Alina Habba, an attorney for former President Donald Trump, accused the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of purposely spreading documents across the floor inside Mar-a-Lago during a Wednesday interview.
A newly-released photograph showed documents labeled as classified or top secret laid out on a patterned carpet inside Mar-a-Lago. Habba accused the FBI of purposely laying out declassified documents that were still labeled as classified or top secret.
“They laid this picture out so you would assume, and I’m somebody who has been — and the press loves to talk about this, especially today — I’m somebody that has been in [Trump’s] office, I’ve seen it. This is not the way his office looks. They give you this appearance that you walk in and there’s these top-secret documents just strewn about,” she said. “They don’t understand, something could be marked top secret, could be marked classified. The Presidential Records Act, he would have said ‘This is declassified,’ [but] it doesn’t get a new marking all the time. He’s left the office, it is a complete public spectacle and I’m not really gonna stand by it anymore.”
“I personally have gotten intimidated, people have tried to intimidate me, it’s not gonna work,” she continued.
The lawyer said she has “firsthand knowledge” of the inside of Trump’s office and she has never seen an array of classified or top-secret documents laying out in the open. She accused the agents of taking the documents out to manipulate the public into believing they are spread across his floor. (RELATED: Trump Legal Team Responds To DOJ Over Special Master Dispute)
“I do have firsthand knowledge, as you know,” she told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “I have been down there [at Mar-a-Lago], I’m down there frequently. I have never seen that,” she said. “I have never, ever seen that. That is not the way his office looks. Anybody that knows President Trump’s office, he has guests frequently there. It’s just a joke.”
“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 that this is top-secret documents that were on his floor. It’s ridiculous,” she continued. “I can tell you personally, it’s ridiculous. I have never seen that.”
The former president made a similar accusation against the FBI in a Truth Social post Wednesday, saying they “threw documents haphazardly all over the floor” to pretend that he had documents lying around his floor.
“Terrible the way the FBI, during the Raid of Mar-a-Lago, threw documents haphazardly all over the floor (perhaps pretending it was me that did it!), and then started taking pictures of them for the public to see,” he said. “Thought they wanted them kept Secret? Lucky I Declassified!”
The agents arrayed the documents after removing them from storage in Trump’s office, The New York Times reported. The documents were not found strewn on the floor, according to two federal law enforcement officials, the outlet noted. It is standard practice for the FBI to take photographs of discovered evidence during a search. The document marked “2A” in the photograph is described as “various classified TS/SCI documents.”