A new Justice Department filing released Tuesday revealed that White House records kept in a storage room at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort were "likely concealed and removed" before the FBI's investigation into the former president's mishandling of sensitive material. The 36-page Department of Justice (DOJ) filing included a new set of 100 documents with classification markings and a picture of the classified documents featuring files labeled "Top Secret" and "Secret" atop ostentatious Mar-A-Lago carpet. Amidst the revelation that the former president apparently attempted to obstruct a federal investigation in the months leading up to the search, his right-wing defenders are flailing to find any way to detract from and dismiss the explosive news.
For his part, Trump released a statement on Truth Social saying he "declassified" all of the documents, which his lawyers did not mention in their lawsuit. In typical Trump fashion, he blamed the FBI for taking pictures of documents they wanted "kept secret" and painted himself as a victim.
The released photograph also includes an interesting discovery: A framed TIME magazine cover with faces of Trump's previous 15 Democratic challengers – some smiling – looking into the Oval Office where an anxious Trump is sitting. The picture, which has garnered a decent amount of attention on social media, received outsized attention from conservative circles.
The Republican minority on the House Judiciary Committee responded to the picture in a sarcastic tone, tweeting "That TIME Magazine cover was huge threat to national security."
Other conservatives on Twitter refused to acknowledge that the picture is real.
Texas Republican Rep. Ronny Jackson went to Fox News to cast doubt on the DOJ's filing. "No one trusts the FBI or the DOJ anymore. I don't trust them any further than I can throw that entire building," the former Obama administration member complained. "I'm just going to say, if they told me that they found something, I wouldn't know that they actually found it there or if they just said they found it there."
"I don't know if the DOJ and FBI can be trusted to tell us what was in there," echoed South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem on Fox News. "That's the thing. You can see folders and big words on the — do we know that is really what President Trump brought to his home? Do we know that he put them there?"
Former Acting Director of the United States National Intelligence Richard Grenell linked to a tweet by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, calling on her to stop "swallowing the government's constant spin" and to "do journalism."
"Staged photo of declassified papers protected by the U.S. Secret Service," Grenell tweeted. "Nothing was available digitally - like Hillary had."
President of the far-right group Judicial Watch, and Trump's one-time lawyer, Tom Fitton also backed this false claim saying that "The Biden FBI staged a dishonest photo with purportedly classified material" and called government agencies "irredeemably corrupt." Fitton, who is a prominent conservative, has previously advised Trump from returning records to the National Archives and has referred to the FBI's search of Mar-A-Lago as the "Biden raid."
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Last week, the House Judiciary Committee tweeted their own illustration of the "Trump raid affidavit" with a majority of the document redacted and replaced by lyrics to Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley.
Representative Eric Swalwell (D-CA) responded to the Tweet saying "If you're willing to let teenagers to be sexually abused I guess you're willing to look the other way when FPOTUS risks the lives of our troops" to which the committee deflected by tweeting out a picture of Swalwell posing next to a suspected Chinese intelligence operative Christine Fang, asking how many secrets he spilled to the spy. Fang reportedly took part in fundraising activity for Swalwell's 2014 re-election campaign and helped place an intern in his office. But upon learning about Fang's activities from federal investigators, Swalwell cut off all ties with Fang and wasn't accused of any wrongdoing. Still, Trump's defenders got "Fang, Fang" to trend on Twitter early Wednesday as news of the DOJ's filing circulated.
Liz Cheney, the recently ousted Republican representative who in a previous interview shared her "disgust" over Trump's targeting of the FBI agents who searched his Mar-A-Lago estate, was one of the few conservatives to criticize Trump following this latest breaking news. She tweeted out a picture of the documents: "Yet more indefensible conduct by Donald Trump revealed this morning."
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