Trump’s former attorney general says ‘he’s toast’ in federal classified documents case

Former U.S. President and 2024 GOP lead contender Donald Trump will appear at a Miami courthouse on Tuesday for a hearing in the classified documents case. The indictment against Trump includes 37 criminal charges, most of which relate to violations of the Espionage Act. Other counts pertain to obstruction of justice and alleged false statements made to the FBI in Special Council Jack Smith’s investigation. If convicted, Trump could potentially face prison time.

While the former president has denied any wrongdoing and claimed the indictment was “ridiculous and baseless,” his former Attorney General Bill Barr is convinced otherwise.

Barr told Fox News Sunday host Shannon Bream that the indictment against Trump is “very detailed” and “very damning.”

“I was shocked by the degree of sensitivity of these documents and how many there were, frankly,” Bar said. “I think the counts under the Espionage Act that he willfully retained those documents are solid counts.”

Barr added that one must wait and see what Trump’s legal defense team comes up with, but stressed that “if even half of it is true, then he's toast.”

“It's a very detailed indictment and it's very, very damning. And this idea of presenting Trump as a victim here, a victim of a witch hunt is ridiculous,” the former attorney general argued.

Barr admitted that Trump has been a victim in the past, as part of the Russia probe, when he stood by his side to defend him against “phony claims.” Nevertheless, he claimed that the classified documents case is much different.

“He’s not a victim here. He was totally wrong that he had the right to have those documents. Those documents are among the most sensitive secrets that the country has... He had no right to maintain them and retain them. And he kept them in a way at Mar-a-Lago that anyone who really cares about national security, their stomach would churn at it,” Barr said.

The former attorney general believes that in this federal case, the government acted responsibly vis-à-vis Trump.

“They gave him every opportunity to return those documents,” Barr stressed. “They acted with restraint. They were very deferential to him and they were very patient. They talked to him for almost a year to try to get those documents, and he jerked them around. They finally went to a subpoena. And what did he do? According to the government, he lied and obstructed that subpoena. And then they did a search, and they found a lot more documents.”

Since the indictment emerged, Trump and his allies have cited the Hillary Clinton email probe and Former U.S. President Obama and Biden’s possession of classified documents to attack the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) of having double standards.

When asked to comment on these claims, Barr said they were based on “two big lies.” The first, is that other presidents took as many documents.

“Those were situations where they arranged with the archives to set up special space under the management control and security provided by the archivist, to temporarily put documents until the libraries were ready. These were not people just putting them in their basement,” he explained.

The second lie, according to Barr, is Trump’s idea that he had the complete authority as president to declare any document personal.

“It's facially ridiculous,” he commented.

Fox News anchor, Mark Levin, disagrees with Barr’s analysis. Levin, who hosts “Life, Liberty and Levin,” was a senior DOJ official. Like Trump, he sees the classified documents probe as an attempt by Democrats to enforce a one-party rule without having to win the elections.

After the charges dropped, Levin told Sean Hannity last week that the indictment against Trump was a “disgusting mark on American history.” He accused the Democratic Party of using the Department of Justice and the FBI to “get what they want.”

“The Presidential Records Act is not a criminal statute, and it was never intended to be,” Levin claimed. “The Espionage Act of 1917 was passed under Woodrow Wilson, another corrupt president... used it to go after his adversaries, and they imprisoned 2,000 people. So, I suppose over there, at the ‘Department of Injustice,’ and this clown prosecutor spent a lot of time at The Hague, they probably figured these laws could be used to try and entrap Trump.”

“There would be no obstruction issue of any kind, not even in anybody's imagination had they not criminalized this case,” Levin added.

The Fox News host emphasized that he does not believe U.S. President Joe Biden, who claimed he had nothing to do with the federal case against Trump.

“Is this some kind of a sick joke on the American people? Joe Biden says he never told them what to do. Joe Biden had to sign off on,” Levin said. “Who does he think he's lying to? The American people. This is a guy that's got documents from the time he was in the U.S. Senate, for God sakes, in his garage. I don't want to hear from the legal analysts that technicalities about false statements and obstruction. This should never have been a criminal case, willful retention of documents.”

On the charge of “willful retention of documents” under the Espionage Act, Levin asked: “What did he do with the documents? Did he sell them to the enemy? No. That's why we have an Espionage Act, not the trick of a president. What did he do? Did he burn them all? No. The government has all the documents back. So, there is no violation of the Presidential Records Act at this point.”

Levin added that Trump and his lawyers did not receive due process by the DOJ.  

“His own lawyers were being subjected to interrogations, and they had hundreds of in-person people testifying in front of grand juries. Thousands of collections of documents. For what? For what?” he asked, following the indictment.

Levin noted that the decision to indict the former president in Miami was “because the moron in Washington figured out that there are venue issues that could lose him his case.”

Levin was likely referring to Special Counsel Jack Smith. He also made the point that Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, who he claimed, “made this final decision.”

“This is not the independent counsel statute. This is a special counsel appointed by the attorney general under a Department of Justice regulation. This attorney general, who pretends he's Helen Keller, he made the decision to indict the former president and they made the decision to interfere in this election. You want to talk about an insurrection? This is an insurrection,” Levin stressed.

The Fox News host didn’t pull any punches regarding the U.S. president, saying: “In the case of Biden, 20 shell corporations, $10 million coming from the communist Chinese military spread out among the family... The idea that this man isn't under a criminal investigation and that they criminalized a damn document case to go after Donald Trump is sickening.”

He concluded by claiming that the federal case against Trump, in addition to other three different state-level cases, is a “war on the Republican Party” and a “cover-up for Biden.”