Trump dismisses latest documents recording: ‘I’m a legitimate person’
Former President Trump on Tuesday brushed aside an audio recording that appeared to capture him discussing classified materials with guests at his New Jersey club in 2021, an incident at the center of his federal indictment.
“I don’t know of any recordings that we should concerned with because I don’t do things wrong. I do things right. I’m a legitimate person,” Trump told Fox News Digital.
Trump spoke with Fox News Digital a day after CNN first published the audio recording, where Trump can be heard discussing “secret” papers related to U.S. military plans for an attack on Iran.
The recording appeared to contradict Trump’s claim just a week ago to Fox News anchor Bret Baier, when the former president suggested he did not have a physical paper with him during the incident in question.
Asked Tuesday how the recording squares with his previous claim, Trump insisted that “what was said was absolutely fine and very perfectly. We did nothing wrong. This is a whole hoax.”
“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,” Trump said. “We had a lot of papers, a lot of papers stacked up. In fact, you hear the rustle of the paper. And nobody said that I did anything wrong other than the fake news, which of course is Fox, too.”
CNN on Monday obtained and aired a two-minute audio clip of the conversation between Trump and others at his Bedminster, N.J., club in which he is heard saying, “These are the papers,” while discussing classified materials.
“I have a big pile of papers, this thing just came up. Look. This was him,” Trump says in the recording, referring to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley. “They presented me this — this is off the record — but they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him.”
“See, as president I could have declassified it,” Trump says in the audio recording. “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”
“Now, we have a problem,” a staffer says in the recording.
Transcripts of large sections of the audio were already included in the Justice Department indictment unsealed earlier this month that detailed the case against the former president, in which prosecutors cited the 2021 conversation as an instance where Trump allegedly showed classified material to individuals without security clearances.