“I Was Very Busy” To Sort Through Boxes

UPDATE: Donald Trump offered a fusillade of unfounded claims and falsehoods in his interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, who seems to have gone into the sit down with a strategy to challenge the the former president on certain topics and move on at other moments.

“Why did you have this very sensitive national security defense documents, like the war plans for a strike on Iran?” Baier asked, referring to a central claim by federal prosecutors in last week’s indictment.

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Trump responded, “So like every other president, I take things out, and in my case I took it out pretty much in a hurry but people packed it up and we left. I had clothing in there. I had all sorts of personal items, and they are much, much stuff.” He then went on to bashing his former attorney general William Barr, insisting that he fired him “because he didn’t have the courage to go after so many different things. He was a coward.”

At one moment, when Trump started to talk about ballot box stuffing, Baier told him, “You lost the 2020 election.”

“There were recounts in all of the swing states. There was not significant widespread fraud,” Baier said.

Trump said, “We were trying to get recounts, real recounts.”

Baier then told Trump, “There were investigations of widespread corruption. There was not a sense of that. There were lawsuits, 50 of them, by your lawyers, some in front of judges, judges that you appointed, that came up with no evidence.”

Trump continued to insist that “Wisconsin practically admitted that it was rigged.”

Baier then noted that fewer than 475 cases of voter fraud were found in six battleground states.

“You know why? They were not looking at the right things. They were counting ballots, not the authenticity of the ballots,” Trump insisted.

Baier then tried to press Trump, “Are you going to go tell this to that independent suburban voter?”

In April, Fox News settled a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million. Dominion claimed that some Fox personalities and Trump allies amplified claims that the election systems company was involved in rigging the 2020 election. The network’s news side, however, declared Biden the winner the Saturday after the election.

During the interview, Fox News also ran clips of Trump from 2016, where he talked of the importance of protecting classified information. Baier also ran through a list of Trump’s attacks on members of his own administration, while reminding him that he had pledged to only “surround himself with the very best people.”

PREVIOUSLY: Fox News has released a preview clip of anchor Bret Baier’s interview with Donald Trump, the former president’s first sit down since he was indicted last week on federal charges related to his withholding of classified documents.

According to the clip (watch it below), Trump offered another explanation for why he didn’t just return the classified material, even in response to a subpoena: He was too busy to sort through the boxes where they were kept.

Baier also asked Trump about a central claim of the indictment: That he had an aide move the boxes to other locations after telling his attorneys he had fully complied with the subpoena. At least in the clip, Trump did not challenge that version of events.

The first part of the interview will air on Fox News’ Special Report at 6 p.m. ET on Monday, and the second part the following evening.

In the clip, Baier noted to Trump that the National Archives and Records Administration asked for the return of the documents.

“No. And I gave them some,” Trump said.

“Baier responded, “And then they said they went to DOJ to subpoena you to get it.”

Trump responded, “Which they’ve never done before.”

Baier then asked, “Why not just hand them over then?”

“Because I had boxes. I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out. I don’t want to hand that over to NARA yet. And I was very busy as you have sort of seen.”

Baier added, “Yeah, but according to the indictment, you then tell this aide to move to other locations after telling your lawyers to say you’d fully complied with the subpoena when you hadn’t.”

Trump responded, “Before I send boxes over, I have to take all my things out. These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things.”

In an interview with Martha MacCallum on Monday afternoon, Baier said that during the hour-long sit down, Trump denied “flatly” some aspects of the indictment, including its account of a 2021 recording in which he acknowledged that documents were still classified and that he could no longer declassify them because he was out of the White House. He also denied having a document with war plans, Baier said. The Fox anchor noted that even though the magistrate judge talk Trump not to talk about the specifics of the case with a list of potential witnesses, he talked extensively about specifics during the interview.

Baier said that Trump continued to bash Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, now his chief rival for the GOP nomination. When presented with an extensive list of former Trump cabinet members no longer supporting him, Trump said that they were “just the wrong people for the job.”

This was Trump’s first interview with Baier since 2018. Trump also participated in a Fox News town hall in 2020 that was moderated by Baier and MacCallum and held at the Lincoln Memorial.