Fox’s Will Cain Quotes Nixon to Defend Trump’s Handling of Classified Documents: ‘If the President Does It, Then it is Not Illegal’

On Sunday during Fox & Friends, co-host Will Cain invoked comments from former President Richard Nixon that had been misinterpreted and later walked back, to give justification to Donald Trump’s claim that he has the ultimate power to declassify documents, in light of Monday’s raid.

According to the inventory list obtained from the Mar-a-Lago raid, 11 sets of documents were taken by the FBI from Trump’s estate, including some with extremely high levels of classification.

In a conversation with Fox News commentator Bill Bennett, Cain claimed that Nixon said “if a president does it, then it is not illegal,” as it related to classified information. The co-host asked, “is that not truly the standard?” while pressing Bennett on whether the president really has the authority to “declassify anything,” whenever he wants.

However, the quote that Cain mentioned from Nixon was said during a 1977 interview and was walked back by the former president a few months later. This statement, although Nixon attempted to clean it up afterward by arguing in a statement that no one is above the law, was viewed as an accidental admission of guilt.

In response to this questioning by Cain, Bennett agreed that the president has the ability to declassify information, however, “There’s a procedure that the president must follow.”

“We cannot exaggerate the importance of this situation and the deadly seriousness of it,” continued the Fox News commentator.

Bennett noted that Trump is being investigated for potential espionage, saying that “accusing a former president, a future candidate for president,” of these charges is incredibly consequential.

And while many are waiting on the release of the affidavit to understand more about the probable cause leading to Monday’s raid, Bennett is not convinced that it will clarify much, arguing that “It could still be general and very vague.”

“The FBI is not what the FBI should be,” concluded Bennett, “Maybe we’ll get clarification from the affidavit,” but “I’m not so sure.”

In the days since the raid on Mar-a-Lago, Trump and his allies have repeatedly claimed that the former president had the ability to declassify confidential information and documents that were removed from federal government possession. Notably, Former Trump administration official Kash Patel argued this theory that Trump could essentially snap his fingers and declassify material.

Many have pointed out that this is not entirely accurate, considering that there is a standardized process that information goes through in order to become declassified by the president. It is unclear at this point whether this process was applied to the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago.

Watch above via Fox News