CNN Fact-Checker Daniel Dale Knocks Down Trump’s Post-Indictment Speech at Mar-a-Lago: ‘Keeps Being Wrong’

CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale debunked former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago speech lashing out after his arraignment and found Trump “keeps being wrong” about some oft-repeated claims.

Trump traveled to New York Tuesday for his arraignment in a Manhattan courtroom, during which Bragg’s indictment was unsealed and the 34 felony counts against Trump were revealed. The defendant entered pleas of “not guilty” to crimes involving hush money payments to adult entertainment entrepreneur Stormy Daniels and others and left the courthouse without answering questions.

Trump returned to Mar-a-Lago and delivered a speech that night in which he renewed his attacks on the judge in the case, and trotted out some well-worn false claims about the crimes he is accused of.

On Wednesday morning’s edition of brand-new dayside program CNN News Central, Dale took on Trump’s false claims about his handling of classified documents and his alleged election crimes in Georgia:

JOHN BERMAN: All right. CNN’s Daniel Dale is with us. And Daniel, you have that furrowed brow, which leads me to believe there might be something amiss with Donald Trump saying that presidents are supposed to negotiate with NARA.

DANIEL DALE: John, Trump keeps saying this and it keeps being just as wrong as it was the first time he said it. The Presidential Records Act of 1978 is open and shut, clear cut. It has a key sentence. You can go look up yourself. It says, “upon the conclusion of a president’s term of office, the archivist of the United States,” so the federal government, “shall assume responsibility for the custody, control and preservation of and access to the presidential records of that president.”

That’s basically it, that’s relevant here. Nothing in this law says there should be a deal-making process, a prolonged negotiation, a talk, talk, talk process, as Trump put it last week between NARA and an ex-president. I spoke to five experts about this. All of them said Trump is completely inaccurate.

NARA former director of litigation, Jason R Barron, told me Trump is simply wrong as a matter of law. He said, Look, as of noon on January 20th, 2021, when President Biden took office, all presidential records of the Trump administration came into the legal custody of the archivist of the United States. Full stop. That means no presidential records should ever have been transferred to Mar a Lago, and there was no further talking or negotiating to be had.

JOHN BERMAN: Those two words shall assume they carry a lot of weight, legally speaking, there. All right, Daniel. So the former president also defended this famous January 2021 phone call, I should say infamous, with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, where he urged Raffensperger to go find him votes, find him enough votes to overturn the Georgia election results. This is what he said about that call last night.

DONALD TRUMP: Nobody found anything wrong with that perfect call until a book promotion tour. Many months later, all of a sudden they say, you know, I remember Trump making a call. Let’s look at that.

JOHN BERMAN: No one had a problem with it until months later? Daniel, That’s not how I remember it.

DANIEL DALE: That is not accurate. It’s a complete rewriting of history. This call was leaked almost immediately. The Washington Post broke the story the day after the call, and there was an immediate uproar. I mean, every media outlet covered it.

That very day, then-Vice President elect Kamala Harris called it a bald-faced, bold abuse of power by the president of the United States. The day after that, some Democratic members of Congress wrote to the FBI asking for a federal probe.

And that same day, Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney indicated that she was willing to investigate it herself. She she said she she saw the report. She found them disturbing. And she said, “I will enforce the law without fear or favor.” And she continued, “Once the investigation is complete, this matter, like all matters, will be handled by our office based on the facts and the law.”

And I’ll add that that same week, so three days after the phone call, CNN ran an article on its website saying that legal experts say that Trump’s call could put him in legal peril. The idea that no one found anything wrong with this call until, say, Brad Raffensperger’s book promotion tour in the fall of 2021, simply not borne out by the facts.

JOHN BERMAN: Daniel Dale, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to CNN News Central. Hope to see you again soon.

Watch above via CNN News Central.

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