Donald Trump admits: 'I did' steal the documents
Former President Donald Trump has confessed.
In an ongoing rant posted to his personal social media account on Monday, the former president admitted that he stole the documents from the White House, concealed them for a year, lied to the FBI, his lawyers lied in court documents, then demanded a special master and now a special master is overseeing a likely prosecution.
"….When will you invade Bill and Hillary’s home in search of the 33,000 emails she deleted AFTER receiving a subpoena from the U.S. Congress? When will you invade the other Presidents’ homes in search of documents, which are voluminous, which they took with them, but not nearly so openly and transparently as I did?"
The fact-check is wrong about the 33,000 emails, but that has never stopped the complaints he has about Hillary Clinton. Similarly, the National Archives has released a statement saying that previous presidents didn't steal documents. All presidents are given 12 years to review or even use past documents, but they have to go to the National Archives to ensure the documents are recorded under the Presidential Records Act.
But it's the last line Trump wrote that will likely be one people remember forever: "they took with them, but not nearly so openly and transparently as I did?"
Trump has only been transparent about stealing the documents after the FBI came in to take them back and after over a year of outreach in trying to acquire them. At no point did Trump post anything or reveal anything about stealing the documents "transparently."
Addressing the issue on Monday, was Mary McCord the former Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the U.S. Department of Justice from 2016 to 2017.
"So, you know, I think that if there hadn't been many months of back and forth a National Archives saying, we think you have presidential records, him delaying, finally delaying delivering a couple of boxes, still not being a full return of all the boxes, a subpoena being issued, more documents being produced, certification or a declaration that there was all the documents that were in his custody, signed certification and filing a search warrant," said McCord. "If we hadn't had all of that, he might've said in the chaos of moving. I didn't realize they were all there."
McCord made it clear, saying "I thought they were mine," isn't really a possibility anymore. She went on to explain that many of the documents being classified and marked as such are also damning for Trump.
"So, even if there was a Pollyannaish defense, he has destroyed it with his own changing stories," she explained. "I think he is going to say his defense to what he said today in that Truth Social post is 'Oh, no — again I do everything transparently and openly, of course, it wouldn't be anything I had any knowledge of what was unlawful. Otherwise, why would you not be trusted?' But at some point, that just doesn't hold up anymore."
Former FBI general counsel and prosecutor under special counsel Robert Mueller's team, Andrew Weissmann, was attacked by Trump in an earlier post as he's been fearless in speaking out about the laws that Trump breaks.
"With Donald Trump, one of the things that you have learned through history and you know as a prosecutor is all of this is never about the actual facts. It is always about invective and adjectives and media spin," said Weissmann. "If you are his defense lawyer, you are having palpitations because of some of that media spin that he engages in. So, the statement you read at the outset of the program completely belies the defense of the documents were planted."
At the same time, Weissmann said that Trump is openly saying that he took the documents. It's part of the "defense du jour," he called it, saying that Trump changed the story almost hourly for a while, then daily and now this is a new defense.
"He seems to be saying, 'Oh, I, openly and notoriously took these documents, but I believed they were my personal documents,'" explained Weissmann. "That the mere act of taking them from the White House sort of magically transmogrified them to be my personal documents. That is belied by the fact that, of course, he didn't have the power and he has said inconsistent things with that latest defense as has his lawyer, where they agreed that these were documents that belonged to the Archives. So, again, I think again I think it's really important to remember that this is not at all about the actual facts. It is really Donald Trump engaging in media relations, and it's going to hurt him at trial."
See a screen capture of the post below as well as the video of the interview with Weissmann and McCord. Upon writing the story, Trump has not deleted the statement.
Related Post