An attorney for Donald Trump said the former president used an empty folder marked classified to block a light on his landline telephone in his bedroom so he could sleep.
Attorney Timothy Parlatore made the absurd comment on CNN days after it was reported that Trump’s legal team turned over a laptop, thumb drive and more documents with classification markings, including an empty folder marked “Classified Evening Briefing,” to federal prosecutors.
Parlatore told CNN that one of the more “humorous” aspects of the investigation was how the empty folder with classification markings ended up in Trump’s bedroom.
“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,” Parlatore explained. “So he took the manilla folder and put it over so it would keep the light down so he could sleep at night.”
“It’s just this folder. It says ‘Classified Evening Summary’ on it. It’s not a classification marking,” He continued. “It’s not anything that is controlled in any way. There is nothing illegal about it there’s nothing in it. And when DOJ found out about it, they went crazy. They actually gave me a subpoena that said give us over this empty folder that means nothing.”
“Now the president has to find a different way to keep the blue light out of his eyes,” Parlatore added.
The folder was found in Trump’s bedroom in December 2022, months after the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago and retrieved hundreds of classified documents.
Special Counsel Jack Smith has been appointed to lead the Department for Justice’s investigation into Trump’s handling of classified files.
