answer jim, if this was declassified, then why are we told that he s on this tape, basically, telling the people in the room that he can t share it with them? you are told by the doj or fbi or whoever filtered that to you, anything they can think of to justify no, but the prosecution. there s new reporting today that reveals how the tape actually figures into the jack smith investigation and presentation of evidence. nbc news can report this, recording was played to the investigation to the garage that s in charge of trump s handling of documents, washington post prints two people familiar with the recorded conversation said prosecutors have asked witnesses about trudge s a awareness of the document discussing at bedminster was sensitive that he could not share or declassify after leaving office. a potential smoking gun in the form of a tape of donald trump
chief. there s no doubt he had the authority as commander in chief to be classified. it does not have to go through a bureaucratic process to be declassified. never mind, the taped conversation takes place in the summer not during the 11 minutes he was still technically commander in chief but lawyer trusty would go on to say that he could prove that trump would classify the material in 11 minutes, but he didn t reveal the evidence that he does so. that defense is there, the washington post reports this way, the audio features trump describing a multipitch document that he claims about possibly attacking iran, expressing the desire to share the information with others but also making some acknowledgement that he would not do so, which begs the question why would he not share a document if he declassified it in his mind or anywhere else. trump attorney jim trusty had no
see trump s lawyers engaged in. i imagine they do a lot of things behind the scenes that we don t see, other than reading or sometimes looney filings. they didn t simplify matters for trump at all. let me show you jim trusty s answer to where the document is today. when it comes to this document, specifically, at the heart of this reporting, how did this document wind up in bedminster? yeah, i know i m good and boring for your ratings but i am not going to try the case that s being set up by leaks that i don t believe are accurate. has the record been returned to the national archives? same answer. so you re not prepared to say 20e7b9 whether the documents have been returned to the national archives or declassified. even trump would know, and he s got a reptilian survival sense if he thought he might have done something wrong, he would have is given it back, i didn t do it. this is 2021.
kims in the declassified investigation is where we begin. the new york times reporter katy bender is here. also joining us, former dispute assistant u.s. attorney harry litman is back at the table. and msnbc rick stengel. katy, this story broke while we were on the air yesterday. as soon as we saw it from our friends over at cnn. we talked about it for a good part of the broadcast. but there s incredible reporting including in the new york times filling out how we understand this tape to be deployed by jack smith, listen. yeah. so what he wants to do, he wants to explain to jurors that donald trump s defense he had a few defenses, but the top defense again is he just declassified everything the minute he was leaving office so everything would have been declassified. so the idea he s hesitating to share something because it could be too sensitive, does sort of
details, what we know so far is that we expected and what we ve seen from donald trump for eight years now. mary, there is something again when there is a revelation and most are from investigative journalists that aren t talking to any of us, but the revelation always makes me look at trump s public utterances differently. and there is an interview with sean hannity where hannity goes you would never ask for this stuff to be taken out, would you? and he said oh, yeah, if i wanted to, i could, and if i could, i did. and sean says let s move on. he doesn t ever deny having it, using it or having the right to share it. and in all his legal defenses, they are on earth 4, i don t know what they are at this point. he declassified it, he didn t have it, he moved it, he didn t know where it was. the gap and gulf between what he is saying out loud on tv and