Fingerprints on Trump classified documents could be damning evidence: former FBI agent

Fingerprints on Trump classified documents could be damning evidence: former FBI agent
President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump arrive at Joint Base Andrews Air Force Base Friday July 5, 2019, in Maryland, and depart on Air Force One en route New Jersey. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
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Donald Trump's fingerprints analysis to build a clearer picture of how widely classified information was exposed at former President Donald Trump's document stashes, former FBI agent Pete Strzok detailed on Twitter Thursday.

Strzok, who became a fixation of Trump allies' anger after an investigation about his text messages while he worked on the Russia case, was responding to a new report that Susie Wiles, a GOP campaign strategist close to Trump, was identified as a person whom Trump showed a classified map.

"Something not mentioned in news reporting: I really hope the FBI has sent all of the original classified docs from Mar-a-Lago to the lab for fingerprint analysis," wrote Strzok. "All clearance holders are fingerprinted, meaning a couple of things: Investigators should be able to get an idea of: 1) who with a clearance handled the docs and 2) ID fingerprints not matching any clearance holder IDing who is associated with the latter can be hard because most people have never been fingerprinted."

"Beyond identification, prints can be investigatively helpful in a number of ways: showing the same print(s) across a variety of documents, [and] the volume of prints, eg, was there one Trump print on a particular doc, or hundreds? The latter would imply heavy handling," Strzok continued. "If a person hasn’t been fingerprinted, they can be asked to voluntarily provide them, or they can be compelled to do so via warrant (a subpoena isn’t enough). (Btw, Trump didn’t have a booking photo taken at Miami. But were biometrics (fingerprints and DNA swab) taken?"

The 37-count Espionage Act indictment brought against Trump by special counsel Jack Smith doesn't reference fingerprints, Strzok continued — and it would be a complicated ordeal, because "God knows there were a parade of people going through Trump’s Bedminster office." Additionally, "Trump has a habit of show-and-tell, holding up docs for people to see without actually handing them to them," so it wouldn't necessarily reflect every person he showed the documents to.

Trump is still trying to claim he did not show classified documents to anyone at Bedminster, despite audio tape released by CNN suggesting he was showing people at Bedminster a highly-classified Iran attack strategy document. Instead, Trump claims he was just showing them "building plans."

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