The Department of Justice wanted to sway the public's opinion of the raid on former President Donald Trump's home by releasing a photograph of documents, along with a gold-framed magazine cover of Trump on Time magazine lying on the floor of his Mar-a-Lago home, one of his attorneys, Alina Habba, said on Newsmax Thursday.
"It's strange. They keep saying [this] is very sensitive, but then they attach a picture of documents that they've taken out and placed for a photo op in order to sway the public," Habba told Newsmax's "Wake Up America." I don't think the DOJ should care about the public's opinion. I think it should be very much about their investigation."
She said she thinks the documents were put on the floor "to show that there were things that had top-secret markings for the public to justify the raid," but still, that "doesn't tell you that things that were declassified were marked classified.
"They don't change the marking when they do that, so that doesn't really indicate to me that they would necessarily be classified documents."
"But that doesn't mean that the president under the Presidential Records act didn't declassify them," Habba said.
Meanwhile, a federal judge has indicated she will grant Trump's request of a special master to go through the documents to determine which messages could be considered privileged material, said Habba.
"They've said that they've gone through the documents already," she said. "There are some privileged documents, but appointing a special master would have, a for lack of better words, it's like a mediator, somebody who's neutral, who is not working for the DOJ, who is not working for Trump, who could come in and just take a look at the documents that were taken and make sure everything is returned."
Habba added that it is her understanding that "everything was declassified," but the special master would be responsible for making sure everything was done properly.
Meanwhile, Habba said she doesn't know if an indictment is coming for Trump, as "I don't know what he would be indicted for."
However, she said she does know Trump has "been under siege and sued and investigated by numerous places for the entire time since he announced he was running for president in 2016. He was impeached. You know, they don't think it stops for Donald Trump."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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