(TheLibertyRevolution.com)- While the Department of Justice is thoroughly investigating whether former President Donald Trump broke any laws by taking classified documents from the White House to his estate at Mar-a-Lago, there’s someone who believes the DOJ should do some more digging.
Michael Cohen, who once served as the fixer and personal lawyer for Trump, said over the weekend that the DOJ should investigate if Trump had photocopied any of the classified documents and kept them at a different location.
Cohen appeared on an MSNBC program Sunday morning when he made those comments. They were in reference to a report that The New York Times published about how the former president was angered that by the National Archives and Records Administration, which refused to give him documents related to the probe the FBI conducted into whether Russia interfered in the presidential election in 2016.
The Times reported that Trump told some of his advisers that he’d hand some documents he had at his Mar-a-Lago estate over to NARA if they gave him the documents he was seeking in return.
Cohen commented on that report, saying that he took a page from his own book, “The Art of the Deal,” in which he talked about trading “this for that.”
As Cohen said:
“This whole issue is absolutely crazy. The fact that we have to sit there and play this game with a former president of the United States?”
Cohen said that Trump was never “entitled” to gain access to the documents he was requesting. He added:
“First and foremost, they are not his. Second of all, we know that he has more documents. We know that because, in the file folder, it would specifically state the number of documents in them. Well, there are more of them obviously out there.
“On top of that, we should find out whether or not he photocopied any of the documents as well.”
Cohen also said he wondered why Trump tried to gain access to those documents after he was president and not during his four years in the White House.
This is not a new suggestion that Cohen is making, either. Last month, he suggested that Trump probably kept copies of some classified files at the homes of his children, New York’s Trump Tower and the golf course he owns in Bedminster, New Jersey.
The Department of Justice is currently embroiled in an investigation about whether Trump violated the law by having classified documents at his home in Florida. During an FBI raid on August 8, agents seized many documents that were classified, some of which were marked as “top secret.”
One of the federal laws that Trump may have violated as a result of this is the Espionage Act, which would be a major charge.
Cohen himself is no stranger to legal problems. He plead guilty to a few felonies in 2018, including charges of campaign finance violations, bank fraud and tax evasion. In December of that year, he was sentenced to spend three years in prison.
Since being released, he’s been an outspoken critic of the former president, commenting for many national media outlets on some of the top political issues of the day.