Trump Fact Checks Fake News: I Didn't Show Anyone Classified Docs, Those Were 'Newspapers, Magazines, & Articles'

On Monday, during the first part of a Fox News interview between 45th President and leading 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump and Fox News’ Bret Baier, Trump corrected claims from Special Counsel Jack Smith that they have him on recording showing a classified document to others. 

"These were newspaper stories, magazine stories, and articles. There was nothing to declassify," Trump clarified.

“It wasn’t a document. I had lots of paper. I had copies of newspaper articles. I had copies of magazines," Trump added.

"When I said that I couldn’t declassify it now, that’s because I wasn’t President. I never made any bones about that. When I’m not President, I can’t declassify," Trump continued.

"But that wasn’t a document. Bret, there was no document. That was a massive amount of papers and everything else, talking about Iran and other things," he added.

"And it may have been held up or it 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," Trump said.

Later on during the interview, Trump said, “I have every right to have those boxes. This is purely a presidential records act. This is not a criminal thing. In fact, the New York Times had a story just the other day that the only way NARA could ever get this stuff back would be, ‘Please, please, please, could we have it back?’”

Earlier this month, Trump pleaded not guilty to all 37 fraudulent counts relating to him supposedly “mishandling” classified documents from Special Counsel Jack Smith.

President Trump turned Jack Smith’s frivolous federal indictment of him on its head as he cited the Presidential Records Act as a defense.

Earlier this month, Trump pleaded not guilty to all 37 fraudulent counts relating to him supposedly “mishandling” classified documents from Special Counsel Jack Smith.

In an op-ed by former Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz on Substack, he concludes that a "[c]riminal indictment of former president has no legitimate basis."

“The bottom line is that if Mr. Trump or his lawyers allege — even without his testifying — that he declassified the documents, a criminal charge of unauthorized possession of classified documents will be difficult to prove. That doesn’t mean that a prosecutor could not get a grand jury to indict this particular ham sandwich. It does mean that it’s unlikely that a conviction against Mr. Trump would be sustainable,” Dershowitz writes.

“Based on what we know, we believe that there is no legitimate basis for a criminal indictment of Mr. Trump based on the material that was found at Mar-a-Lago,” Dershowitz concludes.

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