“Provides context,” claims Trump campaign spokesman
As we wait once again to see if today is the day the Supreme Court drops a bomb on the U.S. Constitution with its Moore v Harper decision, let us consider the bomb dropped last night on (or by) the insurrectionist-in-chief.
CNN somehow obtained a copy of the 2021 audio recording of Donald Trump boasting to people working on the memoir of former chief of staff Mark Meadows about classified war plans he had in a box at his Bedminster, New Jersey resort. Special counsel Jack Smith quotes from the tape in his indictment of the former president in the documents case.
(And just where is Mark Meadows, anyway?)
The Washington Post, the New York Times, and CBS (at a minimum) also have copies.
Trusting to Marcy Wheeler’s keener understanding of legal and national security matters, let’s see what emptywheel hears in the Trump tape on first hearing:
“THIS THING JUST CAME UP.”
Shortly after the CNN clip starts, Trump says, “I have a big pile of papers, this just came up.” He’s saying that, remember, after having transported the documents from Mar-a-Lago to Bedminster for the summer. His comment that, “this just came up,” suggests he was not only carrying these documents around, but reviewing them.
Given the fact that Trump’s lawyers weren’t able to find this document, it means he was reviewing them … before they disappeared forever.
“THESE ARE BAD SICK PEOPLE”
Trump compulsively shared this document for revenge — the same reason he put together the dumbass Russian binder. It not just speaks to intentional retention of documents, but it shows that he intended, from the start, to retain documents to avenge his perceived detractors.
Note that this is the same reason he released classified information at least once while President — when he shared details about the Josh Schulte investigation with Tucker Carlson on the same day the FBI planned to search Schulte’s home. He did so because of false claims he had been wiretapped, but also did so to blame President Obama for the leak.
Trump’s pathological need for revenge would be very very easy to exploit by anyone willing to push Trump’s buttons.
“YOU PROBABLY ALMOST DIDN’T BELIEVE ME, BUT NOW YOU BELIEVE ME”
As multiple reports regarding this document explained, Trump was lying. This document didn’t come from Milley, it dated back to Milley’s predecessor, sometime in 2019. Nevertheless he kept saying, “this was him, this totally wins my case.”
So it didn’t prove his case. Milley didn’t want to attack Iran, but Trump was using an unrelated document to claim that he did.
But Trump was using it — waving a document he described as highly confidential — to substantiate a false claim.
“SHE’D SEND IT TO ANTHONY WEINER, THE PERVERT”
Trump and his aide joke about Hillary printing this out and sending it to Anthony Weiner. That’s unsurprising: Trump always rationalized his own mistreatment of information by pointing to Hillary’s email server (this Roger Parloff post is a remarkably thorough debunking of Trump’s claims).
But understand how this comment will appear against the context of the five attacks on Hillary Trump used to get elected, cited in the indictment.
Jack Smith plans to use Trump’s past condemnation of Hillary to show that Trump knew this was wrongful. So even his false quip about Weiner will make this evidence more valuable.
And then, at the end of this recording, Trump called a staffer to bring some cokes, emphasizing how banal sharing classified information was for Trump.
Wheeler later tweets a short thread on how this tape likely got into the hands of the press:
Probably a good time to remind people that as SDNY was about to obtain access to the recording Michael Cohen made of Trump ordering a hush payment (which will be used in NYS trial), Trump released it preemptively.
It happened at the equivalent time, too: Trump got access to what had been seized from Cohen by intervening in that Special Master process. And then, voila! the tape got released.
So that’s Trump’s M.O. And this Bedminster tape?
One more point: Trump INDEPENDENTLY has this recording — it was recorded by his employee for his benefit, and after she was asked about it, lawyers reviewed it. But Trump will be prohibited from leaking stuff he ONLY obtained thru discovery.
A Trump campaign spokesman’s comment suggests why Trump may have released the tape (Associated Press):
“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.
A Trump campaign spokesman said the audio recording “provides context proving, once again, that President Trump did nothing wrong at all.”
Trump remains a defense attorney’s nightmare. And the secret documents case is only his second indictment. Special counsel Jack Smith and his Department of Justice investigators are “barreling forward on multiple tracks,” reports the Washington Post. In addition to the Jan. 6 insurrection itself, Smith’s team is investigating Trump’s “election fraud” fundraising pitches as well as the fake electors conspiracy in multiple states.
Sean Hannity twisted himself in knots Monday night on Fox News to deny what Trump said on Trump’s own tape.
“That does not confirm for me whether or not specifically this document was declassified or not,” Hannity told viewers. “Was that actually the real document, or was it a story he was telling?”
Twitter had a field day: