Trump has demonstrated that he is willing to use any sort of excuse that he can articulate with words – he has the best words. One of those defenses was sure to be that he didn’t know he had the documents, even the ones in his desk. Now that excuse is going to be problematic given the fact that Maggie Haberman’s book claims that Trump told her that he had the documents a year ago. Last night on The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, they discussed the power of such a revelation as evidence if Haberman has tapes to back up the conversation.

From Mediaite, O’Donnell began:

“I was struck by the Maggie Haberman quotes of a year ago from Witness Trump. Now, if there is an audio tape of that, and I, not sure if Donald Trump allows her to tape their conversations, but if there is, that is something that could be subpoenaed in this case,” O’Donnell said, adding “it appears that Donald Trump realizes in mid-answer, by her surprise, that he’s not supposed to have these. But we know that he did have those at that time.”

MSNBC legal analyst Neal Katyal agreed, telling O’Donnell that “a crime requires two things. It requires a bad act and a bad criminal intent. And what Maggie Haberman’s reporting is suggesting is that there was a bad criminal intent as early as a year ago, in September of last year, that he knew about these documents and the like.”

Why Haberman didn’t go directly to the FBI with the information is… perhaps thinking she was blocked as a journalist from releasing her source? No, there is really no justification.

GLENN KIRSCHNER: You know, I see Donald Trump making admission after admission, all of which are statements by a party opponent, which is not hearsay. We introduced those kind of statements in criminal prosecutions all the time. And I will tell you, Lawrence, as an old career prosecutor, a trial guy, I see all of Donald Trump’s admissions, like the ones to Maggie Haberman, as evidentiary gold.

And I keep waiting to see when some prosecutor will be able to plant her feet in the well of a courtroom and argue to 12 people in the jury box sitting as the conscience of the community and begin presenting this evidence. But there is a prerequisite to us getting to that point. It’s an indictment. And as Neil said, if he had, if I had top secret documents, I handled an espionage case as an Army JAG with a TSSCIC clearance, and I was scared to death. I was going to say or do something that might inadvertently run afoul of the rules by which I had to abide. You know, we would be in jail lickety-split. So I await the Department of Justice to get to a point where it believes the time is right, because this is only a timing issue. The evidence is there.

The evidence is there, and the intent is there. The only remaining question is if it all adds up to a case so strong that it requires an indictment. That is yet to be seen, but if Haberman has tapes. it’s much closer.