Donald Trump reacted Tuesday to the leaked audio obtained by CNN that allegedly is a crucial component of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of the president. He wasn’t buying that it was damning evidence against him:
My voice was fine. What did I say wrong on those recordings? I didn’t even see the recording. All I know is I did nothing wrong.
As we reported Monday, CNN claimed that it has obtained the audio recording of a 2021 meeting in Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey, golf resort where the current GOP frontrunner allegedly discussed holding classified documents. In the recording, the former president says, “These are the papers” while discussing Pentagon plans regarding Iran; he then refers to something else as “highly confidential” and notes, “See, as President, I could have declassified it. And now I can’t.”
Some see this tape as the smoking gun in the case, proving that Trump knowingly and illegally kept classified docs and shared state secrets with the other people in the room. Not so fast, Trump responded:
I had a whole desk full of lots of papers and mostly newspaper articles, copies of magazines, copies of different plans, copies of stories having to do with many, many subjects.
And what was said was absolutely fine and very perfectly. We did nothing wrong. This is a whole hoax .
Watch:
He then compared the case to the many, many investigations into him and the two impeachments brought by Democrats when he was president:
This is just like the Russia, Russia, Russia deal. This is like the fake dossier. The dossier was a fake. It’s all been a big fake–Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine. We went through these things ad nauseam and this is 7 years of this stuff, and now this one.
He couldn’t resist taking a shot at what was formerly his favorite news network:
We had a lot of papers, a lot of papers stacked up. In fact, you could hear the rustle of the paper, and nobody said I did anything wrong other than the fake news, which, of course, is Fox too.
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. He pointed out President Joe Biden has documents issues of his own but isn’t being hounded by a special counsel:
…the one who’s done it wrong, is Biden–he has 850 boxes all over the place. Nobody even knows where they are. He’s got many boxes in Chinatown, D.C.. What are they doing there? And he’s accepting money from China. He’s got boxes all over the place.
We know where the Department of Justice stands on this issue, and now we know Donald Trump’s response to the recording. But there are still questions: where did CNN get this audio, and can we be sure it’s legitimate and not doctored in any way? Who leaked it–the notoriously sieve-like DOJ or possibly the Meadows biographers? CNN isn’t saying.
Trump, though, via Mark Levin, thinks he knows:
There must have been several scores of leaks against Trump involving testimony, documents, audio, etc, and they’re all obviously coming from the government. Trump’s lawyers need to file an immediate motion, with the long list of leaks as an exhibit, asking that the entire case be dismissed because of prosecutorial misconduct and the government’s effort to influence the jury pool. Moreover, I would insist that the court determine whether DOJ has opened investigations into these felonies. THIS NEEDS TO HAPPEN NOW!