Then-President Donald Trump (C) walks with Senate GOP Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) (L), and Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) (R) as he arrives at the Capitol on March 26, 2019. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
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A member of the Senate Republican leadership claimed former President Donald Trump should have handed over allegedly classified documents that were stored at his Mar-a-Lago residence after he left office last year.
“He should have turned the documents over, and apparently had turned a number of documents over,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) told ABC News on Sunday morning, without addressing assertions and an executive order from Trump indicating he declassified documents while president.
Blunt, the No. 3 Republican in the upper chamber of Congress, suggested the FBI raid was politically motivated, noting it was carried out three months before the 2022 midterms.
“What I want to know about is why this could go on for almost two years and less than 100 days before the election, suddenly we are talking about this rather than the economy, or inflation, or even the student loan program,” Blunt said.
Reports indicated that Trump and the National Archives were negotiating over the documents. A legal complaint filed by Trump’s team last week said that FBI agents and top Justice Department official, Jay Bratt, visited Mar-a-Lago two months before the raid and suggested Trump place a second lock on a storage facility.
Trump is seeking the approval of a special master to review the documents that were taken by the FBI agents.
“Good thing they’re going to have a special master look at these documents to sort through the documents that the president had every right to have and the documents that he hadn’t yet turned over. I understand he had turned over many documents, he should have turned over all of them. I imagine he knows that very well now as well,” Blunt, who isn’t running for another term, said in response to the complaint.
Blunt did not elaborate on why he believes Trump should have turned over the documents and did not address the declassification claims in his ABC News interview.
But Trump and members of his team, including former White House aide Kash Patel, have asserted that the allegedly classified documents that were discovered at his home were previously declassified. Earlier in August, the 45th president, on Truth Social, pointed to a declassification order he made while president on Jan. 19, 2021, relating to FBI Crossfire Hurricane investigation materials.
“In October of 2020, President Trump put out for the world to see a sweeping declassification order,” Patel told Fox News this month. “And he did it via social media.”
Patel added he witnessed Trump declassify “whole sets of documents” in December 2020 and January 2021. Patel also refuted claims by senators and analysts that he had to adhere to declassification protocols, saying it is a “fake news media” scam.
