Carlo Allegri via Reuters
- Michael Cohen discussed the report that the FBI found classified nuclear documents at Mar-a-Lago.
- Cohen told MSNBC Trump may have kept the papers to blackmail the DOJ into not indicting him.
- For Trump, it is "all about power," Cohen said.
Donald Trump's former fixer, Michael Cohen, doubled down on his claim that the former president may have kept classified documents at Mar-a-Lago to blackmail the Department of Justice into not indicting him.
Cohen appeared on MSNBC's "The ReidOut" on Wednesday to discuss a Tuesday report by The Washington Post that said FBI agents had found classified documents about a foreign government's nuclear-defense capabilities during their August 8 search of Trump's Florida estate.
The report, which cited several unnamed sources familiar with the investigation, did not specify which foreign government the documents were about.
When MSNBC host Joy Reid asked Cohen to "speculate" on why Trump would keep these top-secret documents in Mar-a-Lago, the lawyer said: "This is all about power for Donald Trump."
"This is all about him still remaining relevant and exerting the power over the United States as extortion in the event you indict me or members of my family, if you indict me or try to incarcerate me, I have nuclear secrets that I have instructed some of my followers to turn over to our adversaries," Cohen said.
Trump also said he expects Trump to be indicted "relatively soon," echoing remarks by David Lauftmann, a former senior DOJ counterintelligence official, and Bill Barr, who served as US attorney general under Trump.
Representatives for Trump did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
The Mar-a-Lago search was part of an investigation into whether Trump violated three federal laws, including the Espionage Act.
This is not the first time Cohen has suggested that Trump was keeping government documents for extortion.
He told MSNBC last month that the former president was likely using the secret documents that he took to Mar-a-Lago "as a get-out-of-jail-free card."
"It's a way to extort America turn around to say if you put me in jail if you go after me ... I will have my loyal supporters who you do not know who has copies of information that may have been," Cohen said at the time.
from Business Insider https://ift.tt/QDoLw7q
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