(NewsNation) — A legal analyst says when the affidavit prosecutors used to get the search warrant on former President Donald Trump’s Florida home is unsealed, information on cooperating witnesses could be compromised.
“A confidential witness, they’re really important to cases,” Legal analyst Mark Reichel said on “Morning in America.” “Once you’ve been charged, we have to give you that person. But prior to that, we assure confidentiality to somebody’s cooperating witnesses.”
A lack of confidentiality could cause a foreign country to stop cooperating with the FBI in the investigation, as the country could say it can’t share information it knows out of fear of being exposed, Reichel added.
The FBI conducted a search at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort earlier this month, linked to an investigation into whether or not Trump mishandled presidential records.
A federal judge overseeing the search warrant declined on Thursday to unseal the affidavit. Instead, the Justice Department will have until Aug. 25 to provide a redacted version to the court.
This affidavit could provide more details about what the Department of Justice believed was at Mar-a-Lago and why it felt the need to search the home.
Reichel said that the Department of Justice could redact it substantially, and the judge could say it’s too much. The judge could also say it satisfies the requirements, he added.
“The DOJ, if they lose and feel they should not lose, they will appeal it above the magistrate to the district court, (and) could then take it to the appellate court,” he said. “We could see this make it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.”