CNN on Monday aired an audio recording in which Trump claimed after leaving the White House that he possessed classified documents about possible attacks on Iran. He also admitted that he had not declassified them before leaving office, undermining his defense that anything he took to Mar-a-Lago was automatically declassified when he removed it from the White House.
“Look, as President, I could have declassified it,” Trump says in the clip, recorded during a July 2021 meeting in Bedminster, New Jersey. “Now I can’t, you know, but that’s still a secret.”
Conway criticized Trump for being so careless with valuable, top secret information that “could result in the deaths of American soldiers” if it fell into the wrong hands.
“This man has no respect for rules. No respect for other people’s lives. No respect for the country. No respect for the constitution. No respect for his duties. He’s a sociopathic criminal. And that’s just another nail in the coffin,” Conway said.
The audio is reportedly a key piece of evidence in the case of Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith, which indicted Trump on 37 felonies earlier this month. The former president has been accused of repeatedly compromising national security and refusing to return boxes of sensitive documents stored at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, despite a government subpoena.