By Aaron Miller-
Former U.S leader, Donald Trump, acknowledged in 2019 that letters he wrote to Kim Jong-un and later took with him upon leaving the White House were secret, according to recordings of an interview he gave to a journalist.
that call into question the credibility of one of Trump’s main defenses in the investigation into his unauthorized retention of government files.
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It has been revealed that in December of that year, Trump shared with Woodward the letters that Kim had written to him, saying, “Nobody else has them, but I want you to treat them with respect … and don’t say I gave them to you, OK?” according to recordings obtained by CNN and the WAshingtom post revealed.
During a weekend call the following month, Woodward asked to see what Trump had written to the North Korean leader, the president replied: “Oh, those are so top secret.”
The comments are a stark contradiction of Trump’s claim that he did not take any government secrets with him upon leaving the White House in January 2021.
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The statements, included in The Trump Tapes: Bob Woodward’s Twenty Interviews With President Trump set for release on Tuesday, also raise questions about the credibility of his defense to allegations that he illegally kept government secrets at his south Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago.
The former president decided to battle the case in court, citing executive or attorney-client privilege.
The letters to Kim, written by Trump apparently reveals a disturbing admiration for the south Korean leader, despite his atrocious record for human rights breaches.
Trump also exchanged birthday greetings, and sent “best wishes” for friends and family, according to English translations of the letters that the Post reported are included in a written transcript of the audiobooks.
The betrayal of his conduct is reminiscent of his warped praise for the hoodlums who mounted an insurrection on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021 as congressmen met to certify the victory of Joe Biden.
During his visits to the White House, Trump asked Woodward about the documents, and if he had made “a Photostat of them or something”. Woodward replied that he had dictated them into his recorder.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Woodward, an associate editor at the paper who is best known for his work uncovering the Watergate scandal, said Trump allowed him to handle the documents in a West Wing office as an aide watched.
Woodward added that the documents contained no obvious classification markings.
In the audiobook, Woodward described “the casual, dangerous way that Trump treats the most classified programs and information, as we’ve seen now in 2022 in Mar-a-Lago, where he had 184 classified documents, including 25 marked ‘top secret’”.
The journalist was referring to Trump’s comment that he “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.”
Referring to Vladimir Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping, Trump remarked to the journalist: “We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before.
Meanwhile, Justice Department prosecutors believe there’s enough evidence to charge former President Donald Trump with obstruction in the agency’s investigation into documents he brought back to Mar-A-Lago, Bloomberg
The DOJ has also alleged in court filings that it believes “efforts were likely taken to obstruct” its investigation into Trump taking White House documents back to Mar-A-Lago with him, as the ex-president did not turn over all classified records when subpoenaed by the government to do so and allegedly “concealed and removed” documents from a secure storage room where investigators had asked him to keep all remaining White House documents.
Meanwhile Trump is also expected to testify Wednesday in a defamation case pitting him against a prominent American columnist who says he raped her in the 1990s.E. Jean Carroll, 78, alleges that Trump sexually assaulted her in a New York department store.
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