Impeachment against Trump is ‘very, very damning,’ says former attorney general

William Barr, former US President Donald Trump’s top law enforcement official at the end of his presidency, said Sunday that the criminal charge against Trump for illegally withholding highly classified national security documents when he left office in 2021 was “very Very damning.”

However, other Republicans have come to Trump’s defense, calling the impeachment an unwarranted political attack to prevent him from retaking the White House in the 2024 presidential election.

“If half of what he says is true, then he’s in the oven. I mean, it’s a very detailed indictment,” Barr, Trump’s attorney general in 2019 and 2020, told the “Fox News Sunday” show. “This idea of ​​presenting Trump as a victim here, a victim of a witch hunt, is ridiculous.”

Barr added: “We cannot forget here that this was all due to [la] reckless conduct of the president” by taking with him more than 300 classified documents to his seaside property at Mar-a-Lago in Florida when his presidential election term ended and he left Washington, instead of turning them over to the National Archives, as required by law.

“I was dead wrong that I was entitled to have those documents,” Barr said. “Those documents are among the most sensitive secrets the country has. They have to be in the custody of the archivist. He had no right to keep them, and he kept them at Mar-a-Lago in such a way that anyone who cared about national security would have a sick stomach.”

Trump, who has proclaimed his innocence, at various times stored some of the documents in a bathroom, a bedroom and a ballroom stage, prosecution photos show.

A federal grand jury in Miami last week returned a 37-count indictment against Trump, charging him with “deliberate withholding” of 31 of the national defense documents, along with six more counts, including obstruction of justice, concealing documents so that one of their own lawyers would not see them and would give false statements to government investigators.

Trump is set to turn himself in to federal authorities Tuesday at the United States courthouse in Miami.

Despite Barr’s assessment of the case against Trump, the first federal indictment against a US president, other Republicans criticized special counsel Jack Smith for bringing the case against the 76-year-old former commander-in-chief. Trump, according to national polls, is also the leading candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

One of Trump’s staunchest defenders, Senator Lindsey Graham, told ABC’s “This Week” that while some of the charges brought against Trump were brought under the country’s Espionage Act, “He did not commit espionage. He is not a spy. He said what Trump did by withholding national security documents was not unlike what the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, did by keeping a private email server at her home containing classified documents. while she was the country’s top diplomat.

“It’s very similar to what he did,” Graham said, referring to Trump. “Not a damn thing happened to him.”

Rep. Jim Jordan, a Trump supporter, told ‘s “State of the Union” that the impeachment against Trump was a “total affront to the rule of law” and accepted Trump’s claim that he had declassified the documents before leaving. The charge. However, the indictment alleges that Trump, after leaving office, showed a couple of documents to other people and acknowledged that they were still classified and that he no longer had the authority to declassify them.

Democratic Senator Chris Coons, a longtime supporter of Democratic President Joe Biden, said, “President Trump has no one to blame but himself” for being charged in the classified documents case, noting that Biden and Trump’s vice president, Republican Mike Pence, switched quickly. about classified documents to the National Archives when such sensitive materials were found in their homes or offices.

Trump kicked off the campaign trail at Republican political rallies in Georgia and North Carolina on Saturday, criticizing Smith, the prosecutor and the Justice Department for making the case against him.

“This is the final battle,” Trump said in a speech in the southern city of Columbus, Georgia. “Either the communists win and destroy America, or we destroy the communists,” apparently referring to opposition Democrats.

Trump lashed out at “globalists,” “warmongers” in government, and “the sick political class that hates our country.”

Trump also described the Justice Department as “a nest of sick people that needs to be cleaned up immediately,” calling Smith “unhinged” and “openly a Trump hater.”

In an interview with Politico, Trump vowed Saturday to continue running for president even if convicted.

“I will never leave,” Trump said in an interview aboard his plane. Trump predicted that he would be acquitted, but acknowledged the seriousness of his legal risk, in that he could face years in prison if convicted.

“Nobody wants to be charged,” he said.

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