OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Former President Donald Trump tore into three former presidents and President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice at his most recent rally.
The former president was in Nevada on Saturday when he insisted that the raid on Mar-a-Lago and the way he has been treated would not have happened to any other president, and he claimed to have proof.
“This is a new hoax: the document hoax. Just look at how every other president has been treated when they left office. Very interesting. They’ve been given all the time needed [to return documents] — because you’re supposed to have as much time as you need — and complete deference when it came to their documents and their papers. ‘Take as much as you need,’” he said.
“Barack Hussein Obama moved more than 20 truckloads, over 33 million pages of documents, both classified and unclassified, to a poorly built and unsafe former furniture store located in a bad neighborhood in Chicago. With no security, by the way,” he said.
He then went on to former President George W. Bush.
“George W. Bush stored 68 million pages in a warehouse in Texas and lost 22 million emails. Can you imagine if I lost two emails? They’d say, ‘This is terrible. It must have been nuclear in those two.’ … He lost 22 million. Can you believe that we’re talking about millions of pages and they’re coming after me? But they’re still looking for them. They’re still looking for those pages,” he said before going for former President Bill Clinton.
“Bill Clinton took millions of documents from the White House to a former car dealership in Arkansas … and kept classified recordings in his sock drawer. In fact, he supposedly put the information from the White House into his socks and left the White House with the information, so we call it the sock case,” the former president said.
“If I did that, there’d be major trouble and NARA — you know NARA, the National Archives and Records Administration — ‘lost’ an entire hard drive full of information from the Clinton White House. They lost it. They can’t find it,” he said.
He then hit his favorite target, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, his opponent in the 2016 presidential election.
“But almost as bad, crooked Hillary deleted 33,000 emails under congressional subpoena. She acid-washed them. … [It’s a] very expensive process. That’s why nobody does it. And then pounded her phones with hammers, making them totally unrecognizable to the naked eye. So she took those phones and she pounded the hell out of them,” the former president said.
He then went as far back as the late former President George H.W. Bush.
“Meanwhile, George H.W bush took millions of documents to a former bowling alley and a former Chinese restaurant. … By contrast, I had a small number of boxes and storage at Mar-A-Lago — very small, relatively — guarded by the great Secret Service. And yet the FBI, with many people, raided my house. It’s in violation, by the way, of the Fourth Amendment, and many other things also,” he said.
“The radical left thinks by doing all these sinister and venomous things, they’re making us weaker, but actually they are making us stronger and much more unified than ever before. I really believe that. I believe that,” the former president said.
“When will they investigate and prosecute Bill Clinton Hillary Clinton, George Bush and look into what took place with George Bush’s father — a very nice man — and the warehouse of documents? And what about Barack Hussein Obama? Are they under potential prosecution. I don’t think so. I don’t think they are,” he said.
The former president said he believes that based on that history there is no case against him.
“So under the socks decision (which was a reference to former President Bill Clinton) … there is no crime. Same thing as what we have [done], except his was much more egregious. Ours was nothing. There is no crime. And they should give me back everything that they’ve taken. Under the socks agreement, I’m allowed to keep what I want. It’s personal. Likewise, under the Presidential Records Act, everything should come back and there is no crime,” the former president said.
“[Yet] they make it sound like the greatest crime in America was committed, and we’ve got all these warehouses that are just falling down, buildings essentially loaded up with millions and millions of pages of previous presidents’ [documents], and nothing was ever said about it. This is a two-tier system of justice, and it’s got to stop, because the people in this country are angry, and they’re sick of it. We want to make America great again and stop this nonsense,” he said.
