An admission that Donald Trump made about his legal troubles during his Fox News interview might cause massive problems for him during his trial.
On Monday, Fox News aired the first part of chief political correspondent Brett Baier’s interview with the former president, where he asked Trump about the legal proceedings against him currently, including the classified documents fiasco.
Trump was formally indicted on June 13 in a federal court in Miami on 37 counts relating to his alleged mishandling of classified documents when he left office in 2021.
While the exact details of the case are still up in the air, one comment Trump made to Baier about the case might have been a huge misstep that could aid the prosecution’s case against him.
At one point during the interview, Baier asked Trump why he did not just hand the documents over to the National Archives and Records Administration when the Department of Justice asked him to.
“Because I had boxes — I wanted to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out,” Trump responded, “I don’t want to hand that over to NARA yet. . . before I send boxes over, I have to take all of my things out. These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things.”
Trump appears to admit here that he did take classified documents with him when he left office, and that he kept them alongside his personal things, which one could argue constitutes a mishandling of classified documents.
Now, to be clear, this is not an admission of guilt on Trump’s part. He is not confessing that he committed any crime. It does, however, have the potential to make the case very tricky.
Even at PJ Media, a Trump-friendly outlet that is skeptical of the charges leveled against him, veteran writer Stephen Green acknowledged that this could be a damaging admission that could cause problems for Trump later down the line.
“What bothers me most here is Trump’s lack of judgment,” Green wrote. “He’s worked his entire adult life in one of the world’s most litigious industries, headquartered in one of the world’s most litigious cities. Add to that a couple of litigious and high-profile divorces, and you have a man who is supposed to know how to behave in public in ways that won’t damage his case in court.”
In other words, Trump should have known better and should have given more thought to his answer before making that comment to Bret Baier on national television.
Now we can argue all day about whether or not Trump is guilty or innocent, or if the prosecution by the Biden administration constitutes an attempt to silence a top political rival ahead of an election, but Trump needs to be more careful about his comments about the case.
If he so much as makes the tiniest misstep during an interview or a speech, you can bet that the prosecution is going to be quick to pounce on it and bring it to the attention of the court.
This will make Trump’s legal defense very difficult.
Again, we need to be clear that Trump is not admitting guilt here, but he clearly should have known better than to make this statement.
This is not just about whether or not Trump will go to jail, but this is also happening against the backdrop of another Trump campaign for the presidency, which means he has to be extra careful when speaking on this matter.
via westernjournal