Trump insists he did nothing wrong after he was recorded admitting he kept ... trends now

Former President Donald Trump on Thursday insisted he had done nothing wrong in his handling of official papers as he finally responded to revelations that he was recorded discussing how he kept a classified Pentagon document after leaving the White House.

A day earlier it emerged that federal prosecutors had been given an audio recording of him effectively admitting that he knew he had kept classified documents.

He ignored shouted questions about he controversy as he hit the campaign trail in Iowa.

But he was forced to answer when Fox News host Sean Hannity raised the issue in a televised townhall.

'All I know is this everything I did was right,' he said. 'We have the Presidential Records Act, which I abided by 100 percent.'

He then quickly pivoted to attack President Joe Biden and official documents that were recovered from his home and office.

Trump is the subject of a federal investigation into his handling of documents recovered from his Mar-a-Lago home. 

CNN obtained details of the recording, which related to plans for an attack on Iran. In it, Trump reportedly suggested that he wanted to share information from the document with others but knew there were limits to what he could declassify after he left office.

The comments, made in July 2021 at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, would seem to undercut Trump's repeated claims that he declassified the documents he took with him from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate, after leaving office. 

Trump sought to deflect the question with misleading attack on Biden in front of a friendly audience and host on Thursday evening.

'Biden has 1850 boxes, with a lot of classified stuff that he's not supposed to have in his case. I have the right to declassify as president,' he said. 

'He's got 1850 boxes that he doesn't want anyone to see. 

'He had seven or eight boxes in Chinatown in Washington DC when nobody even speaks English in Chinatown.'

The 1,850 boxes in fact refer to documents donated by Biden to the University of Delaware in 2012 from his time as a senator representing the state, and are not subject to the same strict controls as White House documents.

A smaller number of documents, however, were recovered, from Biden's office and home relating to his tenure as vice president. And a special counsel is investigating what happened, including their time at an office in Washington's Chinatown and how some ended up stored next to a garage in his Delaware home.

Trump compared that with the condemnation he received. 

'I have Secret Service all over the place. Mara Lago is a fort,' he said. 

'It's a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time. It's a hoax.'

It was an example of 'election interference,' he added.

That still leaves questions about the new recording. 

CNN reported that press aide Margo Martin was regularly taping Trump at the time so that she could accurately depict his remarks in former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows' memoirs.

The recording could also be a key aid for prosecutors looking to prove Trump knew his ability to possess classified documents was limited.