Earlier this week, the recording of Donald Trump discussing a classified military plan back in July 2021 was leaked to the media. According to Trump, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley commissioned the plan for a hypothetical scenario involving an invasion of Iran.
“It is like a highly confidential secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this,” Trump can be heard saying in the leaked recording. “See, as president, I could have declassified, but now I can’t, you know. Isn’t that interesting? It’s so cool.”
When the existence of the recording was first made public, the media quickly pounced on the story, describing it as “smoking gun” evidence of Trump’s supposed negligence with classified information.
“Opinion Trump’s smoking gun recording gives Jack Smith all he needs,” wrote Jennifer Rubin in The Washington Post.
Newsweek claimed that “legal experts say an audio recording in the DOJ’s indictment of Trump is ‘smoking gun’ evidence” against Trump.
The recording admittedly doesn’t exactly cast Trump in a positive light, but the media may be grossly overstating the relevance of the Iran memo discussed in the recording.
Let me explain.
As CBS News reporter Catherine Herridge points out, the Iran memo was not part of the evidence included in the 31 counts Trump faces for the willful retention of national defense information.
The Defense Department memo on Iran — at the heart of the now-public audio recording that captured a July 2021 meeting with former President Donald Trump — is not part of the 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information charged in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of the former president, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to CBS News.
In the recording of the meeting at Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey golf club, the former president can be heard apparently showing and discussing what he described as “highly confidential, secret” documents with aides. Sources say the documents were related to plans for a potential U.S. attack on Iran.
[…]
Multiple sources familiar with the investigation previously told CBS News that defense attorneys were not certain the Iran memo in question was ever recovered and returned to the government. Still, the 2021 incident is one of two instances referenced in the indictment, in which Smith describes Trump allegedly showing national defense information to individuals without proper clearance.
Trump has consistently maintained he did nothing wrong.
The memo and recording in question are indeed mentioned as evidence in Jack Smith’s indictment. However, a reliable source has clarified that Trump was not charged with retaining the Iran memo.
Curious, isn’t it? Since the indictment dropped, that has been presented as the most damning evidence against him, yet he wasn’t charged for it.
It should come as no surprise that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office declined to comment for the story.
As for all of those who insisted the audio recording was a “smoking gun,” well, how can it be when he wasn’t even charged over that document?
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