The excuses, explanations, and arguments coming out of the ex-president and his crackpot team of lawyers and legal advisors — as to why Donald Trump stole countless boxes of highly-classified, top-secret documents and materials, moved them to his Mar-a-Lago estate turned personal residence, and then continually lied to the National Archives and Records administration as well as the US Justice Department about what was in his possession — have been abundant and plentiful, to say the least. And that’s not to even mention how off the wall the excuses have become in the aftermath of the bombshell FBI search and seizure warrant raid at his Palm Beach country club early last month.
But while Donald and his attorneys’ excuses, arguments, and stories are pretty much equally abundant and insane, there is one thing they are not — straight.
The former president sat for an interview with Conservative radio host John Fredericks just yesterday, during which he doubled down on the same claim he’s been making for weeks now — before he left office, he personally declassified each and every word of the information he stole from the White House, via the all-encompassing presidential power and ability and does not and never did actually have to single-handedly declassify any piece of government information he wants.
“There’s nothing secret about it,” Trump claimed in the interview when asked by the host how he ended up with a countless number of classified, highly-classified documents at his golf club turned home that were discovered and retrieved by FBI agents during the August 8th raid. “It didn’t have to be anything secret, and it’s all declassified.”
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Trump’s legal team has unsurprisingly peddled the same declassification claims in their recent public interviews and statements on the matter. And yet, when the former president’s legal team appeared in a Palm Beach courthouse yesterday, the attorneys reportedly whistled an entirely different tune as they argued to the judge for the appointment of a third-party “Special Master” to review and inspect the documents and materials that were seized from Mar-a-Lago, and for the material to then be returned to Donald Trump upon completion.
IMPORTANT: Trump’s lawyers do NOT say he declassified anything in his possession — despite Trump’s repeated insistence that he declassified everything in his possession, his attorneys have never said this in any court document. https://t.co/sI8IqK2ReD
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) September 1, 2022
POLITICO reports Donald’s legal team put all their focus into the argument that Trump had the right to keep the classified government documents, under his favorite rule of executive privilege that apparently he and none of his people actually understand. According to the Trump attorneys, these rules would have allowed then-president Trump to designate various documents and materials as personal and therefore withhold them from the National Archives at his discretion.
In both their court appearance yesterday as well as a new legal filing from the Trump team this week, their public claims of declassification by Trump have been notably nowhere to be found.
National security attorney Bradley P. Moss has spoken with Business Insider on the matter and said it’s likely that Trump’s legal team purposely avoided trying to argue against the clearly “Classified” markings seen on many of the documents found at Mar-a-Lago because they thought it was unnecessary in their efforts to obtain a “Special Master” to review the materials and ultimately stop the DOJ from looking any further into what Donald Trump stole.
“It is more than likely that if there ultimately is an indictment the Trump team will make pre-trial arguments (and presumably produce some kind of evidence) that he had declassified these records,” Moss explained. “It is simply not necessary for them to do so at this stage and for this issue.”
Despite the claims out of Trump World that Donald declassified the information that he stole, there has been absolutely no evidence presented from anyone to back up that notion. But even if there were, the laws and regulations that the DOJ is coming after the ex-president for violating, such as the Espionage Act, don’t require that the documents be classified anyway.
It’s clear at this point that Trump and his people are floundering, and they’re beginning to get sloppy as their fear, panic, and desperation rapidly mount. Frankly, it’s only a matter of time before they dig their own hole that they’ll soon be buried in.
Featured image via Political Tribune Gallery
