It seems like irrefutable proof; what the Anglo-Saxons call the “smoking gun”. In a conversation with collaborators, former President Donald Trump recognized two years ago the highly secret nature of a document on a possible attack on Iran that he carried with him and did not hesitate to show these people despite not having authorization to access confidential papers. .
The conversation was recorded in an audio that CNN broadcast on Monday night and is part of the summary in which the Prosecutor’s Office charges Trump with a total of 37 charges for seven federal criminal offenses, including those of conspiracy to obstruct justice. , witness tampering, false statement and willful withholding of secret documents in violation of the Espionage Act.
In a friendly chat with two of his aides, as well as a writer and an editor working on the memoirs of his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, the former president said the document he was showing them was “highly confidential.” And he added: “Look: as president, I could have declassified it. I can’t now, you know, but this is still a secret.”
Such statements, delivered in July 2021 during a meeting at his Bedminster resort, demonstrate Trump’s full awareness of what he was up to when, upon leaving the White House, he took hundreds of classified records to his Mar residence. -a-Lago, in Florida; among them this document on hypothetical plans against Iran.
The ultra leader brandished the paper before his interlocutors to try to deny that he intended to attack the Islamic republic, which he attributed to the head of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley; a story that the local media raised in its day exactly the opposite, because according to numerous sources the military command opposed said attack… when Trump suggested the idea.
The audio is a resounding denial of the former president’s persistent statements in the sense that neither this nor the other documents he hid in Mar-a-Lago were secret; among other things because he could declassify any paper “just by thinking about it”, as he said over and over again.
It would be difficult for special prosecutor Jack Smith, head of this investigation and the one that is also being followed against Trump for his role in the assault on the Capitol, to have found stronger evidence to prove before a jury the responsibility of the also candidate for re-election in the presidential elections of 2024. The public prosecution has to prove the fraud of the former president, that is, his conscience and intentionality in the commission of the crimes attributed to him. And the audio now broadcast can be key in this regard.
