Former President Trump was recorded saying he knew he had a classified document.
'Disgraced' Trump-appointed Florida judge initially assigned to oversee ex-president’s criminal case:
Former President Donald J. Trump declared at a meeting in July 2021, six months after leaving the White House, that a document in front of him was “classified” and “highly confidential,” according to a person briefed on the matter.
That meeting, with people helping his former chief of staff with a book, has been previously reported but new details of Mr. Trump’s specific comments appear to demonstrate explicitly that he was aware that materials he had taken with him from the White House included classified information. The recording is expected to be a key piece of evidence in the case against him that the special counsel Jack Smith brought this week, with seven counts related to his possession of reams of classified material.
Mr. Trump also indicated he couldn’t show the document to the people in front of him — many if not all of whom didn’t have security clearances that would allow them to see sensitive government material — and added, “As president, I could have declassified them, now I can’t,” according to the person briefed on the matter, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Mr. Trump then said the document was “classified,” and a woman in the room replied, “Now we have a problem,” according to the person familiar with the recording.
Many details of what is said on the recording were reported earlier by CNN, which also first reported on the existence of the recording.
The transcript demonstrates that Mr. Trump was not only aware he had sensitive material, but had it with him at his club at Bedminster, N.J., where the meeting took place, and that he knew he no longer had the power to declassify material.
Mr. Trump’s meeting was with two people helping Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff, with a memoir about his tenure in the White House. Aides to Mr. Trump also attended.
At the time, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whom Mr. Trump had appointed, had been a subject of multiple media portraits describing him as pressing back against an erratic president in the final months of the presidency.
Mr. Trump went on a tear about General Milley.
“Isn’t it amazing, I have a big pile of papers,” Mr. Trump said at one point. Papers could be heard rustling, and then Mr. Trump began appearing to point to a specific document, saying, “Look, this was him.” At another point he said, “This was the Defense Department and him.”
He described something in front of him as “like, highly confidential,” and maintained it was really General Milley who wanted to attack Iran (in fact, General Milley cautioned against such a move).
At one point Mr. Trump was interrupted, and a woman in the room could be heard on the recording referencing Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state whose email server Mr. Trump used as an attack line during the 2016 presidential campaign. Mr. Trump said Mrs. Clinton would send material “to Anthony Weiner, that pervert,” referring to the former congressman who was married to an aide to Mrs. Clinton.
Mr. Trump and his allies have repeatedly asserted that, while still in office, he had declassified all the material he took with him from the White House (though the charges may not rely on whether anything was classified). But his assertion appeared to be undercut by the recording.
“As president, I could have declassified them, now I can’t,” Mr. Trump was recorded saying, according to the person familiar with its contents. He then reiterated something was “classified” as he and one of the women in the room talked over each other, according to the person familiar with its contents.
“Isn’t that interesting? It’s so cool,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “You probably almost didn’t believe me, but now you believe me.”
Judge Aileen Cannon, known for agreeing to Trump’s request by assigning a special master to review the entirety of federal government documents the FBI retrieved from Mar-a-Lago last summer during the execution of a search and seizure warrant will, at least for now, oversee the government’s case allegedly charging Donald Trump with seven different felony categories in its classified documents probe, according to ABC News.
“The summons sent to former President Donald Trump and his legal team late Thursday indicates that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon will be assigned to oversee his case, at least initially, according to sources briefed on the matter,” ABC News reports.
“Cannon’s apparent assignment would add yet another unprecedented wrinkle to a case involving the first federal charges against a former president: Trump appointed Cannon to the federal bench in 2019, meaning that, if Trump is ultimately convicted, she would be responsible for determining the sentence – which may include prison time – for the man who elevated her to the role.”
Cannon, agreeing to Trump’s request to appoint a special master last September, also halted the Dept. of Justice’s use of those materials, which included at least one hundred classified documents, in its criminal investigation into Trump.
Harvard University professor emeritus of constitutional law, Laurence Tribe, called Judge Cannon’s special master decision “utterly lawless,” and said: “She has disgraced her position as an Article III judge.”
ABC News notes that “Legal experts [had] accused Cannon of handing Trump a series of head-scratching victories over the course of those proceedings,” and added, “Cannon’s order was ultimately thrown out in its entirety by an 11th Circuit Court of appeals panel, which found she overstepped in exercising her jurisdiction in the probe.”
The 11th Circuit issued a scathing rebuke of Judge’ Cannon’s decision to appoint the special master. One week later, without explanation or reasoning, she overruled the special master’s decision and extended deadlines – decisions which favored Donald Trump.
Cannon is not the only judge whose name appears on the summons.
“In addition to Cannon, Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart’s name also appeared on the summons sent to Trump on Thursday, the sources said,” ABC adds. “Reinhart, who was sworn in as a magistrate judge in 2018, is also familiar with the proceedings against Trump: he signed off on the initial search warrant of Mar-a-Lago last year and later ruled to unseal the search affidavit – decisions that made him the target of antisemitic jabs on the internet.”
A federal judge whose highly-controversial rulings favoring Donald Trump were derided by legal experts and judges on a higher court, has been initially assigned to the U.S. Dept. of Justice’s criminal case against the ex-president, who appointed her to the bench three years ago.