Former President Donald Trump was indicted by the Department of Justice on 37 federal charges, including for obstruction and unlawful retention of defense information, and even conservative legal experts have deemed the charges against him damning.
In an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier set to air on Monday evening, Donald Trump argued that the only way for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to acquire the classified documents he took with him after leaving the White House was to ask “please, please, please.”
“The only way NARA could ever get this stuff, this back, would be ‘please, please, please, could we have it back?’” Trump told Baier, who promptly pointed out that they did ask for them back.
“Because they have no — we were talking,” replied Trump, after which there was some crosstalk between the host and guest.
Eventually, Baier regained the floor to establish that “then they [NARA] went to DOJ to subpoena you to get the –”
“Which they’ve never done before,” interjected Trump.
The conversation continued:
BAIER: Why not just hand them over then?
TRUMP: Because I had boxes, I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out. I don’t want to hand that over to NARA yet, and I was very busy as you’ve sort of seen.
BAIER: Yeah, but according to the indictment, you then tell this aide to move to other locations after telling your lawyers to say you’d fully complied with the subpoena when you hadn’t.
TRUMP: Before I send boxes over I have to take all of my things out. These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things.
In a brief interview with Baier after he conducted his interview with the former president, the anchor said that Trump “denies flatly some of the things that are specifically laid out in the indictment,” including the allegation that he possessed a document about war plans pertaining to Iran or ever admitted to not having declassified such a document.
