CNN, joined by the Washington Post, NBC News and Scripps, asked a court last week to unseal documents related to the FBI’s search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence – including documents not covered by the Department of Justice’s own offer to unseal a selection of collateral materials.
Specifically, CNN and the other outlets are asking the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida to unseal the entire court filing, including all probable cause affidavits filed in support of the warrant. search. These explain why investigators believe there is probable cause that a crime has been committed and that evidence of this crime existed in recent days at the site where the search was sought.
The request was filed after the Justice Department submitted its own request in Federal Court to unseal certain warrant documents. In remarks announcing the request, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department is seeking the release of the “search warrant and property receipt” from the FBI search.
In the unsealing filing filed by CNN and other media with the court, they stressed “the historical significance of these events.”
“Before the events of this week, not since the Nixon administration exercised the power of the federal government to seize the records of a former president so publicly,” the media said in the filing.
The filing says “the overwhelming public interest in these particular documents outweighs any alleged interest in keeping them secret.”
“Media responders are certainly not seeking these recordings for any improper purpose,” the media said. “On the contrary, public access to these documents will promote public understanding of this historically significant and unprecedented execution of a search warrant at the residence of a former president.”
