Michael Cohen, who previously worked as an attorney and vice president for the Trump Organization, said he believes former President Donald Trump wanted to use some of the classified documents he kept at Mar-a-Lago as “leverage” in the future.
The FBI carried out a search warrant of Trump’s Florida resort home, Mar-a-Lago, on August 8 to recover top-secret and other classified materials that the former president had taken from the White House. Although Trump initially floated the possibility that the FBI planted the classified documents, his spokespeople later pivoted to say that the files were declassified under a “standing order.” But top former White House staff said they never heard of such an order.
Cohen, who has become one of Trump’s harshest critics in recent years, discussed the FBI raid and the classified-documents scandal in an interview with CNN on Saturday. While he said some of the materials were likely kept by the former president out of vanity, the former lawyer thinks he held others for more sinister purposes.
Trump Wanted to Use Classified Documents as ‘Leverage,’ Ex-Lawyer Says (newsweek.com)