Last week, CNN
exclusively reported
that prosecutors had an audio
recording of Trump
admitting
he kept a classified Pentagon document
about a potential attack on Iran will now
And this is what is new.
We are learning exactly what
former President Trump said
during that private meeting in 2021.
Now, according to a transcript
of that recording, Trump
acknowledged
he hadn't declassified the document
and they didn't have the power to do so.
He told people in the room,
quote, As president,
I could have declassified,
but now I can't.
You know,
that goes completely
against what the former president
has been saying publicly.
Do you still have
any classified documents
in your possession?
Are you ready?
Do you know? No, I don't have anything.
I have no classified documents.
And by the way,
they become automatically declassified
when I took them.
If you're the president
of the United States,
you can declassify just by saying
it's declassified.
Even by thinking about it
because you're sending it
to Mar a Lago
or to wherever you're sending it.
When you send it, it's declassified.
We I declassified everything
CNN's Paul Reed broke this story.
I'll read joins us now.
Paula, it's big, big developments.
Walk us through the transcript.
Well, good morning, Phil.
This exclusive, of course,
building on our bombshell
report last week with Kaitlan Collins
and Caitlin
Poland about this recording
where the former president
not only claims to have retained
classified information,
but also acknowledges
the limits of his power to do so.
And now we have the transcript
of the relevant portion
and I'll read some parts of that.
But it's clear
he acknowledges
or claims
that he kept secret information.
Now, in this recording,
this was back in July 20, 21
he is speaking to some visitors
at his New Jersey golf club.
We know from our sources
that among the people in the room,
or at least two people
working on Mark Meadows
autobiography, as
well as some Trump aides
he is referring here
to General Mark Milley.
He says, quote, Well, with Milley,
let me see that.
I'll show you an example.
He said that I wanted to attack Iran
Isn't that amazing?
I have a big pile of papers.
This thing just came up on the tape.
We're told that you can hear him
rustling the papers at this point.
Look, this was him.
They presented me this.
This is off the record.
But they presented me this.
This was him.
This was the Defense Department and him.
We looked at some this was him.
This wasn't done by me.
This was him.
I'll keep reading,
but you can tell at least four times.
You know,
he emphasizes that this was Milley.
He goes on to say all sorts of stuff.
Pages long. Look, wait a minute.
Let's see here.
I just found. Isn't this amazing?
This totally wins my case.
And I want to note here,
he has a case he's referring to here.
Is this a dispute with Milley?
Not the current pending
criminal investigation,
except it is like
highly confidential, secret
This is secret information. Look.
Look at this.
I will note
that secret and confidential are both,
of course, levels of classification.
And then arguably the most damning quote,
he says
he asks if he someone in the room,
if he can declassify it.
And then he says, as president,
I could have declassified,
but now I can't.
And of course, that last quote,
undercutting all of the public arguments
that he has allies
and his attorneys have made
about how he was able
to declassify things
once he left office
or that he may have even
had a standing declassification order
to declassify
any materials in his possession
before he left office.
But in terms of invest
the investigation,
prosecutors are likely going
to be most interested in the fact
that he is claiming
to have retained secret information
and is appearing to try to share that
with a roomful of people.
None of whom had security clearances.
So, again,
this is a really key piece of evidence
in this ongoing investigation.
Yeah, Paula,
this was
reading your reporting this morning.
It was a genuine
kind of jaw drop moment for a minute
just because of how many things
it seemed to rebut
about what the president
has said publicly.
You kind of got to this a little bit,
but what is your sense
of how this will factor
into things
going forward
or into the indictments
that we haven't seen yet?
Well, we're doing our reporting
on the existence of this audio
recording last week.
Mean one source
close to the legal team told me,
look, this audio recording,
this is a problem.
And the former president's
legal team only learned about this
a few months ago in March,
when a witness was asked about it
before the grand jury.
I also want to note
the prosecutor subpoenaed
the document that he refers to
and they still don't have it.
It's unclear.
One What this document was,
if it was indeed a real document, though
it appears by this transcript,
he does clearly think
that he is in possession of something,
that he is showing them
something
that supports his argument against M.E..
But at this point,
it's not clear
that the government even
has this document in its possession.
So we don't have the indictment
at this point.
It's unclear when that will be unsealed,
but it would not be surprising
if this audio recording or quotes from it
come up in in the indictment.
But at this point, we don't know.
It's clearly, though,
a piece of evidence
that even the former
president's legal team
acknowledges is a problem for him.
This is remarkable in every way, Paul.
Everyone should go on CNN
dot com right now
and read through your report
because you have all of these
stunning quotes in there.
Thank you for this.
Stick with us.
Let's also bring in Kaitlan, Paul, Lance
live outside the courthouse.
In Miami, where Trump will appear
Tuesday afternoon.
You were one of the reporters
who broke
the story of that taped conversation.
This development to that
is extremely significant.
It is, Poppy.
And Phil, we knew what this was
going to sound like
because it had been described to us.
But to see the words
there on the screen, to hear Paula
read those words that President
Donald Trump, former
President Donald Trump uttered
after he left the White House
in this meeting
where it's capturing the sound of him
rustling through papers
where there are multiple witnesses
in the room
and you know,
the big question
here, as Paula was saying, is,
is this going to be part of
the charge explicitly?
And if it is, that sets
this recording up
to be a key piece of evidence
as this heads to trial,
it would be something
that the Justice Farm
would very likely play to the jury.
Almost certainly if that is part of
what is indicted here
as a retention charge.
And once they have that retention charge,
that is something we know
that is going to be charged in the case,
because Donald Trump's attorney
last night,
Jim Trusty, said it would be
we don't know exactly
what what paper it will be around
what classified documents.
But if it is about this document he's
describing in this audiotape
and that episode is part of this
from July 20, 21 at Bedminster,
if that's part of the case,
they have to prove two things
that Donald Trump knew
he had
a classified record
or a national defense information
piece of of paper in his possession
and that he was willfully keeping it
from the federal government
outside of a protected
classification area.
Not that he has the ability
to declassify it,
although it is quite sensational
that he says as president
I could have declassified,
but now I can't.
But the other words in this I'll show
you Look, look at this.
Highly confidential.
This is secret information.
It doesn't really get
much more explicit than that.
It really doesn't.
Caitlin, Paul.
And also, stay right there.
Let's bring in our colleague
and friend, CNN
anchor Kaitlan Collins,
who was also on that team that broke
this stunning reporting last week.
CNN senior justice correspondent Evan
Perez also joins us.
And CNN
legal analyst and former
federal prosecutor
Eliot Williams is with us
and CNN political
analyst and senior
political correspondent
for The New York Times, Maggie Haberman.
Paul Read also back with us.
I want to read part of this transcript,
quote, As president,
I could have declassified,
but now I can't.
Perhaps the most stunning line
of all of all of this.
Kaitlan Collins,
let me go to you
for your thoughts,
given you were a key part of this team
that broke the original reporting.
Do you expect that
that would be a key part
when this indictment is unsealed?
Everyone will be looking for
was this tape a key part of it?
Because this was, again, about Iran.
This is about a key
national security issue.
Yeah.
And it completely undercuts
everything that Trump
and his legal team has said publicly
about the powers
that he had after
leaving office
or what he could do with these documents.
And I do think that is one of those
damning lines
of the transcript of this tape
that we reported on.
And there was a reason
this tape has caused
so much consternation
in Trump's legal team.
They didn't learn about it
all that long ago.
It was only in March
when this recording was played
during testimony from another Trump aide
or they heard it.
And then Trump's legal team
was alerted to the fact that prosecutors
did have this audio in their hands
and having Trump on tape admitting
that he doesn't have the power
to declassify it, which we all knew
because we've read
the Presidential Records Act
we've looked at what
that declassification process is.
But it completely undercuts
any of the defenses
that you've seen Trump's
legal team offer up publicly.
And so that is why
this is such a central piece
in this reporting.
Of course, in the bigger context
of what we saw
last night with the former president
being indicted in this,
of course, now going
where Caitlin Pawlenty's on Tuesday
to that Miami courthouse,
this is going to be something
that is a real problem
for his legal team
to try to defend in court and explain.
And it's something that
they are pretty candid
about behind the scenes when it comes to
just how crucial this tape is.
Eliot, as a lawyer, when you look through
or listen
to that transcript,
there's yes, him
acknowledging that he can't
unilaterally declassify things by magic
or after the fact.
But he also seems to be holding
and talking about a specific date.
What stands out to you
as most problematic
for the former president's legal team?
Well,
that's
what helps
the former president
is it
appears that they have not
found this document.
And it appears, based on
what we know about the charges thus far,
that he was not charged
with disclosing the contents
of a document to another person.
That itself
would have been a federal offense
if he had access to something sensitive
and showing it to somebody else
if it could hurt the national defense.
Look, the a challenge here is that
declassification declassification
doesn't really matter
as an element of the offenses
he's charged with,
merely what it matters
if they are government records
and most importantly,
that there was a series
of acts
taken to obstruct the in the Justice
Department's investigation.
So it's a little bit of a red
herring to go down the road
of saying you know,
if he declassified it, therefore,
there would not have been crimes
committed here.
Because the simple fact is,
once the documents were removed,
mishandled, misappropriated,
whatever words you want to use,
that's when the crimes were committed.