Mar-a-Lago security was 'hit and miss' while Trump kept boxes of sensitive documents: NYT reporter

Appearing with MSNBC host Alex Witt on Sunday, the New York Times Peter Baker pointed out that security at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort was, at best, "hit and miss" when he visited at the time when the former president was still illegally hanging onto boxes loaded with sensitive government documents.

Host Witt asked him about the Florida resort and his trips there and what he saw while he was researching his book on the Trump presidency.

"Can you give us any sense of how secure the place is? Where there are a lot of people around, evidence of security standing around?" the MSNBC host asked. "Are there any areas that aren't easily accessible, which you feel would be blocked off from the average club member?"

"It's an interesting place, of course," Baker recalled. "This is not just a former president's estate, this is an active club and hotel basically for his paying guests."

"When he was there we did interviews with him after he left office at Mar-a-Lago and the security was sort of hit-or-miss," he continued. "One time we were screened and one time we weren't and I think it kind of depends on the day. The Secret Service still protects him as they do all former presidents but they are not concerned so much with the property and things on the property as they are with him -- with the former president himself and his family."

"They are not responsible for guarding documents, let's say, and keeping club members from wandering into places that they might not necessarily be supposed to go," he continued. "It's a big place, I don't know where exactly he kept these documents they said are supposed to be in a safe with a double lock the authorities told them they did not think it was secure enough. But it is an active place with lots of people coming and going who do not get screened in a criminal background kind of way."

"We saw during the presidency," he recalled. "A woman showed up there, I think, with surveillance equipment, and did not have any kind of permission to be there, managed to get on the property anyway. I think there has always been concerns for security authorities as to how tightly and secure that place is."

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