Former Attorney General Bill Barr slammed Donald Trump’s defense in classified documents case as “absurd” on Sunday as the former president continues to claim that the Presidential Records Act gives him the authority to take top secret documents from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago resort when he left office.
“The legal theory by which he gets to take battle plans and sensitive national security information as his personal papers is absurd,” Barr said on CBS’ Face the Nation. “It’s just as wacky as the legal doctrine they came up with for having the vice president unilaterally determine who won the election.”
Trump was not charged with violating the Presidential Records Act. However, the former president and his allies argue that the act gave him the ability to take any document from the White House.
“The whole purpose of the statute, the Presidential Records Act, was to stop presidents from taking official documents out of the White House,” Barr explained. “It restricted what a president can take. It says it’s purely private, that have nothing to do with the deliberations of government policy. Obviously, these documents are not purely private. And they’re not even now arguing that it’s purely private. What they’re saying is the President just has sweeping discretion to say they are, even though they squarely don’t fall within the definition. It’s an absurd argument.”
