed to publish the search warrant with its annexes and the inventory of assets seized by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
This allowed us to know that Trump is being investigated for at least three possible crimes punishable by fines and/or long prison sentences and also that numerous documents classified as “top secret” were found in the registry.
Trump later claimed that he had declassified those documents, although there is no documentary trace of it.
[Breaking news.
There will be an update soon]
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