Trump counsels grilled

The FBI interviewed former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his deputy, Patrick Philbin, about boxes of classified information that were kept at the 45th president’s Florida resort after he left office, according to a report Tuesday.

The New York Times, citing three sources, reported that Cipollone and Philbin were tasked as Trump’s post-presidency representatives in dealing with the National Archives, which is responsible for storing presidential papers under federal law.

According to the paper, when the Archives realized some White House documents were missing, they turned to Philbin to try to help retrieve them.

Trump reportedly resisted attempts to get him to return the papers, saying at one point: “It’s not theirs, it’s mine.”

Ultimately, 15 boxes were returned to the Archives from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in January of this year. The following month, the Archives revealed that classified material had been found in the boxes and that it had contacted the Justice Department about potential violations of the Presidential Records Act.

That touched off a chain of events that culminated in the FBI launching a raid on the former president’s home Aug. 8. According to an inventory made public last week, agents left with 27 boxes and 11 sets of documents containing classified information.