(WASHINGTON) — Despite what prosecutors claim in an unprecedented indictment against him, including an alleged recording of him saying otherwise, Donald Trump insisted on Monday that he hadn’t shown a classified document to someone else after leaving the White House.

The former president was interviewed by Fox News’ Bret Baier, who pressed Trump on one of the most notable parts of the indictment that outlines the 37 federal charges against him.

Prosecutors wrote in the indictment that on July 21, 2021, Trump allegedly showed what he called “secret information” to other people at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and acknowledged it was still classified and “highly confidential.”

According to the indictment, Trump allegedly said the information was “done by the military and given to me” and appeared to indicate it was related to plans for attacking a foreign country.

The alleged exchange was recorded, prosecutors wrote.

On Fox News on Monday, however, Trump pushed back when Baier cited that part of the indictment.

“It wasn’t a document, OK? I had lots of paper — I had copies of newspaper articles, I had copies of magazines,” he said.

“There was no document. That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things. And it may have been held up or may not, but that was not a document,” Trump said. “I didn’t have a document per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.”

ABC News previously reported that the recording was made during part of a book interview Trump gave and was subsequently obtained by federal prosecutors.

ABC News also reported earlier this month that Trump’s attorneys had not located the material Trump was referencing in the recording from 2021.

Trump has been indicted by federal prosecutors in Florida related to his alleged mishandling of government secrets after leaving the White House. He pleaded not guilty to the charges.

In a speech to supporters after being arraigned, he maintained that he “did everything right” and “I had every right to have these documents,” an argument which has been disputed by outside legal experts.

Elsewhere in his interview on Fox News, Trump claimed to have no more classified records and falsely cited the Presidential Records Act as giving him permission to take the government records with him when he left office.

He said he took the documents because he was rushing during his move from the White House and wanted to go through his personal items.

“So, like every other president, I take things out. And in my case, I took it out pretty much in a hurry, but people packed it up and we left and I had clothing in there. I had all sorts of personal items,” he said.

“Because I had boxes — I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out,” he said.

He told Baier that he was running for president again “because I want to make America great again. We had great — we were respected all over the world. Very simple.”

He also said he wouldn’t want his children to be in his administration if he is reelected. Daughter Ivanka served as a senior adviser during his first term alongside her husband, Jared Kushner.

“It’s too painful for the family,” he said.

Should he win another term, he said that he wants to be “less combative.”

“I would like to be less combative, but I find the press is extremely dishonest,” he said. “And if I’m not combative, I don’t get my word across. If I’m not combative, I don’t know. I don’t think you could win.”

During the interview, Trump criticized the Biden administration — including on the economy and foreign policy — and labeled the case against him as “weaponization” of the Department of Justice by the White House.

Special counsel Jack Smith, an independent prosecutor named last year by Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee the DOJ investigations of Trump, has defended the indictment.

“This indictment was voted by a grand jury of citizens in the Southern District of Florida,” he said earlier this month, “and I invite everyone to read it in full to understand the scope and the gravity of the crimes charged.”

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(WASHINGTON) — As he prepared to leave Beijing Monday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared that he had accomplished one of his most critical goals for the high-stakes trip: strengthening communication between the U.S. and China.

But whether his visit will have a lasting impact on the relationship will depend on what happens in the weeks ahead.

“I stressed that direct engagement and sustained communication and senior levels is the best way to responsibly manage our differences and ensure the competition does not veer into conflict,” Blinken said of his discussions during a news conference, capping off the first visit to China by a Cabinet official since 2019.

“And I heard the same from my Chinese counterparts,” Blinken continued. “We both agree on the need to stabilize our relationship.”

Despite this point of agreement, Blinken acknowledged that, despite raising the issue multiple times during his visit, he was not able to make significant progress on revitalizing perhaps the most important channel between countries: military-to-military communication.

“I think it’s absolutely vital that we have these kinds of communications,” Blinken said. “That imperative, I think, was only underscored by recent incidents that we saw in the air and on the seas. And at this moment, China has not agreed to move forward with that.”

The close calls Blinken alluded to include a Chinese warship coming within 150 yards of U.S. destroyer earlier this month and a Chinese fighter jet intercepting an American surveillance plane in international airspace in May.

Both incidents were decried by the Pentagon as unnecessarily dangerous, but China says the U.S. is at fault for conducting military operations in the region.

As Beijing has carried out what the State Department has described as increasingly provocative actions in the region, it has also sharply limited direct contact with the U.S. military — even shutting down a request from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to meet with his Chinese counterpart in May.

“It’s an escalation management risk,” said Rear Adm. (Ret.) Mark Montgomery, a senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

“We need to have all the tools at our disposal for deescalating an accidental incident, and we are missing one of the biggest tools right now without military-to-military communications,” he continued.

The secretary’s most important engagement during his trip — a sit-down with President Xi Jinping — came together during the final hours of his visit.

Negotiations over the meeting with Xi continued well after Blinken touched down in China and was firmed up only once the Chinese government determined that the secretary’s other talks had gone well enough to merit face time with the leader, according to sources.

“It’s certainly better that it happened. It would have been quite a dampener to the relations had Xi declined to visit with Blinken,” said Montgomery.

“I’m not sure that it achieves anything of its own, but it’s a signal of Chinese cooperation that that we certainly hadn’t seen in the last six months,” he added.

Blinken predicted that additional dialogue would take place in the aftermath of his visit to Beijing.

“I would expect additional visits by US officials to China over the coming weeks, and we welcome further visits by Chinese officials to the United States,” Blinken said.

American officials likely to visit China in the coming weeks might include Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry. On the Chinese side, Blinken extended an invitation to Foreign Minister Qin Gang to visit Washington at a time both countries deem suitable.

Most telling of all will be if President Biden and Xi come together in the months ahead. The two last met on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, last November, and officials from both countries have speculated that they could sit down again in November in San Francisco when the U.S. hosts the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO Summit.

“I think this Xi/Blinken meeting does make a meeting with the president more likely. I’m not sure it necessarily means that there’ll be a meeting between the two leaders that has a successful outcome,” said Montgomery.

“That’s still predicating on China acting differently and us not valuing engagement for engagement’s sake,” he said.

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