Agreeing to DOJ's redacted version of Trump Mar-a-Lago affidavit was a mistake by the judge: Turley

close

Video

DOJ is 'notorious' for over-redacting: Turley

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley analyzes the Justice Department's effort to keep the affadavit that led to search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago home private on 'Your World.'

Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley said Thursday there will be "hell to pay" if the Justice Department didn't find the purported "smoking gun" at Trump's Mar-a-Lago home that they used as justification to obtain the warrant for the FBI’s raid.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart ordered the Justice Department to unseal and make public a redacted version of the affidavit used to obtain a warrant to raid the president's home by Friday at noon. Turley said on "Your World" that the public should expect a heavily redacted document, pointing to the department's reputation of being "notorious for over-redactions to serve tactical purposes."

While it's still unclear whether the redacted affidavit will provide better insight into the FBI's reasoning for the raid, Turley said he thinks Judge Reinhart "made a mistake" accepting the Justice Department's redacted version as it was presented, without any pushback or demands of increased transparency.

TRUMP FILES MOTION SEEKING INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF DOCS SEIZED DURING FBI RAID ON MAR-A-LAGO

Former president Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.  (Charles Trainor Jr./Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

"The concern I have is that the judge does not appear to have pushed back. He is suggesting that the government got it just right," Turley told Fox News host Neil Cavuto. "He doesn’t have any area where he’s saying, look, I still think you need to explore this section or that section….the assumption is that there’s plenty of redacted material where the judge could have said, you need to explain this one to me, why can’t we be a little more transparent."

The DOJ turned over their redacted version of the affidavit to Reinhart on Thursday at noon after he rejected the government's argument to keep the document under seal, citing the "intense public and historical interest" in the FBI's "unprecedented" raid of a former president's private residence. Four hours later, Reinhart said that he has determined that the Justice Department "has met its burden of showing that its proposed redactions are narrowly tailored to serve the Government’s legitimate interest in the integrity of the ongoing investigation and are the least onerous alternative to sealing the entire Affidavit." 

TRUMP CALLS FOR MAR-A-LAGO AFFIDAVIT RELEASE; DENOUNCES FBI: ‘NO WAY TO JUSTIFY’

U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart ordered the Justice Department to unseal and make public a redacted version of the affidavit used to obtain a warrant to raid the president's home by Friday at noon.  (Xinhua/Liu Jie via Getty Images)

"I think this judge made a mistake in signing off on this language. It had all of the nuance and selectivity of a cyclone," Turley said. "We may see in the legal material what they were saying – they had probable cause of and did they have to justify an open-ended search."

Cavuto noted that Reinhart is the same judge that approved the affidavit allowing the FBI to raid the personal residence of the former president.

"The judge knows what precipitated this and warranted that search, but then we have to wonder, they did the search, took a lot of documents, I’m wondering, let’s say… they go to the home, don’t find the documents or the smoking gun that supposedly triggered all of this," Cavuto said. "Then what?"

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP 

If that's the case, Turley said there will be "hell to pay," because "that would be a repetition of past investigations."

But, he cautioned, "We don’t know if that’s the case."

"What I think should really have occupied the judge to push back a little is that the government was demanding until recently complete secrecy while the media was reporting all of these leaks from the government, including material no doubt in this affidavit," Turley said. "So I’m hoping that the Justice Department was more forthcoming."