Donald Trump sat down for an interview with Fox News on Monday night, and his legal team has to be wishing they worked for someone else. During the surprisingly tense back and forth with Bret Baier, Trump managed to implicate himself even further by basically confessing to have classified material at Mar-a-Lago.
The first crucial moment happened as Baier pressed Trump on the recording where the former president is caught on tape referring to the “Iran attack plan.” The Fox News anchor asked Trump if he remembered the conversation, particularly the part where he admits that he can’t declassify the document. In a stunning move, Trump confessed that the material at Mar-a-Lago was not declassified.
“When I said that, I couldn’t declassify it now because I wasn’t president, I never made any bones about that,” Trump said. “When I’m not president, I can’t declassify.”
However, Trump then tried to argue that there was no actual document when he was caught on tape, which also blew up in his face as he admitted just a few seconds later to having a “massive amount of papers” that talked about “Iran and other things.”
There’s a lot going on here and this is going to reviewed: Trump on the recording of him pic.twitter.com/JpohMqb2Li
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 19, 2023
Via Rolling Stone:
“Bret, there was no document,” Trump insisted. “That was a massive amount of papers and everything else, talking about Iran and other things. And it may have been held up or may not. That was not a document. I didn’t have any document per se. There was nothing to declassify, these were newspaper stories, magazine stories, and articles.” When Baier referred again to the facts of the recording laid out in the indictment, Trump said, presumably of the prosecutors: “These people are very dishonest people, they are thugs.”
These are stunning admissions from Trump, which is why criminal defendants are normally discouraged from giving interviews because their remarks can be used against them. In Trump’s case, that may happen very soon as he could face trial for the classified documents in August, according to The New York Times.
In the meantime, Twitter is having a field day with Trump confessing all of his crimes on Fox News. You can see some of the reactions below:
Well that’s that. Trump just confessed to Fox News that he stole and shared classified materials. https://t.co/W35ZgpT0V9
— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) June 19, 2023
If Trump keeps talking, the actual trial will take a day and a half. https://t.co/Dvt5X0OwKJ
— Mark Jacob (@MarkJacob16) June 19, 2023
Jack Smith gonna love this https://t.co/4TK1XRVl9K
— Wu Tang is for the Children (@WUTangKids) June 19, 2023
How excited are Trump's lawyers that he's answering questions about his 37 felony counts like he's on the stand and Bret Baier is the prosecutor? https://t.co/sJF3YMu2Ql
— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) June 19, 2023
Trump could get convicted from this interview alone. https://t.co/bonZDsv8Ya
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) June 19, 2023
Trump just said “there were no documents,” but instead they were actually just “a massive amount of papers talking about Iran and other things.” https://t.co/EyBm8Zr6T1
— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) June 20, 2023
Trump clearly not struggling at all here or saying a bunch of things that will come up at trial https://t.co/Sy2nVGs4S8
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) June 20, 2023
I wasn’t expecting to watch Trump get prosecuted on Fox News before the trial even started but here we are. https://t.co/1NnQ8FW8UV
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@TheRealHoarse) June 20, 2023
(Via Rolling Stone)