The “Iran attack plan” that former President Donald Trump is accused of keeping at his Mar-a-Lago home is reportedly not among the 31 documents Trump has been charged with retaining — renewing doubts about whether it exists.
The mysterious document is at the heart Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump, which included a transcript of a recording of Trump talking about a supposed plan to attack Iran, which he said he had opposed. The recording, which was leaked to CNN, includes Trump talking about a “secret” plan from Gen. Mark Milley that he said he could have declassified as president that would disprove the claim Trump wanted to go to war.
Asked about the incident by Fox News’ Bret Baier earlier this month, Trump said: “I didn’t have a document per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories, and articles.”
On Tuesday CBS News published a report that may corroborate Trump’s explanation, suggesting that if such a document did exist, it was not among the documents seized by the Department of Justice, or in the indictment:
The Defense Department memo on Iran — at the heart of the now-public audio recording that captured a July 2021 meeting with former President Donald Trump — is not part of the 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information charged in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of the former president, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to CBS News.
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[A]ccording to a source familiar with the matter, Trump was not charged with unlawfully holding onto the Iran-related document discussed in the recording.
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Multiple sources familiar with the investigation previously told CBS News that defense attorneys were not certain the Iran memo in question was ever recovered and returned to the government. Still, the 2021 incident is one of two instances referenced in the indictment, in which Smith describes Trump allegedly showing national defense information to individuals without proper clearance.
Some Trump allies have said the president was merely engaging in bluster. If the document does not exist, the prosecution would appear to have charged Trump for the mere appearance of being willing to share secrets.
Nothing in the indictment suggests that Trump is suspected of sharing or selling the documents, nor has he been accused of destroying them, suggested the “Iran attack plan,” if it existed, was not destroyed by Trump.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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