Apparently, former President Donald Trump had every opportunity to avoid being charged in the classified documents case that’s been brought against him, but he was “not interested” in going that route.
A recent story from The Washington Post reported that one of Trump’s lawyers, Christopher Kise, thought that Attorney General Merrick Garland didn’t want his Department of Justice to charge Trump in the case. Kise believed that the DOJ would be willing to negotiate a settlement, as long as Trump agreed to return whatever remaining classified documents that he still had at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
According to the Post report, though, Trump said he was “not interested” in that plan, after he listened to advisers in his circle who said he should take a more “pugilistic approach” to the situation.
The Post reported that Alex Cannon, who was serving as one of Trump’s lawyers at the time, urged Trump to return all of the documents to the National Archives back in 2021. He also apparently warned the former president that if he didn’t do so, he could face significant legal challenges.
Early in 2021, the National Archives realized that they didn’t have all of the records from Trump’s time in the White House. They then contacted Trump’s deputy counsel, Patrick Philbin, to try to get back any of the documents they were missing.
While Philbin tried to get those documents back, Trump blocked his efforts in doing so. As the former president told many of his trusted people around him at the time:
“It’s not theirs. It’s mine.”
Eric Herschmann, a former White House lawyer in the Trump administration, also told Trump that he could face significant legal jeopardy if he didn’t comply with returning the documents in question.
The Post report corroborates what a lot of other media reports have said about the entire classified documents ordeal – that Trump wasn’t listening to his own lawyers’ advice at the time. Instead, he was listening to what was being said by Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, even though he isn’t a lawyer himself.
Even after being federally indicted on many charges related to having the classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate – including charges related to the Espionage Act, Trump still says he should be cleared of all charges due to the Presidential Records Act.
Last week, the former president wrote on his social media accounts, in all caps:
“So now that everyone understands that the Presidential Records Act, Plus the Clinton socks case, totally exonerated me from the continuing witch hunt brought on by corrupt Joe Biden, the DOJ, deranged Jack Smith, and their Radical Left, Marxist thugs, when are they going to drop all charges against me, apologize, and return everything that was illegally taken (Fourth Amendment) from my home? This was nothing other than election interference!!!”
William Barr, who once served as Trump’s attorney general, has repeatedly disputed Trump’s interpretation of the Presidential Records Act. He – as well as others – have said that the act only protects things such as diaries and notes, not the highly-classified documents that certain federal agencies created that Trump had at his resort.
