Merrick Garland spent weeks deliberating over whether to issue a search warrant for Trump: report
One week ago the Department of Justice and FBI executed a search warrant at former President Donald Trump's Palm Beach golf club, Mar-a-Lago. Attorney General Merrick Garland gave a statement the day after and made it clear that the search warrant issued was signed off by him personally.
According to the Wall Street Journal, however, Garland deliberated over the decision for weeks, citing people familiar with his caution.
“He’s both extremely careful and he understands the critical role of an attorney general in these circumstances,” the Journal quoted former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, who was Garland's boss in the 1990s. “He appreciates the context in which this is occurring. I don’t think he considers politics at all, but I do think he recognizes the seriousness of actions against a former president.”
"The decision had been the subject of weeks of meetings between senior Justice Department and FBI officials," the Journal said, citing their sources. "The warrant allowed agents last Monday to seize classified information and other presidential material from Mar-a-Lago."
Garland's speech also addressed the attacks that Trump supporters have made on law enforcement and state FBI offices around the country. They've also hunted down any possible agent affiliated with the Trump search, their families as well as the judge who signed off on the warrant. Those attacks aren't likely to stop anytime soon, despite Trump's request for law enforcement to tell him "what can I do to reduce the heat?"
The next steps for Garland will depend on the evidence uncovered and whether a case can be made against the former president for breaking the law.
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The DOJ submitted a court filing on Monday responding to calls for them to release the affidavit describing the methodology behind the search warrant. According to the department attorneys, doing so would require so much redaction that it would make the document unreadable. Publication without the redactions would reveal key pieces of information including informants that can't be public.
Republicans and Democrats have sought information from the DOJ as well as other agencies asking for the details in the search warrant request as well as how Trump's possession of the documents could have impacted national security.
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