Republican Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri on Sunday said that Donald Trump “should have turned over all” of the documents the FBI wound up seizing from him during their search at Mar-a-Lago, but also blasted the FBI’s timing of the raid.
“He should have turned the documents over, and apparently had turned a number of documents over,” Blunt told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “What I wonder about is why this could go on for almost two years and less than 100 days before the election, suddenly we’re talking about this rather than the economy, or inflation, or even the student loan program you and I were going to talk about today.”
“Good thing they’re going to have a special master look at these documents to sort through the documents that the president had every right to have and the documents that he hadn’t yet turned over. I understand he had turned over many documents, he should have turned over all of them. I imagine he knows that very well now as well,” he added.
Blunt also questioned why the Senate Intelligence Committee, on which he serves, hasn’t been briefed about any possible national security issue related to Trump’s holding of classified documents.
“We need to get a letter out right now to the Justice Department and the Director of National Intelligence and say, ‘If there really is a problem, why haven’t you told us about that problem?'” Blunt said. “That hasn’t happened yet.”
Asked by Stephanopoulos whether it was “right” for Trump to take classified documents to Mar-a-Lago, Blunt noted that Hillary Clinton did something even more egregious.
“You should be very careful with classified documents,” Blunt conceded. “I’ve been had access to documents like that for a long time. I’m incredibly careful. I was wondering… if the same things were said when Secretary Clinton had documents, when Director Comey had documents. They had them on the internet, which is much more dangerous than having them in a box somewhere. But everybody need to be more careful about how these documents are dealt with.”
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8 Responses
He should have turned them over based on the practice of previous presidents, but the issue is whether he was legally required to do so. This gets you into the question of presidential powers and how much “custom” (minhag) counts as a legal precedent (the custom is the president doesn’t declassify and take home state papers, but the statute is very unclear). In Common Law countries, the precedent is that “custom” is the basis of law, unless there is a contrary statute.
Senator Blunt: Professor of the Obvious.
akuperma: Professor of Excuses at Trump “University.”
The affidavit states the laws that he is being investigated for breaking.
His entire presidential campaign was based on how Hillary disregarded the safety of information confidential or otherwise, so with this exponentially more dangerous disregard, his goose may be cooked.
The fpotus claimed that the docs were ‘planted’ by the FBI. If that is the case how could he have declassified them?
Obama hasn’t handed over…..America…..guess what….I finally loathe you…..now that is a superior development…please come back home our families in america and around the world….
Another thing to keep in mind is that we hear about things Trump did or didn’t do, this doesn’t necessarily mean he ordered these things done or even had knowledge of them. Reports are that staffers of his had these boxes transferred without his knowledge, and he was furious about it when he recently found out. Since then, he’s been getting questionable advice about how to handle this issue.
Akuperma, the minhag and halacha in America is that highly sensitive classified documents are kept in a safe and only viewed in secure locations. Obama had documents from his term which he wanted to review while writing a book transferred to a secure Federal facility in Chicago where he can view them on the premises. Under the halacha known as the Presidential Records act all papers from a president’s term are property of the Federal government and are kept in the Federal archives.
It appears that Trump clearly violated American halacha and will be judged by the American equivalent of a Bais Din.
See the Trump supporters are busy throwing out every idea they can concoct to explain away his behavior… Just remember this was a guy who very clearly said his admin would prosecute all laws related to confidential info and he also clearly said no one is above the law. Oh, but he was talking about Hillary…
And enough with excusing Trump’s behavior with trying to compare it to Hillary. There are vast differences in facts. For one, the outright lying and refusal to return the documents when requested numerous times. Seems Trump had ample opportunity to avoid escalating this situation but choose not to. Either he was acting malicious or is grossly incompetent.
But Hillary… Yeah, Hillary who Comey announced info about an investigation right before the election that hurt her election… But, Hunter Biden is Trump’s big complaint. By his own arguments he should never have been President in the first place.