A recording of former president Donald Trump discussing classified documents that he is accused of mishandling has been obtained by U.S. media, a report said on Tuesday. 

The two-minute recording from July 2021, which contains critical evidence in Trump’s indictment, was aired on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360.” It includes the former president allegedly admitting that he is holding a secret Pentagon document with plans to attack Iran. 

“These are the papers,” Trump is heard saying during a discussion of the Pentagon attack plans during a meeting with people working on the memoir of Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff. 

“This was done by the military and given to me,” Trump continues, before specifying that the document remained classified.

“See as president I could have declassified it,” Trump says. “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”

He also referred to something that he was apparently showing to other people in the room as “highly confidential.” The audio contradicts Trump’s interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier where he claimed that didn’t have any classified documents.  

“I didn’t have a document, per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles,” he said. 

Earlier this month, the former president, who has started his 2024 White House run, pleaded not guilty to 37 counts of alleged mishandling of classified documents that had been found at his Florida residence. Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said that “the audio tape provides context proving, once again, that President Trump did nothing wrong at all.”