Ballgame: Jack Smith has incriminating recording of Donald Trump in classified documents probe
This morning I pointed out that most of the “new” information being reported about Donald Trump’s classified documents scandal was actually old information, and was simply being newly made public. Jack Smith’s classified documents probe appears to be basically over, and anything that’s coming out now is merely a matter of people involved in the probe positioning things before indictment day. Now it’s happened again.
CNN is reporting this afternoon that Jack Smith has a recording of Donald Trump admitting that he knew he’d taken classified documents with him when he left office, and admitting that he knew he didn’t have the legal ability to show the documents to anyone. Specifically this relates to a classified document about attacking Iran of all things.
This is crucial because it destroys the reasonable doubt arguments Trump might try to make at trial, which are that he didn’t know he’s taken the documents, or that he mistakenly thought he’d declassified them. It also proves that he stole the most sensitive of classified documents, involving secret war plans and such, and not merely things that barely counted as secrets. This recording is, in effect, the ballgame.
But the key here is that Jack Smith has apparently had this recording all along. CNN says that Smith has even questioned witnesses in the probe about the Trump recording. In other words, this recording is old news. It’s just newly becoming public.
This once again raises the question of who’s now giving this kind of information to the media and why. After all, this classified documents probe is over. Is this a matter of Jack Smith steering the media to the correct narratives before the Trump indictment happens, so the media will prepare the public for what’s coming?
In any case, we’ll likely see a whole lot of folks on TV and Twitter incorrectly frame this Trump recording as if it were something that Jack Smith just now found out about. But the reporting makes clear that Smith has had this recording for quite some time, and that his case against Trump is partly built on it.
