GOP senator: Trump ‘should have turned the documents over’
Former President Donald Trump should have turned over documents stored at his residence in Mar-a-Lago after leaving office, according to a Republican senator.
Although Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) suggested Trump should have known better, he also questioned the timing of the FBI raid on Trump’s residence earlier this month while speaking with George Stephanopoulos on ABC News‘s This Week on Sunday.
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“He should have turned the documents over, and apparently had turned a number of documents over, George. 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.
Blunt also said great care must be taken with classified documents, as the government says there were several dozen with classification markings retrieved from Mar-a-Lago in what has been a monthslong back-and-forth between Trump’s team and federal officials over records the National Archives has worked to retrieve.
Trump claims he declassified all the documents and has denied any wrongdoing. His legal team seeks a special master to review the documents seized from his residence. A federal judge in Florida announced the court’s “preliminary intent to appoint a special master” to review the documents, per a filing on Saturday.
“Good thing they’re gonna have a special master look at these documents to sort through the documents that the President had every right to have and the documents 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 said.
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Blunt is not running for another term in the Senate in November.
Republican Eric Schmitt and Democrat Trudy Busch Valentine are both running to replace Blunt, with RealClearPolitics ranking the race as “Likely GOP.”
