Donald Trump could have been untruthful when he was recorded talking about sharing a classified document with guests at his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club in the summer of 2021, Newsmax host Lidia Curanaj argued Tuesday.
After all, she said, “You know how Trump is.”
On the audio tape, obtained Monday by CNN, the former president can be heard saying the document—which allegedly contained attack plans on Iran—was “highly confidential” and “secret information.”
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“See, as president I could have declassified it. Now I can’t,” Trump said, according to the recording.
On Newsmax, Curanaj offered a possible defense for Trump, who was indicted earlier this month for willful retention of national defense information, along with six other federal crimes.
“So you know you have some people that say, ‘You know what? We don’t know one hundred percent for sure that what Trump was holding up was actually a classified document. Was he just kind of being hyperbolic?’” Curanaj said on the afternoon show American Agenda.
A bit later in the segment, she weighed in further.
“I could say, ‘This is a classified document’—doesn’t make it true,” Curanaj said while holding up a piece of paper. “You know how Trump is. We don’t know [if it’s true].”
In a contentious interview last week with Fox News host Bret Baier, Trump offered a similar defense, claiming he was just talking about “newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles,” adding, “There was nothing to declassify.”
When asked about the tape Tuesday while on the campaign trail in New Hampshire, Trump did not repeat his assertion that there was “nothing to declassify,” but maintained his innocence. “We did nothing wrong,” he insisted. “This is a whole hoax.”
