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| Photo Credit: AP. |
A former FBI official Peter Strzok said Sunday Russian intelligence along with other foreign intelligence groups tried to gain entry into the Florida Mar-a-Lago estate of former President Donald Trump.
Strzok who
was speaking in an interview with MSNBC host Katie Phang was asked if he
believes it’s a possibility that the Russians would have been interested and “possibly
tried to infiltrate” Mar-a-Lago to get classified records, Newsweek reports.
"Well
Katie, absolutely the Russians, but not just the Russians, any competent
foreign intelligence service, whether that's those belonging to China, those
belonging to Iran, to Cuba, certainly including Russia, are all...interested in
gaining access to Mar-a-Lago," Strzok responded, according to Newsweek.
Strzok’s
comment is coming after the raid at Trump’s residence on August 8 where “top
secret” and other classified information were recovered by FBI agents. The former
President is accused of mishandling classified records which he took with him
to his estate following his White House exit.
"What's
especially concerning right now is some of the information that's coming out
about the absolute lack of any sort of control, or memorialization of who had
access to Mar-a-Lago at any given time—particularly in the context of the fact
that it appears that classified documents were strewn all over the facility,"
Strzok said.
Strzok lost
his job after authorities discovered thousands of texts he exchanged with his
lover Ms Lisa Page, an FBI agent. Strzok at some point called Trump an “idiot”
in his exchanges with his Page. His text was mostly sent in 2016 but he later
became a part of special counsel Robert Mueller investigation into alleged
Trump campaign collusion with the Russians.
The former
FBI counter intelligence agent said that "regardless of the knowledge that
classified documents were there," foreign intelligence services are
"going to have been trying to gain access" to Mar-a-Lago during and
after Trump's presidential administration, according to Newsweek.
"And
that's absolutely the sort of thing that the U.S. intelligence community and
the FBI in particular are going to concerned about, trying to establish who had
access to the grounds, who had access to that storage area, and what they need
to do to mitigate any sort of damage that might [have] occurred," he
added.
Mr. Trump
dismissed the FBI findings as a politically motivated “hoax” and a scam. The former
president later admitted he had declassified the documents obtained by the FBI
at his home