The Trump audio reveals key details we didn’t know before. He should be worried

This tape is truly a bombshell piece of evidence

Classified documents could be heard loudly rustling with laughter filling the room as the former President appeared to casually commit multiple federal crimes. This newly released audio of Donald Trump not only showcases the strength of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case, it also undercuts Trump’s shifting defenses. This tape has some key new details that weren’t previously reported or included in Trump’s federal indictment.

Reading the previous reporting on the tape’s transcript is one thing, but hearing the brazen hubris as Donald Trump exposed America’s secrets to people without a security clearance is another thing entirely. It’s even more stunning when you take into account that Trump knew he was being recorded since he was meeting with Mark Meadows’s biographers. CNN played the two-minute tape from the now infamous July 2021 incident at Trump’s Bedminster Golf Club last night on Anderson Cooper.

“See as president I could have declassified it,” Trump accurately explains. “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.” The previous reporting on the transcript didn’t include “but this is still a secret.” In just 19 words, Trump presents an open and shut case against himself. According to the audio, Trump directly stated that he no longer had the power to declassify the documents and explicitly noted that the Pentagon Iran attack plan in his possession was “still a secret.”

That segment is important for multiple reasons. First, it appears to establish criminal intent. Trump is clearly expressing knowledge of the fact that the document is classified and he had no power to declassify it. Second, it debunks Trump’s months-long legal defense that he believed he automatically declassified the documents when he took them from the White House.

“These are the papers,” Trump says elsewhere in the audio. “This was done by the military and given to me.” Trump’s assertion that "these are the papers" is also a new development. This one was not present in Jack Smith’s indictment or in CNN’s previous reporting. This is important because it suggests that the papers we hear rustling – for almost two full minutes in this audio – are indeed the Pentagon’s attack plans that Trump is speaking about. It also undercuts a new defense Trump tried out in an interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier.

“There was no document. That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things.” Trump claimed. “And it may have been held up or may not, but that was not a document. I didn’t have a document, per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.” The audio we can hear with our own ears indicates otherwise. In classic Trump fashion, he will inevitably come up with a new lie that journalists will have to debunk in our eternal game of disinformation whac-a-mole.

There’s another part of the tape that’s important for multiple reasons. After Trump says that these documents were “secret” and “highly classified,” a sycophantic staffer can be heard saying, “Hillary would print that out all the time, you know. Her private emails.” Trump appeared to love this, responding, “No, she’d send it to Anthony Weiner, the pervert.” The entire room laughed.

The audacity of throwing shade at Hillary Clinton while literally in the middle of exposing classified information is just ridiculous. I’d say it’s unbelievable but this is Donald Trump we’re talking about. Projection is his strong suit. Trump ran his 2016 campaign accusing Hillary Clinton of mishandling classified information and then had his administration probe her for years. No criminal wrongdoing was found. But here, in a tape that is a key piece of evidence in a federal indictment targeting himself, Donald Trump couldn’t resist getting at least one dig in on Clinton.

I’d also say that Hillary Clinton coming up in the conversation in this context could be used by prosecutors to further demonstrate Trump’s intent and knowledge that what he was doing is illegal. Trump very loudly communicated his knowledge of the illegalities of mishandling classified information when attacking Clinton. Trump knew very clearly that what he was doing is wrong.

The tape ends with Trump saying: “Hey, bring some, uh, bring some Cokes in please.” The casual nature of this tape is shocking, but not surprising. Trump has never cared for America’s national security. Here he is happily showing a room full of randos an American attack plan for bragging rights and to attempt to debunk a claim made in his personal beef with General Mark Milley. Trump’s small, self-centered nature is highlighted here, yet again.

This tape is truly a bombshell piece of evidence that highlights why Jack Smith must be so confident about his case. Trump acknowledges he has classified documents, clearly demonstrates he’s showing it to people, admits that he doesn’t have the power to declassify, specifically notes that this particular document is still secret, and undermines several of his future attempted legal defenses.

Former Assistant US Attorney Andrew Weissmann called the tape “game over” for Trump. I bring up Weissmann because this tape bolsters an argument he made in a recent article in The Atlantic. Weissmann speculated about whether additional charges could be brought against Trump related to his exposure of these documents, which is clearly proven in this tape. Trump wasn’t charged for the exposure of these documents in Bedminster, New Jersey. He was only charged for the willful retention of classified documents in Florida. Could Jack Smith be planning more indictments? Could a New Jersey indictment be part of a contingency plan in case things go south with Trump-friendly Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida?

We’ll see, but as it stands, the future Florida jury deciding Donald Trump’s fate will have a pretty clear-cut case in front of them. Whether this jury of Trump’s Florida peers will convict him on this evidence is yet to be seen. But I think we can all agree Trump is really worried right now because I don’t think they serve on-demand cokes in prison.