do those specific words create specific legal jeopardy for donald trump? i m john berman with brianna keilar, and judge bruce reinhart released several procedural court documents used to justify the search of mar-a-lago, providing new details and maybe a sharper focus on the president himself as a potential subject of a criminal probe. this is the document that was released and there is specific information in here about willful retention. in other words, they say he knew he had documents and he knew what they were. so this is all part of the argument over whether to release the affidavit justifying the search of mar-a-lago, prosecutors made the case for secrecy because they say evidence might be destroyed, but the judge set in motion the possibility of releasing a redacted version of the affidavit and that process will kick into gear as soon as next week. and ludicrous, ridiculous, bs, those words and phrases coming from some former trump senior officials who are scoffing
investigation and possibly chill witness cooperation. jessica schneider is here with the breaking details. what has the judge agreed to release? reporter: the judge has already made one crucial decision here. he says that he will unseal some relatively minor filings from the doj and this was something that the doj had said would be fine in their court filing, so the things that will be unsealed. it includes the department s motion to seal the warrant documents, also the court s order granting that motion to seal, and the criminal cover sheets here from the warrant application. the search warrant affidavit. so, those are relatively procedural, general information documents that will be unsealed. crucially, though, any information in those three documents that contain information about doj personnel, like names and contact information, that will all be redacted. so likely, what we re going to see later this afternoon won t contain anything substantive. it will just reveal som
transparency in this unprecedented situation and he set in motion essentially a process where the justice department can come and propose redactions to this crucial document that backs up that search and seizure at mar-a-lago last monday. so during this hearing there was a media lawyer advocating for transparency here, saying the judge is in the place of the media, in the place of the public and becomes the gatekeeper here for what is released widely. but the judge also was hearing from the justice department, from jay bratt, the head of counter intel, one of the top attorneys that we know has been working on this investigation. and one of the things that bratt emphasized is that this is an ongoing criminal investigation that needs to be protected, there s grand jury activity described in that affidavit, there are several witnesses whose interviews with the fbi or with the grand jury are also described in that affidavit, that it does have extensive information about the inves
documents would have became, taken out of mar-a-lago. that is evidence, not just things the government wanted to get back. and then finally the other thing that we learned was in the sealing request when the justice department went to court and said we want to keep this all under wraps before we do this search warrant, one of their reasons was that they had a fear evidence might be destroyed. they wrote those words to the judge. so that s these new documents, all of that said, the substantive piece of information, the thing that lays out the entire course of the investigation so far why that search was absolutely necessary is that affidavit. we still have a week or so of the justice department trying to negotiate redactions with the judge and so we re going to have to see if we learn anything more with that if it is released ultimately. katelyn, thank you for that. here with us now ellie honing, cnn political commentator errol louis and assistant professor of law alexis hoeing forg