Trump previews possible legal defense in post-arraignment speech
WASHINGTON (TND) — Former President Donald Trump previewed a potential legal strategy while he also attacked the Biden administration, Special Counsel Jack Smith and his two of his immediate predecessors in the White House during remarks he gave from his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. the same evening his federal arraignment Tuesday.
"Today we witnessed the most evil and heinous abuse of power in the history of our country, it's a sad thing to watch," Trump said, delivering prepared remarks in from of his historic club's main building. "A corrupt, sitting president had his top political opponent arrested on fake and fabricated charges of which he and numerous other presidents would be guilty – right in the middle of a presidential election."
Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury on 37 felony counts related to his alleged knowing retention of classified national security documents following his time in office, following over a year of investigation by the FBI, a grand jury in Washington, D.C. and the National Archives and Records Administration.
He pleaded not guilty to all charges, which range from violations of the Espionage Act (31 in all) to conspiracy to obstruct justice and scheme to conceal.
Trump became the first American head of state to be arrested by the government he once led in the course of the arraignment Tuesday in Miami.
While Biden, a frequent target of Trump's criticisms – though the current president has not made comment on Trump's situation since his indictment Friday, respecting the independence of the Justice Department – was a main focus of the 45th president's verbal bars, he also criticized the records of his predecessors Bill Clinton and George W. Bush for controversies surrounding their retention or deletion of records and property following their terms in office.
Bill Clinton lost the nuclear codes and absolutely nothing was done about it," he said. "The George W. Bush White House lost 22 million emails ... a document-shredding truck was spotted on the way to Dick Cheney's house ... Hillary Clinton took hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of furniture, flat ware, china, rugs and more from the White House and she wasn't prosecuted.
The Bush administration was found to be conducting some of its official communitcations through a private email server and domain controlled by the Republican National Committee, however NARA was able to recover most of them.
The former president also offered a potential preview of his legal defense strategy in the case, repeating an argument some conservatives have been discussing in recent days revolving around a case involving President Clinton.
In the "Clinton Sock Drawer Case," as it is colloquially known, a conservative government watchdog group sued the National Archives and Records Administration demanding access to a number of cassette recordings made by Pres. Clinton during his tenure as commander in chief. The suit came about after a 2007 report which stated that Clinton retained a collection of recordings – which he later used to write his autobiography – he made with author Taylor Branch during his time as president.
Judicial Watch sued NARA and ordered they classify the tapes as official "presidential records" and take possession of them and store them as would be proper in the Clinton Library.
However, in her ruling in the case, Judge Amy Berman Jackson stated that the court did not have the authority to do so as Clinton had made the tapes as personal materials and not official presidential records.
The decision to segregate personal materials from Presidential records is made by the President, during the President's term and in his sole discretion," Jackson wrote, arguing that an archivist could not – nor indeed did not previously – make a classification decision that "can be challenged here.
Trump argued in his remarks that the decision allowed him to denote the documents taken as personal materials and not Presidential.
However a PolitiFact fact check declared Trump is making a faulty comparison between the socks case and his documents case as "the judicial ruling in the Clinton socks case does not give Trump permission to keep hundreds of classified documents after his presidency ended at his Mar-a-Lago estate."
While it is unknown when or he will appear in federal court in Miami, Florida Federal Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by the former president, was appointed to lead the trial in a move seen by legal observers to ensure Trump receives a fair trial – which Special Counsel Jack Smith intends to be "speedy" in the interest of the defendant and the American people.
An aide to the former president, Walt Nauta, was also charged and arraigned today as part of the total 38 charges in the indictment.