2023-06-27 14:30:05
The recording is compromising for the former American president. Monday, June 26, the American channel CNN has shared on his show “Anderson Cooper 360” an audio excerpt from a July 2021 interview between Donald Trump, two members of his team and two people responsible for writing the memoirs of his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
For two minutes, the five interlocutors discuss with complicity in a room of the golf club of Trump in Bedminster (New Jersey). But in the course of a joke on Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent in the 2016 presidential election, the former president seems to reveal to his audience a confidential document from the Pentagon.
Problem: none of the four participants is authorized to read or have access to this information. Also obtained by The New York Timesthis audio evidence seems to contradict the official defense of Donald Trump, charged in the White House archives case since June 9.
“It’s highly confidential”
It all starts with an informal discussion, probably recorded as part of the interview. In the play, the writer and editor of Mark Meadows’ memoir are reunited alongside two members of Donald Trump’s team.
It is one of them who seems to bring the subject to the table, evoking the statements by an army general accusing Donald Trump of wanting to trigger a “coup” in Iran at the end of his term: “No, they were trying to do that before you even took the oath”, says the employee.
Donald Trump approves, and wants to “show them an example” that proves his good faith. After some sounds of manipulated documents, the former president stops and points to his find: “I have a big pile of papers, this thing has just arrived. Look, it was him. They presented me with this and , it’s unofficial but, they presented me with this. It was him. It was the Department of Defense and him,” accusing the Army general of being the first to bring up a plan to attack on Iran.
Donald Trump even claims that this document would prove him right if it were released… “but it’s highly confidential, it’s secret information,” he immediately admits. The businessman even evokes later the possibility of a “declassification” of the famous document to prove his good faith, acknowledging however that he can no longer do it himself after his defeat in the presidential election of 2020.
Central evidence in the archives case
Through this recording, the former US president therefore seems to indicate that he shared confidential information from the US Department of Defense concerning a hypothetical plan to attack Iran against four unauthorized people.
A dependent element for Donald Trump, but which is not completely new. Since June 9, the businessman has been charged by the American courts for having kept and then illegally shared classified government documents after leaving the White House.
37 counts in total, for which Donald Trump pleaded not guilty on June 13. The said documents had however been found in his personal residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida during a high-profile search in 2021.
According to CNN, this excerpt from an interview at Bedminster’s golf course is one of two pieces of evidence of the sharing of confidential information to an unauthorized public on which Special Prosecutor Jack Smith relies. The American channel had already obtained a transcription of this audio at the beginning of June.
An excerpt that contradicts the Trump defense
If this recording is therefore already known to justice, its dissemination to the public by CNN and the New York Times nevertheless calls into question Donald Trump’s defense arguments in the media.
In an interview for Fox News on June 20, the former American president claimed not to have had “a document strictly speaking” during this interview with Bedminster. “There was nothing to declassify. It was newspaper articles, magazines and articles,” even specified the former American president.
The distribution of the complete audio recording therefore makes it possible to contradict this version, judges the New York Times. In a statement relayed by the two American media, a spokesperson for the former president’s campaign said that “the audio tape provides context proving, once again, that President Trump has nothing hurt at all”. A strategy that risks being ineffective in the face of American justice.
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