Hours after the discharge of an audio tape by which Donald Trump discusses a classified document that he kept after leaving office, the previous president intensified his attacks on the special counsel who oversees the probe that led to Trump’s historic indictment.
In an all-caps social media post Tuesday morning, Trump decried the criminal charges which were filed against him in federal court and asked “any person” to “explain” his position to special counsel Jack Smith, “his family, and his friends.”
A spokesman for the Department of Justice declined to comment on Trump’s latest broadside against Smith, who was tapped last yr to guide multiple criminal investigations involving the previous president.
Trump was indicted on charges stemming from his alleged mishandling of classified documents and efforts to maintain them from the federal government after leaving office. He pleaded not guilty earlier this month to 37 counts, including willful retention of national defense information and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Trump’s post claimed that “as president of the USA, I come under the Presidential Records Act,” as a substitute of the Espionage Act, which is the law cited in 31 of the counts against Trump. Fact-checkers have disputed Trump’s characterizations of each laws.
That statement on Truth Social was not the primary time Trump has referenced Smith’s personal circle. On the morning of his arraignment in federal court in Florida, the ex-president wrote that Smith is a “Trump Hater, as are all his family and friends.” That post also asserted without evidence that materials present in the boxes of records at the middle of the classified documents case were “probably ‘planted.'”
Trump’s latest post followed the Monday night release by CNN of an audio recording of a July 2021 meeting in Bedminster, Latest Jersey, by which Trump references a document that he says is “highly confidential” and “secret.” NBC News obtained the audio recording Tuesday.
“This was done by the military, and given to me,” Trump said within the tape, which was recorded months after he left the White House. Trump indicates that the document has to do with a plan of attack on Iran.
“As president I could have declassified it. Now I can not,” he said within the recording.
Trump was reportedly chatting with a author and publisher who were working on a book about former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Two of Trump’s staff members were also present.
None of them had security clearances or any have to know the classified information referenced by Trump, in accordance with the indictment, which references a transcript of the recording.
In a Fox News interview last week, Trump said “there was no document” and that he was referring to “newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.”
When asked concerning the newly released audio in a subsequent interview with Fox published Tuesday afternoon, Trump said, “I said it very clearly – I had an entire desk filled with a lot of papers, mostly newspaper articles, copies of magazines, copies of various plans, copies of stories, having to do with many, many subjects, and what was said was absolutely high-quality.”
“We did nothing flawed. It is a whole hoax,” Trump told Fox.
Trump’s attacks on Smith fit the pattern and elegance that the previous president has employed against lots of his other legal and political foes.
He has often fired rhetorical salvos against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who’s leading a separate, state-level criminal prosecution against Trump in reference to hush money payments made before the 2016 presidential election.
Trump in April pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records in that case. Ahead of that court appearance in Manhattan, Trump targeted the presiding judge, Juan Merchan, accusing him and his family of being “Trump haters.“
Smith is overseeing a separate probe of the facts surrounding the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and the post-presidential transfer of power in 2020. No charges have yet been filed stemming from that investigation, which is ongoing.
