Fox News analyst Brit Hume believes Donald Trump’s excuse for taking classified documents from the White House were “on the verge of incoherent,” he told the conservative news network Monday.
Speaking with Bret Baier the afternoon clips of the former president’s now-infamous Fox News interview began airing, Hume criticized the former president’s reasoning for taking classified documents from the White House, storing them at him his Mar-a-Lago home and refusing to return them despite facing a subpoena from the Department of Justice. He emphasized that Trump’s defense of being “very busy” won’t help him in court.
Watch Hume’s comments on “Special Report With Bret Baier” in the video below.
“His answers on the matters of the law seem to me, verge on incoherent,” Hume said. “He seems to be saying that the documents were really his, and that he didn’t give them back when he was requested to do so. And when they were subpoenaed because he wasn’t ready to, because he hadn’t sorted them and separated the classified information from his golf shirts, or whatever, from his golf shirts, or whatever he was saying.”
Hume continued: “It was not altogether clear what he was saying. But he seems to believe that the documents were his, that he had declassified evidence, to the contrary, and therefore he could do whatever he wanted with them — which I don’t think is going to hold up in court.”
On June 13, Trump was arraigned in Miami, Florida, after being charged on 37 counts related to mishandling hundreds of classified documents. He pled not guilty to the charges, which fall under the Espionage Act and include conspiracy to obstruct justice and willful retention of defense records.
Trump’s Fox News interview with Baier, which aired its first part on Monday, was the former president’s first sit-down interview since his arraignment. When asked by Baier why he didn’t hand over the documents to the Department of Justice after being subpoenaed, Trump, who continually spoke over the Fox News interviewer in the clip, explained that he had personal items mixed in with the state secrets.
“I wanted to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out. I don’t want to hand that over,” he said. “And I was very busy, as you’ve sort of seen.”
A tentative trial date for Trump’s case has been set for Aug. 14.
