Following the FBI raid at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, the former president and his allies have come up with a myriad of excuses as to why it was perfectly reasonable for him to take highly classified documents from the White House.
The excuses included things like:
– The boxes got packed in a hurry and no one really knew what was in them.
– “Everyone” brings their “work” home and Trump was no different.
– Trump loves scrapbooking and he was going to use the documents for this completely innocent purpose.
– Federal agents planted the documents at Mar-a-Lago as part of a setup.
– People steal classified documents all the time and it’s never been a big deal until now.
Unable to get any traction with those excuses, Trump and his team attempted to point fingers at another culprit: the General Services Administration (GSA).
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At the end of their term, former U.S. presidents are allowed to take certain government materials and office equipment required to set up a permanent office away from the White House with assistance from the GSA. However, that does not include the kind of classified documents Trump took to Mar-a-Lago – which are at the center of an ongoing Justice Department criminal probe.
As the federal agency prepared to ship pallets of material to Florida for former President Donald Trump in July 2021, officials asked Trump aide Beau Harrison to affirm what was in the boxes being shipped.
Harrison, who had been interviewed by federal investigators as they sought information on presidential records, returned a letter on “The Office of Donald J. Trump” letterhead stating what was in the boxes, Bloomberg reports.
“The email exchange between GSA officials and Harrison is one of more than 100 pages of emails and documents newly released by the GSA that debunk claims from Trump and his allies that the government agency is to blame for packing the boxes containing classified documents that were later recovered by the FBI during the search of his Mar-a-Lago resort in August,” Bloomberg reported.
The newly released emails make clear that the boxes had already been packed and sat shrink-wrapped in an empty office space in Arlington, Virginia, as GSA officials planned logistics to ship the five pallets of boxes – including 30 banker boxes similar to those recovered by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago – to Florida.
The emails also add new detail showing how documents from the Trump administration made their way to Florid and directly debunks attempts Trump and his allies have made to defend the former President by blaming GSA.
