Trump Tapped Discussing Sensitive Document He Had After Leaving Office

[ad_1]

Federal prosecutors investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s handling of classified material have a recording of Mr. Trump from 2021 discussing a sensitive military document he kept after leaving the White House, two people said on the matter.

In the recording, Mr. Trump suggested he knew the document was secret and had not declared it, said a person briefed on the matter.

The existence of the recording could undermine the repeated claims of Mr. Trumps already declared the material that remained in his possession after he left office. Prosecutors are examining whether Mr. Trump obstructed efforts by federal officials to retrieve documents he brought with him after leaving office and whether he violated laws governing the handling of classified material.

The existence of the recording was reported earlier by CNN.

The recording was made during a meeting Mr. Trump held in July 2021 with people who helped his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, write a memoir of his 10 months in the White House, according to the person spoke about this matter. The meeting was held at Mr. Trumps club in Bedminster, NJ, where he spends the summer.

Until now, the focus of the investigation of the documents has been mainly on the material that Mr. Trump with him at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, instead of New Jersey.

Mr. Meadows did not attend the meeting, but at least two of Mr. Trump attended. One, Margo Martin, regularly taped interviews she gave for books written about her that year.

In the recording, Mr. Trump complaining about his chosen chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, who was described in media accounts at the time as guarding against an attack by Mr. Trump in Iran in the last days of the presidency, according to people briefed on the matter.

Mr. Trump then began to refer to a document he had with him, saying it was compiled by General Milley and related to the attack on Iran, the people said in the matter. In other comments, he mentioned his sorting abilities during the discussion, a person briefed on the matter said. You can hear Mr. Trump holding up paper on the tape, though it’s unclear if this is the document in question.

The Justice Department obtained the recording in recent months, a potentially key piece in a mountain of evidence that prosecutors under the special counsel, Jack Smith, have amassed since he was appointed in November to oversee federal investigations. to Mr. Trump.

Asked Ms. Martin about the recording during a grand jury appearance, according to two of the people briefed on the matter.

In an interview with CNN on Wednesday night, James Trusty, a lawyer representing Mr. Trump in the case, indicated that the former president took the position that he declared the material he took when he left office.

When he left for Mar-a-Lago with boxes of documents packed for him by other people that he brought with him, he was the commander in chief, Mr. Trusty. There is no doubt that he has the constitutional authority as commander in chief to declassify.

Mr. Trusty said officials could prove that Mr. Trump had declassified material. But when pressed on whether Mr. Trump had disclosed the document in question at the Bedminster meeting, Mr. Trusty to say.

In all, the government has recovered more than 300 documents with classified markings from Mr. Trump since he left office. This includes the first batch of documents returned in January of last year to the National Archives, another set provided by Mr. Trumps aides at the Justice Department in June, material seized by the FBI in a search of Mar-a-Lago in August and a handful found in additional searches last year.

A set of documents found by the FBI during the search had the highest level of classification, top secret/sensitive information in the compartment.

Mr. Trump has long touted what he claims is his ability to automatically declassify materials and has even said he can do it in his mind.

His allies insist he had a standing order to declassify the material when he took it from the Oval Office to the White House residence, a claim some former senior administration officials have suggested is nonsense. Members of his legal team cautioned his aides not to lean too heavily on that argument as a defense in the documents case.

That claim was raised most vocally by Kash Patel, a close adviser to Mr. Trump who testified before a grand jury under an immunity deal forced on him by prosecutors.

The recording obtained by the special counsel’s office could help prosecutors undercut any argument by Mr. Trump that documents he took from the White House upon leaving office were declassified. It could also help them make the case that Mr. Trump knew his abilities to possess and present classified materials were limited.

Moreover, one of the laws cited by the Justice Department in seeking the warrant used in last year’s Mar-a-Lago search, known as the Espionage Act, was enacted by Congress during World War I, decades before the President Harry S. Truman issued an executive order creating a modern classification system for the executive branch.

As a result, the Espionage Act has no definition of whether a document is considered classified. Instead, it makes it a crime to retain, without authorization, documents related to national defense that could be used to harm the United States or aid a foreign adversary.

Investigators have been asking witnesses about General Milley in various interviews for weeks, although it’s generally unclear what they’re looking for.

Investigators have some if not all of the recordings of the book interviews Mr. Trump gave, according to two of the people familiar with the events.

In an interview, Mr. Trump said he didn’t make any pressing demands when asked if he had anything in his possession.

Mr. equivocate Trump when asked if he showed any kind of documents to people once he left the White House. At a CNN town hall event in May, he said, Not really. I would have a right. By the way, they were declassified afterwards.

Mr. Meadows, in his book, appeared to express the statement of Mr. Trump about General Milley.

The president recalled a four-page report that Mark Milley had typed himself, the book said. It contained the generals own plan to attack Iran, deploying massive numbers of troops, something he urged President Trump to do more than once during his presidency. President Trump has rejected those demands each time.

But according to a person familiar with the document in question, the report was not written by General Milley and appears to have been dated to an earlier time in the Trump administration, when Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Jim Mattis is the defense secretary.

General Milley was interviewed by investigators about the matter, according to a person briefed on the discussion.

[ad_2]