In a private meeting inside Trump Tower days before his inauguration, Donald Trump told a group of civil rights leaders something most Republicans wouldn’t dare publicly acknowledge: lower turnout among Black voters did, in fact, benefit him in the 2016 presidential election.

“Many Blacks didn’t go out to vote for Hillary ‘cause they liked me. That was almost as good as getting the vote, you know, and it was great,” the president-elect said, according to an audio recording of the meeting shared with POLITICO.

Three-and-a-half years later, those comments take on new weight, as Democrats and Republicans battle over restrictions on voting amid an historic pandemic.

Trump has repeatedly alleged, without evidence, that expanding mail-in voting will lead to massive fraud, and Republicans have filed lawsuits against a number of states attempting to do so. Higher voter turnout tends to benefit Democrats — low turnout among Black voters in key states is one of the reasons Hillary Clinton lost to Trump in 2016. And voting rights activists have warned that GOP efforts to limit access to absentee ballots could keep many from voting this fall, particularly Black people, seniors and others at high risk from Covid-19.

The coronavirus pandemic was not on anyone’s radar on Jan. 16, 2017, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, when Trump hosted the meeting with leaders from the Drum Major Institute, a voting rights group founded by King and fellow civil rights leader Harry Wachtel. But voting access was. The meeting was requested to lobby Trump on a proposal to put photo identification on Social Security cards to combat voter ID laws.

Attendees included Martin Luther King III, William Wachtel, James Forbes, Johnny Mack and Scott Rechler. Former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young briefly spoke to Trump by phone during the meeting.

Wachtel’s then-chief of staff Tootsie Warhol provided the audio to POLITICO this week. The lawyer-turned-activist attended the sit-down and surreptitiously recorded it from his iPhone. Born Teddy Mukamal, he said his motivation for sharing the recording now is that he is in the process of reinventing himself as Warhol, an artist and activist, since leaving his law firm in November.

Warhol has filed with the Federal Election Commission to run for president in 2020, though he described his independent campaign as a new way to engage voters and said he hopes former Vice President Joe Biden wins the November election.

He told POLITICO, “The first thing that I can never forget was how when you walked in, (Trump) name-drops all these Black celebrities and tries to give the illusion that they’re his friends.”

Inside Trump Tower, Trump told the group that he had “so many” Black friends who “are so incredible, and everyone knows that.” At the top of the meeting, he showed off NBA Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal’s sneaker, world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson’s belt and Sugar Ray Leonard’s boxing glove. (He also flaunted Tom Brady’s Super Bowl helmet and his own chair from “The Apprentice.”)

And during the 45-minute meeting, Trump asked the attendees if they were “surprised that Hillary lost so badly” and boasted that he won 11 percent of the Black vote in 2016. Trump lost the national popular vote by nearly 3 million and only won 8 percent of Black voters, according to exit polls, 81 percentage points behind Clinton. Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, and John McCain, the 2008 GOP standard-bearer, won 6 percent and 4 percent of Black voters, respectively.

“Sounds lousy, but Romney was 4 percent; McCain was 3 percent,” Trump said, misstating both candidates’ support from Black voters. “And we did well with the Hispanics, and we did well with women. You know, the women were gonna abandon me, but we did well with them.”

Incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, senior adviser Jared Kushner and two other aides appeared throughout the meeting. Omarosa Manigault, a prominent Black Trump aide who left the administration a year later, was present the entire time.

At one point, Trump left the room to take a call. “Off the record, that was your friend Barack (Obama),” he told attendees upon his return. “We actually have a very good relationship. I said he did a great job last night on ‘60 Minutes,’ and, uh, we actually have a very good relationship.”