Donald Trump recorded discussing plans to attack Iran in leaked tape
Trump at The Faith and Freedom Coalition's 2023 'Road to Majority' conference in Washington
Reuters
A recording of Donald Trump has emerged that appears to feature the former President flaunting secret documents that he had not declassified.
Recorded at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey in July 2021, the tape consists of a conversation between Trump and a team helping his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to write a memoir.
Trump’s aide Margo Martin recorded the conversation to ensure the authors accurately recounted his remarks, but now the tape forms a crucial piece of evidence in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump.
In the recording obtained by CNN, Trump can be heard saying “these are the papers,” before acknowledging “this was done by the military and given to me”.
Donald Trump at the Oakland County GOP Lincoln Day Dinner yesterday
Reuters
Trump went on: “See as President I could have declassified it. Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”
Trump’s staffer responded: “Now we have a problem.”
The documents in question were reported to contain classified Pentagon documents with plans to attack Iran.
Trump needed the documents to prop up his side of the argument in a petty squabble with the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mark Milley.
Mark Milley
Reuters
In a New Yorker article just before the July 2021 meeting, Milley had been described as talking Trump down from the ledge on the decision to attack Iran in the final weeks of his presidency.
Trump was under the impression that the document outlining plans for a potential attack on Iran would undermine Milley’s account, though the report was apparently written earlier in the Trump administration when Joseph Dunford was chairman of the joint chiefs.
Earlier this month, the former President pleaded not guilty to 37 counts related to alleged mishandling of classified documents kept at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
The existence of such a document could bolster the case against Trump and appears to directly undercut his own dismissal of the Iran documents rumour made on Fox News last week.
Trump told Fox’s Bre Baier: “There was no document. That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things.
“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.
Trump appears on classified document charges after a federal indictment at Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. United States Courthouse, alongside his aide Walt Nauta and attorneys Chris Kise and Todd Blanche in Miami, Florida, U.S., June 13, 2023
Reuters
“These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.”
Choosing to take an optimistic view of the tape revelations, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement that “the audio tape provides context proving, once again, that President Trump did nothing wrong at all.”
Elsewhere in the tape first aired on CNN’s ‘Anderson Cooper 360’ show, Trump and aides mock Hillary Clinton’s emails.
A staffer said: “Hillary would print that out all the time, you know. Her private emails.”
Trump responded: “No, she’d send it to Anthony Weiner.”
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