Trump used an empty folder meant for classified docs as a lamp shade, lawyer says

One of former President Donald Trump’s lawyers claimed on Sunday that the ex commander-in-chief used an empty folder that said “Classified Evening Summary” to cover a light in his bedroom at Mar-a-Lago.

“He has one of those landline telephones next to his bed, and it has a blue light on it, and it keeps him up at night. So he took the manilla folder and put it over so it would keep the light down so he could sleep at night,” Timothy Parlatore told CNN.

The folder was reportedly given to federal prosecutors in December. 

“It’s just this folder. It says ‘Classified Evening Summary’ on it. It’s not a classification marking. It’s not anything that is controlled in any way. There is nothing illegal about it,” Parlatore claimed, adding that the search for classified documents at all of Trump’s properties had been completed.

Trump, 76, admitted in January that he kept folders after his presidency that once housed classified papers because “they were a ‘cool’ keepsake.”​

“When I was in the Oval Office, or elsewhere, & ‘papers’ were distributed to groups of people & me, they would often be in a striped paper folder with ‘Classified’ or ‘Confidential’ or another word on them,” the former president attempted to explain in a post on Truth Social. “When the session was over, they would collect the paper(s), but not the folders, & I saved hundreds of them.”

Trump added that the folders were “ordinary” and “inexpensive” but made for great mementos from his time in the White House.

Since the August FBI raid of Trump’s Palm Beach, Fla., estate that turned up hundreds of sensitive papers, classified documents have been found at President Biden’s office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, DC, and at his Wilmington, Del., home. Former Vice President Mike Pence has also turned over documents with classified markings found at his Indiana home. 

Parlatore argued on Sunday that White House lacks adequate procedures for handling classified documents. 

“What … you’ve seen here and also in the Biden and Pence investigations is that the White House does not have proper procedures for handling classified information. And these documents, when they get packed up and sent out when people leave office, they do keep showing up, if you will,” Parlatore said. 

Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed special counsels to investigate both the Biden’s and Trump’s mishandling of classified materials.