Secrets papers found at private residence ‘cool keepsakes’: Trump

The former president also suggest ‘Marxist thugs’ working for the FBI might have planted evidence during the raid.

Donald Trump departs a Palm Beach polling station after voting in the mid-term elections last November. Picture: AFP

Donald Trump has revealed he took classified documents to his private home in Mar-A-Lago in Florida as “cool keepsakes”, suggesting “Marxist thugs” working for the FBI might have planted evidence when they raided his home to search for documents.

Amid speculation the former US president was poised to return to Twitter and Facebook for the first time since January 6, 2021, Mr Trump said Democrats and the Justice Department had been exaggerating the number of documents he had in his possession in order to make Joe Biden’s predicament “look less significant”.

Following the discovery at Mr Trump’s residence last August, classified documents were found in November at the President’s former Washington office and at his private home in Delaware earlier this month, prompting a Justice Department investigation that has derailed Mr Biden’s announcement of a 2024 presidential bid.

Unlike Mr Biden, whose spokespeople have argued he “inadvertently” misplaced the documents from his time as Barack Obama’s vice-president at his home and office, Mr Trump has maintained he had every right to keep the documents, having declassified them personally.

“These were just ordinary, inexpensive folders with various words printed on them, but they were a ‘cool’ keepsake’,” Mr Trump said in a series of lengthy posts on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT) on his Truth Social platform. “Perhaps the Gestapo took some of these empty folders when they Raided Mar-a-Lago, & counted them as a document, which they are not … As President, and based on the Presidential Records Act & Socks Case, I did NOTHING WRONG. JOE DID!”

Revelations of the discovery of classified documents at Mr Biden’s properties complicated the White House’s claims that Mr Trump had been “irresponsible” for keeping such papers at his private residences, potentially delaying Mr Biden’s announcement he would run for the White House in 2024, which was expected early in the new year.

On Tuesday Mr Biden remained silent as journalists yelled questions about when and what he knew about the classified documents, as he sat alongside visiting Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte at the White House.

The unexpected embroiling of the President in similar allegations has appeared to have emboldened Mr Trump, who announced his third bid for the White House in November.

Mr Trump is urging Facebook to reinstate his account two years after it was deactivated following the January 6, 2021 riot by his supporters at the US Capitol.

His lawyer, Scott Gast, asked in a letter to Facebook parent Meta, obtained by Agence France-Presse, for a meeting to discuss Mr Trump’s “prompt reinstatement to the platform”, where he had 34 million followers, arguing his status as the leading contender for the Republican nomination in 2024 justified ending the ban.

A Republican told NBC news on Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity, that Mr Trump was probably coming back to Twitter. “It’s just a question of how and when,” they said. “He’s been talking about it for weeks, but Trump speaks for Trump, so it’s anyone’s guess what he’ll do or say or when.”

The Justice Department has hired two special counsels, Jack Smith and Robert Hur, to look into the two separate cases of alleged mishandling of classified documents by the incumbent and former presidents.

Experts have criticised the US government for classifying too many documents, potentially as a way of keeping information from journalists and the public.

“There’s somewhere in the order of over 50 million documents classified every year. We don’t know the exact number because even the government can’t keep track of it all,” Oona Hathaway, a law professor at Yale University and former special counsel at the Pentagon, told NPR this week.