Former President Trump shared classified letters from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un with Bob Woodward, the journalist revealed in his upcoming audiobook.
“Nobody else has them, but I want you to treat them with respect,” Trump says to Woodward in December 2019, according to a copy of the audiobook obtained by CNN. “And don’t say I gave them to you.”
Woodward’s audiobook, “The Trump Tapes: Bob Woodward’s Twenty Interviews with President Trump,” features more than eight hours of interviews with the former president.
Trump’s comments to Woodward reflect an awareness that the documents, which he previously described as “love letters,” were classified. However, the letters were among the tranches of documents retrieved from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, which he has since claimed were all unclassified.
The National Archives reportedly obtained the letters when it retrieved 15 boxes of documents from Mar-a-Lago in January. The letters were among other classified documents recovered in January, leading the National Archives to alert the Department of Justice (DOJ).
The DOJ sought to obtain the remaining records from Trump, eventually culminating in the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago in August. Trump and the DOJ are currently locked in a legal battle over the status of the documents.
Trump’s legal team has so far resisted requests to explain his declassification claims.