In an interview on CNN last week, former Trump White House counsel Ty Cobb said that the recent revelation about the audio recording of Donald Trump admitting that he possessed classified documents has put the former president in a tough position, Mediaite reported.
CNN reported last week that prosecutors involved in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s probe of Trump’s handling of classified documents have an audio recording of Trump admitting that he had taken a classified Pentagon document outlining a possible attack on Iran after he left office.
In July 2021, two ghostwriters working on the autobiography of former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows met with Trump and his aides at Bedminster where this audio recording was made.
While CNN did not have access to the recording, sources told the network that the audio features the former president saying that he wanted to share the details of the Pentagon document but he knew there were limits to his ability to declassify documents now that he is no longer in office.
While appearing on “OutFront,” last week, Cobb told host Erin Burnett that the audio “enhances” the Justice Department’s case on obstruction since it “eviscerates” both defenses Trump’s legal team has put forward, namely that by taking the documents with him when he left office, Trump declassified them, and that he can “declassify them in his own mind.”
Cobb said both arguments are “out the door” now that Trump is on audio acknowledging that there are “restraints on what he could do with documents.”
Cobb added that the audio will “put additional pressure” on the special counsel to link the obstruction case to the case involving Trump’s possession and “dissemination” of classified records.
He said the existence of the audio “makes the obstruction case more compelling.”
According to the CNN report, several witnesses have been questioned about the July 2021 recording, including Gen. Mark Milley.
Cobb told Burnett that he thinks the special counsel prosecutors “have their foot on [Trump’s] neck. He also suggested that the Trump team knows that an indictment in the case is imminent since Trump has started raising money off a potential indictment in the case just as he did before he was indicted by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
