Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a Democrat, laughed as CNN’s Jake Tapper began a dizzying 39-second fact check of a tiny excerpt from former President Donald Trump’s post-arrest statement.
Several hours after being detained and charged with 37 violations of the Espionage Act, Trump gave a speech from his Bedminster club on Tuesday night.
On Tuesday’s episode of CNN’s The Arrest & Arraignment of Donald Trump, Tapper cut off his conversation with AOC to air a clip from that speech before pointing up eight inaccuracies in a 105-second clip.
After saying he had much to unpack in Trump’s statement, AOC laughed along with Tapper.
Tapper said:
-Trump has no evidence that he kept the documents legally and that they were the property of the American people.
-There is no evidence that Biden ordered the charges against Trump.
-Trump isn’t losing an election, it hasn’t started, and he hasn’t secured the presidential nomination.
-This isn’t election interference.
-America is not a fascist state.
-About destroying democracy, Trump was the one who tried to undo an election.
AOC responded to Tapper by saying she thinks Trump is the king of telling his supporters one thing and then doing another, the speech being a great example.
He tells his supporters he is aboveboard. But the indictment contains a recording of him saying I “could have” declassified this. You shouldn’t see this.
Tapper agreed with her.
The Atomic Energy Act states that only via a procedure involving the Departments of Energy and Defense can the secret document, named No. 19 in the indictment accusing Trump of compromising national security, be declassified.
Contrary to what the former US president said, Donald Trump had no legal power to declassify a document linked to US nuclear weapons.
According to the experts, the declassification of the other documents in the indictment is controlled by presidential order, which makes the nuclear document distinct from the other 31 documents.
