Fox News host wonders aloud whether Trump could have tried to sell highly classified material to the Russians or Saudis
A Fox News host asked whether Trump tried to sell the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago.
Eric Shawn wondered whether Trump tried to "sell or share" files "to the Russians" or "the Saudis."
Shawn's speculation came amid Trump's growing ire against Fox News programs like "Fox & Friends."
A Fox News host on Sunday wondered aloud whether former President Donald Trump might have attempted to sell the classified documents he kept at Mar-a-Lago to Russia or Saudi Arabia.
Speaking during a live broadcast on Fox News Sunday, Eric Shawn raised one possibility about what Trump could have done with the classified documents the FBI found during its search of Trump's Florida residence.
"And more questions are being raised this morning. Did former President Trump try to sell or share the highly classified material to the Russians or to the Saudis or others?" Shawn asked.
"Or were the documents innocently mishandled and stored because he thought he had a legal right to have them?" he added.
Shawn then referenced reports from Russian state media that the materials might have been leaked to parties in Russia before segueing into an interview with the intelligence analyst Rebekah Koffler.
—Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) August 14, 2022
Shawn's comments came amid a wave of pushback from some Fox News hosts against the former president and his allies over the Mar-a-Lago raid.
For instance, on Thursday, the Fox News host Steve Doocy confronted GOP Rep. Steve Scalise on air, asking him: "I'm just curious, whatever happened to the Republican Party backing the blue? And, in particular, the 35 members of law enforcement, federal law enforcement, at the FBI?"
Doocy's comments came after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and other Republicans lashed out at the FBI and law enforcement over the Mar-a-Lago raid, with Greene calling for the agency to be defunded.
Separately, Doocy told House GOP Chair Elise Stefanik that the FBI's raid was "kind of a big deal" given that agents were looking to retrieve classified documents "related to nuclear weapons."
The Fox News host Bret Baier — who in July criticized Trump over the Capitol-riot panel's public hearings — also rejected Trump's baseless claim that President Barack Obama had mishandled documents, too.
"There is a process. President Obama, according to NARA and that statement and everything we know, followed the processes to get those documents to Chicago," Baier said, referring to the National Archives and Records Administration.
He added that the "difference" between Trump and Obama was that in the latter's case, the sensitive documents were "handled properly."
In July, Trump expressed his unhappiness with "Fox & Friends," a talk show he was known to do nearly weekly calls with during his presidency. In a Truth Social post, he called the talk show "terrible" and said it had "gone to the dark side" after one of its hosts — Doocy — questioned his poll numbers.
But Trump appears to still have some supporters on Fox News. Last week, the host Jesse Watters claimed without substantiation that the FBI could have planted evidence at Mar-a-Lago. And on Friday, Fox News aired a digitally altered photo that showed the body and face of the federal judge who signed off on the Mar-a-Lago search warrant superimposed on an old image of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
The FBI removed 11 sets of classified documents — some of which were marked top secret and concerned nuclear weapons, according to The Washington Post — from Mar-a-Lago after executing a search warrant on the property last week. The Justice Department is now investigating whether Trump broke three federal laws, including the Espionage Act.
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