“Fox & Friends” host Steve Doocy pressed former White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner on the reported 300 classified documents stored in Mar-a-Lago.
The New York Times reported late Monday that the government recovered over 300 documents marked as classified that had been stored in Mar-a-Lago once former President Donald Trump left office. When Doocy questioned Kushner about his father-in-law’s reasoning for keeping a large quantity of classified material, Kushner responded the media had a tendency to jump to conclusions.
“Why would the former president have that many classified things at Mar-a-Lago?” Doocy asked.
“I’m not familiar with what exactly the contents were,” Kushner replied. “But what I’ll just say from my personal experience is that in the transition, we had a very innocent meeting with the Russian ambassador and then four months later, you’re reading that the intel agencies are leaking to the Washington Post that we requested this secret back channel. Then the New York Times and CNN go crazy for a weekend, accusing us of treason. And then it turns out, such a thing never happened.”
“You have to be very careful with what you read and obviously just wait for the facts to develop,” he continued.
The National Archives retrieved 150 classified documents from Mar-a-Lago in January when Trump returned 15 boxes of material to the agency. Aides for the former president turned over a few dozen documents to officials with the Department of Justice in early June. (RELATED: Judge Calls Trump Raid ‘Unprecedented,’ Formally Rejects DOJ Plea To Keep Things Under Wraps)
The FBI later seized 26 boxes containing 11 sets of classified documents in an August raid of Mar-a-Lago. Agents obtained four sets of top secret documents, three sets of secret and three more of confidential material. The search warrant, signed by the U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, permitted agents to search the “45 office” and “all storage rooms” and premises used by Trump and his staff.
The former president filed a motion Monday requesting a “special master” to oversee the review of all materials retrieved from Mar-a-Lago. He accused the federal government of failing to provide a reason for the search and of taking “privileged and/or potentially privileged materials.”