LUCAS: Well, these are some of the most highly guarded secrets in the U.S. Some of those had the highest level of classification markings, including special access programs. It says that in the boxes that it recovered from the Florida property back in January of 2022, that there were more than 700 pages of classified documents in there.
#Redacted png archive
But in the letter, the archive stresses that it negotiated with Trump over the course of 2021 about getting presidential records back from Mar-a-Lago. The archives made this letter public this week after a copy of it leaked. This comes from a letter the National Archives sent to Trump's attorney, Evan Corcoran, in May.
MARTIN: OK, meanwhile, Ryan, as we've been waiting for this decision on this affidavit, more information has come out about an earlier search - right? - what the National Archives found at Mar-a-Lago earlier this year, and that includes highly classified documents, right? We do not know at this point, though, how long that will take. For now, the Justice Department will give the judge its proposed redactions. But since then, in a written order, Reinhart acknowledged that it may be the case that partial redactions in this instance would be so extensive - think of, like, huge chunks of text blacked out - that the document would just become unintelligible, and releasing it in redacted form would be meaningless. And some thought that that signaled that Reinhart was inclined to release at least a redacted version of the affidavit. At a hearing last week, he ordered that the government propose its redactions to the affidavit, basically masking sensitive information. The decision here is up to Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart. Any clues as to which way he's leaning on this? So this decision on whether this is released at all lies with the judge who approved the search warrant in the first place. They say this case is of enormous public interest, and this investigation has already been made public because we all know about it. Media outlets are fighting in court to try to get it released. So for all those reasons, the government says this affidavit should remain under seal. And they say that this affidavit is, in essence, a road map to their investigation and that releasing it could undermine that investigation. It says that the document contains sensitive information about its ongoing criminal investigation, about government witnesses, about specific investigative steps.
The Justice Department doesn't want any of this affidavit made public. What we do know is that by noon Eastern today, the Justice Department has to provide the court in Florida with its proposed redactions to this affidavit. It's unclear, actually, whether the public will see this affidavit at all at this point. MARTIN: So the affidavit would reveal the justification for the warrant that was used to search Mar-a-Lago. MARTIN: NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas joins us with more. The government has to submit its proposed redaction to the affidavit used to get the warrant for searching former President Trump's Mar-a-Lago club and home. The Justice Department faces a deadline today in federal court in Florida.
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