DOJ releases redacted image showing some of the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago with many of them carrying “Secret” and “Top Secret” markings.
Cohen said in his TikTok: “Let me be very clear, considering I know this ‘Mandarin Mussolini’ extremely well. Donald doesn’t take boxes of material around the world for no reason at all. He took it for nefarious reasons.”
“I stand firm when I say that Donald wants to use this in order to hold the country hostage,” he later said. “That’s his goal. His goal, because he knows his ass is in the grinder right now. He knows that he’s cooked, that he’s going to use this information, look for all we know, he’s already given it away, but there’s definitely more that’s there.”
Cohen posited that Trump would try to use the classified information to “ensure that he doesn’t spend the rest of his natural life behind bars charged with treason.”
He previously theorized that the former president intended to use the classified documents he kept at his Mar-a-Lago home as a “bargaining chip” in case he was ever at risk of being indicted or jailed.
“The second that they put him in handcuffs, he’ll turn around and say: ‘You don’t seem to understand. I have the documentation showing, for example, where our nuclear launchpads are, or other information sensitive national security information,” he said.
The filing came after the DOJ said Monday a filter team had already reviewed all the documents and identified a “limited set of materials” that may be covered by attorney-client privilege.
The DOJ has also released a redacted image showing some of the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago with many of them carrying “Secret” and “Top Secret” markings.
The photo — which was part of the Justice Department’s response to Trump’s demands to have the documents reviewed by a special master — may further undercut enthusiasm among some key supporters to defend the former president’s actions. Normally stalwart backers have stayed quiet or tried to deflect criticism after initially protesting the FBI search as an overreach by DOJ.
“TOP SECRET/SCI” blazed out on cover sheets for at least five sets of papers laid out on the carpeting. Another cover sheet at the fore of the government photo said “SECRET/SCI” and “Contains sensitive compartmented information” — a marking for documents that include references to source and methods, which intelligence agencies go to great lengths to protect.
For supporters and critics of the former president, it was the first time the sensitive national security papers at the center of the latest controversy were visible, even if their contents remained classified.
