Former President Donald Trump responded to the release of the Fulton County special grand jury report on Thursday by raging at reporter Bob Woodward.
Trump is in a lawsuit with Woodward for the audio released paired with his last book Rage. Trump did 20 interviews with Woodward over 2020 with one recording from 2016. Almost all of them were from the final year in office.
Woodward's release of the tapes for publication sent Trump into a rage. While he appeared fine with Woodward talking to him and publishing a book about it, the release of the tapes was something for which Trump believes he deserves credit.
The Washington Post editorial board called the lawsuit "absurd and dangerous" at the time pointing to the fourth interview, on Dec. 30, 2019, when Trump asks, “Okay. For the book only, right?” His then-deputy press secretary, Hogan Gidley agreed, “Right. No stories coming out, no nothing.”
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It meant that Woodward was interviewing Trump for the book, not for stories in the Washington Post. Rage was published in Sept. 2020. At the time, about 30 minutes of audio was also released. Trump never had any objections.
Suddenly things changed.
In one talk, Bob Woodward recalls an incident when Trump tells Woodward to turn off the tape recorder so he could look at some photos that his social media staffer brought in.
Trump called tales of this incident "OFF THE RECORD, NOT AUTHORIZED!"
At another point in the Woodward interview, he compares the recordings of Trump to "as close as I can get to — this is the Nixon tapes out of Trump's own mouth." Trump called this "DEFAMATORY!" Legally, it doesn't meet that standard.
The final clip Trump posted was Woodward saying that he obviously did the book off of these recordings, but he called listening to the recordings "completely different when you hear him or you put it all together."
Trump claims that this "proves the UNAUTHORIZED audio recordings are indisputably different than the written book!"
A court will decide whether or not he's right.
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