(Corine Gatti, Headline USA) President Donald Trump sparred with Fox News anchor Bret Baier for storing presidential records at his Mar-a-Lago home in a recent contentious one-on-one interview.
Baier questioned Trump about him allegedly possessing a classified document detailing a U.S. military attack plan on another country.
“You were quoted on the recording saying, ‘The document was secret,’ adding that you could’ve declassified it while you were president, but ‘now I can’t. You know this is still secret, highly confidential.’ You say on tape that you can’t declassify it, so why have it?” Baier questioned.
Trump responded that when he said he couldn’t declassify certain information, it was because there was no specific document. Instead, there were “many articles and stories in various media about Iran and other topics.” Therefore, there was nothing to declassify as it wasn’t a formal document, he said.
The topic of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the storage of presidential records at Trump’s estate entered the heated conversation.
The revocation of Trump’s executive privilege by Biden created an opportunity for the former president to be subpoenaed. The DOJ charged Trump with 37 federal crimes, including the deliberate retention of national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice and making false statements. The preliminary court date is set for Aug. 14, Fox News Digital noted.
Baier also pressed Trump on the DOJ’s investigation into whether he mishandled classified documents after leaving office in January 2021. The National Archives went after Trump a year later about the boxes of records stored at Mar-a-Lago.
“The only way NARA could ever get this stuff back would be to say please, please, please could we have it back,” Trump said.
“They did ask for it,” Baier snapped back. “Why not just hand them over then?”
“Because I had boxes. I want to go through the boxes and get my personal things out. I don’t want to hand that over to NARA yet,” Trump said. “And I very was busy as you’ve sort of seen,” Trump shot back.
“I have every right to have those boxes,” he added.
