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Video of Trump Promising to Protect Classified Information Goes Viral — And It’s Admissible at a Criminal Trial

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During his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to protect classified information and a clip of him making that promise is now going viral and critics are reaming him for the hypocrisy behind that issue, Mediaite reports.

“On political corruption, we are going to restore honor to our government. In my administration, I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law,” Trump says in a now-infamous clip from, from an event in Charlotte, North Carolina on August 18, 2016.

Of course, most of this stems from his attacks on Hillary Clinton, who was then the Democratic contender for president at the time. Trump was referring to her alleged mishandling of classified documents, which he continually put on blast all during his campaign. He eventually strengthened laws regarding classified material.

“Hillary Clinton put her emails on a secret server nobody even knew about except for the man that was giving the Fifth, remember? Whatever happened to him? Where is he? Whatever happened to him? Where did he go? He pled the Fifth. Never heard—that’s the end of him…she put her emails on a secret server to cover up her pay—for—play scandal in the State Department,” Trump ranted at a later campaign event in September, 2016.

As president, Trump signed into law S. 139 on January 18, 2018. The Trump-supported measure edited US Code § 1924, originally reads:

“Whoever, being an officer, employer, contractor, or consultant of the United States, and by virtue of his office, employment, position, or contract, becomes possessed of documents, or materials containing classified information of the United States, knowingly removes such documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both.”

The Washington Post’s Philip Bump explains the various road maps surrounding the law but notes this resulted in Trump increasing the punishment for mishandling classified documents, thus turning the violation into a federal felony. According to the modified law, anyone convicted of violating that law “shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than five years, or both.”

And we now know, according to the search warrant executed on Trump’s Palm Beach home and released on Friday, that it has been confirmed that the FBI retrieved 11 sets of classified documents from Mar-a-Lago, meaning this could indeed be a violation of the law that Trump himself strengthened.

CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski originally shared the clip and the Twitterati have responded, with pundits retweeting and commenting on it, lighting up the media landscape along the way.

Here’s a few of their thoughts.

https://twitter.com/edbott/status/1559226744028233732?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1559226425521184769?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Megan Hamilton
meet the author

Megan has lived in California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida and she currently lives in Central America. Living in these places has informed her writing on politics, science, and history. She is currently owned by 15 cats and 3 dogs and regularly owns Trump supporters when she has the opportunity. She can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/GaiaLibra and Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/politicalsaurus

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