Former President Donald Trump is not having a hot guy summer; he has been caught up in a heat wave due to his countless court cases.
This week, Trump’s troubles became a bit more complex after one of his former staff members conducted an interview to say he had been lying.
The real estate mogul is facing possible prison time (although highly unlikely) for hoarding a substantial amount of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.
The politician was indicted in early June by a grand jury and slapped with 37 felony counts thanks to Special Counsel Jack Smith for allegedly mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021.
The former reality TV star was arraigned in a Florida courtroom, where he pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
Trump has a date with destiny on July 14 for the following reason: “A pretrial conference planned for July 14 will address how classified information must be handled during the case, which will affect how early the trial can be scheduled.”
The upcoming trial has just gotten more interesting because former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in an interview on MSNBC that she witnessed Trump showing classified documents to people at Mar-a-Lago.
Stephanie Grisham did not reveal the identities of those who were granted access to the government’s secret document. She had this to say about seeing Trump in a compromising position: “I watched him show documents to people at Mar-a-Lago on the dining room patio. So, he has no respect for classified information; he never did.”
Stephanie Grisham’s revelations put Trump in a delicate spot because he stated the complete opposite a few weeks ago.
CNN aired a recording that all but confirmed that Trump happily shared classified documents with his friends or guests at his resorts.
The network obtained a partial transcript of a recording of a private meeting that took place in July 2021 at Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club.
During the conversation, Trump can be heard talking and showing a classified Pentagon document that he took from the White House.
The de facto leader of the Republican Party eagerly revealed that the documents contained plans to attack Iran, acknowledging they were “highly confidential” and contained what he described as “secret information.”
Trump also ridiculed his former opponent, Hillary Clinton, by saying: “Hillary would print that out all the time, you know, her private emails.”
The former president said in the recording: “See, as president, I could have declassified it. Now I can’t.”
Taking to Truth Social, Trump made the bizarre and mystifying claim that the recording exonerated him.
He wrote: “The Deranged Special Prosecutor, Jack Smith, working in conjunction with the DOJ & FBI, illegally leaked and ‘spun’ a tape and transcript of me which is actually an exoneration, rather than what they would have you believe.”
In an appearancew on CNN, Trump continued to claim he is innocent by saying: “That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things,” he said in that interview. “And it may have been held up or may not, but that was not a document. I didn’t have a document, per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories, and articles.”
Trump is also under investigation for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, for mishandling campaign funds, and for that fateful phone call he made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in January 2021 where he demanded that 11,000 votes be found so he could remain president.
