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Donald Trump essentially admitted to one of the federal charges he is accused of in the classified documents case during his speech in New Jersey, according to a legal expert.
Former FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann was reacting to the remarks the former president gave after pleading not guilty to 37 federal charges in Miami, Florida, on Tuesday in connection to Special Counsel Jack Smith's probe.
Speaking at his Bedminster resort, Trump dismissed the federal charges against him, while attacking Smith as "deranged" and a "thug."
Trump also said that the reason he had so many boxes of classified materials at his Mar-a-Lago resort after he left office was that he had "every right under the Presidential Records Act" to keep them, and that the boxes also contained "all types of personal belongings."
However, under the Presidential Records Act, which was implemented in the wake of the Richard Nixon Watergate scandal, all presidential documents must be sent to the National Archives when the commander-in-chief leaves office as they belong to the federal government.
Speaking to MSNBC, Weissmann, who worked on special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia inquiry into Trump, said the former president's comments about purposely holding onto the materials he has been charged over could be used as evidence of admission of guilt against the Republican, regardless if he takes the stand at a trial.
"Those are admissions. Part of what he said is just a straight-out confession. It's not a defense. It's a confession," Weissmann said.
"He said, 'I could take these.' When you are charged with the illegal retention, the illegal possession of the documents, it is not a good idea to say, 'Hey, you want to know why I took these? Because I could," Weissmann said.
"That is not a defense to that charge. That is an admission to the charge."
Elsewhere during his speech, Trump claimed that he did not know what was in all the boxes that he kept at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida as going through them all would have been a "long, tedious job" and he has "a very busy life."
Weissmann said that this claim from Trump is "disproved by his own voice" in reference to the apparent existence of an audio recording in which the former president can be heard at a July 2021 meeting in Bedminster admitting that he had retained a secret Pentagon paper after he left the White House, and that he no longer had the authority to declassify it.
Weissmann added that Trump also did not attempt during his speech to defend the obstruction of justice allegations, where he is accused of ignoring a subpoena to return all the necessary documents and hindering the federal attempt to retrieve them.
Trump is also accused of getting his legal team to falsely state that all the classified materials had returned prior to the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022.
"Even if you agree with every single thing he said, it is still not a defense to when you get a grand jury subpoena, you need to comply," Weissmann said.
"Instead there will be a lawyer who will take the stand. And it may be three lawyers to say he wanted me to lie to the Department of Justice and say we returned everything.
"I am confident his lawyers are listening to this and going 'how much worse are you going to make this criminal case for you?'"
Trump's office has been contacted for comment via email.
About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, and Florida ... Read more