Trump hired cronies to search top-secret docs he believed would erase 'stain' of his impeachment: former NYT reporter

Appearing on CNN's "New Day" on Monday morning, former New York Times national security expert Tim Weiner claimed that former President Donald Trump rounded up the boxes of sensitive government documents to take to Mar-a-Lago in the belief that he would find a "smoking gun" in them proving members of the "deep state" were plotting against him.

Speaking with host John Berman, Weiner expanded upon an op-ed in the Times where he wrote, "The Mar-a-Lago papers may well determine if Mr. Trump has a political future. That depends, in part, on the solution to several mysteries. What is in those files? Where did they come from? Whose fingerprints are on them? And who shows up on the surveillance tapes subpoenaed from the Trump mansion, which will show who went in and out of the rooms where they were hidden?"

"I think in the last chaotic days of the Trump administration, Donald Trump was desperate for documents that he thought would somehow absolve him of the offenses for which he was impeached and criminally investigated," Weiner told the host. "I think that he believes that there is some smoking gun in the classified archives of the government that will somehow cleanse him and allow him to run again, that will provide him with political leverage."

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"Whether these documents are, in fact, helpful to the president or not is immaterial! He has no right to have them, they are the property of the American people, not a twice-impeached former president," he added.

"You talk about what he did prior to leaving office and who he put in certain places. Why is that important here?" host Berman pressed.

"That's right," the journalist replied. "In the last year of his administration, President Trump put unqualified loyalists at the top of the intelligence community and the Pentagon, and he wanted them to rifle through the classified files in search of documents, which he believed would somehow cleanse him of the stain of his impeachments and of the counterintelligence investigation, the FBI launched six full years ago against Donald Trump and his inner circle."

"These documents may or may not be what he was looking for," he added. "In other words, he wanted his own set of secret files that he thought would be political ammunition and I believe that's what's in those boxes."

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