Donald Trump doesn't understand the ‘socks’ case he thinks exonerates him: analysis

Trump on Thursday in a post on his Truth Social website wrote that the socks case, along with the Presidential Records Act “totally exonerated me from the continuing witch hunt brought on by corrupt Joe Biden, the DOJ, deranged Jack Smith, and their radical left Marxist thugs.”

Trump during a post-arraignment speech at his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey Tuesday night referenced the socks case.

“I had every right to have these documents. The crucial legal precedent is laid out in the most important case ever on the subject known as the Clinton socks case,” Trump said.

MSNBC producer Steve Benen writes for the cable channel’s website that “if Trump still thinks the ‘socks’ case helps him, he’s mistaken.”

Trump’s mention of the “socks” case is a reference to former President Bill Clinton reportedly having kept physical tape recordings of conversations with author Taylor Branch.

The conservative group Judicial Watch in 2012 filed a lawsuit seeking to compel the National Archives to demand the audiotapes. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit.

Benen writes that “Trump would now have people believe this precedent helps him. It does not.”

MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade described the former president’s assertion as “nonsensical.”

“Clinton’s recordings were from his own interviews, qualifying as diaries, which the Presidential Records Act says are not presidential records,” McQuade wrote in a Twitter thread.

“No law precluded Clinton from keeping them. Trump is charged not with violating the Presidential Records Act, but instead with violating the Espionage Act. The records Trump is alleged to have illegally retained are agency records, such as records of the CIA, NSA, and Department of Defense, not presidential records.”

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