- A former White House adviser said she once found classified documents "in the ladies' room."
- Olivia Troye served as homeland security and counterterrorism adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence.
- Her comments come days after the FBI raided Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate and seized boxes of classified documents.
A former homeland security adviser during the Trump administration said she once found classified documents "in the ladies' room" at the White House.
Olivia Troye, who served as homeland security and counterterrorism adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence, shared the anecdote on MSNBC on Sunday.
"I found classified information in the ladies' room of the White House one time in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building," Troye said. "I was not expecting to walk into the ladies' room and find a document like that."
Her comments come days after the FBI executed a raid at former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. The agency seized about a dozen boxes of classified documents from the Florida property last week.
Troye told Insider that she found the documents on a shelf in the bathroom sometime pre-pandemic, and she "thought it was odd that someone put them down and forgot them."
On MSNBC, she said she immediately reported the classified documents to security but that it would concern anyone with security clearance.
"I remember the panic," Troye said on MSNBC. "There is sort of a blood pressure rise in you where you pick it up, and you're like, 'Oh what do I do with this, I have a responsibility to protect it.'"
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Troye added that it was a "known thing" that her colleagues did not properly handle documents.
"People would carry documents around, especially political appointees, around and traditionally you would put it in a pouch, and you would secure it, and you would lock the pouch and then carry it," Troye said. "That's not what was not the norm in the White House, and I do think there were numerous situations where you would see this kind of behavior."
Reports of the FBI raid said that federal agents believed Trump had presidential records, which are officially government property. The Washington Post reported that investigators were looking for secret documents describing US nuclear weapons.
"For those of us that have clearances, again, you do have a responsibility to protect the information," Troye said. "You don't carry it home and store it for whatever number of months in an unclassified facility."
She added: "It doesn't matter what it says, what it actually contains. The bottom line is that information is stored and should be carried properly and secured because it could put lives at risk if that information gets into the wrong hands "