Republican Marco Rubio shrugs off Trump’s Mar-a-Lago scandal as ‘a storage argument’

During an interview with a local news outlet on Sunday, Republican Senator Marco Rubio (FL) downplayed the federal investigation into Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents.

“This is really at its core a storage argument that they’re making,” Rubio told NBC 6. “They’re arguing there are documents there, they don’t deny that he should have access to those documents, but they deny they were properly stored.”

“I don’t think a fight over storage of documents is worthy of what they’ve done, which is a full-scale raid and then these constant leaks,” he continued. “That’s the second problem. It’s the PR behind all this.”

Documents at Trump's Florida home were "likely concealed" to obstruct an FBI probe into his potential mishandling of classified materials, the Justice Department said in a court filing last week.

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The filing provides the most detailed account yet of the motivation for the FBI raid this month on Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, which was triggered by a review of records he previously surrendered to authorities that contained top secret information.

Before the raid, the FBI uncovered "multiple sources of evidence" showing that "classified documents" remained at Mar-a-Lago, the filing says.

"The government also developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed... and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government's investigation," the filing adds.

The DOJ said it provided the detailed background on the build-up to the raid "to correct the incomplete and inaccurate narrative set forth in (Trump's) filings."

Among the records seized during the unprecedented search of the home of a former president were documents marked "Top Secret," "Secret" and "Confidential."

Trump, who is weighing another White House run in 2024, vehemently denounced the FBI raid and claimed that all of the material confiscated during the search had been previously "declassified."

With additional reporting by AFP