Purported U.S. government documents that ordered CNN to preserve “leaked tax records” and were entered into the search warrant case for former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence have been struck from the U.S. court system, after the government disavowed them.
The documents were purportedly submitted to the U.S. court in West Palm Beach, Florida, by the U.S. Department of Treasury. The department motioned to intervene in the case because federal officials had obtained “seized federal securities” containing sensitive information that was subject to the FBI’s search warrant against Trump, according to one of the documents.
That document and others filed by the same party contained multiple errors. Despite this, they were still entered into the system by Angela Noble, the clerk for the court.
Another document was allegedly an arrest warrant served by federal agents at CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta. The warrant ordered CNN to maintain the federal securities, which were described as leaked tax records, until further notice. Another supposed warrant was to a towing company in Michigan.
A top U.S. lawyer said on Sept. 19 that the filings were fake.
“The United States has confirmed the pleading was not submitted by the Department of the Treasury but rather mailed to the Clerk of Court by someone not associated with the Government,” U.S. Attorney Juan Antonio Gonzalez, a Biden appointee who heads the Department of Justice’s office in southern Florida, told the court.
He asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, who approved the search warrant for Trump’s Mar-a-Lago and is overseeing warrant-related filings, to strike the documents from the record.
Hours later, Reinhart struck the documents.
Filed by Inmate?
The purported warrants were identical to paperwork filed in another case in federal court in Georgia brought by an inmate at the prison medical center in Butner, North Carolina. The case was thrown out, as were the array of other frivolous lawsuits the man has filed from his prison cell.
