I’ve seen many warrant applications and their supporting affidavits. If the identity of the person creates a risk to the investigation, they are referred to only as a “confidential informant.” No need to reveal the actual names.
FBI Search and Seizure at Trump's Mar-A-Lago Residence, August 8, 2022, Case Dismissed July 15, 2024
Reading through the above posts, my understanding is that:
- The DOJ approved the release of the warrant (which includes Attachments A and B) and an itemized list of what was taken.
- Fox News said that they wanted the affidavit to ALSO be released.
- Someone asked what an affidavit is.
- People got confused by the discussion of an affidavit and came to believe that the affidavit HAD been approved for release.
Unless attachment A or B is the affidavit, I do not believe that it has been approved for release. Not even under a redacted form.
Yes, Trump will only see that “Individual 1” ratted him out . 
No, I saw on Twitter than Andrew Weissman also appears to be confused and thinks that the affidavit was requested to be unsealed as well. Which I think is incorrect, but we shall see.
I linked the motion above. Attachments A, and B are the location(s) to be searched and the item(s) to be seized.
Trump could certainly file a motion to unseal and/or inspect the affidavit. Maybe they already have. It’s unclear to me whether that would be successful - possibly now that the search has been completed it might be. Without knowing what the underlying reasoning for the warrant was it’s impossible to know.
ETA: The tweet that seems incorrect from all the other reporting I’ve seen:
I guess we’ll see then… Maybe he knows what the attachments usually are.
It’s probably also important to clarify that the deadline imposed for tomorrow is only for DOJ and Trump’s lawyers to let the judge know if Trump is going to oppose the unsealing. I expect if Trump is going to oppose (what are the odds?), the judge will set a motion schedule and a hearing date.
This operation can’t have just been to recover the documents and that’s that. If Trump had, say, a few pounds of plutonium, then that’s something that can be retrieved. Documents really can’t be. If a document is ever out of the control of its proper secure owners and systems, then you can never know that there weren’t copies made, and that you have all of the copies. Which is why we need such draconian laws about loss of control of documents. When someone steals documents, you absolutely must punish them, as deterrence.
I understand your points but:
- The US government might need to know what’s in those documents, for the sake of its own functioning - where intelligence assets are, what promises have been made, what the codes are for the nuclear football, etc. Retrieval might not be entirely concerned with hiding it from the world as simply with allowing everyone’s work to continue.
- Trump can always say that he de-classified everything, for his own sake, and no one can really say otherwise - in a sense. (Biden can say that he re-classified it, and that allows them to snatch it back, but it leaves Trump in a sufficiently vague legal hole that you might not be able to successfully prosecute him.)
The best punishment will probably be that we all know that Trump did something far more extreme and unforgivable than Hillary Clinton did with her private email server. And then he compounded that matter by turning it from a secret and into something public, for everyone to know about him.
It’s like if you crap your pants and your biggest enemy is so embarrassed for you that he tries to help you get to the bathroom to clean up, without anyone noticing, but you start crying and shouting, draw attention to yourself, and now everyone can see the big brown wet spot running down your legs.
How terribly sad.
We likely will never see the classified documents.
The threats against the FBI are disturbing.
Oddly- ““Anyone being investigated by the FBI is not qualified to be the president of the United States.”” has gone by the wayside, along with “anyone taking the 5th is guilty” and the GOP supporting law enforcement. The cult of trump is strong.
We do, and it is not illegal in the public press. What is illegal is threatening a Federal Agent.
Yeah, I bring a similar point up when I point out that Reagan loved vote by mail.
What/why the fuck are people using “TFG”?
Threatening a Judge is also a crime.
Once the warrant is served, you can call your lawyers. But that will not delay the search.
If it was a normal non-wealthy citizen, maybe, since a indictment without a conviction would not be a disaster. But in the case of trump, it would be a disaster, he would scream he was “vindicated!”.
OK - I guess I was confusing the affidavit with the warrant itself and list of confiscated items. Trump does get copies of those, but not the affidavit.
I don’t think that’s the way it works. Here is a Politifact article on the subject.
I don’t think he can just claim to have declassified something. He can’t just do it in his own mind. I believe there must be a record about something being declassified, which makes sense; whether data is classified or not needs to be available information so everyone involved knows how to handle it. It can’t be ambiguous. Per the article above:
While Trump has the power to declassify information, he doesn’t appear to have done that in this case, at least at the time the story broke.
“There’s no question that the president has broad authority to declassify almost anything at any time without any process, but that’s not what happened here,” said Stephen I. Vladeck, professor at the University of Texas School of Law. “He did not, in fact, declassify the information he shared with the Russians, which is why the Washington Post did not publish that information.”
That bit above is in reference to sensitive information he provided to Russian officials in a meeting.
There is another point made right after, specific to the info he provided to the Russians, and it may or may not be relevant here depending on exactly what was in the documents that were taken from him.
Instead, Vladeck said, Trump “took it upon himself to authorize officials from a foreign government to receive classified national security information that was itself derived from a different foreign government’s intelligence gathering. That’s just not the same thing as what Sen. Risch described, and the law on this topic is far murkier.”
So, while Trump can declassify secrets the US has, if those are actually another nation’s secrets that the US is in possession of, it’s potentially an international incident and can’t be easily brushed off. It could be a diplomatic problem, even a treaty violation and might hurt the country’s relationship with other nations, and as said, the law is not clear about how that sort of thing could be handled. This might even be an issue of international law rather than US law.
(Bolding added)
The article does not say that (nor did a similar article that I recently read on the subject).
But even if it did, he can always say, “I wrote it down on a sticky note. I don’t know what happened to the sticky note.” And no one can prove otherwise.
I inferred that bit, because what the article does say is that “he doesn’t appear to have done that in this case”. The only reasonable way to know if he has classified something or not is if it is somehow recorded somewhere. Otherwise that statement makes no sense.
How does that fit with your presumption that he can just declare it after the fact?
He also clearly stated that the Justice Department doesn’t play favorites one way or the other in their investigations, and that they make a policy of not talking publicly about their work.
If you want to see the conference, here’s a link. (The video is over an hour long, but its mostly a test pattern and empty podium. Garland’s statement is only about 7 minutes.)
From the eyewitness accounts of the incident, he doesn’t appear to have done it. He could have done so just before the witnesses entered the room, however, if the matter ended up being taken to court.
Or he could produce what looks like a very official document, dated Jan 19th.
I fully expect him to present at some point the document where he pardoned himself, the last day of hos presidency. I doubt the courts will uphold it, but he will try.
The Former Guy. A way of referencing he-who-shall-not-be-named, for those who cannot stand to type that name. I kinda like it and have started using it.
In which case the “caveat” as mentioned in the article is no caveat at all.
I think you’re just incorrect as to the legality of this, though. Because I believe this is how this would play out.
DOJ: “Sir, these files are highly classified and it is not legal for you to have possession of them.”
DJT: “I unclassified them when I was in the office so I can have them, no laws were broken.”
DOJ: “Do you have any record of this?”
DJT: “I don’t need this on record, the President can do whatever the Hell he wants with classified information.”
DOJ: “Despite what you believe sir, you are not the President of the United States. And President Biden has not declassified these documents.”
I can’t prove a negative. It’s up to you to find the statute requiring the President to write an official declassification note.
I’m not proving anything. I’m not a legal expert so nobody should even trust my “proof” if I tried. I’m casting doubt on your assumption.
I could very well be wrong, but I also think you might be, and my (amateur) opinion is that I think you are.