Classified documents (illustrative)
Classified documents (illustrative)iStock

Former President Donald Trump turned heads with his latest attack on the FBI on Tuesday morning, referring to the agency as the “Gestapo” while defending himself against the federal raid that found classified documents at his residence last year.

In August, the US government recovered more than 300 documents with classified markings from Trump's Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, the New York Times reported.

According to the report, the classified documents included material from the CIA, the National Security Agency and the FBI.

An initial batch of more than 150 documents marked as classified was recovered by the US National Archives in January 2022, the report said. Aides to Trump gave the US Justice Department a second set in June 2022, while a third batch was seized in the FBI Mar-a-Lago raid in August.

Months later, Trump has hit back on social media, giving his account of why the documents were stored at his residence, while using the term “Gestapo” to refer to the FBI.

According to the former president, the documents consisted of empty folders previously containing classified material which he kept as keepsakes upon leaving the presidency.

“Many of the so-called ‘documents’ that the ‘Gestapo’ took in the raid of Mar-a-Lago, unlike the ‘No Raids of Biden,’ were merely inexpensive and very common folders with words such as ‘Presidential Reading,’ ‘Confidential,’ ‘Classified,’ or other words stamped on the front cover. There was nothing inside of the folders because, during meetings where information was passed out, say at the Oval Office, when finished the papers inside were taken back, but the empty folders were left behind,” Trump said.