Lincoln Project founding member George Conway told the “Morning Joe” panel Thursday that the boxes of documents moved to Mar-a-Lago offer the “shortest distance between” former President Donald Trump and prison.
The New York Times and Washington Post reported Wednesday that witnesses claimed Trump instructed workers at Mar-a-Lago to move boxes to his residence, but it has not been confirmed that the boxes contained the classified and top secret documents seized by the FBI.
“The irony, though, is that the simpler things often take the day and the documents case is just outright theft and lies in a way that’s just orders of magnitudes simpler than anything else he’s ever done … He’s going through [the documents] himself, he’s telling people to move the documents around, he’s telling people to lie. It’s a one man show here,” Conway said. “That, to me, I’ve said this many times, is the shortest distance between Donald Trump and an orange jumpsuit. It’s that case because it’s just so simple.”
“That’s what happened here, he was caught red handed,” Conway added. (RELATED: FBI Agents Remove 11 Sets Of Classified Documents From Mar-a-Lago)
Conway argued that Trump’s refusal to return classified documents to the National Archives and Records Administration is a violation of the Espionage Act, a piece of legislation passed in 1917 that criminalizes the unauthorized disclosure or possession of information related to national defense that could harm the U.S. or aid its enemies.
“Basically, refusing to give the documents back upon request is sufficient under the Espionage Act, and he’s done that. And then you have the aggravating facts about the volume of documents and the lying and how long this dragged on,” he said. “So I don’t know how they don’t bring the case on.”
Former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr told Fox News in early September that the Department of Justice was “very close” to having sufficient evidence to indict the former president over the documents seized by the FBI. A receipt of property released to the public on Aug. 12 disclosed that the FBI obtained 11 sets of classified documents, around 300 in total. These sets consisted of four sets of top secret documents, three sets of secret and three sets of confidential material.
The DOJ later released a highly redacted affidavit revealing that 14 boxes from Mar-a-Lago had classification markings and contained 184 documents – 25 of those documents reportedly had “top secret” markings, 92 were labeled “secret” and 67 had a “confidential” warning.
Trump has assured the public that all of the documents were declassified and kept in “secure storage.”