On August 14, the trial against Donald Trump for the document affair begins. But keeping still is not his thing, which is why he has now given an interview to Fox News – and indirectly confirmed some allegations. His ex-lawyer is appalled.
“It wasn’t that kind of document. It was a bunch of papers, everyone was talking about Iran and other things. Maybe something was held up, maybe not, but it wasn’t a document. There was nothing to declassify. It was newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.” With this wording, which is typical for him, Donald Trump tries in an interview to defuse his own statements from two years ago. They are documented on an audio recording and could seriously get the ex-president in trouble.
Donald Trump boasts about state secrets
According to the US media, a recording of the conversation at the time revealed how the ex-US head of state indicated secret documents. Trump is reportedly shuffling papers and claiming that General Mark Milley would “love to attack Iran” but that this is a “secret,” “a state secret.” “As president, I could have lifted the secrecy. I can’t do that anymore, but it remains a secret.”
This audio recording is currently considered the most serious evidence that Donald Trump was not only informed about the secret status of the documents, but also for his negligent handling of them. On June 8, the US Department of Justice, which is also the top US public prosecutor, indicted him on 37 counts. The trial begins on August 14th.
It is usually not legally advisable to comment on such allegations beforehand and publicly – but Donald Trump has never considered rational arguments. And so, in passing, the Republican presidential nominee (again) indirectly admitted some of the charges. One of the allegations is that Trump did not want to release the documents in his Florida property at the request of the authorities – which his lawyers had advised him to do. He now told Fox presenter Bret Baier why.
It had to do with the golf shirts that were kept in the same boxes with the papers. “I had all these boxes and I wanted to go through them to get my personal stuff,” Trump said candidly, adding, “These boxes were full of everything. Golf stuff, clothes, pants, shoes.” He didn’t want to hand them over to the responsible national archive and he was “very, very busy”.
Golf shirts and state secrets in one box
That comments slightly sarcastically on his statement: “So Trump may have committed a crime because he was too busy finding his golf shirts and shoes, which he keeps in the same box as state secrets. That’s how you do it.”
All in all, the ex-US President did not cut a good figure in the two-part interview. For a long time, Trump felt safe with his house and court broadcaster Fox News, but the TV makers’ love for the Republican has now cooled. The broadcaster experts also left no good hair on Trump’s statements. Brit Hume said of Trump’s words: “His answers on the matter bordered on the incoherent and should not help him in court.”
Performance was a “disaster”
The US magazine “Rolling Stone” reports that Trump even liked the rather unusually harsh tone used by Fox man Baier because he thought he answered the questions well and thus attracted attention. For his former legal advisor Ty Cobb, however, the appearance was a “disaster”, as he told “Rolling Stone”. Trump gave the government (as the prosecutor) a great gift with the interview. “She will be able to use his statements to prove virtually all of the charges in the Mar-a-Lago indictment,” the lawyer said.
Sources: DPA, AFP, , “”, “”, “The New Republic”.
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
