Bob Woodward undermines Trump excuse for not giving back secret papers: ‘He’s not busy’

Ex-president is suing the veteran journalist and his publishers for trying to ‘capitalise’ off of his ‘valuable’ voice

Famed journalist Bob Woodward rejected the idea that Donald Trump was "too busy" to return boxes of classified documents that had been stored at Mar-a-Lago, recalling long conversations he had with the former president at the time while he was researching a book.

Mr Trump was served a subpoena by the Department of Justice in 2022 demanding that he turn over any classified documents he had taken from the White House after he left office in 2021. The former president and his team only returned some of the documents, which prompted an FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago last August. The FBI turned up hundreds of more documents that were still being stored in boxes at the golf resort.

The incident has led to one of Mr Trump's numerous ongoing legal battles as he is accused of withholding and concealing from federal investigators classified and top-secret materials. He has also been accused by DOJ special counsel Jack Smith of directing Mar-a-Lago workers to move boxes around the resort to keep them out of the hands of federal investigators.

Mr Trump and the co-defendants have all pleaded not guilty to the federal charges against them, which include conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Woodward, who has written four books focused on Mr Trump and serves as an associate editor of The Washington Post, sat down for an interview on MSNBC during which he recalled the former president frequently insisting he was "too busy" to talk for long, but ultimately would spend more time than Woodward had allotted chatting with him.

"That he's not busy. That it's a way of, oh, I'm busy. I would talk to him, you can hear this on the tapes. He'd say, I can't talk for long, I've got the joint chiefs downstairs. And then he'd talk for 25 minutes," Woodward said.

Mr Trump is currently attempting to sue Woodward, his publisher, Simon & Schuster, and its parent company, Paramount Global, for releasing 20 recorded interviews the former president had with Woodward for his book Rage. Mr Trump claims he recorded the interviews solely for use in the book, and is accusing Woodward – best known for his Watergate exposes alongside fellow reporter Carl Bernstein in the early 1970s – and his publishers of trying to "capitalise" off of his "valuable" voice.

The lawsuit is asking for $49m.

While that case navigates the courts, the case against Mr Trump for his alleged concealment of sensitive government information is set to go to trial next year.