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H -- limited by his post presidency to declassify records. jack smith has it in his possession. sources describe it as a, quote, important piece of evidence in the possible case -- possible charges against trump. it undercuts his argument that he declassified everything. we're told the reporting is two minutes long from july of 2021 and in it trump talks about a document involving a potential attack on iran. abby philip asked trump attorney about this last night. he deflected. >> did you know that this tape existed? are there others? >> i'm not going to try a case based on the government leaks...

How would a charge under the espionage act look? >> yeah. the espionage act pro dates -- predates the classified act. it refers to national defense information. now generally speaking, whenever there is a production for leaking or mishandling or stealing classified documents, they still use the espionage act and demonstrate it qualified. but it doesn't have to be. here's the thing. donald trump has a slight bit of truth in his statements. this is the most dangerous place for him. yes, when he was president, he had all kinds of authority to declassify documents. but the courts have weighed in s...

Trump is heard acknowledging the limits of his ability to declassify materials once he was out of the white house which, of course, undercuts every public defense and his attorneys have provided for why he was still in possession of some of the nation's most sensitive secrets. >> this is really significant because we're talking about a recording and also what it shows based on the other public comments that have been made by the former president and his legal team. >> that's exactly right. over the past year, he and his attorneys, they've given various at times conflicting explanations for why...

Misrepresent things to the judge. that's why they refuse to do so when dealing with the special master where they kept balking and refusing to indicate whether or not trump had declassified these documents and if they could prove it. they don't want to get to that point. they don't have anything other than trump saying, yeah, i looked at them and said in my mind, it's declassified. they know that's not going to work in the end. they can play this game in the media in the interim. >> bradley moss, thank you. the race to avoid a catastrophic u.s. default is in the hands of the u.s. senate. law...

And trump's comments suggest that he would like to share the information but he is aware of limitations on his ability post-presidency to declassify records. it gets straight at what he understood and there is reporting anybodying around nibbling around the edges, but this reporting seems to put a whole lot of new information in the public side of what we understand in terms of the strength of jack smith's case and understanding trump's true intent. >> yeah, and i think this is really interesting because everything that andrew just said assumes that there really was a four page classified docu...