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Former federal prosecutor Shanlon Wu said on Saturday that Donald Trump's lawyers are hoping that the affidavit used to search the former president's Mar-a-Lago residence would be heavily redacted when released.
Katie Phang, host of The Katie Phang Show on MSNBC, asked Wu: "Why is Trump's legal team continuing to hold off taking a position on the affidavit in court?"
"The reality is they're afraid of how embarrassing that release could be and so they are confident that likely it is not gonna be fully unsealed," Wu responded. "By the time those redactions get made, it's gonna basically look like one giant solid black box at that point."
"So I think they want to do the posturing that they want it released but, in fact, they don't and once it comes out in some incredibly redacted form then of course they can point to all the redactions and say well this is what they are trying to hide," he said, adding that this is the "real strategy" that he suspects will happen.
On Thursday, Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart heard arguments from media organizations calling for the release of the affidavit in order for the public to know the reasons behind the FBI search. The former president also called for the release of the affidavit.
Reinhart said that officials are concerned that releasing the affidavit could risk their probe against Trump, according to The Palm Beach Post, but then later agreed that some portions of the affidavit will likely be unsealed after proposed redactions to the document are submitted by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on August 25, according to local news station WPTV.
Reinhart signed off on the warrant allowing the FBI to search Trump's home as part of a probe looking into the way White House documents were handled after he left the White House. The judge recently released the search warrant after the DOJ asked for it to be made public.
During the raid earlier this month, FBI agents recovered classified White House documents that included records reportedly related to nuclear weapons, among other secret sensitive information.
The search was approved by Attorney General Merrick Garland, with the purpose of looking for top secret (TS) and sensitive compartmentalized information (SCI) as well as other classified documents. Sources told Newsweek that the search was carried out after authorities received a tip from an informer who knew what documents Trump kept and where he kept them.
Meanwhile on Friday, Trump hinted that his legal team plans to challenge the search by filing a legal motion that might allege violations of the Fourth Amendment, which he believes prohibits unreasonable search and seizures.
However, Wu thinks that there is no "coherent theme" in the efforts made to support Trump against the search.
"At one moment, they are talking about this is an unconstitutional search and the rights have been violated, and another moment you hear Trump talking about how he actually declassified all of the information and so there is nothing to look at. They can't make up their mind on what to do is my view on it," he said.
Meanwhile, Trump described the raid as "atrocities being perpetrated by the FBI and DOJ," and accused law enforcement of "destroying our Country" in a series of posts on his Truth Social account.
Newsweek reached out to Trump's media office for comment.
About the writer
Fatma Khaled is a Newsweek weekend reporter based in New York City. Her focus is reporting on U.S. politics, world ... Read more