The article author attempted to get the court order but could not find one. This is common when the order is made as part of an ongoing investigation, or else criminals could just watch for their names in PACER to know when to fire up the shredders.
You seem to be coming from the assumption that checks and balances requires granting random outsiders full transparency into the court docket during the investigation phase. That’s not how it has ever worked, because it would tip off those being investigated.
Our system allows for challenging the government’s right to execute a search after the search has happened. And it isn’t open to random interlopers who think they’ve spotted a government misstep—you must have standing to challenge a search. The architects of this system didn’t want justice to get caught up in the equivalent of a GitHub pull request war.
Eventually the warrant will become unsealed and we can all inspect it.
Okay, so I'm not allowed to see the court order because I'm a random outsider, got it. What about the family of the person? What about their lawyer? Why can't they see the court order, or if they have seen it why can't they say so?
It would be especially detrimental to the pursuit of justice if the friends, family, and lawyers of a suspect could find out whether or not a warrant has been issued for them or their stuff before it is executed.
Our system works on “trust but verify”. If the cops show up with a warrant they claim they is valid, you trust the warrant is valid, let them do the search, and later verify the warrant is real and that it was issued legally. Doing otherwise is a crime (obstruction of justice).
We don't know 100% for sure, just from their claim. In the other high profile cases recently it was a different agency and they were open that there was no amount of due process.
