Washington Post reporter slams Ted Cruz's 'complete BS' excuse for Trump taking top-secret docs

On Fox News with far-right talk radio host Mark Levin, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) defended former President Donald Trump's stash of highly classified documents at Mar-a-Lago with a claim the former president himself has repeatedly made: that every other president has done the same thing. "This was a fishing expedition," Cruz told Levin. "Every former President has taken documents from his administration. Obama did that. Clinton did that. Bush did that."

Except, notedThe Washington Post's Aaron Blake on Twitter, that actually isn't true.

"Cruz now picking up on Trump's talking point, which is complete and unmitigated BS," wrote Blake. "These docs were for their presidential libraries. They were in [the National Archives and Records Administration's] custody."

This comes after FactCheck.org did a much lengthier takedown of Trump's claim earlier this month during a rally in Arizona, in which he said, "George H.W. Bush took millions and millions of documents to a former bowling alley pieced together with what was then an old and broken Chinese restaurant, they put them together. And it had a broken front door and broken windows. Other than that it was quite secure. And there was no security."

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"All of the examples Trump mentioned were cases of the National Archives and Records Administration — not the former presidents themselves — storing documents in secure facilities, while permanent presidential libraries were being built," noted Robert Farley and Lori Robertson, adding that in that specific example regarding Bush, "none of the presidential records, including classified documents, were in Bush’s possession or in his personal residence," and NARA added security features to the facility.

This comes as the FBI is investigating the documents they recovered from a search of Mar-a-Lago, amid litigation in federal court over which documents agents are allowed to review, and as some legal experts are urging the Justice Department to file charges against the former president.