Former President Donald Trump was captured on tape admitting that he did not declassify ‘secret’ military information and kept it nonetheless.
‘As president, I could have declassified, but now I can’t,’ said Trump in a 2021 meeting, according to a transcript of the audio recording reported by CNN on Friday.
Trump was referring to a classified Pentagon document on a possible military attack on Iran. Federal prosecutors have obtained the tape, the news outlet reported last week, which undercuts Trump’s claims that he declassified all documents he removed from the White House.
The report of Trump’s acknowledgment comes a day after he was indicted on seven counts in special counsel Jack Smith’s probe on mishandling classified documents.
It is not known if any of the counts pertain to the 2021 meeting, as the Justice Department has not unsealed the indictment. Trump is scheduled to appear in a Miami federal court on Tuesday, the day before his 77th birthday.
The recording shows that Trump knew the records he took to his Mar-a-Lago home were classified. Trump has publicly insisted that the documents at his Florida residence were declassified.
In a CNN town hall last month, Trump said the documents that the FBI seized in August 2022 ‘were declassified after’ the end of his term and that he accordingly had ‘the right to’ show them to whomever he wished to.
The meeting took place at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and included his aides and two people working on his former chief of staff Mark Meadows’ autobiography.
Meadow’s autobiography states that Trump ‘recalls a four-page report typed up by (his former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) Mark Milley himself. It contained the general’s own plan to attack Iran, deploying massive numbers of troops, something he urged President Trump to do more than once during his presidency’.
Thursday’s indictment marks the first time Trump is facing federal charges.
Trump in March became the first former president to be indicted, in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s inquiry into his role in a hush payment to a porn star. Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. The 34 counts would typically be misdemeanors, lower-level charges that usually would not result in prison time.
However, Trump could reportedly face up to 100 years in prison if convicted on federal charges in the classified documents probe.
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