Federal judge considers unsealing affidavit on Trump Mar-a-Lago raid
Yahoo Finance's Alexis Keenan explains the latest legal news surrounding the FBI's raid of former President Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence.
Video Transcript
DAVE BRIGGS: All right, a federal judge says he's inclined to unseal at least part of the affidavit used to search former president Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. Joining us now with more on this is Yahoo Finance's Alexis Keenan. Nice to see you, my friend. What are we hearing?
ALEXIS KEENAN: Good to see you. So what happened is, this was a motion and a hearing that happened in court today in Florida. And a bunch of news organizations brought a motion to say, we want to see the search warrant affidavit. That's the detail. That's the meat on the bones. That's where the Justice Department has to make their case as to why they thought there was evidence that they could seize at Mar-a-Lago that would be evidence, then, that would lead to a crime, specifically the Espionage Act that requires a president, Trump, and other presidents to protect classified information.
Now we have the return of a list, basically just a list of what was seized from the property, but we don't have the details of why the government was making its case. So that's what is the fight here. The DOJ, for its part, it argues that its whole case will be jeopardized if it were to have to unveil this information. The judge in this case said, actually, maybe not. Let's go and make some redactions, telling the government they have to do that. Come back to me, and then we'll decide on how much of this can be unsealed. So it may not say under seal, as the government has wanted it to.
DAVE BRIGGS: Really interesting when you hear this might be part of a much larger investigation. It really makes you wonder what they are after. Meanwhile, here in New York, the chief financial officer of Trump's business has entered a plea deal with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. Tell us about what we know here.
ALEXIS KEENAN: OK, so more on the Trump front today. This happened earlier today. I was in court in New York. This is a state court case. And this is the Manhattan prosecutor's case that was brought against the Trump Organization, as well as its longtime CFO, Allen Weisselberg. He pled guilty to 15 felony counts. There are tax fraud charges, and there's a whole list of them. They include things like conspiracy, grand larceny, tax fraud, filing false tax documents, and so forth.
But basically, he has pled guilty to all 15 charges that were brought against him. He has agreed to a term of imprisonment of five months, followed by a probationary period of five years. However, the prosecutor said that that is all contingent upon whether or not he testifies truthfully at the trial, the criminal trial, that's still to take place in October on the 24th against the Trump Organization. So the Trump Organization stays in this case. Unless they settle, the trial will go forward in October.
At that time, we expect that he'll be testifying. And at that point that he does that and does it truthfully, then he can get his plea deal and move on. So there will be a lot to be watching in that trial to see what he says about the organization and what he says about this alleged tax scheme that the organization was supposedly taking part of. He's also going to have to pay about-- repay about $2 million in taxes and fees and interest that he was-- ill begotten, they said.
DAVE BRIGGS: But to be clear, in under 10 seconds, he has not flipped, as some are making out in the headlines.
ALEXIS KEENAN: That's right. So he has to testify. It doesn't mean he has to cooperate in the larger investigation. And whatever he says in his testimony just has to be true. It doesn't mean that he has to go so far as to testify against Trump or the organization itself.
DAVE BRIGGS: Boy, interesting trials ahead. Alexis Keenan, great stuff. Thank you.
