Recordings of an interview have revealed that former US President Donald Trump acknowledged in 2019 that Kim Jong-un’s letters that he took with him upon leaving the White House were secret. The interview was given to journalist Bob Woodward.
Records obtained by CNN and The Washington Post reveal Trump shared with Woodward the letters that Kim had written to him, saying, “Nobody else has them, but I want you to treat them with respect … and don’t say I gave them to you, OK?”
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When Woodward in a phone call later asked Trump what he had written in the letters to Kim, the president replied, “Oh, those are so top secret.” The recordings put into question Trump’s statements that he did not take any classified documents with him when he left the White House in January 2021.
The National Archives tried to get the Kim letters back from Trump in 2021, but the FBI recovered them only in August this year after a raid at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida estate. The statements that are a part of an audiobook ‘The Trump Tapes: Bob Woodward’s Twenty Interviews With President Trump’. They bring into the limelight his defence that he did not keep any classified documents illegally at his Florida home.
A court case ensued after FBI took the documents, with Trump claiming they were protected by executive or attorney-client privilege.
The letters he shared with Kim are about Trump’s admiration of Kim, while also exchanging birthday greetings and best wishes for friends and family. Washington Post reported that the English translations of the same are included in a written transcript of the audiobooks.
Woodward told Post in an interview that Trump let him to handle the documents in a West Wing office while one of his aides watched. Trump even asked him if he had made “a photostat of them or something”.
(With inputs from agencies)
