As a former reality TV star, Donald Trump seems to have a strange habit of forgetting of getting caught on hot mics. The twice-impeached president has a habit of willfully incriminating himself on the record — see his latest Fox News interview with correspondent Bret Baier — but a recently-revealed batch of old recordings relating to his classified documents conundrum might prove more damning than even that two-part national sit-down. A new filing in the criminal case against Trump — you know, the one where he’s facing 37 counts including Espionage Act charges — seems to suggest the prosecution has even more evidence of Trump knowingly hoarding top secret files … and they’ve got it on tape.
As part of the first round of evidence presented to Trump’s defense attorneys as part of the discovery process, Special Counsel Jack Smith revealed the prosecution has “interviews” (as in, plural) which were “recorded with his consent” and presumably confirm he knew the documents in his possession were classified and that he did not have the power to declassify them. Now, we already know of one such tape that features Trump can be heard saying he can’t show certain documents to other parties in the room because they’re classified, but the interviews are a new, and possibly damning revelation.
“They used the word plural when talking about interviews in recordings that they have of Trump, which they said were made with his consent,” CNN’s Kaitlan Collins said of the filing. “Of course, we know one of those was when he was speaking with people who were ghostwriting that book for Mark Meadows, and that is where he was talking about seemingly having a classified document in front of him. We don’t yet know what these other recordings are. But it is significant that now discovery has started in this documents case.”
And just imagine, Trump could’ve likely gotten away with all of this if he had simply liked hearing himself talk a bit less.
(Via Mediaite)