Trump's Stolen Documents Were So Secretive FBI Agents Needed Special Clearance To View Them

Some of the documents that Donald Trump took from the White House were so highly classified that FBI agents had to obtain special clearance levels in order to view them. This new information gives us an even clearer picture of just how secretive these documents were, and why it was so dangerous for Donald Trump to have them in his possession. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses this.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

According to the filing from the DOJ earlier this week, some of the documents that were retrieved from Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago by the FBI, they were so heavily classified that FBI agents, regular FBI agents, literally weren't even allowed to look at them and they had to bring in agents with specialized high security clearances, just to be able to properly handle the documents. Now, that story is just to let everybody know, of course, from the DOJ, how sensitive this material was that Donald Trump was hoarding down there at Mar-a-Lago. It was so secretive, so highly classified that we couldn't even allow just the regular run of the mill FBI guys to touch it. We had to bring in the guys from the top with the highest level of security clearances just to be able to pick it up in case they accidentally opened it and saw top secret information. And of course we have all seen the photographs by now. We have seen them stamped with that big top secret red stamp on the front of them and they were everywhere. And of course you did have some of these documents that did reach the highest levels of classified sitting down there at Donald Trump's golf resort.

Now, of course, the interesting thing is that Donald Trump claims and he continues to maintain that I declassified all of these things, right? So it wouldn't have mattered if the FBI agents didn't have these special security clearances. I declassified 'em, anybody can look at 'em. Technically still not even how that works. But here's the fun part. Not once in any of their legal filings have any of Donald Trump's lawyers claimed that he has declassified these items. And you would think with all the court filings, with all the meetings with the FBI, with everything that's been going on for months and months and months now, you would think that if he had declassified these, one of those lawyers at some point would've stood up and said, hey guys, hold up. These are declassified. And then provided of course the evidence to back that up, but you don't have the evidence to back it up. None of the intelligence agencies, nobody from the DOJ, nobody from Donald Trump's staff while he was still in office can corroborate this story that he declassified these specific documents because the corroborating evidence doesn't actually exist.

Now here's the kicker, folks. Even if he did declassify these documents that changes nothing in terms of criminal liability. Here it is. Section E of the espionage act, one of the three laws Trump has suspected of having violated, makes it a crime to retain any government records pertaining to the US's national defense, regardless of classification level. So even if he declassified these things, he's still in violation of section E of the espionage act. So it doesn't change anything. Classified, not classified, doesn't matter. And yes, that's important. That's something that's probably going to come into play as this investigation continues. So when Republicans, if you're online, if you're arguing with 'em in person and they say, he declassified 'em, all you gotta do is mention section E of the espionage act. That's how that goes. Classified or not, he can still be criminally charged for having these documents. There's also of course, multiple other statutes that he has likely violated and could be prosecuted for. So when he says I've declassified all these things, first of all, there's no evidence that you did. Second of all, even if you did, it still doesn't change the fact that what you did was illegal.