Mar-A-Lago Is A Magnet For Spies, Warns Former FBI Official

Mar-a-Lago has long been a lure for foreign operatives seeking intelligence and access to Donald Trump and other U.S. political leaders even as the former president haphazardly stored top secret information at the unsecured resort, a former FBI official warned Sunday.

Any competent foreign intelligence service, whether those belonging to China, those belonging to Iran, to Cuba, certainly including Russia are ... and were interested in gaining access to Mar-a-Lago, Peter Strzok , former deputy assistant director of counterintelligence at the FBI, told MSNBC host Katie Phang.

Even without the knowledge that Trump was storing classified documents on the grounds of course ... the intelligence services are going to have been trying to gain access, said Strzok.

But the situation is especially concerning because of information coming out right now about the absolute lack of any control or memorialization of who gets access to Mar-a-Lago at any given time, Strzok pointed out.

The FBI earlier this month confiscated several boxes of government documents from Trumps Florida estate, including classified information with highly sensitive material.

The sworn affidavit supporting the search released Friday indicated that there were classified documents were strewn all over the facility, not just in the storage room near the Mar-a-Lago pool, said Strzok.

Classified documents were recovered from his [Trumps] office, from the pine hall, from a multitude of places, he elaborated.

The affidavit noted that documents have not been handled in an appropriate manner or stored in an appropriate location. It added that highly classified records were unfoldered, intermixed with other records, and otherwise improperly identified.

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