iran. isn t it amazing how a big pile of papers, this thing just came out. look. this was him. they presented me this. this off the record. but they presented me this. this was him. this was the defense department and him. wow. we looked this up. this was him. this wasn t done by me. this was him. all sorts of stuff. pages. let s see here. yeah. i just isn t that amazing? this totally wins my case, you know? except it is highly confidential, secret, there is secret information. but look at this. if you had to boil this entire case down to two sentences this would be it. this is secret information. look at this. and if we break it down, look at this. this tells me as a prosecutor he is showing them something. you can hear them reacting. you can hear papers rustling.
this was done by the military and given to him. one thing to keep in mind. it doesn t matter for the charges made this in case whether it was classified or declassified. the law relates to sensitive defense information. here he is saying this is a document created by the military earlier he said it relates to attack plans for iran. and so that gives you that element this is almost the definition of sensitive defense information. classification is a necessity, but listen to this. um, i think we can probably right? i don t know. we will have to see. yeah, we will have to declassify i am a president, i can declassify it. now i can t. this puts the lie to donald trump s campaign of public defenses. how many times has he said i automatically declassified, i declassified through mental thought, nothing was sensitive. here is acknowledging correctly as president i could have declassified it. now i can t.
about this. they are throwing around state secrets and donald trump is taking it sort of very lightly. the other thing to keep in mind, th there are witnesses. everyone is a potential witness for the prosecution, people who will be called at trial. tell us what was happening in the room? what did he show you? what did you see? who is he talking to? we don t know. could be walt nauta who is appearing in court later today. if so, you know walt nauta was in that room and knew how sensitive the documents were. he welie took a legal elemen it. he is the lawyer. leave it to ely. thank you, come on. let s talk about this. our chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst john miller. okay, john, that was helpful to dissect what s important about this. can you speak to why this particular document about a potential attack on iran is so crucial?
two reasons. he is not charged with disseminating classified information. he is charged with i will healy possessing information about the national defense. a lot of documents were found and they are about a lot of different things. if you have one recorded on tape where he is talking about possessing it and showing it to people without clearances a contingency plan developed by the joint chiefs of staff to attack iran if it came to that is about as purely national defense information as you can get. it s not an analysis of the political economic situation in maldova. it s a document about the u.s. defense and leaking that information, sharing that information joking about it. joking about it. giving it to someone who might put it in a book. discussing the idea can we hand this document over in the loose lips sink ships department, once
president donald trump discussing classified documents at his bedminster, new jersey, golf course in 2021. it happened in an interview with people working on the memoir of mark meadows. the special counsel s indictment alleges that trump claire davis classified information about those to attack iran. elie hoenig is with us right now. we start by playing the tape in its entirety. we will pause at key moments and have you kind of break bowne w down / down what means for the prosecution s case. let s start it with this. these are bad, sick people. that was your coup, you know? against you. started right at the when milley is talking about, oh, they were no, they were trying to do that before he was sworn in. that s right. trying to overthrow well, with milley, let me see that. i got to show you an example. he said that i wanted to attack