Former US President Donald Trump touted an “absolute right” for presidents to keep — and return — documents as they please as he peddled a familiar defence during the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual conference on Saturday.
Trump, who pleaded not guilty to 37 charges tied to his handling of classified documents, has previously claimed that the Presidential Records Act gave him the right to take records — a claim legal experts have challenged, according to The Associated Press.
The former president pivoted to the defence again Saturday in front of a mostly pro-Trump crowd.
“Whatever documents a president decides to take with him, he has the absolute right to take them,” claimed Trump, who evoked the act by name earlier in his remarks.
“He has the absolute right to keep them or he can give them back to NARA if he wants, he talks to them like we were doing and he can do that if he wants,” he added, referring to the National Archives and Records Administration. “That’s the law and it couldn’t be more clear.”
Twitter users weighed in on the Trump claims and argued the former president was “making this very easy for Jack Smith,” the special counsel overseeing the classified documents probe.