Trump Publicly Confesses To The Classified Documents-Related Crimes With Which The DOJ Has Charged Him, In Interview With Fox's Bret Baier
A trial date of August 14 (!) was set by the Trump-appointed judge in the classified documents case.
Updated: With snip from The Atlantic.
Of course, Special Counsel Jack Smith did not bother pursuing a gag order on Donald Trump after charging him with 37 federal criminal counts. Why would a prosecutor ever want Trump to shut his mouth?
Trump confessed to the federal crimes with which he has been charged during an interview with Fox’s Bret Baier. When he wasn’t busy incriminating himself or justifying those illegal actions, Trump offered farcical, implausible, and incoherent excuses that contradicted his earlier explanations.
One of his new defenses? “I was very busy.”
Trump confessed, regarding returning the documents: “I gave back some”. That’s a new admission of guilt from Trump and it matches up with what Jack Smith stated in the federal indictment.
The Department of Justice could probably secure a conviction on all 37 charges by using only Trump’s TV interviews in the last four months as evidence.
Even Fox veteran Brit Hume admitted — on the air — that Trump’s “answers on the matters of the law seem to me to verge on incoherent” and “I’m sure his legal and political advisers were wincing all the way through”.
He seemed to be saying that the documents were really his. And that he didn’t give them back when he was requested to do so and when they were subpoenaed . . . because he hadn’t sorted them and separated the classified information . . . from his golf shirts or whatever he was saying. It was not altogether clear what he was saying . . .
More than one observer said Trump looked and acted scared. In The Atlantic, Tom Nichols wrote:
Trump was jittery and combative, but that’s not so unusual; the former president tends to answer even softball questions as if they’re accusations. . . . Trump seemed not himself—or at least not the character he’s been presenting to the public for most of his life.
Instead, he seemed deeply uneasy in an environment where he should have felt at home. . . . [B]y the end of the interview, Trump was calling Fox a “hostile” network.
Through it all, Trump seemed genuinely off-balance. . . . This was not the same Trump who took instant charge of CNN’s town-hall interview . . .
For a man who has spent so many years on television, Trump seems uncomfortable in a studio unless an audience is present. . . .
Trump’s discomfort had a lot to do with Baier. One-on-one interviews are hard for Trump, because they require him to focus on individual human beings and engage with them as if he cares about—or even heard—what they just said. He always runs the risk that the other person might continue to ask pointed questions even after he has wandered into some incomprehensible reverie. . . . Baier came prepared, and pushed back—with data—on many of Trump’s claims. . . . Baier interrupted Trump, corrected him, and challenged him on multiple fronts, including his election lies, his indictments, his record as president, his involvement in the January 6 insurrection, and even his predilection for silly nicknames.
Baier brought quotes, sound clips, and charts. . . . Trump clearly hated the whole experience this time, and he retreated to his comfort zone, dismissing facts, insulting the people who once worked for him, belittling Fox’s ratings, and accusing the network of bias against him. . . .
And so it went, with every answer either a retreat into magical thinking or chaff bursts of jarring non sequiturs. . . . while showcasing the trademark tells—including nervous (and distracting) sniffling and verbal hiccups such as “Are you ready?”—that signal when he is tense and flustered. . . .
Conservative pundit Erick Erickson tweeted: “Guys, Trump admitted on TV tonight he withheld documents from the grand jury. Game over, legally. What an idiot.”
Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University and a consistent Trump toady, warned that the statements “are generally admissible at trial.”
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough — a former Republican congressman — said that Trump’s statements were “incoherent, incriminating and idiotic on so many levels. He keeps putting himself one step closer to jail every time he does one of these rambling interviews.”
“Keep confessing,” wrote national security attorney Bradley Moss. “No criminal defense attorney worth their salt would ever advise their indicted client to do a media tour. That helps explain the problems Mr. Trump has had retaining qualified counsel,” he added. . . .
“This is one more inculpatory statement,” former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman told MSNBC. “Every time he opens his mouth, it gets worse.” . . .
“If it were just newspaper articles, why in the world are you saying on the tape that it’s classified? It’s totally incoherent,” [former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal] said. “And the other parts of the tape… really is an admission of guilt. Like, if you just think about the Espionage Act, what does the prosecution need to show? They needed to show the defendant had unauthorized possession of national defense documents, that he willfully retained the documents, and failed to give the documents to an officer of the U.S. Those are the elements. So, the Trump admission goes to all of that.”
Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann . . . [called the interview] a “colossal blunder” by Trump . . .
“What he had to say is preposterous,” Weissmann said. “He is saying that he didn’t have enough time to take out personal things. So first, he has already said that everything is his — everything is personal. . . . [A]ccording to his prior defense, everything is personal, because they are quote, ‘mine.’ It’s an inconsistency, something that Jack Smith can easily point out. Second, people should understand when you get subpoenaed, if you don’t have time to comply . . . you have your lawyer call up and say . . . [we] need more time. . . . [W]hat you don’t do is send something to the Department of Justice that says, ‘I fully complied.’ Now he is saying, in spite of the fact that he said I fully complied, he’s now saying, no, no, no, I just needed to take out my golf shirts. This is the kind of thing that Jack Smith has to be salivating over.”
“Trump’s defense that he was too busy to return national defense information is not a valid legal defense,” former U.S. Attorney Barb McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor, told Salon. “In fact, it is an admission that he failed to turn over the documents when requested. In addition, not only did he fail to return the documents, he also engaged in proactive efforts to lie and obstruct the investigation.” . . .
“Had he complied with those requests in good faith earlier in 2021 and 2022, it is very likely the FBI search would never have happened in the first place, with the subsequent federal indictment that followed for the unlawful and willful possession of classified government documents,” Javed Ali, former senior counterterrorism official at the Department of Homeland Security, told Salon.
He added that the former president’s claims that he was too busy to sort through the boxes of personal effects and government documents will not “hold water from a legal perspective” as it “shows a disdain” for the process . . .
At the Trump University School of Law, you’ll learn you can totally ignore a federal subpoena as long as you mix in a few golf shirts with whatever is being demanded!