According to conversations between Trump and Bob Woodward recorded in 2019, Trump was aware that materials he had retrieved earlier this year from his Mar-a-Lago estate were highly classified.
This week, excerpts were released from “The Trump Tapes,” an audiobook by Woodward that will be published later this month. They include Trump’s correspondences with Kim Jong Un. he has previously referred to as “love letters.”
“Don’t say I gave them to you, okay?” Trump tells Woodward in an excerpt from their conversation in December 2019.
Woodward asks Trump whether he can see the letters he wrote Kim in this excerpt from a conversation that took places in January 2020. “Oh, those are top secret,” Trump tells WoodwardThe journalist was eventually allowed to read and record the contents of the letters on his tape recorder.
In commentary for the audiobook, Woodward reports being troubled by Trump’s cavalier attitude regarding the documents, saying that Trump responded to questions about North Korea’s nuclear program in a “casual, dangerous way.” It’s also likely that the former president revealed too much when bragging about the U.S.’s nuclear program, the journalist says.
“I have built a weapons system that nobody’s ever had in this country before. We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about,” Trump tells him in the tapes.
The revelations from the Woodward audiobook could hurt Trump’s legal arguments in the case regarding his improper removal of thousands of government documents from the White House upon his exit from office, Minimum 300 must be classified.
Trump’s comments showcase that he knew almost three years ago that the letters between him and Kim were deemed classified. Trump claimed baselessly that he had declassified documents from Mar-a-Lago and other documents obtained by National Archives and Records Administrations (NARA) and Department of Justices (DOJ) since he was president. Trump even suggested that he was able to declassify documents because he was president. His thoughts are all that matter..
If classified documents from the government were declassified by President, it would be recorded. security experts have said. But there is no record of declassification for the Kim letters — and although the other documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago have not yet been made public, there’s no indication they were declassified, either.
All documents originating or handled by the president must be subject to the Presidential Records Act To be handed to NARA upon their departureThe White House will inform you whether these documents are classified. This includes mementos such as letters from foreign dignitaries.
It’s possible that Trump is still holding onto additional government documents, either at Mar-a-Lago or elsewhere. According to NARA The agency has not yet found all the documents it knew went missing.When Trump became a private citizen.
