CNN received a leak from an undisclosed source of an audio recording of a July 2021 interview former President Donald Trump gave at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, in which he discusses a “highly confidential” Department of Defense document.
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The two-minute recording is of an interview Trump gave to a writer, a publisher, and two of his staff members working on the memoir of his former chief of staff Mark Meadows.
It is a central piece of evidence in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump on federal charges over his alleged mishandling of classified documents kept at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump pleaded not guilty to the 37 counts brought against him earlier this month.
Trump can be heard on the recording discussing what he calls a “highly confidential” Pentagon document detailing a plan to attack Iran.
“[General Mark Milley] said that I wanted to attack Iran,” Trump said. “Isn’t it amazing? 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,” Trump continued, showing the staffers the Pentagon document.
“This totally wins my case, you know. Except it is like, highly confidential, secret, this is secret information. But look, look at this,” he said.
A woman can then be heard joking that “Hilary [Clinton] would print that out all the time, you know. Her private emails,” to which Trump quips that Clinton would send it to the “pervert” disgraced former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner.
“I think we can probably, like…declassify it. See as president I could have declassified it but now I cant, you know, but this is still a secret,” Trump said.
“Now we have a problem,” the woman said.
“Isn’t that interesting? It’s so cool,” he said of the classified document before calling for Coca-Colas to be brought into the room.
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.”
Leaks my deepstate arse, poor propaganda release for uninformed. Confidential papers are a long way from top secret…..never mind Biden secure vette papers eh?
Bravo, Ken Frost, they are making an “arse” out of themselves. If the leftwing media can twist the truth they will or die trying.