Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team apparently leaked audio evidence to CNN featuring President Donald Trump discussing secret documents he did not declassify during a 2021 meeting in Bedminster, New Jersey.
The leaked recording “comes from a July 2021 interview Trump gave at his Bedminster resort for people working on the memoir of Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff,” CNN reported.
The special counsel’s indictment alleges that those in attendance – a writer, publisher and two of Trump’s staff members – were shown classified information about the plan of attack on Iran.
The two minute audio recording, which first aired on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” features Trump describing his political enemies as “bad sick people,” joking about Hillary Clinton’s emails, and discussing a secret Pentagon document that was presented to him regarding a plan to attack Iran.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley told the New Yorker in January of 2021 that Trump wanted to “embark on a military conflict with Iran as part of his quixotic campaign to overturn the results of the 2020 election and remain in power.”
Milley claimed that he had argued against striking Iran and was concerned Trump was going to set in motion a full-scale conflict.
Trump, still furious about the article months later, pointed out during the Bedminster meeting that he had documents refuting Milley’s claims.
“He said that I wanted to attack Iran, Isn’t it amazing?” Trump said as the sound of papers shuffling is heard in the background. “I have a big pile of papers, this thing just came up. Look. This was him. They presented me this—this is off the record but—they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him.”
“Wow!” someone in the room said in response.
“This wasn’t done by me, this was him. All sorts of stuff. Pages long. Look,” Trump continued. “This was him, this wasn’t done by me, this was him!”
Trump indicated that he had just recently found the documents refuting the claim that it was his idea to attack Iran. “Isn’t it amazing? This totally wins my case, you know,” he said. “Except it is like—highly confidential. Secret. This is secret information. Look at this. Look—you attack and …”
Someone in the group then noted that Hillary Clinton had famously mishandled classified emails.
“She’d send them to Anthony Weiner,” Trump quipped. “The pervert!”
“By the way, isn’t that incredible?” he added. “I was just thinking, because we were talking about it. And you know, he [Milley] said, ‘He wanted to attack Iran, and what’—” the former president told the group. “This was done by the military and given to me.”
Trump seemed to want to declassify the document so he could share it, and lamented that he had neglected to declassify the evidence while he was still president because it allegedly proved Milley was lying.
“See as president I could have declassified it,” Trump noted. “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”
“Now we have a problem,” a staffer responded.
“Isn’t that interesting,” Trump remarked. “It’s so cool. I mean, it’s so, look, her and I, and you probably almost didn’t believe me, but now you believe me.”
“No, I believed you,” the writer said.
“It’s incredible, right?” Trump added.
“No, they never met a war they didn’t want,” the writer replied.
The Trump audio:
"See as president I could have declassified it. Now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret."
"Now we have a problem," a staffer responds. pic.twitter.com/ftNqOTnfZn
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) June 27, 2023
As CNN reported, the audio recording seems to undercut Trump’s claims in an interview last week with Fox News’ Bret Baier that he did not have any classified documents with him during that conversation.
“There was no document. That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things,” Trump told Baier. “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.”
Trump pleaded not guilty earlier this month to 37 counts related to the alleged mishandling of classified documents.
Following the airing of the audio recording, many Republicans fumed that the Special Counsel’s office shared the very information it indicted Trump for mishandling, and timed the leak to knock the damning IRS whistleblower testimony about the Biden family’s corruption off the front pages.
“This latest leak against Trump “obviously” came from the government,” lawyer and conservative talk show host Mark Levin argued on Twitter. “Trump’s lawyers need to file an immediate motion, with the long list of leaks as an exhibit, asking that the entire case be dismissed because of prosecutorial misconduct and the government’s effort to influence the jury pool,” Levin wrote. “Moreover, I would insist that the court determine whether DOJ has opened investigations into these felonies. THIS NEEDS TO HAPPEN NOW!”
“Help me with this,” tweeted Trump’s Ambassador to Israel David M. Friedman. “DOJ is prosecuting Trump for sharing information with a reporter, when DOJ itself shared the same information with CNN.”
“Trump hasn’t leaked anything to the public,” Levin noted on Twitter Tuesday. “They have.”
Garland appointed and unleashed the disgraced Jack Smith, known for Gestopo-like tactics, to pursue Biden’s political targets (especially “MAGA” Republicans) and his biggest threat and nemesis, Trump. Smith was publicly admonished in an 8-0 Supreme Court decision for his abuse of power in a phony public corruption case brought against a former Republican governor. Garland saw that as a compelling credential.
Garland, Biden, his operatives, the hopelessly corrupt media, and the Democrat Party are destroying our country right before our eyes. This latest prosecutorial leak of an audio clip to CNN, is further intended to poison a jury pool and deny the former president due process, as he was denied attorney-client privilege and the usual administrative processes afforded former presidents when leaving office.
To be clear, we know nothing about the context of the audio. Nothing. We are fed exactly two minutes via CNN, a favorite state-run media outlet. We know no more or no less than they tell us. And the multiple felonies committed by the regime in leaking the tape will be ignored. Felonies committed in pursuit of Trump are no longer felonies. The “justice system “ is dead. The Democrat Party owns the federal government.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in statement that “the audio tape provides context proving, once again, that President Trump did nothing wrong at all.”