since january, the national archives has retrieved more than 700 pages of classified documents from former president trump s florida home. te department of justice had argued to keep the affidavit under seal to protect witnesses and their investigation. but news organizations including abc news argued the public had a right to know. and the former president in public called for the affidavit to be released, but his lawyers did not argue that in court. the question tonight, when this document is revealed, how much will be redacted? and what could we actually learn? abc s chief washington correspondent jonathan karl leads us off. reporter: we may soon learn more about why the justice department took the extraordinary step of searching donald trump s mar-a-lago home. this morning, the doj lawyers submitted a redacted version of the document used to justify the search a so-called affidavit. and just hours later, judge bruce reinhart ordered them to release it to the public by noon tomo
3:00 p.m. on air and on livestream, answ tonight, several developing stories as we come on the air. a judge ordering the release of the redacted affidavit tied to the search of trump s mar-a-lago. rising alarm over the potential for a nuclear disaster in ukraine. and millions on alert for more major flooding in the deep south. first, the breaking news in the mar-a-lago search. the affidavit the government relied on to justify the search of former president s trump s home. a judge ordering a redacted version released by noon tomorrow. agreeing with the justice department that certain portions should be blacked out. what could the document show? jonathan karl with late reporting. in ukraine, u.n. officials sounding the alarm about europe s largest nuclear power plant. for the first time, that plant cut off from the power grid. all six nuclear reactors shut down. strid owe circulating online
compelling reason/good cause to seal portions of the affidavit and that the redactions are narrowly tailored to serve the government s legitimate interest. jon karl joining us tonight. j jon, the big question here, what will this redacted document actually reveal about why the fbi wanted to search donald trump s home? reporter: that is the question, whit. what we know is that in that search, the federal agents retrieved more than 20 boxes of government material. 11 sets of documents that were marked ed classified, some at highest known level of classification. the markings reserved for the government s most sensitive secrets. but what this affidavit, depending on how much is re redacted could tell us, is why the justice department felt it was necessary to go in, in the way they went in, to retrieve those documents so urgently. as for donald trump, as you mentioned earlier, he has said publicly that he is in favor of releasing this affidavit, but his lawyers had absolutely
i think most people are like that now. gabe, thank you so much. such an important report. and new day continues right now. we begin with six words that could spell legal jeopardy for donald trump, willful retention of national defense information. i m brianna keilar with john berman this morning and those words appear in one of several documents that were unsealed yesterday by judge bruce reinhart. these are documents that were used to justify the search of mar-a-lago and they put a sharper focus on the former president himself as a potential subject of the criminal probe. the document contains specific language about willful retention, in other words, they say trump knew he had them and he knew what these documents were. this was all part of the argument over whether to release the affidavit justifying the
judge. one of the things we ve been trying to point out to people this whole time is it s never been clear necessarily that this search and investigation was into donald trump specifically. that he is the one who personally retained these documents, but do those words, when you re talking about the willful retention of national security documents, does that put the focus in your mind more squarely on him? it does. i mean, to be fair, it is possible that this is evidence that mark meadows willfully took all those documents, stuffed them away in mar-a-lago and left them there and that mark meadows refused to return them, but given the co-location of these documents in donald trump s home, the scope of the number of people who might have willfully put them there is pretty slim. i suppose you might also include jared or ivanka, but it s narrowing it down pretty closely to mr. trump himself. paul, i know you re specifically interested in the