An incriminating recording in which former President of the United States Donald Trump talks about classified documents is Monday made public by CNN. The recording would have been made in 2021, during the time when Trump was no longer president. He says, among other things, that he has secret documents that have not been officially released.
The recording lasts about two minutes and was made during a conversation Trump had with people who wrote the autobiography of his former chief of staff Mark Meadows. A writer, a publisher and two of Trump’s staffers were present.
In the sound clip, Trump appears to be talking about a secret Pentagon document describing a plan of attack against Iran. “As president, I could have declassified it. Now I can’t, but this is still a secret,” said the former president.
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Court case
Trump is currently embroiled in a lawsuit over his handling of classified documents. The charges allege that he possessed state secrets and shared them with others, knowing they were classified. The research is currently in its final phase. When it is completed, Special Counsel Jack Smith will advise whether Trump should be prosecuted or not
According to Smith, during the conversation of the recording, Trump showed documents about the Iranian nuclear weapons program, among other things. This information is so classified that only a small group of people within the US government are aware of this information.
Trump denies the charges. During his first court appearance on June 13, his lawyers said the former president was not guilty on all counts. In the evening, Trump said in a speech that he had done everything as it should be, “and yet they sued me”. He says the charges are an attempt to sabotage his upcoming election campaign.