Former Trump chief of staff Mick Mulvaney says he never knew about Mar-a-Lago safe

Former White House chief of staff for the Trump administration Mick Mulvaney said Thursday that he was not aware there was a safe at Mar-a-Lago. His comments followed the raid earlier this week of the former president's Florida home.

On CNN's "New Day," Mulvaney said that only someone "really close" to Trump would have known there was a safe on the Florida estate. 

"I didn't even know there was a safe at Mar-a-Lago, and I was the chief of staff for 15 months," he said. "So this would be someone who was handling things on day-to-day, who knew where documents were. So it would be somebody very close inside the president. My guess is there's probably six or eight people who have that kind of information." 

The former South Carolina representative said he wasn't sure about who would have that sort of access to Trump these days, as he is no longer in Trump's inner circle. He added that Trump currently has the ability to release the FBI search warrant, which would indicate what documents officials were seeking during the raid.

The search was reportedly related to documents Trump removed from the White House at the end of his term, including some potentially classified material.

Mulvaney also weighed in Thursday morning about the former president's decision to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights not to testify during his deposition with the New York state Attorney General Letitia James (D), who has been, for years, looking into the finances of Trump's companies.

"I think the president learned a valuable lesson. Look, it's easy for anybody, including the president of the United States, to watch people on TV, especially if you've already formed an opinion of them, and watch them take the Fifth and go, 'That is an admission of guilt.' And it's easy for anybody to say that, it's different when you're the one sitting across the table from a prosecutor and looking at potential criminal charges," he said.