Last month an audio tape of Donald Trump apparently showing a classified document he knew he wasn’t allowed to share dominated headlines. But the incident wasn’t part of the DOJ’s classified documents indictment of Trump… until now. Tali Farhadian Weinstein, former federal and N.Y. state prosecutor, and legal analyst Lisa Rubin talk with Alex Wagner about the matter.
Alex Wagner: Buried in this 60 page superseding indictment is an additional charge against Donald Trump concerning the willful retention of national defense information. Remember that Trump was already facing 31 counts of willful retention of the classified documents he hoarded down at Mar-a-lago. But this new 32nd count is a bit different. But this new 32nd count is a bit different. This is for a presentation concerning military activity in a foreign country. And that charge answers a question that was raised by the previous indictment about whether Trump had a certain document in his possession when this conversation took place at his Bedminster golf club in 2021.
Audio tape: I just found isn’t that amazing? This totally wins my case, you know. Except it is, like, a highly confidential secret. This is secretive for me.
Alex Wagner: According to the superseding indictment, the document that Trump possessed and showed on July 21 2021, the one referenced in that very audio tape we just played. The document is charged as count 32 in this superseding indictment. indictment. Still with me tonight is former federal and state prosecutor, Tali for Hailey and Weinstein. Tali. Now we know that it wasn’t just bluster, at least according to the DOJ, it sounds like Trump had the Iran war plans in his hand that he was waving around to whoever was in his office. Why are they charging this now?
Tali Fahardian Weinstein: So they’ve always had the document that we know. And remember, Alex, they had more than a 100 documents and only charged 31 not 32. So they had made an initial decision of which to leave on the cutting room floor, and I think that there were 2 categories of things. 1 were the ones that didn’t have a jury appeal, I think. We’re too boring. Maybe we’re technically classified, but didn’t really tell you why this was a danger to the country — Right. — that he was retaining them.
Then, of course, More importantly, in these cases, prosecutors often hold back ones that are so sensitive that they don’t want to expose them in an open trial. And, generally, the agencies that have what we call the equities in those documents that did the work in putting together. They get to weigh in and say, no. It’s not worth it to prosecute based on this one. So I think this fell into that pile, and they eventually got, I think, a witness who or some other evidence that connected it to the waving around at Bedminster. And once they made that connection, they decided that it was worth including in the indictment.
And I think that’s for 2 reasons. 1 is, as we talked about a bit earlier, this means that this is gonna get in front of the jury before they would have had to litigate a bit whether evidence of an uncharged crime could come in because that’s generally considered prejudicial to a defendant to say here are other bad things that he did that we’re gonna tell you about without charging him. So there are various rules for the admission of that evidence, and now they don’t have to deal with that. They short circuit all of that. but I also think this just has a lot of jury appeal because it’s so serious a war plan against Iran, and the reasons for waving it around or keeping it are so unserious. And I would want to be able to say that sentence to a jury. And now they come.
Alex Wagner: And it sounds like the difference maker is they have someone who can confirm who was in the room at that time in Bedminster Yes. Indeed. He was waving around the Iran war plans. The DOJ was like, oh, check. We have those in our possession. We got them And the first tranche of documents that were returned to us after we begged Trump for an unspecified number of months, they have them, they could say, we know that this was real. This was really the president waving around secret military plans to people to base it. own Mark Milley, even though he didn’t own Mark Milley in the pro in the colloquial sense. Not anyway. I gotta ask you as we talk about classified documents. NBC News Laura Jarrett is reporting that Trump’s lawyers are now requesting that Trump be able to discuss classified discovery outside of a classified setting, notably in his home. The prosecutors have responded.
There is no basis for the defendant’s request that he be given the extraordinary authority to discuss classified information at his residence. And it is particularly striking that he seeks permission to do so in the very location at which he is charged with willfully retaining the documents charged in this case. The irony, Tolly, never been thicker.
Tali Fahardian Weinstein: I think what he’s saying with this, really borderline frivolous motion is I’m not like other defendants, and I don’t wanna be inconvenienced. the way that other defendants are. Because when you are given access to these things, as a defendant, you have to look at them in a skiff with your lawyer. As a care of everybody else, classified information.
A facility. And I think actually felt kind of sorry for his lawyers when I read this motion because this can’t be good for their credibility with the court. I mean, it suggests that as a team, they are not taking seriously what is at stake here. And it seems to me that he made a calculation that it was more important for him to sort of puff up. He is a former president and wants to continue to be regarded as such first instead of sort of thinking about just the confines of this.
Alex Wagner: literally asking to do the thing that he is being charged for. Can I look at classified information in my bathroom with a gold chandelier? please? No. Absolutely not. You’re not allowed to do that. Maybe in some circular way.
The other piece of this is there there seems to be some kind of witness who played a key role in bringing this bedminster audio tape bringing that sort of kerfuffle, what are we gonna call that? It’s not being charged as a dissemination case, bringing that incident down to Florida. Right? Someone said the thing Trump was waving around was an actual Iran war document, and now the feds can charge Trump on that because they have in their possession the Iran war plan.
Lisa Rubin: But the way that they have the Iran war plan is revealed in this indictment, and it’s surprising to me. So one of the things we see in this indictment is a list of all the documents, the classified documents that Trump is being charged with willfully and unlawfully retaining. That new document, the Iran war document, has dates of when he unlawfully retained it. They all start January 20 2021. The day he left office. Most of them end June 3 2022.
That’s the date that the DOJ and the FBI went down tomorrow long ago to meet with Evan Corcoran. But this one, the Iran war document, what’s the end date on it? January 17 2022, That’s the same day that Trump returned the first tranche of 15 boxes to the national archives, and we know that because it’s in the indictment.
Alex Wagner: But so why does that mean, what does that suggest what do you draw from that? That they’ve had this document in their position for a while. They didn’t charge for it. Initially.
Lisa Rubin: They might not have known that was, in fact, the document. And you were discussing earlier tonight with Tali Farhadian Weinstein. that they must have also had a witness who could confirm for them, yes. That is the document I saw at that meeting in Bedminster in July of 2021.
Alex Wagner: And they can now bring in that episode to this trial. Right? That seems important for public opinion because the whole thing with this case is well, how grave is it? How serious is it? And now they can be brought into the courtroom in Florida. Well, this is how serious it was. There were US military plans to attack Iran, and the president was waving them around to just anybody just so that he could basically have a war of words with Mark Milley and try and win that.
Lisa Rubin: That’s right. And we’ve always known that that episode was enormous in terms of demonstrating Trump’s intent. Right? He says to the people assembled there I shouldn’t be showing you this, but look at this. Now we have the document in question. You’ll remember that after the initial indictment, Trump told multiple media outlets that I never had a document or I was rummaging around my drawers. I have newspaper articles and all sorts of stuff. must have been one of those. Oh, there were some plans. Oh, I really just met golf course plans.
He was all over the place in explaining what this was. but he repeatedly denied that he had a classified document that was shown to the people at Westminster. We now know definitively that that is not true. The special counsel would not have put in the indictment that the document he waved around was in fact the document charged in count 32 unless they have very crystal clear evidence of that.
Alex Wagner: Well, the consciousness of guilt on all three on the part of all of the hush, the emoji, the audio room, sneaking around the property, waving around the document, then lying about it, knowing that it was not declassified. It’s all in there. It’s real, it’s a real read.
Source: MSNBC
