Report: Trump discusses key docs on tape
Federal prosecutors investigating former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified material have a recording of Trump from 2021 discussing a sensitive military document he had kept after leaving the White House, two people briefed on the matter said.
The recording, in which Trump also indicated he knew the document was secret, could undermine his repeated claim that he had already declassified material that remained in his possession after he left office. Prosecutors are scrutinizing whether Trump obstructed efforts by federal officials to retrieve documents he took with him after leaving office and whether he violated laws governing the handling of classified material.
The tape was made in a meeting Trump held in July 2021 with people helping his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, write a memoir of his 10 months in the White House, according to the people briefed on the matter. The meeting was held at Trump’s club at Bedminster, N.J., where he spends summers.
Until now, the focus of the documents investigation has been largely on material Trump kept with him at Mara-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, rather than in New Jersey.
Meadows did not attend the meeting, but at least two of Trump’s aides did. One, Margo Martin, routinely taped the interviews he gave for books being written about him that year.
On the recording, Trump began railing about his hand-picked chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, who was described in media accounts at the time as having guarded against
Trump’s striking Iran in the final days of the presidency, according to the people briefed on the matter.
Trump then began referencing a document that he had with him, saying that it had been compiled by Milley and was related to attacking Iran, the people briefed on the matter said. Among other comments, he mentioned his classification abilities during the discussion, one person briefed on the matter said. Trump can be heard handling paper on the tape, although it is not clear whether it was the document in question.
The Justice Department obtained the recording in recent months, a potentially key piece in a mountain of evidence that prosecutors have amassed under special counsel Jack Smith since he was appointed in November to oversee the federal investigations into Trump.
Martin was asked about the recording during a grand jury appearance, according to two people briefed on the matter.
Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump, said in a statement that “leaks from radical partisans behind this political persecution are designed to inflame tensions and continue the media’s harassment of President Trump and his supporters.” He accused prosecutors of interfering with the 2024 election through the investigation, which began in early 2022.
In total, the government has recovered more than 300 documents with classified markings from Trump since he left office. They include a first batch of documents returned in January 2022 to the National Archives, another set provided by Trump’s aides to the Justice Department that June, material seized by the FBI in the search of Mar-a-Lago in August and a handful found in additional searches late last year.