Only a handful of people who were “very close” to former President Donald Trump could have tipped off federal investigators about boxes of classified documents stored at his Mar-a-Lago resort, a former White House chief of staff claims.
The FBI raided Trump’s residence in Palm Beach, Florida last Monday in search of classified documents the former president allegedly took from the White House at the end of his term.
The FBI knew exactly where to look for them. “It would be someone who handled things on a day-to-day basis, who knew where documents were, so it would be someone very close, close to the president who whistled,” Mick Mulvaney told CNN. “My guess is there are probably six or eight people who had that kind of information. Mulvaney was Trump’s chief of staff for a year and a half.
Mulvaney added that the person who spoke to the agents was so close to Trump that they knew about the existence and location of a safe in Trump’s home. “I didn’t even know there was a safe there and I was chief of staff for 15 months,” he told CNN. “I don’t know the people who are in the inner circle these days, so I can’t name people that come to mind, but if you know where the vault is and you know the documents are in 10 boxes in the basement, you’re pretty close to the president,” Mulvaney added.
The raid was carried out by more than 30 agents from the Southern District of Florida and the FBI’s Washington office and took place in all of the Trump family’s 3,000 square feet of private living quarters, as well as a separate office and safe, and a locked storage room in the basement where 15 cardboard boxes of Material from the White House. The agents arrived at 9 am and left around 6:30 pm. An eyewitness to the raid said all the crates were confiscated by federal agents on Monday, but it was not known if anything else was taken because a detailed list of items taken was not provided by the FBI.