Former President Donald Trump said Monday that he didn’t return classified documents to the National Archives because he hadn’t had time to go through the droves of boxes he took from the White House to Mar-a-Lago.
Trump was asked by Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier why he had ‘very sensitive national security defense documents’ in his possession in an interview from Bedminster that aired Monday night.
Last week Trump appeared in federal court in Miami and pleaded not guilty to 37 counts related to his mishandling of classified materials including the willful retention of national defense information and making false statements.
He told Baier that ‘based on the law’ he had ‘zero’ concerns about being convicted in the case.
The ex-president said he didn’t just give the documents back because he wanted to go through the boxes and ‘get all my personal things out.’
‘And I was very busy, as you’ve sort of seen,’ Trump said. ‘Before I send boxes over I have to take all of my things out. These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things – golf shirts, clothing, pants, shoes – there were many things.’
Former President Donald Trump said Monday that he didn’t return classified documents to the National Archives because he hadn’t had time to go through the droves of boxes he took from the White House to Mar-a-Lago
Baier presssed Trump on whether the boxes included a U.S. battle plan to attack Iran, which had been mentioned in the indictment.
‘Not that I know of. Not that I know of,’ the former commander-in-chief said. ‘But everything was declassified,’ he argued.
‘And Biden didn’t have the right to do that because he wasn’t president. Nor did Mike Pence, by the way, have the right to do that because he wasn’t president.’
Pence has already been let off the hook for the classified documents that were found at his Indiana home among his belongings.
Special Counsel Robert Hur has been charged with looking into whether Biden committed any crimes after classified documents were found in his D.C. office and his Wilmington, Delaware home from his time serving as vice president.
Both Pence and Biden voluntarily gave documents back to the government, whereas many of the charges Trump faces have to do with his resistance to giving them back.
‘No he didn’t!’ Trump claimed when Baier pointed out the current president gave the government his documents.
A DOJ photo that was part of the federal indictment against Trump that shows boxes where classified documents were found sitting in a bathroom at Mar-a-Lago
Baier again pressed Trump on whether he possessed a classified battle plan against Iran, which he reportedly showed a writer and publisher working on a book on July 21, 2021, according to the indictment.
‘Ready?’ Trump said. ‘It wasn’t a document, OK? I had lots of paper. I had copies of newspaper articles. I had copies of magazines.’
The indictment says that investigators have a recording from that day of Trump saying that the document was ‘secret’ and that ‘as president I could have declassified it’ but ‘now I can’t.’
‘When I said that I couldn’t declassify it now, that’s because I wasn’t president. I never made any bones about that,’ Trump told Baier. ‘When I’m not president I can’t declassify that.’
‘Bret, there was no document. That was a massive amount of papers and everything else, talking about Iran and other things. And it may have been held up or it may have not, but that was not a document,’ Trump continued. ‘I didn’t have a document per say. There was nothing to declassify. There were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.’
Trump called those who testified that they were shown a classified document ‘dishonest people’ and ‘thugs.’
He also raged against the August raid of Mar-a-Lago, in which the boxes were removed.
‘We were discussing with NARA giving them back. All of the sudden we’ve gotten raided, which is a violation of my Fourth Amendment rights,’ Trump said. ‘They raided my home and they came and took things.’
Trump denied that any classified documents remained in his possession.
‘No, I don’t have anything, no,’ he said.
He also pushed that the evidence taken by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago could have been tampered with.
‘But what I’m concerned about. They took everything, right? I don’t know what they took. They could be stuffing it,’ Trump said. ‘They’ve never treated the president like this,’ he complained.
