Alina Habba is an attorney for disgraced, one-term, twice-impeached former president Donald Trump, and she’s absolutely flabbergasted that the Justice Department might want to charge her client with “mundane” crimes such as violations of the Espionage Act.
Speaking with right-wing activist Charlie Kirk on Real America’s Voice, Habba whined:
“So what they did was to try and criminalize Donald Trump, as they always do. They found these three mundane statutes, espionage and the two others, obstruction.
“And they’re trying to claim that there was some sort of criminal activity. But their papers say it’s under the Presidential Records Act. So your admission is the power that we’ve all been saying he does have. You can take a picture of top secret documents, Charlie, and show the world a label.”
Habba added:
“But if they’re declassified, as he has the right to do that, he has the right to have them.”
Time for a fact check: Habba is trying to cloud the matter by suggesting everything was covered under the Presidential Records Act, and that means Trump should have turned all his records and documents over to the National Archives.
The documents were not declassified because there is no paper trail proving that. Trump cannot just wave his hand over a piece of paper and call it declassified. There’s a process that requires quite a lot of paperwork and numerous steps before something is officially declassified.
Additionally, as Mediaite notes, there are several laws Trump is suspected of having violated, and they’re a hell of a lot more serious than Habba is suggesting:
The warrant allowing the FBI to search Mar-a-Lago cited three potential statute violations by Trump:
18 USC 2071 — Concealment, removal or mutilation
18 USC 793 — Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information
18 USC 1519 — Destruction, alteration or falsification of records in Federal investigations
18 USC 793 is the Espionage Act, which Habba referenced.
