Trump Tells Newsmax He Took Government Documents ‘Very Legally and I Wasn’t Hiding Them’
Former President Donald Trump insisted on Wednesday night that he legally took government documents from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago estate and “wasn’t hiding” this fact.
Trump is under indictment in federal court in Florida for what Special Counsel Jack Smith says was his willful retention of classified documents and efforts to obstruct their retrieval. The former president has pleaded not guilty.
In an interview with Newsmax’s Greg Kelly, Trump railed against the charges and the FBI’s execution of a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago estate in August 2022. After retrieving documents from the property in January 2022, the government notified Trump it believed he still possessed government material. In June 2022, a lawyer for Trump signed a letter stating that to her knowledge, no such documents remained onsite. Two months later, the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago and found more material.
The indictment includes photos of boxes allegedly containing classified documents in various locations, including a ballroom, a bathroom, and a storage room.
“I was dealing with them,” Trump told Kelly. “We were dealing fine. And then all of a sudden they raided this house. They raided Mar-a-Lago. These are corrupt people.”
Trump then noted that President Joe Biden retained classified documents from his time as a senator and vice president. In that case, lawyers for Biden found the material and gave it to the National Archives. Special Counsel Robert Hur investigated Biden and declined to prosecute.
“But they release Biden,” the former president stated. “What Biden did, he wasn’t protected by the Presidential Records [Act] because he wasn’t president. He took them when he was a senator.”
The former president has insisted that the Presidential Records Act allowed him to take government documents, but the National Archives refuted this claim in a rare statement.
He then claimed he took the material “very legally”:
There’s something going on because they’re going after me viciously. Then all of a sudden it comes out that Biden took 10 times the number of documents that I did. And I took them very legally and I wasn’t hiding them. We had boxes on the front of the– and a lot of those boxes had clothing and a lot. We’re moving out, ok? Unfortunately, we’re moving out of the White House. And because we’re moving out of the White House, our country’s going to hell. But we weren’t hiding anything.
Later Trump rehashed his attacks on Smith, calling him “a total animal.”
Watch above via Newsmax.
