Trump Team Points out How the Affidavit Raises ‘More Questions Than Answers’ – Opinion

The Trump legal team is now responding to the release of the affidavit behind the warrant for the raid on President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. They are saying that the affidavit “raises more questions than answers,” and that it shows more than ever why their request for a special master to hold the documents should be granted.

In a Friday court filing, the Trump team asked again for the designation of special master.

“The Redacted Affidavit underscores why this Motion should be granted, as it provides almost no information that would allow Movant to understand why the raid took place, or what was taken from his home,” Trump’s legal team wrote.

About 20 pages from the 38 page document had been either completely or significantly redacted. At least one page of the document’s 24 pages was blacked out.

“The few lines that are unredacted raise more questions than answers. For instance, Paragraph 3 states, in pertinent part, as one of the bases for probable cause, that there ‘are Presidential records subject to record retention requirements currently remain[ing] at the PREMISES,’” the team argues.

So the affidavit, at least the part that we can see, doesn’t justify why the raid took place — it doesn’t indicate why they needed to conduct the raid or specify anything that would indicate an urgent need to go in, particularly when Trump was cooperating. It talks about classified documents but, at least in the unredacted parts, doesn’t deal with the question that the President can declassify and has complete purview over his records, as we noted in a prior case involving Bill Clinton.

Also, as the Trump legal team notes, the Presidential Records Act doesn’t provide for a criminal remedy.

Trump’s legal team continued, “This provides the deeply troubling prospect that President Trump’s home was raided under a pretense of a suspicion that Presidential records were on his property – even though the Presidential Records Act is not a criminally-enforceable statute.”

So, using the Act wouldn’t support this action by the FBI because even if it had been violated, it wouldn’t be a crime.

It also notes something else that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention. We’ve reported that the Biden White House was involved in the process against President Donald Trump, with contact with the DOJ — something that should trouble anyone that they had a hand in the process against their political opponent and then lied about it. However, the affidavit reveals that in February 2022, the Archivist had spoken to Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D.NY), about the records. They told her by letter that they had contacted DOJ as there were classified documents. This raises questions about what Maloney was actually saying or doing in relation to this investigation. Maloney just lost her primary to Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), so she’s out of office.