Michael Cohen, who was once former President Donald Trump's lawyer, believes Trump likely has copies of the classified documents the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago stashed in other locations.
Cohen was reacting on Twitter to an article from The Washington Post on the Department of Justice's recent court filing, in which the DOJ suggested that Trump's team may have concealed or moved top-secret files when officials were probing the matter.
"I believe Trump has copies, potentially other documents as well, at other locations including his children's homes, Weisselberg's florida home, Bedminster, NJ golf course, Fifth Avenue apartment, etc…" Cohen tweeted.
Cohen was referring to Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization's former CFO, who in August admitted to orchestrating a payroll tax-dodge scheme at the organization.
During its search of Mar-a-Lago on August 8, the FBI seized 11 sets of classified documents, including some marked "top secret" and files that may have concerned nuclear weapons. According to the warrant for the search, the DOJ is looking into whether Trump broke any of three federal laws — including the Espionage Act — by keeping the documents at his Florida residence.
This week, the DOJ also released a photograph from their search of Mar-a-Lago, which showed several folders bearing the words "top secret" strewn across the floor.
It is unclear if the former president ever made copies of these documents, or if these copies are being kept at the former president's other homes. A representative at Trump's post-presidential press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.
Cohen was Trump's lawyer and close confidante for a decade. In 2018, he was the subject of a search of his home and office, as part of a Trump-related investigation into illegal hush-money payments to adult-film star Stormy Daniels.
Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to felonies including tax evasion, campaign-finance violations, and bank fraud. He was sentenced in December 2018 to three years in prison and disbarred in February 2019 by the New York Supreme Court.
For his part, Cohen has weighed in on many aspects of the Mar-a-Lago raid. He celebrated the news of the raid, saying that Trump was finally being "held accountable."
He later weighed in on how Trump was likely nervous about a potential mole at Mar-a-Lago and said he would not be surprised if one of Trump's children or his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was an FBI informant.
Cohen has also posited that Trump may attempt to find a scapegoat for any offenses uncovered by the Mar-a-Lago raid, such as his former lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. He also speculated that Trump likely kept the classified documents as a "bargaining chip," so he could threaten the release of classified information to America's adversaries as a "get-out-of-jail-free card."
