Trump’s Shifting Explanations Follow a Familiar Playbook (original) (raw)
Advertisement
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
News Analysis
The former president and his allies have given often conflicting defenses of his retention of classified documents, without addressing why he had kept them.
Former President Donald J. Trump and his aides have given inconsistent statements regarding the classified materials removed from his residence in Palm Beach, Fla.Credit...Yuki Iwamura/Associated Press
Aug. 14, 2022
WASHINGTON — First he said that he was “working and cooperating with” government agents who he claimed had inappropriately entered his home. Then, when the government revealed that the F.B.I., during its search, had recovered nearly a dozen sets of documents that were marked classified, he suggested the agents had planted evidence.
Finally, his aides claimed he had a “standing order” to declassify documents that left the Oval Office for his residence, and that some of the material was protected by attorney-client and executive privilege.
Those are the ever-shifting explanations that former President Donald J. Trump and his aides have given regarding what F.B.I. agents found last week in a search of his residence at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla.
Mr. Trump and his allies have cast the search as a partisan assault while amplifying conflicting arguments about the handling of sensitive documents and failing to answer a question at the center of the federal investigation: Why was he keeping documents, some still marked classified, at an unsecured Florida resort when officials had sought for a year to retrieve them?
The often contradictory and unsupported defenses perpetuated by Mr. Trump and his team since the F.B.I. search follow a familiar playbook of the former president’s. He has used it over decades but most visibly when he was faced with the investigation into whether his campaign in 2016 conspired with Russians and during his first impeachment trial.
In both instances, he claimed victimization and mixed some facts with a blizzard of misleading statements or falsehoods. His lawyers denied that he had tied his administration’s withholding of vital military aid to Ukraine to Mr. Trump’s desire for investigations into Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son, Hunter Biden.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Advertisement