Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday compared the FBI to Nazi Germany’s secret police while also suggesting that “Marxist Thugs” were in charge of the agents who recovered classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Trump said he held on to many empty folders marked classified after he left the presidency because “they were a ‘cool’ keepsake,” glossing over the fact that the FBI also found documents with the highest levels of government classification, including material on foreign nuclear secrets.
“Perhaps the Gestapo took some of these empty folders when they raided Mar-a-Lago, & counted them as a document, which they are not,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform. “It’s also possible that the Trump Hating Marxist Thugs in charge will ‘plant’ documents while they’re in possession of the material.”
He added: “I did NOTHING WRONG. JOE DID!”
Trump’s comments came just days after the revelation that additional classified documents ― a total of six pages ― were discovered at President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, in December. Biden’s lawyers had also found classified material in his garage and his former offices at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, dating from his time as vice president.
The White House has said it is cooperating with a Justice Department investigation into the matter, adding that Biden’s documents were “inadvertently misplaced, and the President and his lawyers acted promptly upon discovery of this mistake.”
Trump failed to return more than 100 classified documents to the National Archives and Records Administration after he left the presidency as required by law, leading to the search of his Florida property by federal agents last year.
The former president also used incendiary language Monday when he attacked special counsel Jack Smith, who is investigating Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents and the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, which Biden won.
“This is a Gestapo type operation! Are they doing this to the Biden people? I don’t think so!” Trump complained on Truth Social.
Merrick Garland, Biden’s attorney general, last week appointed former U.S. Attorney Robert Hur to investigate classified documents discovered at Biden’s home and former offices.
