Trump says DOJ made him look like a ‘slob’ over documents photo

Former President Donald Trump complained Thursday that the FBI made him look like a ‘slob’ after a Department of Justice filing released Tuesday showed a photo of classified documents strewn on the floor of what’s presumably an office space at Mar-a-Lago. 

‘A lot of people think that when you walk into my office, I have confidential documents or whatever it may be – all declassified – but I had confidential documents spread out all over my floor. Like a slob,’ Trump said Thursday morning on the John Fredericks Radio Show. ‘Like I’m sitting there reading these documents all day long or somebody else would be.’ 

The ex-president had called into the right-leaning TV network to push that the DOJ’s move was ‘dishonest,’ because investigators ‘put them there in a messy fashion, and then they took a picture and they released it to the public.’ 

On Tuesday, this partially redacted photo was included in a 35-page court filing by the Department of Justice, as former President Donald Trump tries to get a ‘special master’ to be appointed to review the evidence seized from Mar-a-Lago 

On Fox, allies of the president made similar complaints. 

‘He’s a very neat individual,’ daughter-in-law Lara Trump said Thursday morning on Fox & Friends. ‘He would never scatter documents around on a floor like that.’

One of Trump’s lawyers, Alina Habba, said on Sean Hannity’s Fox program Wednesday night that Trump’s office isn’t messy – and she knows from personal experience. 

‘I do have firsthand knowledge, as you know, I’m down there frequently,’ she told Hannity. ‘I have never seen that. I have never seen that. That is not the way his office looks. Anybody that knows President Trump’s office – he has guests frequently there – it’s, uh, just a joke.’ 

Former FBI officials, including one of the so-called ‘FBI lovers,’ Peter Strzok, were baffled by the admission that guests frequently were in the proximity of classified documents. 

“‘I have been down there, I’m down there frequently … he has guests frequently there,”‘ Strzok wrote, roughly quoting Habba. ‘And from Langley to Ft Meade to 935 Pennsylvania, brows furrow even more deeply,’ he tweeted Wednesday night, sharing Habba’s Fox News clip.

Allies of former President Donald Trump have taken offense to the photo released of classified documents strewn on the floor. Daughter-in-law Lara Trump (left) called Trump a ‘very neat individual,’ while lawyer Alina Habba (right) said she was in the office ‘frequently,’ while also admitting Trump had ‘guests’ near where the trove of documents were found  

Rep. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat, shared Trump’s interview on Real America’s Voice, and made the point that no matter how the documents were stored – if they were unsecured – it was a federal crime

On CNN Thursday morning, Greg Ehrie, the former special agent in charge of FBI Newark explained what Habba’s admission meant: ‘They have to assume, just from this conversation, that they were in the open, that they were in his office,’ he said of the classified documents.

‘They have to assume that information is out. How do we protect those assets now,’ Ehrie added. 

Rep. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat, shared Trump’s interview on Real America’s Voice, and made the point that no matter how the documents were stored – if they were unsecured – it was a federal crime. 

‘It doesn’t matter if Trump had the classified documents in cartons, or made paper airplanes out of them or used them as emergency toilet paper,’ Lieu tweeted. ‘The federal crime is having the classified documents in an unsecured location, one that his lawyer now admits lots of people entered.’ 

Habba’s admission raises the possibility that prosecutors could call her as a witness. 

Former FBI officials, including one of the so-called ‘FBI lovers,’ Peter Strzok, were baffled by the admission that guests frequently were in the proximity of classified documents

Lara Trump, who is married to the ex-president’s son Eric and is a Fox News contributor, downplayed the security threat by pushing that all the documents had already been declassified. 

‘I think their goal was, of course, to say look, all of these are labeled as classified documents. Well just because something has that label on it doesn’t mean that’s something that wasn’t declassified by my father-in-law while he was still president,’ she told Fox’s Ainsley Earhardt. ‘Which he said everything he took from the Oval Office was declassified.’  

‘I think this whole situation has been handled incredibly wrong by the Department of Justice and the FBI,’ she scoffed. 

In court Thursday, the Justice Department will argue against team Trump’s request to utilize what’s called a ‘special master’ to be appointed to review the evidence seized from the ex-president’s Florida home and private club. 

The hearing comes after the DOJ released a 35-page filing, plus the photo, on Tuesday. 

The New York Times reported that the documents were not found on the floor, but arranged that way, part of a standard protocol on how federal agents display and photograph evidence during searches. 

Habba alleged that the FBI was trying to make the ex-president look even more careless by having the documents arrayed on the floor. 

‘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 this is top secret documents that were on his floor,’ she told Hannity. ‘It’s ridiculous. I can tell you personally, it’s ridiculous. I’ve never seen that.’