Donald Trump's lawyer says the search for classified material at the former president's properties is over.
Timothy Parlatore confirmed Sunday that additional classified documents were found during a search in December and turned over to the Justice Department.
"We've tried to do searches of all the relevant places, and anytime we've found anything, we've immediately turned it over," Parlatore told CNN.
He also confirmed that Trump's team handed over to DOJ an empty manilla folder marked "Classified Evening Summary" after receiving a subpoena for the item, which was found in the former president's bedroom.
According to Parlatore, Trump had been using the empty folder as a lamp shade to block a light on his landline telephone that was keeping him up at night.
"He has one of those landline telephones next to his bed, and it has a blue light on it, and it keeps him up at night. So he took the manilla folder and put it over so it would keep the light down so he could sleep at night," Parlatore said. "It’s just this folder. It says 'Classified Evening Summary' on it. It's not a classification marking. It's not anything that is controlled in any way. There is nothing illegal about it."
In addition to the folder, Trump's team turned over other materials found last month at his Mar-a-Lago resort -- including at least one document with classification markings and a laptop belonging to a current aide of the former president, ABC News reported.
As for why classified documents were still being found at Trump's properties, Parlatore told CNN he blamed White House procedure for handling sensitive material when an administration leaves office. He also pointed to similar situations involving former Vice President Mike Pence and President Joe Biden mishandling documents.
"When you have DOJ go into these things, they are automatically going in with all the criminal processes and trying to threaten people to go to jail over something that is a procedural failure and an institutional procedural failure that has nothing to do with Mike Pence, Donald Trump or, quite frankly, Joe Biden," Parlatore said.
In August, the Federal Bureau of Investigation recovered hundreds of classified records during a raid of Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate that he refused to hand over willingly. The U.S. Department of Justice in November appointed a Special Counsel to address the case. That investigation is ongoing.
Trump has claimed that, as president, he declassified the documents and that the continuing investigation is nothing more than a "witch hunt."
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