Many legal experts appeared stunned Friday afternoon upon reading the FBI’s unsealed, redacted affidavit released by a federal judge after several news organizations had filed a Freedom of Information request for the document used to obtain a “search and seizure” warrant of Mar-a-Lago.
Few, it seems, expected the document to revel to the extent it did the sheer volume and range of classified documents Donald Trump had been storing at Mar-a-Lago, nor did they expect it would reveal just dog doggedly DOJ had worked to get the hundreds of documents back.
Nor did they expect to learn the documents Trump apparently illegally took from the White House would be so sensitive as to put human intelligence sources in danger of death.
Now, many are saying Donald Trump will be indicted, and DOJ has been building an airtight case against the former president across several violations of federal law.
Former Mueller investigation executive Andrew Weissmann, a former DOJ official who spent two decades at the FBI and DOJ, pointed to the fact “that when the FBI reviewed the classified docs in the 15 boxes, they determine what looked like Trump’s handwriting on them.”
“Dang,” Weissmann added, after already stating clearly, “the former president is going to be prosecuted.”
MSNBC/NBC News legal analyst Joyce Vance, a former U.S. Attorney, responded to Weissmann mentioning Trump’s handwriting is on some of the classified documents, by saying he’s at the end of the road.
“To put a fine point on it, none of Trump’s usual excuses are going to work this time,” Vance said.
David Laufman, a former Chief of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section (CES) in the National Security Division at the Department of Justice (DOJ), says: “If I were President Trump and his attorneys, I’d be fearful of getting what’s called a ‘target letter’ in the not too distant future.”
Even former Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz has “said that the unsealed affidavit supporting the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago gives the Justice Department enough evidence to indict the former president,” according to Newsweek.
So does top national security attorney Brad Moss.
“I have seen enough, folks. Donald Trump will be indicted in the classified documents matter. I’m placing my marker.”
Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan, Friday evening on MSNBC agreed.
“I do believe that there are going to be multiple charges that are going to result from what we have now seen happening at Mar-a-Lago.”