Daily Times

Former US President Donald Trump said Monday that the case regarding classified documents against him by the Department of Justice (DOJ) is politically motivated, adding that he did not know “there were any classified documents in the boxes” he took after leaving the Oval Office.

While speaking in an interview with Fox News, Trump said, “he wanted to go through the boxes and get all his personal things out of them.”

“I don’t want to hand that over to [the National Archives and Records Administration NARA] yet. And I was very busy, as you’ve sort of seen.”

The interview was conducted days after Trump was indicted with 37 counts for the second time on June 13 to which he pleaded not guilty for mishandling of the secret documents at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.

For the first time, he was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury in a hush-money case in March, making him US history’s first-ever former president to face criminal charges.

The former president said there were many things “beyond classified documents” including golf shorts, clothing, pants, and shoes.

His above statement clearly indicates that there was some classified material in his stuff and he may have misled people about the matter.

Responding to a question about whether he knew there were secret documents in his boxes, he said: “Not that I know of.”

Trump was also asked about the recording where he admitted to a classified document about an attack plan on another country prepared by the US military.

“When I said that I couldn’t declassify it now, that’s because I wasn’t president,” Trump said.

“There was no document. 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.”

When Trump left office in 2021, he took a number of documents from his time as president.

Nara asked to be granted full access to what was taken to Mar-a-Lago and it was eventually discovered that there were classified documents included in the troves.

Later on, the agency requested DOJ to pursue the matter and then the investigation commenced with the department issuing a subpoena for the records.

According to the indictment, Trump moved classified materials around Mar-a-Lago in order to hide the full extent of the boxes he kept from both the feds and even his own lawyers.

The special counsel also said 77-year-old Trump discussed classified material as per the audio recordings.