CNN, joined by The Washington Post, NBC News and Scripps, asked a court last week to unseal documents connected to the FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence — including documents not covered by the Justice Department’s own bid to unseal a selection of the warrant materials.
Specifically, CNN and the other outlets are asking for the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida to unseal the entire record filed with the court, including all probable cause affidavits filed in support of the search warrant. These lay out why investigators believe that there is probable cause that a crime was committed and the evidence of that 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 with the federal court to unseal certain warrant materials. 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’s search.
In the unsealing filing by CNN and the other outlets with the court, they pointed to “the historic importance of these events.”
“Before the events of this week, not since the Nixon Administration had the federal government wielded its power to seize records from a former President in such a public fashion,” the outlets said in the filing.
The filing said that “tremendous public interest in these records in particular outweighs any purported interest in keeping them secret.”
“The Media Intervenors certainly do not seek these records for any illegitimate purpose,” the outlets said. “To the contrary, public access to these records will promote public understanding of this historically significant, unprecedented execution of a search warrant in the residence of a former President.”