Special Counsel Jack Smith has obtained a damning audio recording of a 2021 meeting in which former President Donald Trump acknowledges he held onto a classified Pentagon document. The document was about a potential attack on Iran, and it undercuts his argument that he declassified everything because he admits that it's not declassified. And Mark Meadows' name is all over this report. I wonder why.
The audio shows that Trump understood he retained classified material after he left the White House. Trump's comments in the audio suggest he would like to share the information. However, he admits that he's aware of limitations on his ability post-presidency to declassify records. Ooof!
CNN reports:
Special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the Justice Department investigation into Trump, has focused on the meeting as part of the criminal investigation into Trump's handling of national security secrets. Sources describe the recording as an "important" piece of evidence in a possible case against Trump, who has repeatedly asserted he could retain presidential records and "automatically" declassify documents.
Prosecutors have asked witnesses about the recording and the document before a federal grand jury. The episode has generated enough interest for investigators to have questioned Gen. Mark Milley, one of the highest-ranking Trump-era national security officials, about the incident.
The July 2021 meeting was held at Trump's golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, with two people working on the autobiography of Trump's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows as well as aides employed by the former president, including communications specialist Margo Martin. The attendees, sources said, did not have security clearances that would allow them access to classified information. Meadows didn't attend the meeting, sources said.
Meadows' autobiography includes an account of what appears to be the same meeting, during which Trump "recalls a four-page report typed up by (Trump's former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) Mark Milley himself. It contained the general's own plan to attack Iran, deploying massive numbers of troops, something he urged President Trump to do more than once during his presidency."
Now it's in Jack Smith's hands.
The recording that's now in the hands of prosecutors shows they are not only looking at Trump's actions regarding classified documents recovered from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida but also at what happened at Bedminster a year earlier.
The meeting in which Trump discussed the Iran document with others happened shortly after The New Yorker published a story by Susan Glasser detailing how, in the final days of Trump's presidency, Milley instructed the Joint Chiefs to ensure Trump issued no illegal orders and that he be informed if there was any concern. The story infuriated Trump.
When CNN made the awful decision to host a town hall for the sexual abuser, he was asked if he showed classified documents he kept after the presidency to anyone. Trump said: "Not really. I would have the right to. By the way, they were declassified after."
I want to know if he made copies of our country's secrets, who he shared them with, why Bedminster hasn't been raided, if he sold any of them to foreign entities, and how many are in Ivana's grave.
