Chris Lange, FISM News
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The Justice Department has until noon today to unseal a redacted version of the Trump Mar-a-Lago search warrant affidavit. U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart approved the federal government’s proposed redactions Thursday, saying the DOJ had “met its burden of showing…good cause to seal portions of the affidavit.”
Reinhart, who presides in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, had given the federal government until noon Thursday to provide him with proposed redactions to the original affidavit after rejecting the Justice Department’s argument that the document should be kept under seal.
The judge concluded that the government showed “a compelling reason” for the redactions, saying a full release of the document’s contents would reveal the investigation’s “strategy, direction, scope, sources and methods” and “grand jury information” protected by federal rules, according to a Fox News report.
“I have reviewed the Government’s memorandum of law and proposed redactions to the search warrant Affidavit,” Reinhart wrote in his order to unseal the documents Thursday afternoon. “I am fully advised in the entire record, including the contents of the Affidavit.”
On Aug. 5, Reinhart signed the FBI’s warrant affidavit for the raid on Trump’s Florida residence. Three days later, agents entered Mar-a-Lago and seized 20 boxes of documents during an hours-long search.
Earlier this month, Reinhart unsealed the FBI’s search warrant and property receipt from the search, which includes references to “various classified/TS/SCI documents,” including four sets of top-secret documents and three sets of confidential documents.
Reinhart’s involvement in legal decisions involving the unprecedented raid has been called into question by some on the right, citing his alleged bias against the former president.
Tea Party Patriots Action this week filed a federal complaint seeking Reinhart’s removal from the case, citing “a conflict of interest and a pattern and history of hostility to President Trump.”
Included in the complaint are several examples of Reinhart’s alleged bias against Trump, including purported social media posts by Reinhart criticizing the former president and public records showing that he donated to the campaigns of former President Barack Obama and former Florida Republican Gov. Jeb Bush in his efforts to become the GOP’s 2016 presidential nominee over Trump.
The lawsuit seeks to have Reinhart removed from the case and, potentially, from his position in the court.
“Judge Reinhart should be disciplined and removed as a federal magistrate because of his failure to meet the standards of ethical conduct and character necessary for the public to have confidence in the nonpartisan role of a judge in a matter of this extreme public interest,” the suit reads.
“Clearly, Judge Reinhart is a partisan and has publicly expressed his partisan views against former President Trump,” it continues, alleging that his history of “antipathy for the former President is such that he should have recused when presented with the search warrant for the highly problematic search of President Trump’s home in Florida.”
The first-of-its-kind raid on a former president’s private residence set off a political firestorm, fueling ongoing accusations by some conservatives that the Biden administration is weaponizing the Justice Department to go after its political opponents.