There’s nothing stronger than the power of a person’s voice.
And few have a more recognizable one than Donald Trump.
The media have gone into high-decibel mode over an audio recording, obtained by CNN, which appears to prove that he did show a highly classified document to one or more staffers, contradicting his past denials.
You may have read part of the transcript of this 2021 conversation – it’s included in the indictment – but there are new details on the tape (including the sound of Trump ruffling papers) that make it more newsworthy.
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At the same time, this leak from the Justice Department is entirely improper and designed to turn public opinion against the indicted former president. Without denigrating CNN’s scoop, it fuels perceptions, especially on the right, that prosecutors are working hand in glove with the network and being unfair to the defendant. This may sound quaint, but criminal investigations are supposed to be conducted in secret.
Trump’s response, on Truth Social: “The Deranged Special Prosecutor, Jack Smith, working in conjunction with the DOJ & FBI, illegally leaked and ‘spun’ a tape and transcript of me which is actually an exoneration, rather than what they would have you believe. This continuing Witch Hunt is another ELECTION INTERFERENCE Scam. They are cheaters and thugs!”
He’s right to be upset about the leaks, but I don’t quite see how this is an exoneration.
In an interview last week, Fox’s Bret Baier asked about the transcript strongly suggesting that he had shared a plan to attack Iran with an aide who did not have a security clearance.
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“There was no document,” Trump said then. “That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things. 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.”
The fuller tape tells a different tale.
But more of the backstory: It was also CNN that obtained a partial transcript of the conversation earlier this month, before Trump was indicted. Referring to a secret document, he said: “As president, I could have declassified, but now I can’t.”
Trump’s conversation at his Bedminster golf club was with a writer and a publisher who were helping former chief of staff Mark Meadows with a planned book, and two of Trump’s aides.
Speaking to one of his staffers, Trump is anxious to convince the person that it was Gen. Mark Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was pushing the idea of invading Iran.
“He said that I wanted to attack Iran, isn’t it amazing?” Trump says as the sound of papers shuffling can be heard. “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.”
There’s also Trump saying, “Let’s see here. Look,” and a brief pause, in which Trump appears to show papers to the assembled group and they laugh.
“This totally wins my case, you know,” Trump says, adding that the documents are “highly confidential, secret. This is secret information.”
So: Donald Trump tells the gathering that he knows he has secret documents, that he wanted to declassify them but couldn’t, but appears to show them to one or more people in the group. That undercuts his argument that he had automatically declassified the papers he took from the White House, that he didn’t understand the system, and that it was really just a bunch of clippings.
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Can there be any document more sensitive than a memo about attacking a potentially nuclear Iran, even if it was a general pushing the idea or, at the end of the administration, trying to stop the president from taking reckless military action?
There was also some joking on the tape about Hillary Clinton and her secret documents, kept on her private server as secretary of State, and how they wound up on Anthony Weiner’s laptop.
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The thing about a person’s voice on tape is that it can’t be cross-examined. He said what he said. Whether that rises to the level of a criminal conviction will ultimately be up to a jury.
