Former President Donald Trump's excuse for the existence of a potentially incriminating audio recording in his classified documents case is "the last gasp of a guilty person," according to former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner.
The July 2021 audio recording, a key piece of evidence in the Department of Justice's felony indictment of the former president, features Trump openly speaking about what he said was a document outlining the Pentagon's plan to attack Iran. CNN obtained and aired a copy of the recording on Monday night.
The ex-president can be heard saying that he did not declassify the document before leaving the White House and discussing the plan with people who lacked the appropriate security clearances. Trump claimed that there was no classified document at all, during an ABC News interview on Tuesday, insisting that his words were only "bravado."
Kirschner shot down Trump's explanation during the latest episode of his Justice Matters podcast on Wednesday night, calling the "bravado" claim a "laughable lie" and predicting that Special Counsel Jack Smith would "crush" the former president in court.
"Donald Trump's last gasp to try to avoid accountability for his crimes is to say that he was lying about holding a classified document. He calls it bravado," said Kirschner. "The bravado dog doesn't hunt. It is the last gasp of a guilty person—who was caught committing the crime, who was caught confessing to the crime—to say, 'made it all up.'"
Kirschner said that Trump's statements during the ABC interview demonstrated that he had a "consciousness of guilt," meaning that he supposedly knew that the recording showed he was breaking the law.
The legal analyst pointed out a particular moment in the interview, when the former president claimed that his use of the word "plan" in the recording—clearly in reference to an attack on Iran—may have instead been referring to building plans for "a golf course."
"How desperate does Donald Trump have to be? ... to say, 'no, no, no, I swear I'm just a liar, I didn't have documents. It was bravado, I was lying about all of that,'" said Kirschner. "Does Donald Trump often admit that he's a great big liar or that he's wrong?"
"That's how desperate Donald Trump is, that his last gasp at avoiding accountability for his crimes is to try to claim he was lying about everything that incriminated him," he continued. "To tell a laughable lie to try to cover up your crime—that demonstrates your consciousness of guilt."
Newsweek has reached out to the office of Trump via email for comment.
Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung denounced Kirschner as "a notorious trafficker of wild conspiracy theories and dubious legal analysis" who "has been shunned by the legal community at large" in a previous statement to Newsweek.
Kirschner is not the only legal expert to suggest that the former president could be landing himself in hot water by publicly speaking about the case and attempting to explain away the recording and other pieces of evidence that the Justice Department could use to prove its case.
Veteran lawyer Alan Dershowitz, a member of Trump's legal team during his first impeachment, said on his The Dershow podcast on Wednesday that Trump was creating "a problem for his lawyers at trial" every time that he speaks about the evidence.
Former FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann said in a tweet that the ex-president was "digging himself deeper and deeper," while Norm Eisen, attorney and ex-official in the administration of former President Barack Obama, told CNN that Trump was making "his situation in front of the jury" worse with each "different and frequently inconsistent explanation or justification."
