Kristi Noem Defends Trump By Saying ‘We Deserve to Know’ What Was in the Top Secret Documents Revealed by DOJ Photo
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem (R) bashed the Justice Department by making the cynical argument that their newly-disclosed information about the classified documents from Mar-a-Lago cannot be trusted.
In an interview with Fox & Friends on Wednesday, Noem was asked about the DOJ’s filing which says they have evidence that Donald Trump “concealed and removed” classified documents as part of a likely effort to “obstruct the government’s investigation” into the documents the ex-president had at Mar-a-Lago. The filing also included a photo of the more than 100 documents the FBI confiscated from Trump’s residence, including documents marked “top secret” or “sensitive compartmentalized information” (SCI).
Asked if this justifies the FBI’s search, Noem went on a tangent that “Republicans, Democrats, the public, they don’t trust the DOJ and they want this to be transparent.” She also scoffed at the DOJ’s “ridiculous” argument that Trump’s demanded appointment of a special master is “unnecessary and would significantly harm important governmental interests, including national security interests.
“Hiding these documents and this information, keeping it within the DOJ is wrong,” she said. “It needs to be transparent so people can build trust back in the FBI and the DOJ and what they’re doing.”
Steve Doocy followed up by pointing out that the documents were marked to contain “the biggest secrets in the world.” Thus, he asked Noem “Why would he have all that stuff at Mar-a-Lago?”
Noem’s answer:
Well that’s why I think it’s important that this is transparent and that we do have someone outside of the DOJ looking at this and talking to people. What is this information? We don’t know what was in there, and I believe President Trump declassified all this information. Let’s find out really what the process is, what is right, what is precedent that other presidents have followed, and make sure that this is done correctly.
“I don’t think any president has ever carted off that many documents to their house after they left the presidency,” Doocy countered. Brian Kilmeade remarked on the “pretty terrible job” of keeping the documents secret, Noem arrived at the notion that the only way to verify the contents of these top secret documents is to release them all.
I guess the question to all of you is what was in those documents and folders. Do we know? We deserve to know. I don’t know if the DOJ and FBI can be trusted to tell us what was in there. That’s the thing. You can see folders, you can see big words. Do we know that’s really what President Trump brought to his home? Do we know that he put them there? Do we know what’s inside? That’s why I think it’s important that the DOJ bring in someone who is outside of this, that’s a neutral individual that can look at this and really build some trust back in our justice system. This has been a political fight against President Trump. They’ve attacked him for years and years. They want to destroy him. That is why we can’t trust them to do this alone.
Noem went on to say “this is all political” while predicting the contents of the documents will be publicly released right around the midterm elections
“They’ve been picking at this issue for years and years,” she said, “and they’ll use it to their advantage to see what they can do to manipulate an election again.”
Watch above via Fox News.
