News/Commentary

‘I love him even more’: Critics throw cold water on report Trump casually used classified docs for ‘to-do lists’

September 19, 2023 | | Print Article

New claims were leveled in former President Donald Trump’s documents case regarding his alleged use of materials for “to-do lists.”

Serving in both the White House and at Mar-a-Lago, Molly Michael’s role as a personal assistant to the president continued after his term in office. Now, ABC News reported that the suspected “Trump Employee 2” in the federal case, told investigators about his alleged casual treatment of what were said to be “sensitive White House materials.”

According to “sources familiar with her statements,” the outlet detailed how Michael told investigators that “more than once — she received requests or tasking from Trump that were written on the back of notecards, and she later recognized those notecards as sensitive White House materials — with visible classification markings — used to brief Trump while he was still in office about phone calls with foreign leaders or other international-related matters.”

The assistant had explained that the particular documents in question had not been taken by the FBI when they raided Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8, 2022, but that when she came to work the next day she facilitated their being turned over to the agency.

“The sources said Michael also told federal investigators that last year she grew increasingly concerned with how Trump handled recurring requests from the National Archives for the return of all government documents being kept in boxes at Mar-a-Lago — and she felt that Trump’s claims about it at the time would be easy to disprove, according to the sources,” read the report.

Reacting to the claims, a spokesperson for the president asserted that the information had been obtained through “illegal leaks” and that it further lacked “proper context and relevant information.”

“President Trump did nothing wrong, has always insisted on truth and transparency, and acted in a proper manner, according to the law,” the spokesperson added.

ABC News went on to report that in her discussion with investigators, “Michael said she believed early on that claims of no more boxes from Trump were ‘easily’ disproven, and she believed Trump knew they were false because he knew the contents of those boxes better than anyone else — and because he had previously seen a photograph of the storage room with all 90 or so boxes in it.”

When Michael had first been contacted by the FBI for an interview, she was said to have informed Trump who, according to the sources, reportedly told her, “You don’t know anything about the boxes.”

While corporate media latched on to the opportunity to resume talks of “walls closing in” on the onetime commander-in-chief, others took to social media slamming the report for, as the spokesperson had argued, lacking “context and relevant information.”

As many pointed out, the prevailing question remained whether the documents in the case were even classified at the time they were collected by federal agents.

“Just because something is marked classified doesn’t mean it’s still classified,” said one as another pointed out, “The markings never leave most likely something that he already had declassified, but we got him now.”

Kevin Haggerty
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