Nixon never said anything ‘as clearly illegal’ as Trump in new audio: Watergate historian

A Watergate historian and journalist compared the just-released audio of Donald Trump talking about classified documents with people who did not have a security clearance, to the secret tapes former president Richard Nixon made during his more than five years in the White House.

Garrett Graff, a former Politico editor and Washingtonian editor-in-chief is also the author of the 2022 book, Watergate: A New History.

“Speaking as a Watergate historian,” Graff said Monday night, “there’s nowhere on thousands of hours of Nixon tapes where Nixon makes any comment as clear, as clearly illegal, and as clearly self-aware as this Trump tape.”

Trump says, “these are bad sick people,” in the tape (below), obtained and published by CNN, which explains the former president’s staffer “claims there had been a ‘coup’ against Trump.”

“Like when Milley is talking about, ‘Oh you’re going to try to do a coup.’ No, they were trying to do that before you even were sworn in,” the staffer says in the audio.

“He said that I wanted to attack Iran, Isn’t it amazing?” Trump says, “as the sound of papers shuffling can be heard,” CNN adds.

“I have a big pile of papers, this thing just came up. Look. This was him. They presented me this – this is off the record but – they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him.”

Further into the recording, Trump says, “See as president I could have declassified it.”

“Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret,” Trump continues.

“Now we have a problem,” the staffer says.

“Isn’t that interesting,” Trump says.

“It’s so cool. I mean, it’s so, look, her and I, and you probably almost didn’t believe me, but now you believe me.”

Graff also says the audio is “incredibly damning” to listen to. “Somehow so much worst listening than even reading” the transcript.

Talking Points Memo publisher Josh Marshall calls the audio “an amazing recording,” and says Trump “ticks off every link in the chain of criminality and full awareness of each link in the chain.”

Listen to the Trump audio at this link.