Trump says he declassified EVERY official document found at Mar-a-Lago and claims charging him with a crime would ‘tear this country apart’
- Trump told Hugh Hewitt on his radio show he did no wrong and the Department of Justice would have absolutely no reason to indict him
- ‘There is no reason that they can be other than if they are just sick and deranged, which is always possible,’ he said
- The former president warned of unrest if he were to be indicted: ‘The people would not stand for it’
Former President Trump on Thursday insisted that every official record he took to Mar-a-Lago he had declassified, even as he refused to say whether he knew the documents were the property of the federal government.
Trump told Hugh Hewitt on his radio show he did no wrong and the Department of Justice would have absolutely no reason to indict him.
‘There is no reason that they can be other than if they are just sick and deranged, which is always possible, because I did absolutely – you see the legal papers – absolutely nothing wrong,’ Trump said.
The former president warned of unrest if he were to be indicted.
‘The people would not stand for it,’ Trump told Hewitt. ‘I think you’d have problems in this country the likes of which you have ever seen before.’
Trump told Hugh Hewitt on his radio show he did no wrong and the Department of Justice would have absolutely no reason to indict him
Trump also refused to say whether he intentionally took government records to his Mar-a-Lago residence
‘What kind of problems?’ Hewitt asked. ‘Big problems,’ Trump shot back. ‘That’s not inciting. I’m just saying what my opinion is. I don’t think the people of this country would stand for it,’ he added.
‘If they ever did anything on indictment I just think it would just tear this country apart. I think this country would be torn apart,’ Trump said.
The former president refused to say whether he would still run for president in 2024 if he were indicted. ‘You know if a thing like that happened, I would have no prohibition against running,’ he pointed out.
Hewitt then asked whether Trump took the papers by accident or on purpose.
‘Every former president has papers that should not be with them by accident. Did you take those papers down there after declassifying them intentionally or did you have any idea they were there?’ Hewitt asked.
‘Remember this – everything was declassified, number one,’ Trump said. ‘And if you look at the presidential, if you look at the act that was passed, it talks about what you can – anything.’
Lawyers for Trump have repeatedly invoked the Presidential Records Act in their defense of the former president. The law says the government ‘shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of presidential records.’
Trump’s team argues that the law allows Trump to designate any government document, even classified ones, as his own personal property.
The point to a provision of the law that says ‘the presidential records of a former president shall be available to such former president or the former president’s designated representative,’ claiming it gives him essential ownership of the documents.
The legal team has not explicitly said that he did designate the documents his personal property, only insinuated he might have done so to get the government to back away from a criminal case.
‘To the extent President Trump may have categorized certain of the seized materials as personal during his presidency, any disagreement as to that categorization is to be resolved under the P.R.A. and cannot possibly form the basis for any criminal prosecution,’ they wrote.
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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk