An audio recording of Donald Trump from 2021 has been released where he discusses holding secret documents and admits he did not declassify them.
The recording, from Bedminster in New Jersey, was obtained by CNN who broadcast it for the first time on Monday evening.
It is thought the audio is a critical piece of evidence in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump over the mishandling of classified information.
In one section of the recording Trump seems to indicate he was holding a secret Pentagon document with plans to attack Iran.
“These are the papers,” Trump says, while discussing the Pentagon attack plans, a quote not included in the indictment.
In the two-minute audio recording, Trump and his aides also joke about Hillary Clinton’s emails after the former president says that the document was “secret information.”
“Hillary would print that out all the time, you know. Her private emails,” a staffer says.
“No, she’d send it to Anthony Weiner,” Trump responds, referring to the disgraced former Democratic congressman.
The recording casts significant doubt on Trump’s claim on Fox News last week that he did not have any documents with him.
“There was no document. That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things,” Trump said on Fox.
“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 kept at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
The audio recording comes from a July 2021 interview Trump gave at his Bedminster resort.
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 special counsel’s office declined to comment to US media.
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.”
The recording obtained by CNN begins with Trump claiming “these are bad sick people,” while his staffer claims there had been a “coup” against Trump.
“Like when Milley is talking about, ‘Oh you’re going to try to do a coup.’ No, they were trying to do that before you even were sworn in,” the staffer says, according to the audio.
The next part of the conversation is mostly included in the indictment, though the audio makes clear there are papers shuffling as Trump speaks.
“He said that I wanted to attack Iran, Isn’t it amazing?” Trump says as the sound of papers shuffling can be heard.
“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 speaks about the Iran document, according to the audio recording and indictment transcript.
“I was just thinking, because we were talking about it. And you know, he said, ‘He wanted to attack Iran, and what…,’ ” Trump says.
“These are the papers,” Trump continues, according to the audio file.
“This was done by the military and given to me,” Trump continues, before noting that the document remained classified.
“See as president I could have declassified it,” Trump says. “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”
“Now we have a problem,” his staffer responds.
“Isn’t that interesting,” Trump says.
