The image of sensitive papers lying about on the floor of what seems to be an office area at Mar-a-Lago, which was published in court files on Tuesday, has drawn criticism from the supporters of former President Donald Trump.
‘He’s a very neat individual,’ daughter-in-law Lara Trump said Thursday morning on Fox & Friends. ‘He would never scatter documents around on a floor like that.’
One of Trump’s lawyers, Alina Habba, said on Sean Hannity’s Fox program Wednesday night that Trump’s office isn’t messy – and she knows from personal experience.
‘I do have firsthand knowledge, as you know, I’m down there frequently,’ she told Hannity. ‘I have never seen that. I have never seen that. That is not the way his office looks. Anybody that knows President Trump’s office – he has guests frequently there – it’s, uh, just a joke.’
Allies of former President Donald Trump have taken offense to the photo released of classified documents strewn on the floor. Daughter-in-law Lara Trump (left) called Trump a ‘very neat individual,’ while lawyer Alina Habba (right) said she was in the office ‘frequently,’ while also admitting Trump had ‘guests’ near where the trove of documents were found
The Department of Justice filed a 35-page court document on Tuesday with this partly redacted image as former President Donald Trump wants to appoint a “special master” to analyze the evidence seized from Mar-a-Lago.
Former FBI personnel, including Peter Strzok, one of the alleged “FBI lovers,” were perplexed by the fact that visitors regularly got close to sensitive material.
“‘I have been down there, I’m down there frequently … he has guests frequently there,”‘ Strzok wrote, roughly quoting Habba. ‘And from Langley to Ft Meade to 935 Pennsylvania, brows furrow even more deeply,’ he tweeted Wednesday night, sharing Habba’s Fox News clip.
On CNN Thursday morning, Greg Ehrie, the former special agent in charge of FBI Newark explained what Habba’s admission meant: ‘They have to assume, just from this conversation, that they were in the open, that they were in his office,’ he said of the classified documents.
‘They have to assume that information is out. How do we protect those assets now,’ Ehrie added.
Habba’s admission raises the possibility that prosecutors could call her as a witness.
Former FBI officials, including one of the so-called ‘FBI lovers,’ Peter Strzok, were baffled by the admission that guests frequently were in the proximity of classified documents
Lara Trump, who is married to the ex-president’s son Eric and is a Fox News contributor, downplayed the security threat by pushing that all the documents had already been declassified.
‘I think their goal was, of course, to say look, all of these are labeled as classified documents. Well just because something has that label on it doesn’t mean that’s something that wasn’t declassified by my father-in-law while he was still president,’ she told Fox’s Ainsley Earhardt. ‘Which he said everything he took from the Oval Office was declassified.’
‘I think this whole situation has been handled incredibly wrong by the Department of Justice and the FBI,’ she scoffed.
The Justice Department will argue against Team Trump’s request to use a “special master” to evaluate the evidence seized from the former president’s Florida home and private club in court on Thursday.
The DOJ published a 35-page file along with a picture on Tuesday, which before the hearing.
The papers, according to the New York Times, were shown and photographed by federal officials as part of a regular process, not because they were discovered on the floor.
Habba said that by arranging the papers on the floor, the FBI was attempting to make the former president seem even more irresponsible.
‘They literally must have gone in and taken out documents they wanted or cover letters as it is and put it about so that the public believes this is top secret documents that were on his floor,’ she told Hannity. ‘It’s ridiculous. I can tell you personally, it’s ridiculous. I’ve never seen that.’