A top House Republican on the Intelligence Committee first saw the news that Trump stole documents to take back with him to Mar-a-Lago two weeks ago and made it clear that it could be bad.
It was two weeks ago that Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT) took the mishandling of sensitive classified documents very seriously. Lately, however, he's been quiet.
“I mean, if he had actual Special Access Programs — do you know how extraordinarily sensitive that is? That’s very, very sensitive. If that were actually at his residence, that would be a problem,” Stewart told Politico after the search at Mar-a-Lago. “But we just don’t know that. So let’s find out.”
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), similarly said, “When you get to compartmentalized classified spaces, it gets more serious.”
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MSNBC's Rachel Maddow producer Steve Benen asked where the bipartisan consensus is on the seriousness of Trump's actions.
Stewart too has been silent. On Monday, he spoke to Newsmax, but he left out his concerns over classified documents being taken to unsecured locations and people without the proper clearance level riffling through them. Instead, Stewart is attacking Democrats for hiding behind a redacted affidavit for the search warrant.
First, Republicans demanded to see the warrant. The judge released that as well as what was found in the search. That ultimately ended up making Trump look worse. So, they've requested the affidavit for the warrant, which will likely be heavily redacted.
Stewart told Newsmax that was unacceptable because it was unprecedented to search the place where a president stays. It's also unprecedented for a former president to steal top secret or classified documents from the government. Stewart attacked Democrats, saying that they're "very comfortable" with the search of Mar-a-Lago. Now, what he considers to be serious is that Trump was searched.
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"I have to look at [Democrats] and say, 'What in the world are you thinking? Do you not realize how dangerous this is?'" he said.
Benen noted Stewart said it “would be a problem” if Trump took special access program materials. It's now clear that those were exactly the documents Trump took. In the past week, Stewart hasn't said a word on social media about reports that Trump possessed at least 700 pages of classified or top secret documents.
McCaul also has been very quiet on the matter. The last thing he said was on the Sunday morning political talk shows where he called the search "by the books."
See Benen's full analysis at MSNBC.
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