Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) defended on Sunday ex-President Donald Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort by claiming that Trump isn’t beholden to the same pesky rules as others.
McCaul, who sits on the House Homeland Security and Foreign Affairs committees, told ABC’s “This Week” host Martha Raddatz that he “personally wouldn’t” have made the decision to take the records to Mar-a-Lago, “but I’m not the President of the United States.”
“He has a different set of rules that apply to him,” McCaul said. “The President can declassify a document on a moment’s notice, and we don’t have all the facts.”
“I know they were taken out of the White House while he was president, and whether or not he declassified those documents remains to be seen,” the GOP lawmaker added. “He says he did. I don’t have all the facts there.”
Frantically trying to fend off potential criminal prosecution, Trump did indeed claim last week that he had declassified all the materials the FBI found stashed away at Mar-a-Lago.
But whether Trump can simply declare on his fake Twitter app “Lucky I Declassified!” and thus avoid any legal consequences for lying to the feds about keeping classified records at his private resort remains to be seen.
On Monday, a federal judge approved Trump’s request for a third-party special master to review the seized documents.
