Trump may accidentally admit to taking documents ‘intentionally’: Haberman

  • Former President Donald Trump said the president could declassify documents “even if he thinks about it.”
  • According to a previous interview, one political analyst said he may be “planning to send boxes of material.”
  • Trump’s claims may be at odds with the idea that the documents accidentally fell into his home.

CNN political analyst Maggie Haberman said former President Donald Trump may have inadvertently deviated from the narrative that classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago had accidentally landed there.

In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Trump made baseless claims that the president was able to declassify documents by “saying: ‘It’s declassified'” or “even by thinking.”

“Because you’re going to deliver it to Mar-a-Lago, or wherever you’re going to deliver it,” Trump told Hannity on Wednesday. “You’re the president and you make the decisions. So when you send it, it’s declassified. I declassify everything,” Trump added.

On Friday’s episode of CNN New Day, Haberman focused on Trump’s line “You’re going to send it to Mar-a-Lago.”

She argued that the statement “appears to indicate that he intends to deliver the boxes to his private club and home. Although people around him keep saying it was a total accident, the stuff just shipped out.”

Two sources familiar with the Mar-a-Lago attack and the Justice Department’s investigation into the documents told NBC News in August that Trump’s aides were scrambling to pack documents as his presidency came to an end — here are a few possibilities one of the reasons.

“So they were trying to believe it was some kind of accident, and just now he seemed to suggest it was intentional,” Haberman added.

Trump also claimed the FBI planted messages at Mar-a-Lago during the August raid, but then appeared to undermine that allegation.

Trump wrote in a September post: “There seems to be some confusion over ‘photos’, documents being hastily thrown on the floor and then released to the world as photos, as if the FBI broke into my house. Found out.” 1 Truth Social Post: “Wrong!”

He added: “They took them out of the carton and spread them out on the carpet to make them look like a big ‘find’. They dropped them, not me – very deceptive… remember Live, we can have no representatives, including lawyers, present during the raid. They were told to wait outside.”

Haberman, a White House correspondent for The New York Times and a political analyst for CNN, has followed Trump extensively throughout his political career. Her forthcoming book, “The Confident Man: The Making of Donald Trump and America’s Collapse,” discusses the details of how Trump handled his 2020 election defeat, including his attempts to ask White House aides whether he should refuse Leave the advice office.

Haberman and CNN hosts John Berman and Brianna Kaylar continued to discuss more about Trump, including the civil lawsuit brought against him by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

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