By: Nina He

Trump has been accused of crime—and he could still run for president. This time, Trump stole classified files. After he lost the 2020 presidential race, he took hundreds of these top-secret files to his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago. These files had things to do with things like national security and nuclear weapons.

If these fell into the wrong hands, they would threaten the safety of American spies as well as American soldiers and might harm the way the government got information from other countries. Trump kept these documents in a ballroom, a bedroom, and a bathroom in Mar-a-Lago.

But why did Trump steal them?

Trump never said why he stole the files in the first place. You don’t just grab a bunch of top-secret files from the American government to decorate your house.

So why?

There are some theories on why Trump stole the files. One of them is that Trump wanted leverage. His former attorney, Micheal Cohen, said that he thinks Trump took these files with a goal in mind.

“I believe Trump held on to these classified documents as a way to extort the country and to use them as leverage in the event he is to be indicted and convicted by the DOJ,” Cohen said.