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Former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home has likely been infiltrated by "every significant" foreign intelligence agency, according to Democratic Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island.
Reed told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on Thursday that the FBI discovering multiple classified documents while executing a search warrant at the Palm Beach, Florida, residence was "extremely serious," adding that the "very serious" documents "must be maintained in safe, secure facilities." He weighed in on potential foreign intelligence breaches after Mitchell recalled an incident involving a Chinese woman suspected of espionage after being found trespassing at Mar-a-Lago in 2019 with a thumb drive containing malware.
"Your point is extremely well taken," said Reed. "Not just the Chinese, but I am fairly confident—just a general feeling—that every significant intelligence service in the world has been floating in and out of Mar-a-Lago all through his presidency and beyond... He has been known to conduct business in the open with foreign leaders, making statements that could in fact... implicate sensitive information."
"This is a situation where there's no excuse," he continued. "A fundamental lesson anyone learns who deals with classified information is you can't talk about it. Two, you have to secure it. And certainly you can't take it with you."
Reed also lashed out at Trump for having "this sense that he owns everything" and being dishonest about the documents. He called Trump's claims of having "declassified" the documents recovered during the Mar-a-Lago raid "completely unfounded."
Reed said that "notifying the agencies that produced the documents that they are declassified" is "one of the rules" of declassification, along with keeping the documents "properly maintained and stored," which Trump had not done.
"You're looking at a situation where the president not only removed these documents without authority," said Reed. "But then over many, many months he and his staff insisted they didn't have them... All of this adds up to, I think, serious, serious misconduct."
Although Trump has maintained that he declassified the documents in question, prompting ridicule from figures including President Joe Biden, the classified status of the documents are not necessarily relevant to the federal laws cited in the search warrant, which include the Espionage Act.
Reed is not the only prominent figure to suggest that Mar-a-Lago could have been infiltrated by foreign spies during or after Trump's presidency.
Former FBI official Peter Strzok—a frequent target of Trump and his allies due to his involvement in the Mueller investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election—said last Sunday that foreign intelligence agencies, including Russia, had "absolutely" been seeking access to Trump's property.
Stephen L. Hall, a former senior U.S. intelligence official, expressed concerns about Trump keeping sensitive documents at Mar-a-Lago while commenting last week on potential infiltrators including Inna Yashchyshyn—a Russian-speaking immigrant who the FBI recently said gained access to the property using a fake identification card.
"The combination of this kind of person (and she's not the only one) getting into Mar a Lago and the presence of highly sensitive, unsecured documents there is terrifying," Hall tweeted.
Newsweek reached out to Trump's office for comment.
About the writer
Aila Slisco is a Newsweek night reporter based in New York. Her focus is on reporting national politics, where she ... Read more