Rep. Chip Roy of Texas says that members of Congress should be able to see the full affidavit used to justify a search of former President Donald Trump’s estate in Florida and that Democrats should join him in demanding the document.
A federal judge released a redacted version of the document, hoping to balance Mr. Trump’s demand for transparency and the Justice Department’s fears that the full version would imperil witnesses or other aspects of their investigation into sensitive documents that were discovered at Mar-a-Lago.
“What in the hell are my colleagues afraid of in seeing the full unredacted version?” Mr. Roy said Wednesday during a House Judiciary Committee hearing. “The American people right now are tired of seeing the power of government being used against them.”
Mr. Roy said he respects the role of prosecutors and law enforcement but that Congress must conduct oversight to ensure that Attorney General Merrick Garland is not abusing his authority on behalf of President Biden, who could face Mr. Trump again in 2024.
FBI agents searched Mr. Trump’s estate in August and seized boxes of documents. The raid followed a back-and-forth between government archivists and Mr. Trump’s attorneys over the discovery of papers with high-level markings at Mar-a-Lago.
Those documents, they said, contained high-level secrets and should be in the custody of the government in a secure place.
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Mr. Roy said if the affidavit is too sensitive for public consumption, then lawmakers can take a look at it within a sensitive compartmentalized information facility, or SCIF.
“We’re sitting here right now simply wanting to see the entirety of an affidavit so that we can do our oversight duty, our job,” he said. “If there’s some concern about that, not being able to be seen by the public, we can march down to the [secure facility] right now and go look at the fully unredacted version.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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