From what I have read there are 4 people that we know of that have the taping, the Trump aide, the biographer interviewer for the Mark Meadows book, the prosecution, and NOW, this past week, the Trump Defense Lawyers/Trump got it in the trial Discovery process from the prosecution...
there is no benefit for Smith to leak it.... He has had the taping for months, and has already gotten testimony from the two women that made the recordings and others there, and has not leaked it this whole time.
Smith is not using the recording to prosecute Trump for having this Defense Document. He is using the taping to show Trump understood he could not declassify a top secret documents after he left office, where it narrows it down to Trump needing to order documents declassified before he left office....now Trump needs to show that he did order each of the classified documents he took, to be declassified, while a sitting president.
and it debunks Trumper claims that if the document went home with him, then it was automatically declassified by him......
because he clearly took the Classified Defense Document on the contingent Iran war plans, and knew they were still classified, even though he took them home with him.... Contradicting the Trump spin on it that anything he took home with him, was declassified.
There will not be a prosecution against Trump for unlawfully retaining this document imo. Unless brought in New Jersey, which imo is unlikely if the contents of this Defense Document is so classified that they do not want the nitty gritty contents revealed to the public....way way way too highly classified, could harm us greatly.
One of the tape holders released it...likely Trump himself, or even more than likely imo the biographer to keep putting their Meadows book in the limelight.... Them leaking it, would not be illegal, unfortunately.