Judge who approved FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago once linked to Jeffrey Epstein

By Miranda Devine, Mark Moore and Samuel Chamberlain

The Florida federal magistrate judge who signed off on a search warrant authorizing the FBI raid of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort left the local US Attorney’s office more than a decade ago to rep employees of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein who had received immunity in the long-running sex-trafficking investigation of the financier.

Sources tell The Post that Judge Bruce Reinhart approved the warrant that enabled federal agents to converge on the palatial South Florida estate on Monday in what Trump called an “unannounced raid on my home.”

Reinhart was elevated to magistrate judge in 2018 after 10 years in private practice. That November, the Miami Herald reported that he had represented several of Epstein’s employees in connection with the sex trafficking investigation against the financier.

According to the outlet, Reinhart resigned from the South Florida US Attorney’s Office effective on New Year’s Day 2008 and went to work for Epstein’s cohorts the following day.