Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Thursday that the Justice Department has filed a motion to unseal a search warrant and property receipt relating to the search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property.
CNN legal analyst Elie Honig called the announcement a “remarkable and unusual move” because “we basically saw Merrick Garland call Donald Trump’s bluff.”
As a result of that search warrant, Trump and his attorneys have two documents, Honig told CNN following Garland’s remarks. “One is the search warrant itself with all the attachments. And the other is this inventory or receipt.”
These documents contain important research information. Usually the policy of the Department of Justice is to only talk about things that are recorded by the court. But with this ruling, Garland hopes to put those documents in front of the Americans, Honig said.
The warrant usually lists logistical information: location to be searched, a general description of the items to be searched, the name of the judge, a time frame within which the DOJ must complete the search.
But sometimes there is also an attachment, which usually lists laws that the DOJ has probable reason to believe have been violated.
The second document is the inventory or receipt.
“It’s a list. The FBI says, ‘Here are the items that were removed from Mar-a-Lago.’ Again, the degrees of specificity and generality tend to vary. I don’t expect to have a paper-by-paper breakdown if they took thousands of pages,” Honig says. “I think what we’re going to see are lists like X number of boxes. If they took electronic documents, if they took laptops, cell phones, that sort of thing.”
However, Honig notes that we won’t see the affidavit, which is the most detailed document, which can be anywhere from 20 to 100 pages where prosecutors lay out details that give them probable reason to believe the laws were violated.
This document will remain confidential, and generally it is released if and when there is an accusation, Honig explains.
“If someone is searched and then charged, they will be given a copy of that affidavit … so that person can then challenge it in court,” he said.
WATCH: CNN Elie Honig explains how Merrick Garland just called Donald Trump’s bluff