Trump defends his handling of documents in an interview on Fox News

The ex-president US donald trumpwho faces dozens of charges for mishandling classified government documents, defended himself Monday in an unusually poignant interview on the conservative network foxnewswhere he said he had been very “busy” to review the documents.

The former president was indicted on 37 charges after taking mountains of documents with him when he left the White House and try to prevent investigators from retrieving them.

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In an interview broadcast on Monday night with the presenter Bret Baier on Fox News, Trump said he left the White House quickly in 2021 and that his personal belongings were mixed with government documents.

“In my case, I practically took everything in a hurry, but (there were) people who packed up and left. And he had clothes there, he had all kinds of personal items there, many, many things (…) He had every right to have those boxes“, said.

Asked by Baier why he did not turn over the documents when requested by officials, Trump said: “Because I had boxes, I want to search the boxes and take out my personal things.”.

“I was very busy as you may have seen”, he added.

In his indictment, the Justice Department showed audio evidence of a meeting that Trump had in July 2021, when he was no longer president, with an author, an editor and two members of his staff -none with security clearance-, in which the former president would have shown them a document “secret” and “highly confidential”.

“This secret information… as president I could have declassified it.”Trump said, according to the indictment document. “I can’t now, you know, but this is still a secret”.

When Baier pressed during the interaction, Trump said that what he showed others “it was not a document”. “He had copies of newspaper articles, magazines“, said.

“That was a huge amount of papers and other things that talked about Iran and other issues. And they may or may not have been retained, but that was not a document”.

Baier was also incisive in asking Trump about the many Republicans who served him and are now challenging him on his way to the White House or blatantly criticizing him, including Bill Barrwho as attorney general refused to go along with their claims of voter fraud.

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When Trump repeated those same baseless claims, Baier told him candidly: “You lost the 2020 elections″.

The 77-year-old former president is also under the spotlight for his alleged role in the attack on the Capitol by a mob of followers of the magnate in January 2021.

The criminal trial for the case opened in NY It will probably be held at the beginning of 2024, in the midst of the campaign for the Republican primaries, in which Trump is the great favorite.

Source: Elcomercio

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I am Jack Morton and I work in 24 News Recorder. I mostly cover world news and I have also authored 24 news recorder. I find this work highly interesting and it allows me to keep up with current events happening around the world.