August 25, 2022 7:05pm EDT
Agreeing to DOJ's redacted version of Trump Mar-a-Lago affidavit was a mistake by the judge: Turley
Judge ordered the unsealing of the Trump raid affidavit by noon on Friday, Aug. 26
By Yael Halon | Fox News
Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley said Thursday there will be "hell to pay" if the Justice Department didn't find the purported "smoking gun" at Trump's Mar-a-Lago home that they used as justification to obtain the warrant for the FBI’s raid.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart ordered the Justice Department to unseal and make public a redacted version of the affidavit used to obtain a warrant to raid the president's home by Friday at noon. Turley said on "Your World" that the public should expect a heavily redacted document, pointing to the department's reputation of being "notorious for over-redactions to serve tactical purposes."
While it's still unclear whether the redacted affidavit will provide better insight into the FBI's reasoning for the raid, Turley said he thinks Judge Reinhart "made a mistake" accepting the Justice Department's redacted version as it was presented, without any pushback or demands of increased transparency.
"The concern I have is that the judge does not appear to have pushed back. He is suggesting that the government got it just right," Turley told Fox News host Neil Cavuto. "He doesn’t have any area where he’s saying, look, I still think you need to explore this section or that section….the assumption is that there’s plenty of redacted material where the judge could have said, you need to explain this one to me, why can’t we be a little more transparent."
The DOJ turned over their redacted version of the affidavit to Reinhart on Thursday at noon after he rejected the government's argument to keep the document under seal, citing the "intense public and historical interest" in the FBI's "unprecedented" raid of a former president's private residence. Four hours later, Reinhart said that he has determined that the Justice Department "has met its burden of showing that its proposed redactions are narrowly tailored to serve the Government’s legitimate interest in the integrity of the ongoing investigation and are the least onerous alternative to sealing the entire Affidavit."
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https://www.foxnews.com/media/agreeing-doj-redacted-version-trump-mar-a-lago-affidavit-mistake-judge-turley
