Fox News host Mark Levin claims the Espionage Act “was never intended to apply to a sitting or former president”

Levin: “It deals with information, which of course, the former president retains in his head”

Fox News host Mark Levin claims the Espionage Act "was never intended to apply to a sitting or former president"

black and white image of Mark Levin; clip art microphone; audio wave graphic
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From the August 25, 2022, edition of Westwood One's The Mark Levin Show

MARK LEVIN (HOST): Second, Trump was out of office for a mere 12 months when the issues arose about these particular boxes, it may have been earlier. Multi millions of pages of Trump administration documents are with the Archives.

So these documents likely in and around his office, etcetera, went to Mar-a-Lago. Now as president, when he made the decision to remove them to Mar-a-Lago -- if in fact he did and not the GSA -- that would remove any application of the Espionage Act. Period.

I understand former prosecutors don't look at it this way, but they're wrong. The law was never intended to apply to a sitting or former president. Now remember the Espionage Act is much, much broader than just the handling of classified documents. It deals with information, which of course, the former president retains in his head. Now his subordinates have no constitutional protection.