WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 24: Republican presidential candidate former U.S. President Donald Trump ... [+]
New York Times correspondent and CNN analyst Maggie Haberman says an audio recording obtained by CNN in which former President Donald Trump discusses discusses his possession of secret government documents that he did not declassify is “the most damning piece of evidence” known in the federal case against Trump.
“It doesn’t mean that there are other things that are problematic for him,” Haberman told CNN’s Abby Phillip Monday night. “I am guessing that some of these tapes or other book interviews or other interviews he sat for, this is very specific and this was just, again, to your point about the fact that he knew his aides taped these meetings, it is not like this was a secret recording.”
WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 9: In this photo illustration, pages are viewed from the unsealed federal ... [+]
The audio, which first aired Monday night on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, includes new details from a conversation that is a critical piece of evidence in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump over the mishandling of classified government information, including a moment when Trump seems to indicate he was holding a secret Pentagon document detailing U.S. plans to attack Iran.
“These are the papers,” Trump says in the audio recording, while he’s discussing the Pentagon attack plans, a quote that was not included in the indictment.
WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 03: President Donald Trump speaks about the election after presenting the ... [+]
The audio also contradicts Trump’s public comments about the document case, including remarks he made in an interview last week with Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier. In the new recording, Trump says “these are the papers,” and then refers to something he calls “highly confidential” as he seems to be shuffling through papers and showing them to others in the room. The audio was recorded during a 2021 meeting at Trump’s home in Bedminster, New Jersey.
“There was no document,” Trump told Baier when asked about the Iran document. “That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things,” Trump said. “And it may have been held up or may not, but that was not a document. I didn’t have a document, per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.”