Is Trump’s audio even more incriminating than it first sounded?: A recording emerged earlier this week of former President Donald Trump discussing having a classified document with people without security clearances. It may have been even worse than it looked.
Donald Trump Has Possibly Even Bigger Legal Issues
When former President Donald Trump was indicted on federal charges earlier this month, possibly the most damning allegation was that he had said out loud, on a recording from 2021, that he knew he had classified documents. While doing so, he was showing them to people without security clearances.
On Monday, a couple of weeks after the indictment, CNN published the audio.
“He said that I wanted to attack Iran, Isn’t it amazing?” Trump is heard saying on the tape while speaking with ghostwriters for Mark Meadows, his former chief of staff. “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.”
“See as president I could have declassified it,” Trump further said on the tape. “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”
According to a new column, the recording may have been even worse than it sounded.
What Did Trump Do Now?
Philip Bump writes in the Washington Post this week that he noticed something when listening again to the recording that was released by CNN. He noticed that Trump, as part of cross-talk, appeared to use the phrase “but this is classified,” something that has been omitted from most transcripts of the conversation.
“This is an important distinction. If Trump said ‘this is still a secret,’ he has some wiggle room on denying that he was showing his audience a document that was legally protected under classification rules,” Bump writes. “If he said ‘this is classified,’ that goes out the window. It’s Trump admitting that he had something that was classified in his hand, at that moment — and was showing it to people.”
The columnist does note that the audio is somewhat ambiguous, but it does sound a lot like “this is classified.”
Trump, as is usually the case when he is accused of any type of wrongdoing, says that he is completely innocent.
“IF I WASN’T RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT, OR IF I WAS LOSING BADLY IN THE POLLS (I AM WINNING BY RECORD NUMBERS, & AGAINST BIDEN ALSO!), I WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN FAKE INDICTED,” Trump said in a Truth Social post this week. “LIKEWISE, IF THE VERY CORRUPT DEMOCRATS TRULY WANTED TO RUN AGAINST ME, I WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN INDICTED. IT IS ALL A BADGE OF HONOR & COURAGE. I AM BEING INDICTED FOR YOU!!!”
“Why did Deranged Jack Smith and the DOJ/FBI leak a tape to Fake News CNN, phony spin and all? Will they be prosecuted for this illegal act? Pure SCUM!,” Trump said in another post this week. “This case is about THE PRESIDENTIAL RECORDS ACT, affirmed by the CLINTON SOCKS CASE! Has nothing to do with the made up tale of the Espionage Act of 1917, which has never even been used!”
That last post is very wrong. The Espionage Act has been “used” many times over the years. It’s not clear who liked the tape to CNN, nor is there reason to think such a leak would be “illegal.”
As for the “Clinton socks case,” that has just about nothing to do with the things that Trump is accused of in the federal indictment. It was a 2012 case in which former President Bill Clinton retained recordings of interviews with a historian, and the conservative group Judicial Watch sued to try to gain access to those recordings; the court found against them.
“The definition of ‘personal records’ is narrow, clear, and functional: it includes only records of a ‘purely private or nonpublic character,’” Peter Margulies, a professor at Roger Williams University’s School of Law, told the AP.
Expertise and Experience:
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
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