Speaking to CBS News this Thursday, former Attorney General Bill Barr said that the legal case that currently poses the greatest threat to former President Donald Trump is his alleged mishandling of classified documents.
"I've said all along that of the cases out there right now, the one I'd be most concerned about, if I were the president, is the Mar-a-Lago document case," Barr told CBS News anchor Catherine Herridge.
"It's very clear that he had no business having those documents," Barr added. "He was given a long time to send them back ... they were subpoenaed. And if there's any games being played there, he's going to be very exposed."
Barr said that Trump's argument that the documents were automatically declassified when he took them to Mar-a-Lago is not "gonna fly."
The DOJ appointed special counsel Jack Smith to investigate Trump for documents that were discovered last August at his Palm Beach resort, which were then taken by the FBI.
Speaking to Newsweek, University of New Haven political science practitioner Patricia Crouse said that Barr is likely correct.
"The law says you cannot simply remove classified documents from the White House when you leave, nor can you declare that they became 'automatically declassified when I took them,' as Trump did on national television at his CNN Town Hall," Crouse said. "The DOJ can really just use his own words against him in this case."
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