Aug. 12, 2022: Clock ticks down on Mar-a-Lago warrant reveal
Donald Trump will not oppose the Justice Department\u2019s motion to unseal the search warrant approved by a federal court in West Palm Beach on August 5 and a partially redacted property receipt listing the items seized during the FBI search. (The redactions, according to the government, \u201cremove the names of law enforcement personnel who executed the search,\u201d which seems to indicate that they do not remove any information about the items seized.)\nAttorney General Merrick Garland announced the government\u2019s filing Thursday afternoon at an unusual two-minute briefing at the Department of Justice.\nHis reason for unsealing the documents? \u201cThe department filed the motion to make public the warrant and receipt in light of the former president\u2019s public confirmation of the search, the surrounding circumstances, and the substantial public interest in this matter.\u201d\nIt seems likely that Garland would not have asked the court to make the warrant and property receipt public if Trump had not gone nuclear with his accusations that the attorney general and FBI had weaponized law enforcement against him.\nGarland, as many observers put it, called Trump\u2019s bluff.\xa0\nSubscribe to the POLITICO Playbook newsletter\nRaghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.