The opposition from federal prosecutors came in a court filing in response to US media efforts to unseal the document. He also defied mounting pressure from Republican lawmakers to release the affidavit, amid an outcry across conservative America over the government’s motives in searching the former president’s home. But the Justice Department said releasing the affidavit, which served to justify its request to a federal judge for a search warrant, would “cause significant and irreparable harm to this ongoing criminal investigation.” The Justice Department said the document contained “highly sensitive witness information, including witnesses interviewed by the government [and] specific research techniques’. “If disclosed, the affidavit will serve as a road map for the government’s ongoing investigation, providing specific details about its direction and likely course, in a way that is very likely to compromise future investigative steps,” he added. Last week, the FBI took the unprecedented step of searching Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Fla., as part of an investigation into the mishandling of a trove of government documents – including highly classified material – that he has since kept that left. the white house. Trump has denounced the investigation — which focuses on possible violations of federal laws regarding the handling of information related to national defense, obstruction of justice and the handling of government records — as a politically motivated stunt. On Monday, he complained that federal agents confiscated his passports as well as boxes of other material. “Wow! In the Mar-a-Lago FBI raid, my three passports were stolen (one was expired), along with everything else,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social media channel. for attacking a political opponent on a scale never before seen in our country. Third World!” Although the Justice Department last week agreed to unseal the search warrant and a list of items recovered from Mar-a-Lago, it said releasing the affidavit would be a fundamentally different act and pointed to the fact that the investigation involved national security. “Disclosing the government’s affidavit at this stage would also delay future cooperation from witnesses whose assistance may be sought as this investigation progresses, as well as in other high-profile investigations,” the justice department said.

“The fact that this investigation involves highly classified material further underscores the need to protect the integrity of the investigation and exacerbates the potential for harm if the information is disclosed to the public prematurely or inappropriately,” he added. Over the weekend, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee asked the Justice Department to provide them with affidavits supporting the FBI’s closed-door investigation, as well as any information about the national security threat posed by Trump’s mishandling. documents. Republicans reacted angrily to the effort to keep the document secret. “Why isn’t the Justice Department releasing the search affidavit? What are they hiding?’ Marsha Blackburn, a Republican senator from Tennessee, tweeted.