Donald Trump Defends Taking Government Documents to Mar-a-Lago While Criticizing Joe Biden for Doing the Same Thing: 'I Wasn't Hiding Them'

Former President Donald Trump claimed on Wednesday, March 13, that he was allowed to take the government documents he took from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago estate.

In an interview with Newsmax’s Greg Kelly, Trump went on the offensive against the criminal charges against him and the FBI’s execution of a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago estate in August 2022.

After retrieving documents from the property in January 2022, the government notified Trump they believed he still possessed government material.

In June 2022, a Trump lawyer signed a letter stating that, to her knowledge, no such documents remained onsite. However, two months later, the FBI found more government documents during the raid at Trump's Florida property after several attempts to retrieve them.

The indictment against Trump includes photos of boxes allegedly containing different levels of classified documents found in various locations throughout the property, including a ballroom, a bathroom and a storage room.

“I was dealing with them,” Trump told Kelly. “We were dealing fine. And then, all of a sudden, they raided this house. They raided Mar-a-Lago. These are corrupt people.”

Trump tried to defend himself by mentioning how President Joe Biden retained classified documents from his time as a senator and vice president. However, in that case, Biden's lawyers found the requested material and handed it over to the National Archives. By cooperating, unlike Trump, Special Counsel Robert Hur investigated Biden and declined to prosecute.

“But they release Biden,” the former president told the Newsmax host. “What Biden did, he wasn’t protected by the Presidential Records [Act] because he wasn’t president. He took them when he was a senator.”

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The former president has frequently claimed that the Presidential Records Act allowed him to take the classified government documents. Still, the National Archives has denied this claim time and time again.

"There’s something going on because they’re going after me viciously," Trump told Kelly. "Then all of a sudden it comes out that Biden took ten times the number of documents that I did. And I took them very legally and I wasn’t hiding them."

"We had boxes on the front of the– and a lot of those boxes had clothing and a lot. We’re moving out, ok? Unfortunately, we’re moving out of the White House," he continued. "And because we’re moving out of the White House, our country’s going to hell. But we weren’t hiding anything."