It was six years ago this week when former FBI Director James Comey prepared to testify to the Senate about a highly provocative topic: He was poised to talk under oath about his conversations with Donald Trump about the Russia scandal. The then-president turned to Twitter to suggest there might’ve been secret tape recordings of their conversations.
As it turns out, Trump had simply made all of this up, but Comey made clear he wished the threats were true. “Lordy, I hope there are tapes,” he told senators.
The phrase had nothing to do with Trump’s classified documents scandal, of course, though as the criminal investigation has unfolded, plenty of the former president’s critics have probably thought to themselves, “Lordy, I hope there are tapes.” It was against this backdrop that multiple news organizations published reports yesterday on the existence of — you guessed it — relevant tapes. The Washington Post, for example, published this piece overnight:
Special counsel Jack Smith has obtained a 2021 recording in which Donald Trump appears to brag about having a classified document related to Iran. … The recording was made at a meeting at Trump’s golf course in Bedminster, N.J. … The audio features Trump describing a multi-page document that he claims is about possibly attacking Iran, expressing a desire to share that information with others but also making some kind of acknowledgment that he shouldn’t do so, the people said.
The Post’s report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, added that the recording suggested the former president “understood both the legal and security concerns around his possession of such restricted information.”
CNN, which was the first to report the news about the recording, noted the recording would appear to undercut Trump’s claims that he declassified the materials he took and refused to give back: “The recording indicates Trump understood he retained classified material after…
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