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Donald Trump spokesperson Alina Habba seemed to forget where her side stands on classified documents while on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”
While the former president has previously claimed he magically declassified thousands of government documents, Habba said Trump’s court cases are full of sensitive material when talking about his dual indictments with host Maria Bartiromo over the weekend.
This week, Trump was indicted in Washington, D.C., for conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
In June, Trump was indicted in Miami on accusations he illegally kept classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort, where he allegedly showed the sensitive material to employees, friends and guests who did not have the necessary security clearance.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing, claiming he had “every right” to keep the documents and that he also personally declassified the material himself, so was able to share them with whomever he liked.
Michael M. Santiago via Getty Images
But Habba slipped up while complaining about special counsel Jack Smith’s plan for a speedy prosecution of the former president, who is currently the front-runner in the Republican presidential primary.
Asked about a timeline for the “complicated” and overlapping cases, she told Bartiromo, “I think that realistically you have to remember that a lot of these cases deal with classified documents, which mean that all the lawyers now have to apply for special clearance, right?”
“You can’t just take a classified document and review it. You have to have SCIFs,” she said, using shorthand for the special remote sites the government uses to review restricted material.
While she could have only been talking about the D.C. case, Habba’s statement seemed to contradict Trump’s previous claims about the Mar-a-Lago documents.
Last September, he told Fox’s Sean Hannity he had carte blanche with the papers, saying, “There doesn’t have to be a process, as I understand it. You’re the president of the United States. You can declassify just by saying, ‘It’s declassified.’ Even by thinking about it.”
Despite Habba’s concern, Trump’s team appears to have been given ample time to consider the evidence in the documents case.
He isn’t set to appear in court until May of next year, when the 2024 presidential race is sure to be in full swing.
Watch the full Fox News segment below. Habba’s comments come around the 4:45 mark.
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