Trump’s inclusion underscores growing evidence in documents case

The revelation that federal prosecutors have a recording of former President Donald J. Trump discussing a highly sensitive document in his possession after he left office underscores the weight of evidence Special Counsel Jack Smith is gathering as he makes a decision on whether or not to bring criminal charges.

The recording, according to people briefed on its contents, recorded Mr Trump in July 2021 discussing a document he said related to military planning for confronting Iran. During the conversation, Mr Trump indicated he was aware of his inability to release the document because he had already left office, they said.

If that description of the recording turns out to be accurate – and Mr Trump’s lawyers have been careful not to confirm or deny it – it would undermine one of the main defenses Mr Trump’s advisers have put forward in their attempt to justify why he was allowed to hold onto some of the administration’s most sensitive secrets after leaving the White House. They have argued that Mr. Trump, while still in office, released all the material he took with him when he left.

It would also show Mr. Trump invoking a sensitive government document with his own voice to settle a score. In this case, he refuted what he perceived as criticism from General Mark A. Milley, whom Trump had appointed as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The exact contents of the document referred to by Mr. Trump during the taped meeting remain unclear. And it’s not known when or if the federal government recovered Mr. Trump’s document when it attempted to recover thousands of pages of material he took with him when he left the White House in violation of the Presidential Records Act. That law makes all presidential records the property of the federal government.

But a recording showing he knew he had material he hadn’t released — and that it touched on highly sensitive national security issues — could potentially be compelling evidence that he knew he shouldn’t have kept it, even when federal officials increased efforts. attempts to get back what he had taken.

Federal prosecutors led by Mr. Smith have investigated whether Mr. Trump — the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — obstructed the administration’s efforts and whether he violated other laws related to the handling of national defense information and government documents . Mr. Smith is also overseeing a parallel investigation into Mr. Trump’s attempts to stay in office following his defeat at the 2020 polls.

After months of back and forth with the National Archives, Mr. Trump finally turned over 15 boxes of material in January last year. They were found to contain nearly 200 documents marked classified.

After a subsequent subpoena demanding that he return all other classified material in his possession, he gave the Justice Department just over three dozen additional documents and a letter from his attorney saying a careful search had turned up nothing. .

Then, in August, FBI agents with a search warrant dived into Mar-a-Lago, his Florida residence and club, and took away additional boxes of equipment, containing more than 100 additional classified documents.

The taped meeting took place more than a year before the search and was between Mr Trump and two people who helped with a book being written by the last White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, according to three people familiar with the session . A small number of Trump aides, including Margo Martin, who routinely attended and recorded book interviews of Mr Trump, also attended.

Ms. Martin was subpoenaed to appear in March before the grand jury that heard the evidence in the case. According to a person familiar with the situation, investigators had access to the recording of the meeting before Ms. Martin appeared. Her devices were subpoenaed after the appearance, the person said.

Some of Mr Trump’s own advisers, who were aware of the existence of the recording, have been waiting for it to be made public since Mr Trump’s town hall event on CNN in May, where he gave an ambiguous response when he directly asked if he had ever shown one. classified documents to people after leaving the White House. “Not really,” said Mr. Trump.

A lawyer for Mr. Trump continued to take the position in an interview on CNN on Wednesday that his client released the materials he removed from the White House and could prove it.

But even the attorney, James Trusty, declined to say whether Mr. Trump released the document he waved around at the July 2021 rally that took place at his private club in Bedminster, NJ

In a separate interview on CNN on Thursday, a lawyer who recently left Mr Trump’s team, Timothy Parlatore, downplayed the legal significance of the Bedminster episode and suggested that Mr Trump had the documents due to a “failure of trial” when he left the White House.

Mr Parlatore said whether the documents had been released was irrelevant because Mr Trump was under investigation for “deliberate withholding of national defense information” under statutes that did not depend on classification status.

In the summer of 2021, Mr. Trump was outraged by General Milley’s high-profile roles in books and magazine articles. General Milley was portrayed in his last months in office as a last line of defense against an increasingly erratic and bellicose president. On the tape, Mr. Trump hit back at General Milley, according to those familiar with its contents. He suggested that General Milley – not himself – was a dangerous warmonger. He indicated that he had a document showing that General Milley wanted to go to war with Iran.

Former senior administration officials involved in Mr Trump’s deliberations on Iran said General Milley typically urged restraint on Iran. They said they were not aware of any document prepared by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs that matched the description proposed by Mr. Trump.

These former officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe sensitive discussions, said Mr Trump could have referred to summaries of deterrence options – ranging from fairly benign to very aggressive – presented to him as he pondered how to counter Iran .

Mr. Smith and his team have examined the documents case from multiple angles, including investigating whether there are any links between the material Mr. Trump took and his foreign business deals. They are also investigating whether his associates tried to interfere with the government’s attempt to obtain security camera footage from Mar-a-Lago.

But the existence of the recording raises new questions, including what role Mr. Meadows might play in providing information to investigators, and highlights the extraordinary sensitivity of the material that Mr. Trump had access to when he left office.

Mr. Meadows has been a source of suspicion and frustration among some in Mr. Trump’s job for months. Mr. Trump was outraged by Mr. Meadows’ memoirs, which revealed intimate details of the former president’s 2020 battle with Covid. Mr. Meadows then gave investigators a road map of sorts when he handed over thousands of private text messages to the House Select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, omitting only those he thought were protected by executive privilege.

But until now, Mr. Meadows’ role in the investigations involving Mr. Trump had been largely limited to participating in an elaborate effort to limit the scope of the grand juries investigating his former boss with claims of various types of privilege.

A lawyer for Mr Meadows, George Terwilliger, declined to comment.