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Former President Donald Trump offered a dizzying multitude of new justifications Monday for keeping classified material after leaving the White House and refusing to give them back to the National Archives and Records Administration.
“I was very busy,” he told Fox News’ Bret Baier, explaining that he wanted to go through all the boxes identified by the Archives to remove personal things before handing them over.
Trump said he wanted to pull out “all sorts of things, golf shirts, clothing, pants, shoes,” interspersed with papers in his boxes.
He deflected about why exactly he kept all the sensitive material in the first place: “I don’t say I do.”
And as for the classified Pentagon document, which CNN first reported Trump is on tape acknowledging he held onto, the former president offered a new answer. He told Baier the paper he waved in front of people – which, according to the indictment, did not have security clearance – was not the document in question.
“I didn’t have any document per se,” he said, claiming the papers he had were newspaper and magazine articles.
And he denied to Baier that the Iran attack plan was ever in the boxes of documents – “not that I know of,” he said.
But during a Fox News town hall earlier this month, Trump said he didn’t “know anything about” the summer 2021 meeting at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club captured on the audio recording – a meeting that his former chief of staff appeared to recount in detail in his memoir, including a description of the document.
The changing and fuzzy explanations create the picture of a man unwilling to cooperate with records laws for the nation he again wants to lead.
While his top rivals for the Republican nomination are staying relatively quiet about his indictment, some of his top former Cabinet secretaries are not holding back.
“A defiant 9-year-old,” is what former Attorney General William Barr compared his former boss to during an appearance on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
“If true, that conduct was a flagrant crime that cannot be excused,” Barr added of the indictment in an op-Ed in the Free Press on Monday.
Barr left Trump’s administration before the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol and he has been critical of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. He was not complimentary of Trump in a memoir published last year.
But Barr’s comments are noteworthy since he is also the attorney general who defended Trump from the Mueller report and worked alongside Trump for more than a year of his presidency.
Barr’s not alone. Trump’s former secretary of defense, Mark Esper, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that the revelations in the indictment jeopardize national security, although he was careful to add the “if the allegations are true” caveat to his answer.
“If the allegations are true that it contained information about our nation’s security, about our vulnerabilities, about other items, it could be quite harmful to the nation,” he told Jake Tapper, going on to call out “irresponsible action.”
“No one is above the law,” Esper added. “And so I think this process needs to play out and people held to account, the president held to account.”
Asked if Trump could be trusted with the nation’s secrets ever again, Esper said, “Based on his actions – again if proven true under the indictment by the special counsel – no.”
On Monday, the magistrate judge in the classified documents case agreed to prosecutors’ request that neither Trump nor his co-defendant, Walt Nauta, should be allowed to talk about information handed over to their lawyers as part of the discovery process – an expected ruling but nonetheless significant given Trump’s penchant for sharing things on social media.
If anyone needs a reminder, there is a pattern of disgruntled former aides left in the former president’s wake.
Trump’s defense secretary who preceded Esper, James Mattis, had already turned full throttle against Trump before the 2020 election.
Trump had two confirmed attorneys general during his time in the White House and cut the first one – former Sen. Jeff Sessions – loose shortly after the 2018 midterm elections. He then opposed Sessions’ attempt to return to the Senate.
Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, while carefully reacting to news of the indictment, is among the 2024 Republican presidential candidates who say the legal process should proceed.
“I think we need to let the courts do their job. And let this case work its way through our judicial system,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press” recently, saying it’s “premature” to discuss a possible pardon for Trump – the latest question facing the GOP field.
Trump’s position in the primary has solidified even as his fitness to conduct the nation’s business has been questioned.
That so many who once worked for his administration ultimately turned against him, or were turned against by him, has long been a theme of his presidency. But it has not yet jeopardized his power in the party.
Barr parsed what fellow Republicans are saying in their defense of Trump.
There are those like Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the House Judiciary Committee chairman, who maintains that Trump had the power to declassify the documents he is accused of mishandling even if the former president is on tape saying he did not.
Others, Barr said, are focused more on the prosecution than the crime.
“I don’t think they’re actually defending his conduct, but they are saying it’s unfair to prosecute him,” Barr said.
That is an argument a longtime Republican like Barr can identify with. He opposes Trump’s prosecution in New York by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, for alleged participation in a hush money scheme before the 2016 election.
He also questions whether Trump should be prosecuted in connection with January 6, 2021, or his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
But this case, Barr has been arguing, is not the same because Trump brought it upon himself.
“Yes, he’s been a victim in the past. Yes, his adversaries have obsessively pursued him with phony claims. And I’ve been at his side defending against them when he is a victim. But this is much different. He’s not a victim here,” Barr said on “Fox News Sunday” last week.
Trump’s prosecution in relation to the aftermath of the 2020 election is still a very real possibility in both Fulton County, Georgia, and at the federal level. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, a Democrat, has indicated she will make a charging decision in August after a years-long investigation.
Court filings in the classified documents case brought by special counsel Jack Smith refer to other “ongoing investigations.” (The special counsel’s office is also running that federal probe of the period after the 2020 election and leading up to the insurrection.)
Any ultimate prosecution with regard to the 2020 election could be a mistake, Barr said, arguing a candidate should have First Amendment rights.
“We don’t want to get into a position where people can’t complain about an election and claim that an election was stolen.”
And he even sees legitimate explanations for the recording of Trump asking Georgia election officials to “find” him enough votes to win the swing state.
“There are innocent interpretations of what he said, which is, look, of all the votes that we think are bad, you certainly can find among them some that are slam-dunk,” Barr argued.
For the record, Barr left the administration after refusing to appease Trump’s unfounded insistence there had been election fraud in 2020, so it’s interesting to hear him offer a defense on that front.
Republicans can defend Trump against prosecution all they want, but for Barr, that’s not the point.
“The question is, should we be putting someone like this forward as the leader of the country, leader of the free world, who has engaged in this kind of conduct?” he asked.
When CBS’ Robert Costa asked if putting Trump in the White House again would put the country at risk, here’s how Barr answered:
“He will always put his own interests and gratifying his own ego ahead of everything else, including the country’s interests. There’s no question about it.”
Barr wasn’t done.
“Our country can’t be a therapy session for, you know, a troubled man like this.”
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