Former President Donald Trump once acknowledged that he had retained "secret" military information that he had not declassified, CNN reported.
CNN made the claim Friday based on a transcript of an audio recording of a 2021 meeting during which Trump is discussing a classified Pentagon document about attacking Iran.
"As president, I could have declassified, but now I can't," Trump said, according to the transcript obtained by CNN.
CNN previously reported that the audio recording was obtained by prosecutors.
Trump said Thursday that the Department of Justice informed his legal team that a federal grand jury in Miami, Florida, had indicted him.
The New York Times reported that the Justice Department is accusing Trump of mishandling classified documents he kept upon leaving office and then obstructing the government's efforts to reclaim them.
Trump has said that all the documents he brought with him to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida residence, are declassified.
CNN last week reported that prosecutors had obtained the audio recording of the 2021 meeting at Trump's resort in Bedminster, New Jersey. Two people working on the autobiography of Trump's former chief of staff Mark Meadows, as well as Trump aides, including communications specialist Margo Martin, also attended the meeting, according to the network.
The transcript suggests that Trump is showing the document he's discussing to those in the room, CNN reported.
"Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this," Trump says at one point in the transcript, according to CNN. "This was done by the military and given to me."
The meeting occurred shortly after The New Yorker published a story detailing how Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, in the final days of Trump's presidency, instructed the Joint Chiefs to ensure Trump issued no illegal orders.
"Well, with Milley – uh, 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. Look. This was him," Trump says in the transcript, according to CNN.
"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.
"All sorts of stuff – pages long, look. Wait a minute, let's see here. I just found, isn't that amazing? This totally wins my case, you know. Except it is like, highly confidential. Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this."
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.