Former President Donald Trump said he did not turn over presidential records to the National Archives because he was busy and had not yet had time to remove personal items from boxes packed at the White House.
(Bloomberg) — Former President Donald Trump said he did not turn over presidential records to the National Archives because he was busy and had not yet had time to remove personal items from boxes packed at the White House.
“I wanted to go through the boxes and get all of my personal things out. I don’t want to hand that over to NARA yet,” Trump said Monday in an interview with Fox News. “And I was very busy, as you’ve sort of seen.”
Trump was charged earlier this month, and pleaded not guilty, on 37 felony counts related to his retention of classified documents and obstruction of justice. The federal government recovered more than 300 documents with classified markings from Trump after he left the White House, including from a FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago resort in August 2022.
During the interview, Trump was asked about a portion of the indictment that alleges he ordered an aide to move documents after they were requested by the government — and tried to pressure his attorneys to say he had fully complied with a subpoena despite knowing it was not true.
“Before I send boxes over, I have to take all of my things out,” Trump said. “These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things — golf shirts, clothing, pants, shoes, there were many things.” Trump said he believed all the documents in his possession were declassified and said he did not “know of” Pentagon plans for a possible invasion of Iran being among the materials.
In an audio recording obtained by the Department of Justice and cited in the indictment, Trump describes a document — which he says shows evidence that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley wanted to invade Iran — as “like, highly confidential” and says he could not declassify it now that he was out of office.
On Monday, Trump denied that he had actually shown classified military plans.
“There was no document,” Trump said. “That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things. It may have been held up or may not, but that was not a document. I didn’t have a document, per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.”
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