GOP Has New Defense Plan for Trump's Mar-a-Lago Documents

A pair of top House Republicans are defending Donald Trump by saying that storing classified documents in a bathroom at Mar-a-Lago was acceptable, considering the number of bathrooms at the resort and the fact that bathroom doors lock.

Photos of dozens of boxes allegedly containing myriad classified documents were released by the Department of Justice in sync with the 37-count indictment document issued against Trump, for which he is set to be arraigned this afternoon in Miami, Florida. Photos showed countless boxes discovered "in a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, [Trump's] bedroom, and a storage room" in his South Florida residence.

Florida Representative Byron Donalds, who has endorsed Trump for the 2024 GOP nomination, told CNN's Phil Mattingly this morning that the media is making too much of the bathroom images.

"As somebody who's been to Mar-a-Lago, you just can't walk through Mar-a-Lago of your own accord because Secret Service is all over the place," Donalds said. "So, if the documents are in a place, they're in a room, depending on the time of year you can't even get into said room. There are 33 bathrooms at Mar-a-Lago. So don't act like it's just in some random bathroom that the guests can go into. That's not true."

Donalds' comments came one day after Speaker Kevin McCarthy compared Trump's alleged mishandling of documents and the boxes discovered at Mar-a-Lago, to the classified documents that were previously discovered inside the garage at President Joe Biden's Wilmington, Delaware, residence.

He was asked by a reporter if it was "a good look" for Trump to have boxes of potentially classified information in a bathroom.

"I don't know," McCarthy responded. "Is it a good picture to have boxes in a garage that opens up all the time? A bathroom door locks."

Nick Akerman, former assistant special Watergate prosecutor and former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, told Newsweek that "there's no real comparison" between what Trump is alleged to have done and what Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence did upon being found to be in possession of classified documents.

"Biden and Pence had a couple of documents that were taken by mistake and they turned them back the minute they found them," Akerman said. "This was not done by mistake. This was done totally intentionally, as evidenced by the fact that [Trump] was using this stuff at Bedminster," referring to the former president's New Jersey golf club.

The defenses exhibited by Republicans like McCarthy and Donalds lack substance and do so intentionally based on the nature of the charges stemming from special counsel Jack Smith's investigation, he added.

"What's really remarkable is that these people have made the statements and defenses despite the facts in the indictment, despite the fact that some haven't even read the indictment," Akerman said.

"So, you've got certain people—Kevin McCarthy is the GM in the sense that he's got a very slim majority. He's got to appease these kinds of right-wing wackos that he's got that could turn on him at any moment. So, he's trying to play both ends against the middle, but the problem is the facts are just so bad."

Republicans have been across the board in either supporting or admonishing the former president based on the charges presented. He has his die-hard supporters in Congress, including those like Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and other members of the MAGA movement.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said today that the images released by the DOJ were "sensationalized" and intended to evoke certain emotions.

"There was a box that was shown with all these documents spewn out...It wasn't anything classified; it was newspaper clippings and some personal items presented to try to give the impression that there's all these classified documents just laying around on the floor," Scalise told reporters. "Yet you contrast that with Joe Biden's garage where there were classified documents going back to when he was a United States senator."

However, there has been a slight shift in tone within the past 24 hours among some of Trump's presidential challengers.

Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who originally blasted the justice system when the indictment was initially issued, said Monday that if the allegations are true then Trump's actions were "reckless" and put the U.S. military's men and women in potential peril.

Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson said from the beginning that the charges should be taken seriously, as did former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

"This is vanity run amok...ego run amok," Christie said, referencing Trump's charges Monday evening during a CNN town hall. "And he's now going to put this country through this when we didn't have to go through it. Everyone's blaming the prosecutors. He did it, it's his conduct."

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump's biggest 2024 challenger based on polling and the candidate who could potentially gain the most should Trump's numbers ultimately take a dip, mentioned the "weaponization" of government but has not referred to Trump or his charges specifically. He has also not mentioned a pardon specific to Trump's legal troubles.

Vivek Ramaswamy, a longshot GOP candidate to claim the 2024 nomination, has said he would pardon Trump if elected and is scheduled to appear in Miami as a show of support for the former president.

"You've got presidential candidates who are trying to appeal to Trump's base, while at the same time having to acknowledge that the facts are terrible," Akerman said. "And they can't be running for president saying it's okay to take classified information and secrets on national security...At the end of the day, the facts just bury them and bury Trump.

"They're kind of caught betwixt and between, and I think what they're sort of hoping—at least the presidential candidates—is that when the next two bombs drop, which is January 6 and the one in Georgia, that at that point Trump will be totally marginalized," he said.

Smith is investigating Trump's actions related to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, when his supporters breached the building as lawmakers were certifying Joe Biden's election win. In Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is leading an investigation into whether Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 election result in the state.