Key Points
- Releasing the affidavit could harm the ongoing investigation, the department said.
- It comes as Mr Trump accused the FBI of confiscating his passports in a post on Truth Social.
Former US president Donald Trump has accused the Federal Bureau of Investigation of stealing his passports during last week's search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
"Wow! In the raid by the FBI of Mar-a-Lago, they stole my three passports (one expired), along with everything else," Mr Trump wrote on Monday on the Truth Social network he co-founded.
"This is an assault on a political opponent at a level never seen before in our Country. Third World!"
It remains unclear why Mr Trump only spoke out about this a week after the search of his property.
The raid followed suspicions that Mr Trump may have violated the Espionage Act and other laws by taking classified documents from the White House when he left office in January 2021.
A court in Florida published the list of seized items as well as the search warrant last Friday at the request of US Attorney General Merrick Garland.
The list of seized items includes documents and several boxes. Passports are not explicitly listed there.
Mr Trump and his Republican supporters say the raid was orchestrated by Democrats to deflect from President Joe Biden's unpopularity.
Mr Trump is weighing another presidential bid in 2024.
Justice Department opposes unsealing affidavit
The US Justice Department said on Monday it opposed requests by the news media to unseal the affidavit that prosecutors used to obtain a federal judge's approval to .
In a court filing, prosecutors said they will not oppose the release of other sealed documents tied to the search, such as cover sheets and the government's motion to seal.
But releasing the affidavit itself could harm the ongoing investigation, the department said.
"If disclosed, the affidavit would serve as a roadmap to the government's ongoing investigation, providing specific details about its direction and likely course, in a manner that is highly likely to compromise future investigative steps," prosecutors wrote in their filing.
Mr Trump's Republican allies have ramped up their calls for Mr Garland to unseal the document in recent days, which would reveal the evidence that prosecutors showed to demonstrate they had probable cause to believe crimes were committed at Mr Trump's home - the standard they had to meet to secure the search warrant.
On Friday, at the Justice Department's request, a federal court in south Florida unsealed the search warrant and several accompanying legal documents that showed that FBI agents carted away 11 sets of classified records from Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort.
Some of the records seized were labelled as "top secret" - the highest level of classification reserved for the most closely held US national security information.
