House Democrat: 'Overwhelmingly devastating' Trump indictment is of 'serious importance' to national security
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) on Sunday characterized the federal indictment of former President Trump in connection with the handling of classified documents as "overwhelmingly devastating" and "of serious importance" to national security.
"This is an overwhelmingly devastating indictment that demonstrated Donald Trump believed the law does not apply to him, and that he would do anything he could to conceal and maintain possession of highly, highly classified national security information that would jeopardize our national security and would jeopardize the good men and women of the United States intelligence community who risked their lives to gather that information," Goldman said on CNN's "State of the Union."
"This is of serious, serious importance to our national security," Goldman, an attorney who served as the lead counsel in the first impeachment trial against Trump, stressed.
Trump was indicted last week on 37 counts in connection with his alleged mishandling of records at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida. Federal authorities also said the former president tried s to prevent the government from recovering the documents after the end of his White House term.
Goldman on Sunday also countered comments from Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a Trump supporter who appeared earlier on the program and sparred with host Dana Bash over whether the former president had declassified the material at the heart of the investigation.
"He says, 'Yeah, we'll have to try to declassify it. As president, I could have declassified it. Now I can't, but this is still a secret,'" Goldman said, referring to Trump while paraphrasing a line from a transcript of an audio recording obtained by CNN.
"So there is no question based on his private recorded conversations that he did not declassify these documents. Mr. Jordan and Donald Trump and his defense team can try to spin this any way they want. But the evidence, based on his own recording, his own voice, says to the contrary," the House Democrat said.