In new audio obtained by CNN, former President Donald Trump speaks about classified documents in his possession.
In the recording, which first aired on “Anderson Cooper 360” and was also obtained by CBS News, Trump is heard speaking with staffers as papers are shuffled.
“It is, like, highly confidential, secret, this is secret information,” Trump says in the recording. “All sorts of stuff, pages long, look.”
During the clip, Trump references documents he claims show Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wanted to attack Iran. At one point, Trump says, “It’s so cool.”
“This was done by the military and given to me,” Trump says. “See, as president I could have declassified it, now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”
Trump knew he was being recorded during the conversation, according to CNN, because he was speaking in the presence of two people working on former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ autobiography. The two-minute clip is part of audio that’s about an hour long, and the conversation occurred in 2021 at Trump’s club in Bedminster, N.J., according to CNN.
Trump was federally indicted in June on 37 counts of mishandling classified documents. He was also indicted earlier in New York on 34 counts of falsifying business records. Trump is the first former U.S. president to be indicted on federal criminal charges and he has denied wrongdoing.
Criminal charges don’t prevent someone from running for president, and an NBC News poll released this week shows Trump gaining support among Republican voters.
The poll found Trump with 51% support among Republican primary voters, up from 46% in April. Support for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump’s nearest competitor, fell to 22% from 31% in the same time period, according to the poll.
Trump’s campaign is fundraising off the indictments. In paid ads on social media, Trump said he was facing “endless witch hunts — including my politically motivated arrest.” The New York Times found Trump is increasingly funneling money raised through his campaign to a political action committee that’s paying his legal fees.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said Tuesday that Trump’s indictment “complicated” his campaign but could also help him, and that while he believes Trump can beat President Joe Biden, he wasn’t sure if Trump was the strongest candidate.
“Can he win that election? Yeah he can,” McCarthy told CNBC. “The question is, is he the strongest to win the election? I don’t know that answer, but can anybody beat Biden? Yeah, anybody can beat Biden. Can Biden beat other people? Yes, Biden can beat them. It’s on any given day.”
In a post on his social network Truth Social, Trump accused Jack Smith, the special counsel who indicted him, of “working in conjunction with the DOJ & FBI, illegally leaked and ‘spun’ a tape and transcript of me which is actually an exoneration, rather than what they would have you believe.”