It has been exactly three weeks since the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s golf club and private residence in Palm Beach, Florida. And in the weeks since, we’ve heard a litany of bad, sad, pathetic, and plain laughable excuses for what prompted federal investigators to search the home of a former president for the first time in our country’s history. While many versions of these stories have come from Trump directly, Ohio congressman Mike Turner has now joined in the fun — and might just have come up with the most inane reason for Trump to be in possession of highly classified documents.
CBS: What use could a former POTUS have for classified information once he's left office? Why bring it home to Florida?
REP. MIKE TURNER: You'd have to ask him, but certainly we all know that every former POTUS has access to their documents. It's how they write their memoirs. pic.twitter.com/ZwOiKcCnqj
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 21, 2022
On Sunday, Turner appeared on Face the Nation, where he chatted with Ed O’Keefe. While discussing Trump’s tricky situation, O’Keefe asked Turner — who Newsweek notes is “also the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee” — what possible reason a former president might have for keeping top-secret documents when he’s no longer in office, and for bringing them to his home in Florida. Turner’s response?
“Well, I don’t know. I mean, you have to ask him. But certainly, we all know that every former president has access to their documents. It’s how they write their memoirs. They don’t have… great recall of everything that’s occurred in their administration.”
Which only begs the question: Why would Trump be writing about top-secret details of his presidency in a memoir? But we’ll save that answer for another day.
(Via Newsweek)