SHOWED THEM OFF TO WRITERS

Trump also authorized an undisclosed number of other boxes in May 2021 to be taken to his golf club in Bedminster, NJ, where he was recorded two months later discussing one of the classified documents with a writer, a publisher and two aides.

In the meeting, the former president referred to a senior military official, reported to be Milley, who worried Trump might order a military strike on another country, reportedly Iran, after his defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

“He said that I wanted to attack [Country A],” Trump said in a transcript of the exchange included in his indictment, while disputing that he authored the plans. “This was him. This was the Defense Department and him.

“I just found, isn’t that amazing? This totally wins my case, you know,” Trump went on in the transcript. “Except it is like, highly confidential . . . Secret. This is secret information.

“This was done by the military and given to me. Uh, I think we can probably, right,” he added. “I don’t know, we’ll, we’ll have to see. Yeah, we’ll have to try to—” an aide responded. “Declassify it,” Trump said. “See, as president I could have declassified it . . . . Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”

Neither the writer, publisher nor Trump’s aides had security clearances at the time, prosecutors say.

In August or September 2021, Trump showed a member of his political action committee, who also did not have security clearance, a classified map of another country — and immediately admitted to the person that he shouldn’t have.