OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Former President Donald Trump has continued to defend his decision to house classified documents at his Mar-A-Lago residence.
The former president spoke to former Fox News host Megyn Kelly on her Sirius XM show, “The Megyn Kelly Show,” that aired on Thursday when the topic was mentioned.
“These fascists and these Marxists, and these people that are dealing, and they leak, and they’re disgusting people. They’re horrible for the country. We have a deranged guy named Jack Smith, who has been overturned at the Supreme Court a number of times and he gets overturned – you know why gets overturned? Because he goes too far. They don’t even mention the Presidential Records Act,” the former president began.
“This is all about the Presidential Records Act. I’m allowed to have these documents. I’m allowed to take these documents, classified or not classified. And frankly, when I have them, they become unclassified. People think you have to go through a ritual. You don’t, at least in my opinion, you don’t. But it’s even beyond that. Because the Presidential Records Act allows you to do as president, only as president. Now, the other people that we talk about, including Biden, he wasn’t president. So what he did is a different standard. And he should have real problems. They really should be talking about that. Not about me. I did absolutely nothing wrong,” he said.
Some legal experts believe that the former president confessed to a crime in the interview.
“Credit to @megynkelly for letting him confess to the crimes in the indictment. She’ll see this played at the trial by the government,” national security attorney Bradley Moss said.
“Donald Trump looked around this week, saw Biden hit with the impeachment inquiry and Hunter hit with an indictment and decided, ‘you know what, I’m not getting enough attention, I think I will go confess to crimes under the espionage act,’” he said.
When it comes to Smith’s ongoing investigations into the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, an attorney who gave then-President Trump legal counsel after the contentious 2020 election aftermath has drawn a firm boundary.
John Eastman’s attorney, Harvey Silverglate, declared that his client had no intention of making any plea agreements and that he would not cooperate with Smith or other federal prosecutors.
Silverglate said his client gave “good faith legal advice” when he said that former Vice President Mike Pence could refuse to certify President Biden’s election.
“It was certainly cutting-edge. It was creative,” Silverglate said of Eastman’s theory. “But, you know, that’s what good lawyers are supposed to do. And Eastman’s advice was perfectly within the realm of good faith legal advice. I don’t have any doubt about it. I’m sure we can get experts to testify to that if necessary. If Eastman is charged, he’s going to trial. If he is convicted, he’s going to appeal. We will never, ever make a deal.”
“This whole thing has become so politicized that it’s not even funny. And it is a blot on the Department of Justice, in my view,” Silverglate said. “So, we are giving away our defenses. But we are that confident in our case that we’re willing to tell them what our arguments are in order to keep them from indicting him.”
The New York Times published a report noting that Trump and the nearly two dozen co-defendants in the case have already complexed the case that could result in courtroom battles for years.
“In the Georgia case, the question of whether to change the venue — a legal maneuver known as removal — matters because it would affect the composition of a jury. If the case stays in Fulton County, Ga., the jury will come from a bastion of Democratic politics where Mr. Trump was trounced in 2020. If the case is removed to federal court, the jury will be drawn from a 10-county region of Georgia that is more suburban and rural — and somewhat more Trump-friendly. Because it takes only one not-guilty vote to hang a jury, this modest advantage could prove to be a very big deal,” the Times reported.
