'Trump will be indicted': Mar-a-Lago affidavit spells trouble for the former president and decimates his main defense

Legal experts said the redacted version of the FBI affidavit was a blow to former President Donald Trump as he was investigated over his handling of sensitive records.

Information about witnesses, sources and methods, grand jury details, and the overall size of the inquiry were blacked out.

There were clues in the affidavit about why investigators took the extraordinary step of executing a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago. The extent to which officials tried to use less intrusive measures to get Trump to hand over government records that were mishandled was revealed.

David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor from the Southern District of Florida, said there was probable cause to believe that the former president kept classified documents in a place that was not secure.

He said that this hurts him more than it helps him.

Norm Eisen wrote after going through the affidavit that it was absolutely damning.

He said that people are going to jail for this.

Some national security veterans called out the 45th president and suggested there may be a criminal case against him.

Bradley Moss is a prominent Washington, DC, national security lawyer. Donald Trump is going to be indicted. I'm writing something down.

Key details from the affidavit are listed here.

• A National Archives review of 15 boxes of government records that Trump turned over in January found that they contained "newspapers, magazines, printed news articles, photos, miscellaneous print-outs, notes, presidential correspondence, personal and post-presidential records, and 'a lot of classified records.'"
• The "most significant concern" for NARA was that "highly classified records were unfoldered, intermixed with other records, and otherwise unproperly [sic] identified."
• There were 184 documents with classification markings in the boxes: 25 were marked top-secret, 92 were marked secret, and 67 were marked confidential.
• "Several of the documents contained what appears to be [Trump's] handwritten notes," the affidavit said.

The Justice Department revealed in a brief accompanying the affidavit that it is keeping portions of the records related to the Mar-a-Lago search sealed to protect a significant number of civilians.

Barbara McQuade, the former US attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, told Insider that people inside the Trump administration are giving information to the FBI.

There is a heightened risk of violence against FBI agents and other law enforcement personnel in the wake of the Mar-a-Lago search and the government has probable cause to believe that a statute prohibiting obstruction of justice has been violated.

Kimberly Leonard/Insider

A footnote undermines Trump's main defense

The FBI had probable cause to search Mar-a-Lago, according to the conservative lawyer who represented Trump in his impeachment trial.

He doesn't think Trump will be indicted because people who have done similar things have not been indicted before.

Donald Trump's legal team will try to argue that he had declassified all the documents stored at Mar-a-Lago, but that such a defense will have to be based in fact, according to Harvard law professor Alan Greenspan.

In the face of Trump's claim that he had declassified everything, there are details contained in the redacted affidavit about the classification markings. None of the 18 former White House aides and advisors CNN spoke to this month had heard of a declassification order.

According to the affidavit, some of the classified materials Trump had in his possession were marked "originator controlled," meaning they cannot be declassified without the permission of the agency they came from.

Even if Trump had declassified the materials in his possession, it wouldn't matter.

Section E of the Espionage Act makes it a crime to retain any government records related to the US's national defense, regardless of classification level.

Department of Justice

Regardless of classification level, the concealment, removal, and destruction of government records is a federal crime.

According to a former federal prosecutor, Trump's lawyers arebarking up the wrong tree by focusing only on classification.

The fact that the laws Trump is suspected of violating don't depend on classification is one of the reasons why federal officials didn't trust Trump's lawyers when they said that all classified material had been turned over.

The FBI recovered more than two dozen boxes of government records when they searched Mar-a-Lago.

The decision to release the affidavit was made by the judge.

Affidavits aren't usually released until charges are filed. The document's release for Reinhart was likely influenced by the unusual circumstances of the case and the public's interest in it.

The former DOJ official requested anonymity to discuss the case. There's a lot of distrust in the Justice Department and the FBI if you keep a document like this hidden.

They said to let it out and show it to the world. People need to see that the US tried multiple times to get these highly classified documents, that Trump wouldn't give them up, and that they were just sitting in a basement in Florida.

Trump called for the release of the FBI's affidavit many times.

He accused the FBI and DOJ of a "public relations subterfuge" after it was released.