Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
- Trump's lawyer said they turned over a folder marked "classified" to the DOJ
- The empty folder had been used by Trump in his Mar-A-Lago home, Timothy Parlatore told CNN.
- Trump used it to block a blue light on a landline telephone next to his bed, Parlatore said.
Former President Donald Trump used an empty folder labeled "classified" to block a blue light on his nightstand that had been keeping him awake at night, one of his lawyers told CNN on Sunday.
Timothy Parlatore was responding to reports last week that claimed Trump's lawyers turned over an empty manilla folder marked "Classified Evening Briefing" to the Department of Justice last month.
The DOJ had issued a subpoena for the folder after prosecutors discovered that it was located inside the private quarters of the former president's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, The Guardian and CNN reported.
Parlatore, who represents Trump in the investigation into the handling of classified material, confirmed that they handed over additional classified documents to the DOJ and that one of them was the folder. He added, however, that it was empty and had been used by Trump as a way to block light in his 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. So he took the manilla folder and put it over so it would keep the light down so he could sleep at night," Parlatore told CNN.
"It's just this folder ... There is nothing illegal about it, there's nothing in it," he said.
"When DOJ found out about it, they went crazy and they actually gave me the subpoena to say 'give us over this empty folder that means nothing,'" he added.
—Zachary Cohen (@ZcohenCNN) February 12, 2023
The folder was found four months after the FBI seized the first round of classified documents and other presidential records from Mar-A-Lago during a raid last August. The search was part of a broader investigation into whether the former president violated federal laws, including the Espionage Act.
Parlatore's comments echo those made by Trump himself earlier this year when he said on Truth Social that the FBI merely recovered empty folders from his Mar-a-Lago estate.
"When I was in the Oval Office, or elsewhere, 'papers' were distributed to groups of people & me, they would often be in a striped paper folder with 'Classified' or 'Confidential' or another word on them," he wrote. "When the session was over, they would collect the paper(s), but not the folders, & I saved hundreds of them."
"Remember, these were just ordinary, inexpensive folders with various words printed on them, but they were a 'cool' keepsake," Trump added.
But photos released last summer by the Justice Department of materials seized from the estate paint a different picture. One image shows redacted documents in folders spread out on the carpeted floor of Mar-a-Lago, some of which are labeled "TOP SECRET."
Parlatore represents Trump in both the special counsel investigation into his handling of classified material and the probe linked to the January 6 attack on the Capitol in 2021.
A representative for Trump did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.