The central tenet of Donald Trump’s claim to innocence in the classified documents probe has been his insistence that he had declassified the materials in question, perhaps simply “by thinking about it.” “There doesn’t have to be a process, as I understand it,” Trump told Sean Hannity last year, not long after federal agents executed a search of his Mar-a-Lago home. “You can declassify just by saying it’s declassified.”

But a transcript of an audio recording obtained by CNN, and revealed the morning after Trump became the first former president to be indicted on federal charges, appears to undermine that defense. Speaking during a meeting at his Bedminster club in 2021, Trump repeatedly refers to a “secret” Pentagon document, which he directly says he did not declassify. “As president, I could have declassified,” he says in the recording, per CNN. “But now I can’t.”

The sound of papers being shuffled can be heard on the recording, sources told CNN, and Trump seems to be showing documents to the people in the room as he discusses “confidential” military information he retained involving Iran. “Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this,” Trump says at one point in the transcript. “This was done by the military and given to me.”

“I’ll show you an example,” he says at another point, discussing a report that Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley had instructed his staff to keep Trump from issuing illegal orders in the final days of his presidency. “He said that I wanted to attack Iran. Isn’t that amazing? I have a big pile of papers, this thing just came up. Look. This was him,” Trump continues, according to CNN. “They presented me this—this is off the record, but—they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him. We looked at some. This was him. This wasn’t done by me, this was him.”

A Trump campaign spokesman told CNN the “leaks” are meant to “inflame tensions” around Trump and accused the DOJ of “continued interference in the presidential election.” 

The transcript seems to make clear Trump knew that the documents were classified, and is just one piece of the evidence reportedly obtained by special counsel Jack Smith, who is said to have indicted Trump on seven charges Thursday. The indictment remains under seal, so details about the counts are unclear for now, but the New York Times reported that they include conspiracy, obstruction, contempt of court, mishandling official documents, and unauthorized retention of national security documents—a violation of the Espionage Act. 

On Thursday night, Jim Trusty, a lawyer representing Trump, told CNN that the charges “break out from an Espionage Act charge,” which he dismissed as “ludicrous.” (Trusty and another attorney, John Rowley, said in a statement Friday to Vanity Fair that they will no longer be representing Trump, who posted on Truth Social that he’ll be “represented by Todd Blanche, Esq., and a firm to be named later.”)

Of course, the indictment is not “ludicrous,” nor is it the political persecution Trump and his allies quickly framed it as: While Trump claimed that he was indicted by the “Biden administration,” a White House official said the president learned of the charges through news reports. Those charges—handed down by a special counsel, not Attorney General Merrick Garland or a presidential appointee—came after months of investigation; testimony from Trump allies, employees, and others in his orbit; and a grand jury vote to indict. The Florida case, moreover, has reportedly been assigned to Aileen Cannon—a judge Trump himself appointed, and who has already issued rulings favorable to Trump in the classified documents inquiry. 

In prosecuting the case, Smith’s job should be “straightforward,” Norman Eisen, Andrew Weissmann and Joyce Vance wrote in a Friday Times op-ed. “He must cut through it all and make clear to the jury that this case is about two simple things: First, a former president took documents containing some of our nation’s most sensitive secrets, which he was no more entitled to remove than the portraits of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin hanging on the walls of the Oval Office,” they wrote. “Second, when he was caught, he persistently made up excuses, lied and tried to cover up his behavior, which he continues to do.”

Politics inevitably hang over the case, even as prosecutors take pains to avoid it: The former president is not only once again a candidate, but currently the frontrunner for the GOP nomination to challenge Biden again. He and the vast majority of Republicans—including most of his competitors, with the exception of Asa Hutchinson—have cast the indictment as political. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy accused the Biden administration of a “brazen weaponization of power.” Matt Gaetz called the indictment the “most severe election interference…that we have EVER seen.” Nancy Mace said Biden was “trying to take out his political opponents using the executive branch.”

“This is a banana republic,” Mace lamented. 

As was the case when Trump was indicted two months ago in New York, they’re saying all this without even knowing details of the charges. They’re liable to have egg on their face as those details emerge. Not to mention, Trump could still face charges related to his efforts to undermine the democratic process and overturn his 2020 election loss as investigations continue with the special counsel and in Georgia, led by Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis. 

But at the end of the day, it’s Trump’s own words and actions that could sink him, rather than some imagined plot against him. “All sorts of stuff—pages long, look,” Trump says in the transcript obtained by CNN. “This totally wins my case, you know. Except it is like, highly confidential. Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this.”