‘Busy’ Donald Trump defends taking secret files to Mar-a-Lago

Donald Trump has defended his mishandling of classified documents, saying he was too busy to sort through them as he moved out of the White House.

Donald Trump defends himself on Fox News on Monday night.

Donald Trump has defended his mishandling of classified documents, saying he was too busy to sort through them as he moved out of the White House.

The former president told Fox News on Monday night that as he quickly left the White House in January 2021, his personal ­belongings were mixed in with government documents.

“In my case, I took it out pretty much in a hurry, but people packed it up and we left. And I had clothing in there, I had all sorts of personal items in there – much much stuff,” the 77-year-old told host Bret Baier.

“I have every right to have those boxes.”

Mr Trump appeared before a federal judge in Miami last Tuesday to be formally presented with 37 charges brought by the federal government following an FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago Florida mansion last August.

The Department of Justice ­accuses Mr Trump – who is vying to win back the White House next year – of violating the Espionage Act and other laws when he ­removed classified documents upon leaving office and failed to give them up to the National ­Archives.

Donald Trump with Fox host Bret Baier.

When host Baier asked why Mr Trump did not just hand over documents when asked by officials, the former president said: “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 … yet.

“I was very busy, as you’ve sort of seen.”

In its indictment, the Justice Department described evidence including an audio recording from a July 2021 meeting that Mr Trump, who was no longer president, had with an author, a publisher and two of his staff – none of whom had a US security clearance – in which Mr Trump showed them what he called a ­“secret” and “highly confidential” document.

“This is secret information … See as president I could have ­declassified it,” Mr Trump said, according to the indictment.

“Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”

When pressed by Baier about the exchange, Mr Trump claimed the thing he had been showing the others “wasn’t a document”.

“I had copies of newspaper ­articles. I had copies of magazines,” he said.

“That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things.

“And it may have been held up or may not, but that was not a document.”

Baier also pushed Mr Trump over the many Republicans who served under him and were now ­either challenging him for the White House or harshly criticising him, including Bill Barr, who as attorney-general refused to wade into his claims of election fraud. When Mr Trump repeated those unfounded claims, Baier said bluntly “You lost the 2020 election” and legal challenges even in front of judges he had ­appointed.

AFP