Bolton: Trump's defense of Mar-a-Lago materials "almost certainly a lie"

What he's saying: Bolton told the Times he had never heard of any such standing order. It is "almost certainly a lie," he said.

• "I was never briefed on any such order, procedure, policy when I came in," Bolton said. "If he were to say something like that, you would have to memorialize that, so that people would know it existed."
• Trump's clubs in Florida and New Jersey had installed secure facilities for the purpose of viewing top secret documents, Bolton noted — Trump shouldn't have needed to declassify anything.
• Moreover, declassified materials are subject to public record requests, Bolton pointed out.

• "When somebody begins to concoct lies like this, it shows a real level of desperation."

The big picture: The unsealed warrant showed that the materials recovered from the estate were only meant to be kept in secure government facilities.

• The revelations undercut Trump and his allies’ claims that the warrant was baseless.

Worth noting: Trump's legal team said in a written declaration in June that all classified material stored at Mar-a-Lago had been returned to the government, the Times reports.

Go deeper: Presidential Records Act and Trump search explained