Former GOP congressman: Trump put 'lives at risk' in not returning classified documents

Former Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas) said Sunday that former President Trump put "lives at risk" by not returning classified documents stored at Mar-a-Lago.

"He absolutely could have put people's lives at risk for not returning these documents. And like when I first read the indictment, it's shocking," he told CNN's Jim Acosta. "The fact that you have recorded audio of Donald Trump saying that he has documents he shouldn't have, and it's highly classified. And he's showing it to people. Who else did he show this kind of information?"

"Why is he trying to hold this information or to not let the National Archives know the kind of information he has access to? When you look in that indictment, there was — some of the classification is classified. That's how sensitive this information is," he added.

Hurd, who was once a CIA intelligence officer, said that while Trump as president had authority to review the documents, he erred when he decided to keep materials that included some of the nation's most sensitive secrets, including military capabilities.

"And so when you when you give away what your capabilities are, then your adversaries know what you can and can't do and that's the position that you don't want to be in," he said. "And to me, we would not be in this situation if Donald Trump just gave the documents back. He could have had access to then if he wanted to review them. And so, we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for his own decisions."

Trump's indictment indicates that he shared some information from the documents with people who had no security clearances, including an author and someone who worked for his political action committee. The Trump charges also involve improperly storing the documents around his Mar-a-Lago property where prosecutors say hosts of people wandered in an out.