- Trump is testing out a new strategy as he faces a 37-count indictment: publicly calling himself a liar.
- He told ABC News that “it was bravado” when he appeared to show off “highly confidential” information to aides during a 2021 meeting.
- It’s a remarkable shift for the former president, who has repeatedly boasted about having access to classified information.
As he faces 37 felony counts related to his handling of classified documents, former President Donald Trump is trotting out a surprising new strategy: publicly admitting that he lied.
The latest defense came in an interview with ABC News on Tuesday, where Trump insisted that he had “no regrets” about his actions and that he was just trying to impress people when he appeared to show off “highly confidential” information to his aides during a meeting in 2021.
Trump now says the papers he showed off were harmless, and that he lied about them being classified.
“If you want to know the truth, it was bravado. I was just talking and holding up papers and talking about, but I have no documents,” Trump told ABC, referring to his conversation, which was captured on audio and detailed in the special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment earlier this month.
“I didn’t have any documents,” the former president said.
Trump previously told Fox News’ Bret Baier that he didn’t take any classified material with him when he left office: “There was no document. That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things. 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.”
But Tuesday’s interview with ABC is the first time Trump has publicly said that he lied about having classified government material.
It’s a remarkable shift for the former president, who has in the past boasted about having access to the country’s most sensitive secrets.
Among other things, he tweeted out a photo from a classified intelligence briefing, disclosed information about a highly classified Israeli operation to Russian officials, and discussed the US’s response to North Korea’s ballistic missile threat in plain view of Mar-a-Lago patrons.
Trump is no stranger to legal threats. Now, however, he no longer has the shield being the president as he faces a 37-count indictment from the special counsel.
Before the indictment was unsealed, Trump tested out a number of other defenses, including claiming that the Presidential Records Act meant he could take what he wanted from the White House, and that he could declassify anything he wanted to.
Prosecutors didn’t buy that excuse — and Trump didn’t buy it either, according to the indictment.
“See, as president, I could have declassified it,” Trump told his aides during the 2021 meeting, referring to a Pentagon document he allegedly showed off. “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”
“Yeah,” a staffer said, laughing. “Now we have a problem.”
“Isn’t that interesting,” Trump said.
Insider has reached out to a lawyer for Trump and a campaign spokesperson for comment.
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