If I Did It, by Donald Trump

One way to stop being prosecuted for crimes is to stop confessing to crimes on live mics:

An audio recording of former President Donald J. Trump in 2021 discussing what he called a “highly confidential” document about Iran that he acknowledged he could not declassify because he was out of office appears to contradict his recent assertion that the material he was referring to was simply news clippings.

Portions of a transcript of the two-minute recording of Mr. Trump were cited by federal prosecutors in the indictment of Mr. Trump on charges that he had put national security secrets at risk by mishandling classified documents after leaving office and then obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them.

The recording captured his conversation in July 2021 with a publisher and writer working on a memoir by Mr. Trump’s final chief of staff, Mark Meadows. In it, Mr. Trump discussed what he described as a “secret” plan regarding Iran drawn up by Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Defense Department. Mr. Trump was citing the document in rebutting an account that General Milley feared having to keep him from manufacturing a crisis with Iran in the period after Mr. Trump lost his re-election bid in late 2020.

The audio, which is likely to feature as evidence in Mr. Trump’s trial in the documents case, was played for the first time in public on Monday by CNN and was also obtained by The New York Times.

The argument that Trump is being treated differently than an ordinary citizen is true: an ordinary citizen would already be doing hard time for this.

…Although it’s hard to argue with this:

Some folks laugh at how Trump more or less publicly admits to acts he has been charged with, and he's on tape for some of it, too. But remember, he needs just one juror to dig in & refuse to convict regardless of the evidence. And this is the jury pool. https://t.co/BThyVqjPDb— Orin Kerr (@OrinKerr) June 27, 2023