recording surfaced
First Donald Trump hid secret documents with himself – then he admitted it in an audio recording
Donald Trump at a campaign event in Michigan – he wants to become US President again in 2024
© Scott Olson/Getty Images/AFP
Ex-President Donald Trump has been charged (among other things) with keeping confidential government documents at his property. He always denied the allegation. Now an audio recording has been made public in which he admits exactly that.
The publication of a sound recording could put the accused ex-US President Donald Trump in the affair of secret government documents in need of explanation. “As President, I could have released them, now I can’t,” said Trump in the 2021 recording published by US broadcaster CNN on Monday evening (local time) about papers that he apparently shows to interlocutors. Specifically, it seems to be about a secret Pentagon document on an attack on Iran that Trump is showing around.
Trump calls release of recording a ‘witch hunt’
The existence of the recording was already known – its copy is a central part of the indictment. The media had also reported on the sound recording, which had not yet been published. Trump has repeatedly claimed that classified information was no longer classified after it was taken to his private home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida. The recording could undermine Trump’s argument.
On the Internet portal “Truth Social”, which he co-founded, Trump described the publication of the recording as electoral influence and part of an “ongoing witch hunt”. He called the Justice Department’s special counsel, Jack Smith, “mentally deranged.” Smith, the Justice Department and the FBI illegally leaked the recording to the press and twisted the facts – in fact, the recording is more of an exoneration for him as an ex-president.
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The federal police FBI had searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in August and confiscated numerous classified documents from his tenure, some with the highest classification level. By keeping confidential government documents in private rooms after Trump was in office, he could have made himself liable to prosecution. He was charged in the affair in mid-June and had to appear in person in federal court in Miami. Trump pleaded “not guilty”. It was the first time a former US President had appeared in federal court to face an indictment.