Former president Donald Trump refers to possessing “highly classified” documents in audio recorded at his resort in Bedminster, N.J., in 2021, according to a new report.
In the audio, obtained and published by CNN, Trump appears to speak about Pentagon paperwork that references plans to attack Iran.
“These are the papers,” Trump says in the audio clip.
“This totally wins my case, you know?” Trump says. “Except it is highly confidential.”
Trump, 77, was charged this month with 37 felonies in a federal indictment accusing him of stashing classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Trump, the 45th U.S. president who is running again in the 2024 election, has pleaded not guilty.
Trump made the comments while speaking with people working on a memoir by former chief of staff Mark Meadows.
Trump recently claimed to Fox News, “There was no document.”
“That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things,” Trump said last week. “And it may have been held up or may not, but that was not a document. I didn’t have a document, per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.”
