a closer look at the shadowy effort that s getting high-profile results getting the war in ukraine on to russian soil. we begin tonight with exclusive new reporting, the prosecutors investigating former president s handling of classified material have in their position a recording from the summer of 2021 in which the former president is telling people around him in a meeting at his golf rissoles or it in bedminster that he has held on to a pentagon document about a potential attack on iran. cnn s reporting this undercuts his argument that he declassified everything, and on the tape, as he spoke, it sounds like he was waving a piece of paper around, raising the question, was he holding the classified documents in question? which goes to what cnn s kaitlan collins asked him at cnn s town hall earlier this month. when it comes to your documents, did you ever show those classified documents to anyone? not really. i would have the right. two by the way, they were declassified
Automatically declassified when i took them. and the same goes for this. if you are the president of the united states, you can declassified just by saying it is declassified. even by thinking about it. the incident is so serious that a special counsel investigating trump has now questioned the joint chiefs chairman general mark milley about it. sources tell cnn that the tape of a meeting between trump and people without a security clearance. it did not take place at mar-a-lago as well where the other classified documents were found. but instead they were at trump s golf club in bedminster, new jersey. let me first bring in one of the journalists who broke the story. cnn s kaitlan collins. so caitlin, a huge thing here. what does this all tell us about what donald trump knew about the status? the classification status of these documents? yeah it is really significant reporting from our team. it was a team effort on this. and i think the biggest take away from it, likely the bi