Donald Trump on Friday insisted that investigative reporter Bob Woodward’s recordings of his multiple interviews with the former president, which will appear in Woodward’s upcoming audiobook, “belong” to Trump.
“We’ve already hired lawyers to sue him,” Trump told Fox News host Brian Kilmeade on Friday. “Bob Woodward is a very sleazy guy,” he added of the famed Watergate journalist.
Woodward’s audiobook, “The Trump Tapes: Bob Woodward’s Twenty Interviews with President Trump” is scheduled for Tuesday. It features more than eight hours of the journalist’s twenty interviews with Trump over the years, interspersed with commentary from Woodward.
Trump appeared to admit that Woodward was the one who set up the tapes and recorded the interviews, but insisted that the rights to use the tapes belonged to him.
“In many ways I like the tires, I’m on tires, but I also say the tires are mine,” Trump told Kilmeade. “So that means Woodward has to get the deal he made, you know, we’re probably going to have a lawsuit over it. Because we gave tires for the written word, not tires for sale, and that’s always been made clear,” he said.
Trump insisted he told Woodward, “These tapes are for the written word, these tapes are for you [previous] book, these are not to be sold, these are bindings for your book, to help you. I like that because it’s more accurate,” he added.
“So now he’s turning it into an audiobook, so we’re going to sue him,” Trump said.
Woodward was not immediately available for comment.
Some of the revelations from Woodward’s book have already been told in media that have obtained copies in advance.
In one of the 2019 interviews, Trump admitted that letters from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un seized from his Mar-a-Lago compound in August were “so top secret,” The Washington Post reported. Yet he showed them to Woodward nonetheless. “Don’t say I gave them to you, okay?” Trump can be heard on the tape.
In another audio recording of a 2020 interview with Woodward, Trump said he preferred “tougher and meaner” world leaders.
“I love Putin,” Trump told Woodward, CNN reported after obtaining a pre-copy of the audiobook.
“Getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing, okay? Mainly because they have 1,332 nuclear warheads,” he told the journalist.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
