Former President Donald J. Trump claimed to a Fox News anchor in an interview on Monday that he didn’t have a labeled doc with him in a gathering with a guide writer regardless that he referred throughout that assembly to “secret” data in his possession.

The July 2021 assembly — at Mr. Trump’s golf membership in Bedminster, N.J. — was recorded by not less than two individuals in attendance, and a transcript describes the former president pointing to a pile of papers after which saying of Gen. Mark A. Milley, whom he had been criticizing: “Look. This was him. They presented me this — this is off the record, but — they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him.”

On the recording, in keeping with two individuals aware of its contents, Mr. Trump might be heard flipping by way of papers as he talks to a writer and author engaged on a guide by his remaining White House chief of employees, Mark Meadows. Mr. Trump and the individuals within the assembly don’t explicitly say what doc the previous president is holding.

According to the transcript, Mr. Trump describes the doc, which he claims exhibits General Milley’s want to assault Iran, as “secret” and “like, highly confidential.” He additionally declares that “as president, I could have declassified it,” including, “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”

But within the interview on Monday, with the Fox News anchor Bret Baier, Mr. Trump denied that he had been referring to an precise doc and claimed to have merely been referring to news clippings and journal items.

“There was no document,” Mr. Trump insisted. “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. I didn’t have a document per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.”

Apparently taking part in down the knowledge from the recording, he added, “I don’t think that I’ve ever seen a document from Milley.”

The audio recording is a key piece of proof in an indictment charging Mr. Trump with illegally holding on to 31 delicate authorities paperwork, a few of which had been extremely labeled and included details about U.S. nuclear and navy capabilities. The indictment was filed this month by Jack Smith, a particular counsel appointed by the Justice Department, in Federal District Court in Miami. The indictment additionally accused Mr. Trump of conspiring with one of his aides, Walt Nauta, to evade a grand jury subpoena issued final May for all labeled materials in his possession.

An outline of a typewritten doc by General Milley seems in Mr. Meadows’s guide, unattributed and acknowledged as reality.

Criminal defendants often keep away from talking publicly about particulars of any prices of their case, for concern of their remarks getting used in opposition to them. The interview was broadcast on the identical day {that a} federal Justice of the Peace choose in Mr. Trump’s case issued a protecting order instructing him to not reveal any proof that had been turned over to his authorized crew as a part of the invention course of.

While the interview didn’t appear to violate that order, his remarks represented a few of his most expansive feedback concerning the almost two years that federal officers spent making an attempt to retrieve materials from his presidency that belongs to the federal government. The feedback had been additionally the most recent in a string of shifting tales that he and his allies have provided because it turned public that officers on the National Archives and Records Administration recovered 15 containers of fabric from Mr. Trump in January 2022.

Earlier within the interview with Mr. Baier, Mr. Trump appeared to concede that even after the Justice Department issued a subpoena final yr for all labeled paperwork in his possession, he delayed complying with it to be able to separate any private information which may have been amongst them.

“Before I send boxes over, I have to take all of my things out,” Mr. Trump stated. “These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things.”

Mr. Trump additionally acknowledged that he didn’t instantly adjust to an earlier request to return authorities information to the archives, telling Mr. Baier that he gave the archives “some” and sustaining, “I was very busy, as you’ve sort of seen.”

A spokesman for Mr. Trump didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

In February 2022, after the general public realized that Mr. Trump had returned labeled materials to the archives, the previous president directed aides to challenge an announcement saying he had returned all the pieces to the federal government. The remaining assertion the Trump crew launched didn’t make this declare.

But the draft model of that assertion turned a spotlight of prosecutors who had been getting into proof and listening to testimony earlier than a grand jury in Florida, in keeping with two individuals aware of the matter.

Mr. Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination for 2024, and his allies have provided evolving explanations for his possession of labeled materials and repeated refusals to return it. He has insisted the paperwork all belonged to him as private information. He has additionally claimed that he declassified all the pieces he eliminated earlier than it left the White House, by way of a so-called standing order that materials was declassified when it left the Oval Office to go to the White House residence. Former senior White House officers stated no such order existed.

And final month, Mr. Trump’s attorneys wrote a letter to Congress saying that his employees “quickly packed everything into boxes and shipped them to Florida,” leaving the impression that Mr. Trump himself didn’t undergo the fabric and was unaware of what was within the containers once they had been packed.

The indictment contradicted that declare, with prosecutors saying that Mr. Trump was “personally involved in this process” and “caused his boxes, containing hundreds of classified documents, to be transported from the White House to the Mar-a-Lago club.”

In his interview with Mr. Baier, the previous president indicated that he did kind by way of some containers after they had been despatched from Washington to Mar-a-Lago, his personal membership and residence in Florida.

At one level, Mr. Baier requested Mr. Trump why he didn’t merely hand the fabric over.

“I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out,” Mr. Trump stated. “I don’t want to hand that over to NARA yet.”