Global Courant
CNN
A day after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) defended former President Donald Trump’s hoarding of classified documents relying on bathroom door locksMAGA Stimulating Representative Byron Donalds (R-FL) took some hilarious steps further with that excuse on Thursday morning.
Just hours before Trump is scheduled to be charged at a federal courthouse in downtown Miami, Donalds appeared on CNN This Morning to announce the GOP’s latest talking points in defense of the twice-deposed ex-president.
Donalds, whose name has blown over as Trump’s potential running mate for 2024, the interview began by attacking Special Counsel Jack Smith for indicting Trump under the Espionage Act. Smith 37-count indictment against Trump accuses the former president of violating seven federal laws, including willfully withholding national defense information, participating in a conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a government file, concealing an official document, concealing a record of a federal investigation, making false statements and concealing a plan.
After Donalds claimed that Smith’s indictment is “downright ridiculous” because Trump was allowed to see his records for “up to five years,” CNN host Phil Mattingly pressed the congressman for what the indictment actually revealed. Namely, that Trump would not have been charged with crimes had he simply voluntarily returned the classified documents to the National Archives and not attempted to hide them.
It was then that Donalds decided to press charges, including photos of documents stored in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom and shower, insisting there was nothing insecure about the storage location. Why? Because the ex-president’s private club has a lot of bathrooms.
“You’re throwing the photos around like they were in a bathroom or on a podium,” the pro-Trump congressman stated. “As someone who’s been to Mar-a-Lago, you can’t walk through Mar-a-Lago of your own accord, because the Secret Service is everywhere. So if the documents are in one place, they’re in a room, depending on the time of year, you can’t even get into that room.”
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From there it only got better.
“There are 33 bathrooms at Mar-a-Lago!” exclaimed Donald. “So don’t pretend it’s in a random bathroom that the guests can enter. That is not true!”
Donalds’ comments come after McCarthy was widely mocked try to shrug Trump hides classified documents in various locations in Mar-a-Lago by noting that bathroom doors can be locked. The speaker appeared to be trying to draw parallels between Trump and President Joe Biden’s investigations into classified documents.
“Is it a good picture to have boxes in a garage that open all the time? A bathroom door is locked,” McCarthy told reporters Monday. It wasn’t long before critics Unpleasant assign just those bathroom doors lock from the inside.
D.C.’s most staunch MAGA defenders have struggled to come up with a cohesive defense for the ex-president since the indictment was unsealed Friday, especially since the indictment destroys their previous defense of him.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), for example twisted into knots on Sunday in support of Trump’s contradictory claims that he had previously released all the documents, despite evidence showing that Trump was well aware that they were being kept secret. “What you’re saying just doesn’t make sense on the face of it,” CNN host Dana Bash told Jordan at one point.
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