‘I Didn’t Have to Hand Them Over’: Trump Falsely Insists He Had Right to Keep Government Documents After Leaving Office
Former President Donald Trump claimed on Fox News that he was not required to hand over government documents he kept after leaving office.
Trump is under federal indictment in Florida for what the Department of Justice says was his willful retention of classified materials and his efforts to obstruct the government from retrieving them. He has pleaded not guilty.
On Tuesday, Trump participated in a town hall in Greenville, South Carolina, where he falsely claimed he had no obligation to return the documents.
Moderator Laura Ingraham asked the former president about a report released by the Department of Justice, stating that Special Counsel Robert Hur declined to prosecute President Joe Biden for retaining government material after leaving the Senate and the vice presidency. The report noted that lawyers for Biden voluntarily returned the documents after being made aware they were in Biden’s possession. Hur also stated that Biden should not be prosecuted because a jury would likely view him “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Ingraham asked Trump whether he thinks Biden should be prosecuted.
Trump did not answer the question directly and falsely insisted the Presidential Records Act gave him the right to take the documents.
“I was allowed to do what I did,” he said. “Absolutely allowed.”
The host asked why Trump did not just return the documents that were found by FBI agents executing a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago residence in August 2022:
INGRAHAM: Why didn’t you just hand them over when they requested them? I mean, they requested them. You could’ve just handed them over, probably save yourself a lot of trouble.
TRUMP: First of all, I didn’t have to hand them over. But second of all, I would’ve done that. We were talking and then all of a sudden they raided Mar-a-Lago.
In May 2021, the National Archives informed Trump’s representatives that the agency was missing documents generated during his administration. After months of back and forth, Trump’s team told the Archives there were boxes of documents ready to be retrieved, which the agency subsequently did in January 2022. However, the Archives knew of other documents still in Trump’s possession. In June of that year, Trump voluntarily allowed the Department of Justice to inspect the property, where his attorney Christina Bobb signed a statement to the DOJ stating that to her knowledge, no government material remained at Mar-a-Lago.
As the FBI raid showed, that was not the case.
Watch above via Fox News.
