Former Donald Trump attorney and fixer-with-attitude Michael Cohen blasted the top-secret documents mess at Mar-a-Lago, saying sensitive files in the ex-president’s office were just steps away from the resort’s large, chaotic catering hall.
Stashing such documents in that way was reckless, according Cohen’s remarks on CNN.
“That place is completely open. It’s directly above the catering hall,” he told anchor Poppy Harlow on Thursday night.
“So it’s not just guests, it’s not just members; it’s anybody that’s there, hypothetically, for a wedding or a christening, a bar mitzvah — any event that they have. And all that separated these individuals from top-secret, classified documents were 10 stairs and one little Master Lock key.”
Cohen also criticized Trump for throwing his lawyers under the bus in his showdown with the Department of Justice and the FBI, which searched the Florida resort to retrieve government documents Aug. 8. Trump typically gives his attorneys “talking points” and doesn’t worry about the consequences, said Cohen.
In the Mar-a-Lago case, a Trump attorney had signed a certification in June that all classified materials had been returned to the government.
“There’s a plethora of lawyers that have all gone down or are going down or need to lawyer-up simply because they did Donald Trump’s bidding,” said Cohen.
Check out the full interview below:
Among the most chilling revelations in a new court filing Friday, which offered more details of what was recovered, was that FBI agents at Mar-a-Lago retrieved “43 Empty Folders with ‘CLASSIFIED’ Banners” and “28 Empty Folders Labeled ‘Return to Staff Secretary,’” or military aide. It’s unclear where the files once inside those folders are now.
“It’s the empty classified folders that are of most concern,” tweeted Andrew Weissmann, a former federal prosecutor, on Friday. “Where are the contents?”
“OMG!” tweeted Glenn Kirschner, another former federal prosecutor. “Trump didn’t pack up EMPTY folders to take with him to FLA. Things just went from bad to worse to unfathomably dangerous.”