Alan Dershowitz, Harvard University Law School professor emeritus, told Newsmax on Tuesday that former President Donald Trump "may have been wrong" in the leaked audio recording about classified documents.
In a recording that was obtained by CNN, Trump refers to something as being "highly confidential" and said, "See as president I could have declassified it. Now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret."
Dershowitz said on "John Bachman Now" that based on the audio that's been released, "I don't think that he can plausibly claim that what he was showing them was newspapers and magazines. It seems clear from the context he was showing them something that he believed was probably still classified."
Dershowitz noted that Trump "may have been wrong about that, there are several ways in which documents become declassified. One is the president can do it, he says he didn't do that. But there is another way and I think that's the way the Trump defense team is going to be pushing this. They can say that the content of this material, the Milley plan relating to Iran had already been made public."
He continued, "If, in fact, the content appeared publicly in any newspapers and magazines, that automatically declassifies it whether or not the person showing it to them believed it was classified."
Dershowitz also said that the audio was "of course … an illegal leak," although he did admit "it's conceivable that it could have been leaked by the people who actually made the recording, people who are on Trump's staff. That would not be illegal."
He added: "It's also possible, though unlikely, that somebody on Trump's legal defense team without Trump's permission may have leaked that. That would raise legal questions, ethical questions, and lawyer-client questions as well. But CNN's not going to tell us who leaked it to them."
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Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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