Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told investigators at Special Counsel Jack Smith he had no recollection of former President Donald Trump releasing classified documents before he left the White House.
ABC News reported Sunday morning that Meadows said he was unaware of Trump’s “standing order” to release a wide range of classified documents that had been taken to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s home and private club in Florida.
Since the FBI searched the property last August, Trump has been pushing for declassification of all documents he took from the White House.
Trump pleaded not guilty to 40 criminal charges related to improper handling of classified materials.
ABC also received an early draft of Meadows’ memoir, The Chief’s Chief, which included a description that Trump had a secret war plan “on the couch” of his Bedminster, NJ office when he was meeting with Meadows’ ghostwriter and publicist .
Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows (right) told investigators at Special Counsel Jack Smith he couldn’t recall former President Donald Trump (left) releasing classified documents before he left the White House
A photo of boxes of classified documents in a Mar-Lago bathroom released as part of the federal indictment against former President Donald Trump
This reference was removed at the time the book was published.
According to ABC sources, Meadows admitted to investigators that he asked for this paragraph to be removed from the book because it would be “problematic” for Trump to have the document.
As the network reported, Meadows also told Special Counsel investigators that he did not discuss these changes with Trump.
The first charge in the classified documents case related to a conversation Trump had on July 21, 2021 with an author-publisher who was working on a Meadows book.
CNN later obtained an audio recording of the conversation, in which Trump can be heard saying that the Pentagon and military officials “presented this to me — it’s confidential — but they presented this to me.”
The former president tried to push back a story in the New Yorker that said Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley and other military officials feared Trump would start a war with Iran to stay in power after he had lost the 2020 elections.
The New Yorker story was released a week before the conversation, which reportedly took place in the audio recording.
Meadows (left) testified that he was not aware of any “standing orders” from Trump (right) to release a wide range of classified documents that had been brought to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s home and private club in Florida
“This totally wins my case, you know? Unless it’s strictly confidential. Secret. “This is classified information,” Trump is heard saying in the leaked clip.
A woman on the recording then commented, “Hillary would print this out all the time,” a nod to classified documents.
“She would send it to Anthony Weiner, the pervert,” Trump replied.
The rustling of papers can be heard several times during the two-minute clip.
“By the way, isn’t that incredible?” Trump also said. “These are the papers. That was made by the military and given to me.’
“Look, as President, I could have declassified it. Now I can’t, you know,” he added, noting how “interesting” and “cool” it was.
Before and after the audio clip was released, Trump insisted that he show newspaper clippings from Meadows’ team.
“I said it very clearly — I had a whole desk full of papers, mostly newspaper articles, copies of magazines, copies of various plans, copies of stories that had to do with many, many subjects, and what was said was absolute.” Fine. And very perfect,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier. “We didn’t do anything wrong.” This is a complete hoax.’
He reiterated this point after the audio recording came out.
“All I know is that I didn’t do anything wrong. We had lots of papers, lots of papers piled up. “You can actually hear the newspaper rustling,” Trump told Fox News.
After the Mar-a-Lago raid, the ex-president’s team released a statement saying Trump had “entered a standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office and brought to the residence were removed at the moment.” shall be deemed released by removing them.” .’
According to ABC, Meadows told investigators that he had heard the term “standing order” at the time, but that it wasn’t related to bulk document release.
Meadows also testified that he did not help pack boxes at the end of the term, but also told investigators that he also did not see Trump pack boxes, ABC said.
After the National Archives initially contacted Trump to get the documents back, Meadows said he offered the ex-president to help search the boxes and help with the recovery, but Trump did not approach his ex-counsel about the offer, said the network.