Judging Freedom - Former Pres. Trump Had Classified Documents in His Possession

Episode Date: February 18, 2022

Material Recovered From Trump by Archives Included Classified Information. The 15 boxes of White House records stored at former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence included classified national security information, the national archives says. The agency said it has referred the matter to the Justice Department.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello there everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, February 18, 2022. It's 310 in the afternoon on the East Coast. Within the past five minutes, the National Archives has announced that it informed the Department of Justice that among the documents it retrieved from former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida were classified documents, documents that had been marked with one of the classified designations of secret or top secret. This is very bad news in a very bad week for the former president. Let's unpack this.

The president of the United States, when he is the sitting president, has the highest security clearance there is. There is nothing that the president can't see. The president's security clearance is so profound, he can declare a document to be top secret, and he can remove a top secret designation from a document. But of course, he only has these powers while he is the president of the United States. So can the president of the United States remove secret classified materials from the White House to his private residence? Answer, only if he first declares them to be no longer classified. If he fails to declare them no longer classified, if he removes the classified,

if he fails to remove the classified designation, then he's committed a crime, the crime of failing to safeguard classified materials. This is the same crime that many of us argued Mrs. Clinton committed when she put classified materials on the private server in her home when she was using a private server as Secretary of State. The exact same crime. Federal crimes require that the government prove intent and intent to do it. So you can't commit a federal crime by mistake, except for this one, this particular crime, the failure to safeguard secret classified information affecting national security can be a crime if it's committed by gross negligence, if it's done by mistake. Look, I don't know what the Justice Department is going to do.

There's no example in the history of the country of a Justice Department bringing a criminal case against a prior, a previous president. But this is now a very serious matter, a matter that can only be decided by Attorney General Garland and President Biden himself. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the president did remove these classified designations while he was still president, while he was still in the White House. It doesn't appear to be the case from the letter that the National Archivist sent to the Attorney General of the United States. More bad news in a week of bad news for Donald Trump. I know we'll hear about this from him very soon. Judge Napolitano, judging freedom.