House Republican says Trump should not have kept classified documents

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) on Sunday said former President Trump should not have kept classified documents at his Florida residence after his term in the White House ended, despite the former president’s claims that he had a right to keep them.

“We don’t have a right to take top-secret information to our home. I’ve dealt with top secrets since I was 22 years old, in the military for 30 years now, and now in Congress. You don’t show our attack plans on Iran to people who are not cleared, or pick documents that talk about our nuclear technology or where our intelligence resources are located throughout the world,” Bacon said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“And that’s what happened there. And when the government asks for them back, you give them back. And if you deny having them, but then you have them, those are crimes.”

The Nebraska lawmaker was responding to a clip of Trump during the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s conference over the weekend when he incorrectly stated that a president “has the absolute right to take” documents, and “has the absolute right to keep them or he can give them back to [National Archives and Records Administration] if he wants and talks to them like we were doing and he can do that if he wants.” 

Trump pleaded not guilty to 37 criminal charges after a federal indictment alleged that he kept classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home after his time in office and that he resisted the government’s efforts to recover them.

Asked Sunday why many in the Republican Party have rallied around Trump over the materials, Bacon suggested that they are looking at the Trump case in the context of the classified documents found in the keeping of Trump’s former vice president Mike Pence and President Biden, “but the situations are different,” he said. Most notably, both Pence and Biden returned the documents when requested by the government.

The DOJ concluded its investigation into Pence over the materials and will not bring charges. Special counsel Robert Hur is probing the Biden documents, which were were found by the president’s attorneys.

Bacon on Sunday also suggested some Republicans may “see or perceive … inconsistencies” in the context of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was investigated over her use of a private email server while in office. The FBI declined to charge her in the matter.

“But two wrongs don’t make a right. You can’t have hundreds of top secret information and be showing our attack plans on Iran to noncleared people. I think, again, our party does best when we stand on the rule of law, the truth of the principles that made our party strong. And if we walk away from that, we’ll be weakened in the short run, for sure,” Bacon said.