Fox’s Bret Baier Pushes Back When Trump Attacks Biden Over Documents: ‘He Turned Them Over When Asked’
Fox’s Bret Baier pushed back when ex-President Donald Trump attacked President Joe Biden over classified documents, pointing out that Biden cooperated with the Justice Department and NARA when the documents were discovered.
Trump sat for an interview with Baier on Monday night’s edition of Fox News Channel’s Special Report, just days after trashing Fox News and dancing a figurative jig over their loss to MSNBC the week of his indictment.
Throughout the interview, Trump offered several lengthy defenses of his actions that also simultaneously contained admissions to key facts in the case.
When Trump tried to use Biden’s classified documents case to deflect his own bombshell 37-count indictment against Trump related to Espionage Act violations, Baier pushed back — to a point:
TRUMP: But everything was declassified. And Biden didn’t have the right to do that, because he wasn’t president, nor did Mike Pence, by the way, have the right to do that, because he wasn’t president.
BAIER: All right, I’m not going to be-label this — belabor this, but I want to just get to the specifics.
TRUMP: No, but, Bret, when you look at this, other presidents, when they leave, they take the papers. They have thousands and thousands.
Obama had it. Nixon had it. Carter had it. The Bushes had it.
BAIER: Their argument is that these are super sensitive national security documents.
TRUMP: Oh, I’m sure. I’m sure — I’m sure you will see real super sensitive that Biden has, because Biden has far more than anybody’s ever kept.
BAIER: And he turned them over when asked.
TRUMP: No, he didn’t.
BAIER: But — that’s what he says.
TRUMP: And he still hasn’t given the 1,850 boxes that are stored at the University of Delaware. In fact, they’re fighting them in court, and they’re fighting them.
BAIER: Right.
TRUMP: And the boxes…
BAIER: But he opened up for them to look at them.
TRUMP: Excuse me. The boxes from Chinatown, he didn’t turn them over. He sent them up to his lawyer in Boston to look at before they handed them over.
BAIER: And there — a special counsel is looking at that, and we will see what comes out of it.
Baier is correct that the president cooperated, but misses the mark factually. Biden didn’t give back the documents when asked, his representatives were the ones who discovered and reported the documents and turned them over, and subsequently invited the FBI to conduct searches for other documents, which turned up a small number of documents that were immediately handed over.
Numerous outlets have fact-checked the claims Trump has been making about Biden’s documents. They all say the claim about the 1,850 boxes is inaccurate, false, or misleading.
Watch above via Fox News Channel’s Special Report.
