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Former President Donald Trump offered a dizzying array of new justifications Monday for keeping classified material after leaving the White House and refusing to return it 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 items before handing them over.
Trump said he wanted to remove “all kinds of things, golf shirts, clothes, pants, shoes,” interspersed with papers in his boxes.
He digressed on why exactly he kept all the sensitive material in the first place: “I’m not saying I do.”
And regarding the classified Pentagon document, which CNN first reported Trump is on record acknowledging was kept, the former president offered a new response. He told Baier that the newspaper he waved in front of the crowd – which, according to the indictment, did not have a security clearance – was not the document in question.
“I didn’t have any documents per se,” he said, stating that the papers he had were newspaper and magazine articles.
And he denied to Baier that the Iran strike plan was ever in the files, “not that I know of,” he said.
But during a Fox News town hall earlier this month, Trump said he “knew nothing” about the summer 2021 meeting at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, which was caught on tape by audio, a meeting that appeared his former chief of staff. to explain in detail in his memoirs, including a description of the document.
The shifting and vague explanations paint a picture of a man unwilling to cooperate with the records laws of the nation he wants to lead again.
While his main rivals for the Republican nomination are staying relatively quiet about his impeachment, some of his top former cabinet secretaries are not.
“A defiant 9-year-old boy,” is what former Attorney General William Barr compared to his former boss during an appearance in CBS News“Face the Nation” on Sunday.
“If true, this conduct was a flagrant crime that cannot be excused,” Barr added of the indictment in a op-ed in the Free Press on Monday.
Barr left the Trump administration before the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol and has been critical of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. He did not praise Trump in a memo published last year.
But Barr’s comments are notable because 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 is not alone. Former Trump Defense Secretary Mark Esper told CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday that the indictment’s revelations endanger national security, though he was careful to add the caveat “if the allegations are true” to your response.
“If the allegations are true that they contained information about our nation’s security, about our vulnerabilities, about other things, it could be quite damaging to the nation,” he told Jake Tapper, calling it “an irresponsible action.” .
“No one is above the law,” Esper added. “And so I think that process needs to be carried out and people need to be held accountable, the president needs to be held accountable.”
When asked if Trump could ever be trusted with the nation’s secrets again, Esper said: “Based on his actions, again if proven true under the special counsel’s indictment, no “.
On Monday, the magistrate judge in the classified documents case granted prosecutors’ request that neither Trump nor his co-defendant, Walt Nauta, be allowed to speak about information given to their lawyers as part of the discovery process, a decision that was expected. but nonetheless significant given Trump’s penchant for sharing things on social media.
If anyone needs a reminder, there’s a pattern of disgruntled former aides following the former president.
Trump’s defense secretary who preceded Esper, James Mattis, had already turned full throttle against Trump ahead of the 2020 election.
Trump had two attorneys general confirmed during his time in the White House and let go of the first, former Sen. Jeff Sessions, shortly after the 2018 midterm elections. He then opposed Sessions’ bid to return to the Senate.
Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, while reacting cautiously to news of the indictment, is among the 2024 Republican presidential candidates who say the legal process should continue.
“I think we need to let the courts do their job. And let this case work its way through our court system,” he recently told NBC’s “Meet the Press,” saying it’s “premature” to discuss a possible pardon for Trump, the latest question facing the GOP camp.
Trump’s position in the primaries has been consolidated even as his fitness to run the nation’s business has been called into question.
That so many who once worked for his administration have turned against him, or have been against him, has long been a theme of his presidency. But he has not yet jeopardized his power in the party.
Barr weighed in on what fellow Republicans are saying in their defense of Trump.
Some, like Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, maintain that Trump had the power to declassify documents he is accused of mishandling even though the former president is on record saying that he didn’t
Others, Barr said, focus more on the charge than the crime.
“I don’t think they’re defending his conduct, but they’re saying it’s unfair to prosecute him,” Barr said.
That’s 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 involvement in a hush money scheme before the 2016 election.
He also questions whether Trump should be prosecuted in connection with the 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 on himself.
“Yes, he has been a victim in the past. Yes, his adversaries have pursued him obsessively with false claims. And I have stood by him defending them when he is a victim. But this is very different. No he’s a victim here,” Barr said on “Fox News Sunday” last week.
Trump’s prosecution in connection with the fallout from the 2020 election remains a very real possibility both in 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 filed by special counsel Jack Smith refer to other “ongoing investigations.” (The special counsel’s office is also running this federal investigation of the period after the 2020 election and leading up to the insurgency.)
Any final prosecution regarding the 2020 election could be a mistake, Barr said, arguing that a candidate should have First Amendment rights.
“We don’t want to put ourselves in a position where people can’t complain about an election and claim it was stolen.”
And he even sees legitimate explanations for the recording of Trump asking election officials in Georgia 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 can certainly find some that are slam dunks,” Barr argued.
For the record, Barr left the administration after refusing to appease Trump’s baseless insistence that 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 impeachment all they want, but for Barr, that’s not the point.
“The question is, should we introduce someone like that as the leader of the country, the leader of the free world, who has engaged in this kind of conduct?” he asked.
When CBS’s Robert Costa asked if putting Trump back in the White House would put the country at risk, this is how Barr responded:
“He will always put his own interests and the gratification of his own ego ahead of everything else, including the interests of the country. There is no doubt about that.”
Barr wasn’t done.
“Our country can’t be a therapy session for, you know, a troubled man like that.”
