#Trump on reported audio discussing classified document: ‘Everything I did was right’

Former President Donald Trump on Thursday dismissed reports that the Justice Department has an audio record of him talking about retaining a classified document after leaving the White House.

“I don’t know anything about it. All I know is this. Everything I did was right,” Trump said at a town hall event with Fox News host Sean Hannity in Iowa. 

Trump added that he abided by the Presidential Records Act “100 percent.” The act details that presidents and vice presidents must retain official documents and turn them over to the National Archives for preservation.

CNN first reported Wednesday that federal prosecutors have an audio recording of Trump speaking in the summer of 2021 about a classified Pentagon document he held onto even after leaving the White House. The document reportedly relates to a potential attack on Iran.

The report could prove significant as Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith investigates whether Trump mishandled classified material after he left the White House in early 2021. Federal agents last August executed a search warrant on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida after the former president refused to turn over classified material he had in his possession, as required under the Presidential Records Act.

Trump on Thursday complained that the investigation was intended to hurt his chances of winning reelection in 2024.

“When you look at it, it’s another, it’s a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time. It’s a hoax,” Trump said. “And it has to do more than anything else with trying to interfere with the election.”

He also levied claims about President Biden’s retention of classified materials after a few dozen documents from his time as vice president were found at his Delaware home and an old Washington, D.C., office.

But the two cases have stark differences. Biden’s team notified federal officials quickly of the documents when they were discovered and sought to turn them over, while Trump did not cooperate with efforts by the National Archives to retrieve the documents he took with him upon leaving office to Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.

Trump has repeatedly offered varying defenses, including that he had the ability to declassify documents unilaterally and that he had the right to take those documents with him.

But legal officials have suggested the recording in which Trump reportedly talks about knowingly having a secretive document in his possession could be problematic.

“It further enhances the obstruction case because it eviscerates the two defenses that Trump has put forward,” former White House counsel Ty Cobb told CNN on Wednesday.