DoJ has asked court to unseal Trump search warrant, Merrick Garland says

The US justice department has asked a court to unseal the search warrant the FBI received before searching the Florida estate of Donald Trump, Merrick Garland said on Thursday.

The attorney general cited the “substantial public interest in this matter” in announcing the request at a hastily scheduled justice department news conference.

Related: FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home for classified nuclear weapons documents – report

The news follows an FBI raid on the former US president’s resort home of Mar-a-Lago earlier in the week. That search was part of an investigation into whether Trump took classified records from the White House.

It was not immediately clear when – or if – the unsealing of the warrant request might be granted or when the documents could be released.

Late on Thursday night, Trump released a statement saying he would not oppose but rather was “encouraging the immediate release of those documents” related to what he called the “unAmerican, unwarranted, and unnecessary raid and break-in … Release the documents now!”

On Thursday, the Washington Post reported, citing people familiar with the FBI investigation, that classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the items sought by federal agents in their search of Mar-a-Lago.

Those familiar with the investigation didn’t provide additional details about the information agents were seeking, including whether it involved weapons owned the by the US or another nation. Neither did they say if documents were recovered, the Washington Post reported.

The DoJ has been investigating the potential mishandling of classified information since the National Archives said it had received from Mar-a-Lago 15 boxes of White House records, including documents containing classified information, earlier this year.

Since the search Republicans, led by Trump, have attacked the FBI and the DoJ and accused it of conducting a politically motivated investigation.

In a brief press conference announcing the move Garland said he personally authorized the decision to seek a search warrant of Trump’s home and that the decision had not been “taken lightly”.

Garland also cited the fact that Trump himself had provided the first public confirmation of the FBI search, and the attorney general said that disclosing information about it now would not harm the court’s functions.

The attorney general condemned verbal attacks on FBI and justice department personnel over the search. “I will not stand by silently when their integrity is unfairly attacked,” he said, calling them “dedicated, patriotic public servants”.

The fury of the Republican response has prompted fears that FBI agents and officials could be placed in danger. Earlier on Thursday, an armed man decked out in body armor tried to breach a security screening area at an FBI field office in Ohio. The man then fled and exchanged gunfire in a standoff with law enforcement, authorities said.

The justice department’s motion to unseal the warrant and property receipt from the Mar-a-Lago search have been posted publicly, and offers details of the legal reasoning behind the request.

The motion recounts that the search was carried out quietly with little public attention, until “later that same day, former President Trump issued a public statement acknowledging the execution of the warrant. In the days since, the search warrant and related materials have been the subject of significant interest and attention from news media organizations and other entities.

“The public’s clear and powerful interest in understanding what occurred under these circumstances weighs heavily in favor of unsealing”, said the motion, which was signed by Juan Antonio Gonzalez, the US attorney for the southern district of Florida, and Jay I Bratt, chief of the justice department’s counterintelligence and export control section.

It asks for the documents to be released “given the intense public interest presented by a search of a residence of a former president … absent objection from the former president”.