Trump may have killed whatever 'wiggle room' he had with bombshell Bedminster recording: analysis

Many legal analysts have said that special counsel Jack Smith has a strong case against former President Donald Trump in the Mar-a-Lago documents scandal -- and a new analysis from the Washington Post's Philip Bump shows it could have just got even stronger.

In his analysis, Bump zeroes in on the leaked audio recording of the former president boasting to guests at his Bedminster resort about possessing a secret attack plan for Iran that he acknowledges he never declassified while he was president.

Bump noticed while listening to the recording that there is a small but relevant discrepancy between what he heard Trump say and what the government alleged Trump said in its indictment.

And unfortunately for Trump, this discrepancy does him no favors.

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In the indictment, the transcript shows Trump saying of the document, "As president I could have declassified it... now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret."

However, as Bump hears it, Trump actually says, "See, as president I could have declassified it... now I can’t, you know. But this is classified."

"This is an important distinction. If Trump said 'this is still a secret,' he has some wiggle room on denying that he was showing his audience a document that was legally protected under classification rules," Bump writes. "If he said 'this is classified,' that goes out the window. It’s Trump admitting that he had something that was classified in his hand, at that moment — and was showing it to people."