Trump suggests he knowingly took documents from White House

Former President Donald Trump admitted more directly than before Wednesday that he knowingly removed government records from the White House and claimed that he was allowed to take anything he wanted with him as personal records, appearing to misstate the law and undercut some assertions by his own lawyers.

The remarks by Trump at a televised CNN town hall event in New Hampshire were the most extensive he has made in recent weeks about his handling of classified material after he left office. Jack Smith, a special counsel appointed by the Justice Department, has for months been investigating whether Trump illegally kept national defense documents at his properties — including Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida — and whether he obstructed the government’s repeated efforts over more than 18 months to get the materials back.

Answering questions from CNN host Kaitlan Collins, Trump appeared at times to be kicking up sand as he offered an array of excuses for — and distractions from — the key issue of whether he improperly held on to sensitive government records after he left the White House.

“I took the documents; I’m allowed to,” he told Collins at one point, asserting that he had “the absolute right” to do so under the Presidential Records Act. The law, enacted in 1978 after the Watergate scandal, gave control of presidential records to the government — not to individual presidents.

Legal experts have called Trump’s interpretation of the act “muddled” and “confused.” Last year, in a court fight with Trump’s lawyers over records that were ultimately seized from Mar-a-Lago by the FBI, the Justice Department also dismissed the claims, saying that such a broad reading of the law “would nullify the statute’s entire purpose.”

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