[Washington Examiner] Former CIA official Philip Mudd downplayed FBI agents finding classified documents in former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida during a raid on Monday.It’s common for government officials to bring classified documents home with them accidentally because files are often "overclassified," Mudd, a former deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center and the FBI’s National Security Branch, said during a CNN appearance on Tuesday. Therefore, the process of obtaining a search warrant for the residence of a former president would require much more than just seeking classified documents, he added.
"The chance the attorney general and the FBI director went in and said, ’Hey, he’s got some secret document down there he hasn’t given us, and to ensure we recover those, we’re just going to go to Mar-a-Lago,' I would put that near zero," Mudd explained. "To get to the bar where you’re going to the residence of the former president, classified documents don’t get you there. I had them in my house sometimes, inappropriately. It happens all the time. There has to be the additional piece ... and they have to do with stuff that the FBI can’t get someplace else."
Earlier this year, the National Archives retrieved about 15 boxes' worth of material it contends were presidential records that it said should have been given to the agency. Upon review of the records, the agency discovered classified material and referred the matter to the Department of Justice, according to a letter David Ferriero, the archivist of the United States at the time, sent to Congress back in February. The DOJ subsequently opened a grand jury inquiry into the matter, the New York Times reported.
Federal agents took approximately 10 more boxes out of Mar-a-Lago on Monday, according to the Wall Street Journal, which said this marked an escalation of the investigation into how classified documents ended up at the resort after Trump left office.