FORMER ATTORNEY GENERAL Bill Barr on Fox News Sunday as guest and thoroughly dismantled nearly any argument Donald Trump could make defending his innocence in removing highly classified and sensitive information from the White House and storing it at Mar-a-Lago. According to Barr, the indictment against the former president is “very, very damning.”
Trump was indicted Thursday on 37 federal felony counts related to “willful retention of national defense information” as well as conspiracy to obstruct justice, corruptly concealing a record or document, false statements and representations, among other charges. Trump was even caught on tape admitting that he did not declassify certain documents he retained and that he “can’t” declassify them after leaving the White House.
Fox host Shannon Bream began the interview by asking a question about the argument Trump’s legal team has been making that the indictment against the former president should have focused on the Presidential Records Act rather than Espionage Act charges and other charges.
Well, it started out under the Presidential Records Act, and the Archives trying to retrieve documents that Trump had no right to have, but it quickly became clear that what the government was really worried about were these classified and very sensitive documents,” Barr said. “I was shocked by the degree of sensitivity of these documents and how many there were, frankly. And so the government’s agenda was to get those, protect those documents and get them out, and I think it was perfectly appropriate to do that. It was the right thing to do, and I think the counts under the Espionage Act — that he willfully retained those documents — are solid counts.”
Barr continued by dismantling Trump’s argument that he is the innocent victim of a out-of-control witch hunt. “I do think that — what Andy McCarthy said — that if even half of it is true, then he’s toast,” Barr said. “I mean, it’s a very detailed indictment, and it’s very, very damning… This idea of presenting Trump as a victim here, a victim of a witch hunt, is ridiculous… Yes, his adversaries have 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. He was totally wrong that he had the right to have those documents. Those documents are among the most sensitive secrets that the country has… He had no right to retain them, and he kept them in a way — at Mar-a-Lago — that anyone who really cares about national security, their stomach would churn at it.”
Barr went on to call the Mueller investigation into possible collusion with Russia to interfere with the election “a false claim” but then said in the current documents investigation, “The government acted responsibly., and it was Donald J. Trump who acted irresponsibly.”
“They gave him every opportunity to return those documents,” Barr added. “They acted with restraint. They were very deferential to him, very patient. They talked to him for almost a year to try to get those documents and he jerked them around. They finally went to a subpoena, and what did he do? According to the government, he lied and obstructed that subpoena. Then they did a search, and they found a lot more documents. And I don’t think they’re even sure now whether they have everything. So they acted in a very patient way, and what they were met with was, according to the government and the indictment, very egregious obstruction.”
When Bream tried to defend Trump by bringing up the argument that former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama may have held onto documents after their term in office, but Barr quickly shot that down. “There are two big lies, I think, that are out there now. One is ‘all these other presidents took documents.’ Those were situations where they arranged with the Archives to set up special space under the management and control of security provided by the archivists to temporarily put documents until their [presidential] libraries were ready. These were not people just putting them in the basement, OK?”
Barr went on to destroy Trump’s argument that he could declare any document unclassified at a whim. “And the second thing… this idea that the president has the complete authority to declare any document personal is facially ridiculous… These are official documents. It’s inarguable. The President’s Daily Brief, provided by the intelligence community, is not Donald J. Trump’s personal document. Period.
