CNN has claimed that it obtained an audio recording from the meeting of 2021 in Bedminster New Jersey where Donald Trump is alleged to have discussed holding classified documents. The recording is a key piece of evidence for the special counsel Jack Smith to indict the former president for mishandling classified information.
Trump refers to “these papers” in the recording when he is discussing Pentagon plans for Iran. He then refers to something else as “highly secret”.
Listen:
CNN plays a recording of Donald Trump discussing classified documents:
“It’s like highly confidential…This is secret information.” pic.twitter.com/h3YaLkdzmF
— Republican Accountability (@AccountableGOP) June 27, 2023
The conversation sounds like several people are in the room and, from the conversation, it is clear that they are looking through documents. Here are some of the lines which could be problematic for the ex-president:
Let me check that out with [General Mark] Milley. Let me give you an example. He said I wanted to attack Iran. It’s amazing, I have a lot of papers and this just appeared, look.
This was him. They presented this to me. This is off the record, but they presented me with this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him. We looked at him. This was him. This wasn’t done by me. This was him. All sorts of stuff. Pages long.
Isn’t that amazing? This totally wins my case, you know. Except it is a highly confidential secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this.
He also said toward the end of the tape, “See, as President, I could have declassified it. And now I can’t, you know.”
Earlier in the conversation, Trump and a female staffer joked about Hillary Clinton and her classified emails scandal:
Female Trump Staffer: Hillary would print that out all the time, you know. Her private emails.
Trump: No, she’d send it to Anthony Weiner. Pervert.
The audio is from a meeting in 2021:
The audio recording is from an interview Trump conducted in July 2021 at his Bedminster Resort for people who were working on Mark Meadows’ memoir, Trump’s former chief-of-staff. The indictment by the special counsel alleges that two Trump staffers, a writer and publisher were present when classified information was shown about Trump’s plan to attack Iran.
Trump said in an interview with Fox News’s Brett Baier last week that he had no documents on him when he met with the lawyer.
No document was found. This was a huge amount of paper and all the other stuff talking about Iran. It may or may not have been a document. I didn’t actually have a document. It was not necessary to declassify anything. These were magazine articles, newspaper articles, and newspaper stories.
Trump pleaded not guilty to 37 counts of mishandling classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago Resort in Palm Beach, Florida earlier this month.
It remains to see if a jury will consider this evidence to be “smoking gun” proof. Trump might argue that the laughter in the room was him making jokes or boasting. He could also maintain, as he did during the Baier interview, that “these are newspaper articles, magazine articles, and articles.”
CNN has not explained where they obtained this recording. Is the Department of Justice still leaking? CNN is not telling yet.
