Newly unsealed sections of the search warrant authorizing FBI agents to raid former President Donald Trump‘s home last year suggest that he was attempting “significant obstruction,” according to former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance.
Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart ordered that “additional portions” of the search warrant be made public on Wednesday. Several parts of the document remain blacked out. Reinhart unsealed the new sections while denying a request from multiple media organizations to release the full, unredacted version.
The newly released parts of the warrant reveal that surveillance camera footage taken from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home show boxes being moved out of a storage area shortly before Department of Justice (DOJ) investigators visited the home to collect classified and sensitive documents in June 2022.
Trump was charged last month with multiple federal crimes related to his retention of classified documents after leaving the White House and his alleged attempts to obstruct justice when asked to return the records. The ex-president pleaded not guilty to 37 felony counts and claims that he is the victim of a political “witch hunt.”
Vance said in a tweet on Wednesday that the unredacted portions of the warrant show that DOJ investigators already had “early evidence” last year to justify obstruction charges against the former president.
“It looks like DOJ knew, when they asked for the search warrant, that a significant number of boxes Trump took out of the WH weren’t included in the storage area he identified as the only repository of his materials,” Vance tweeted. “Early evidence of significant obstruction of the investigation.”
Newsweek has reached out to the office of Trump via email for comment.
Trump Search Warrant Underscores ‘Significant Obstruction’: Ex-Prosecutor (newsweek.com)