the nature of the material seized. while i would like to see a hint of course and we may well see the number of top-secret, the number of sensitive, compartmented documents and then confidential and then secret, you know, i m hopeful there will be at least a hint. i don t think it s likely. but there could be a hint that, hey. in the top-secret realm this got into national defense or this involved plans for war. i doubt that s going to happen but that s in the high end of expectation. i think we ll see a lot of blacked out lines with regard to that portion of the probable cause statement. let s talk from your experience about how unprecedented it is to release this kind of affidavit before charges, before a case has proceeded. yeah, so it is not unprecedented is a little strong but extremely unusual especially early in the investigation,
could be subjected to harms including retaliation, intimidation, or harassment and even threats to their physical safety. as the court has already noted these concerns are not hypothetical in this case. and then to your point, it s all the rest of that is blacked out. they ve clearly given examples of when that has happened with witness intimidation. they then go on to say that other categories are an investigation road map. this is the justice department. this is signed by as you know one antonio gonzales, the u.s. attorney on this case and j. bratt. they go through the investigation road map, through the safety of law enforcement personnel, and here they have a number of other redactions. it is a minor but important redactions are necessary to protect the safety of law enforcement personnel, and they say they are appropriate to
they have the dates listed that they, kash patel is making a statement in the article in may of 2022 and paragraph 61 they refer to an e-mail from the department of justice in june of 2022. so the following month where the department is saying there is classified information at mar-a-lago. they re still taking that position and not crediting the statement in the breitbart article. it seems that the paragraphs between 53 and 61 are probably addressing that issue of classification. it is so enlightening. thank you so much. this brady material is in every case. the prosecution is required to provide information they have
and clearly laid out here, the number of efforts that have been made to try to get compliance from the former president in what the government believes was his improper handling of this material. it wasn t a case of put a lock on the door and we re good, that was a different framing from the former president and his associates about how that played out when they say he has been cooperative. when tom talked about how there were disparate pieces, we know many of the people in his public life, both as a businessman and in his time at the white house, at the end of the day he would scoop up the things on his desk and put them into a box and take them to the residence. and there you would possibly explain how a personal note, a confidential document, and other things that are unrelated could end up in the same location, including things like his passports. so what this gives us is a window into donald trump s personal practices that are very
situations makes it very clear that there has been a course of action involving the former president or perhaps people around him that leads doj to have concerns that the judge, too, seems to have accepted, in permitting so much of this material to remain redacted. i think important contextual note for all of us. obviously we would all like to read every word of this affidavit but it is far more important that doj be able to protect the integrity of its investigation, that there not be any more public signaling than absolutely essential of where doj is headed next in this investigation, what steps it will take, what witnesses it will interact with. so that this case can proceed to its logical conclusion and justice can be done. we don t know if anyone will be charged as a result of this investigation. much of the evidence we re discussing publicly looks very incriminating, specifically for the former president who was