Donald Trump has accused the FBI of staging a photo of secret documents on the floor of his Mar-a-Lago home insisting, “They dropped them not me.”
The first image of documents seized by agents during the 8 August raid of Mr Trump’s luxurious Florida estate was released as part of a court late-night filing by the Justice Department.
Investigators stated in the court papers that the Justice Department has evidence that government records were likely moved to obstruct an investigation.
The documents in the photo also have “secret” and “top secret” labels clearly affixed to them.
Mr Trump took to Truth Social on Wednesday to continue his public criticism of the agency and to claim that agents “broke” into the estate.
“There seems to be confusion as to the ‘picture’ where documents were sloppily thrown on the floor and then released photographically for the world to see, as if that’s what the FBI found when they broke into my home. Wrong!” wrote Mr Trump on his social media website.
“They took them out of cartons and spread them around on the carpet, making it look like a big ‘find’ for them.
“They dropped them, not me - Very deceiving…And remember, we could have NO representative, including lawyers, present during the Raid. They were told to wait outside.”
The release of the photo came as part of a late-night filing by the Justice Department in the Florida court where Donald Trump has sued to require the appointment of a special master to review the documents taken by FBI agents and determine whether any are protected by executive privilege.
The FBI search at Mr Trump’s estate saw federal agents remove 20 boxes that contained 11 sets of classified material.
Mr Trump and his allies have claimed that the one-term president had declassified documents he took from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, but have also alleged they were planted by agents.
No one, including Mr Trump, has yet explained why the classified documents were being stored in an unsecured area of his estate and without the approval of the National Archives.
