is vision come to light the pedal and the master planner, confusing part of rebel architecture? announcer? years from al jazeera. on the go and me tonight, out is there is only a mobile app. is that this is where we dissects analyze. leslie and i guess from algae, there is a mobile app available in your favorite app. still just sat for it and tapped made a new app. him out, a 0 me at you think it ah, i'm hammered from jerome and durham. these are the top stories on al jazeera. if he

appears to grow, i rebel, say they are ready for a cease fire and would accept a peace process led by the african union. this is a breakthrough of sorts as the rebels had been previously opposed to any a u involvement. the united nations has welcomed the development and said it's ready to support the a you with the process. the announcement coincides with the p o p as new year. the usda department is called on ethiopia leaders to try and put the country back on a path of peace. rosalind jordan has more well, the u. s. has been very concerned about of the resumption of hostilities between the ethiopian military, the tpl life of the rebels in the northern part of ethiopia as to cry, region and era tray and forces coming across the border to uh, basically i amp up the violence. and so there has been a this a renewed concern. the us special envoy for the horn of africa, michael hammer, has been in addis ababa since september 5th, meeting with officials, not just in the ethiopian government,

but also with the leadership of the t p l. f. the main rebel for saw in the northern part of ethiopia trying to load lay the groundwork for some sort of piece, talked. he's also i've been meeting with a you officials. the process is such that the u. s. wants to see. all parties lay down their arms and try to get into peace talks as quickly as possible. on sunday, the u. s. secretary of state antony blank and released a statement i urging all parties to engage in peace talks and you try to seize the opportunity in the name of the ethiopian people try to basically restore stability, restore. com and also deal with a growing humanitarian crisis. preliminary results and sweden's general elections suggest a right wing alliance could win a slim majority over the ruling center, left block boats are still being counted and the incumbent prime minister magdalena anderson has not conceded defeat. but if the current trend holds moderate party

leader of christian, expect it to become prime minister, rising crime, immigration, and the energy crisis for the key election issues. ukrainian official se russian attacks have taken out critical infrastructure in response to their counter offensive in the northeast. they say the strikes of hit a thermal power station and harkey triggering widespread blackouts. the body of queen elizabeth has been taken to the official residence of the british monarchy in scotland. it's being kept at hollywood palace in edinburgh on monday will be taken to the city's saint giles cathedral, where the queen will lie at rest. on tuesday, the casket will be flown to london. pakistan's, former prime minister emron con, is returning to court is the bail for his terrorism charges expires. it relates to his speech con, gave an august where he accused police and a judge of detaining and torturing his close. 8, last week in islamabad court also ruled to indict him on contempt of court charges

. us president joe biden has marked 21 years since the 911 attacks. he took part in a reef laying ceremony at the pentagon, remembering the nearly 3000 people who died biden spoke of the recent killing of eminem's de la hurry, the man who led l. 5 after the death of osama bin laden in 2011, saying the threat of another attack in the u. s. is never a dears and we still kept our premiums. we will not rest. we'll never forget. we'll never give up. now law harry can never again threatening the american people in 20 years at dr. ganesh dennis over. but our commitment to ready another attack, united states is without an our intelligence advanced encounter chairs and professionals in the building behind me in across the government. continued our vigilance against chairs, threats that has evolved to spread new reasons to the world. spanish teenager

carlos alcaraz has claimed his 1st grand slam title after beating. caspar route in the us open final. it defeated norway's route after 4 sets. the 19 year old becomes the youngest ever wolf. number one, he's replaced russian daniel meditative at the top of the rankings. the news continues here on al jazeera after the bottom line. the hi, i'm steve clements. i have a question. is the uproar over american national security documents at trump's home, a serious crime or political witch hunt? let's get to the bottom line. ah, for the 1st time in american history, the f b, i executed a search warrant on the home of a former president. last month. the federal agents were retrieving sensitive.

whitehouse documents from donald trump's mar logo is state in florida. some mark this top secret. now the justice department is investigating with the trump broke the law by keeping them and by obstructing their work, by claiming that he returned all the files. trump says the whole thing has been blown out of proportion to serve the democratic party before the mid term elections a few weeks from now. he sued the government and a judge that he appointed stalled parts of the investigation and authorized an independent 3rd party to filter out materials that trump has the right to keep private confusing. so what's next, and what are the chances that a former president will be charged with federal crimes? to day, we're talking with brian greer, a lawyer who worked in the office of general counsel, where he was a member of the senior intelligence service and worked on the classification of national security documents and kinda go over a politics reporter for semaphores. a new media company that in full disclosure, i'm also affiliated with, and formerly with buzz feed where she covered congress and national politics here

in washington dc. brian, let me just start out with you and ask you what, when it comes to the president and national security documents, what is the line between right and wrong? well, our whole system is set up with now security in general, in classification, particular to assume that the president is going to be acting in the national interest. that he's going to be acting with the public interest at heart, not private interest. and so it gives him or her maximum leeway. so you're saying there's an assumption involved there. there's not a legal responsibility that the president is going to be, have the sumption. how can we, in a nation of rules and laws, be assuming anything, it's difficult to with president trump, for sure. the classification system was set up to govern. not only what the president does, what, what all employees we worked for him do. and there's very specific rules in place on what employees like me when i was at the see i had to do in regards to handling classified information. but a lot of those rules don't apply to the president because again, they assumed the president's going to be acting the public interest. here we don't

have that. and sort of the, everything sort of goes out the window when it comes to things like that. he declassify the documents, so we're a little bit in the wild west, but we still have very clear criminal statutes that apply to both government officials in private citizens like former present trop, about handling and mishandling classified information. and that's where now for president trump has gone over the lot. so before i jump to kitty, i want to get this. can the president of the united states declassified documents? it will. and if he can, doesn't that allow, could be a gober and myself and the public because presidents don't declassified for themselves, they declassified for the public. so help me solve this riddle. yeah, it is quite a real and i did see a lot of things put out at 1st that were just frankly true on both sides of this issue. and that's why i felt compelled to speak up. the president does have very broad declassification of authority, and a lot of people are saying that 1st is, well, no, there's a process in place that he has to fall. there's really not. i can speak from experience being involved in presidential declassification. so he has a file on

a manual macro and sex life, which some people are saying he might have maybe a speculation. he can declassify, he can take that home declassify that. but what is, that's what you're saying is there's no process, but what is the requirement the how do people know what's declassified? well, that's what normally this goes back to my 1st point of the system assumes good faith and act in the public interest almost every time i can think of a president as the classified information they do. so because they want to release it to the public, that's what that, that's why we've never had these debates before. the president in law wants to classify the lot rate with immediately he gives a speech right away to the public. joe biden recently declassified some documents about 911 and saudi arabia development. he signed a public order to declassify the information. so normally it's provided immediately to the public because when president obama have the documentation around the, the midline and raiden, some have been latin, was killed. he took conscious deliberate steps to declassify that material and put that out to the public. i would think he did almost immediately upon hearing confirmation that the alarm had been killed by point there is,

i don't know for sure, but i seriously doubt that he sat there and signed a piece of paper. say not here by to classify that. he decided just to do it in the president, do have much broader leeway than any other federal employee in this regard. but there has to be evidence that happened and that's what's completely lacking here. the trump team has had, i killed 3 opportunities to claim that this information was actually declassified before some sort of agency or tribunal. there's the national archives, who they talk to you for a year, or would of been very relevant to tell them that they never did. there was the department of justice who they've been talking to since april or may. they never once told them. and then now there's the proceedings before judge cannon and florida. never once did they claim that their why lying to any one of those 3 individuals is a crime and it gets you in quite a bit of trouble line on tv, not a crime. what do you think president trump may have been doing with, i mean, we know that president trump didn't even like getting security briefings. he didn't like intelligence briefings and he was bored by them. and so the notion,

that's the 1st thing i saw that they found literally hundreds, if not more classified documents. these are documents that he reportedly from enemy, anyone i talked to on his team, had 0 interest in. so what's, what's a foot? yeah, i mean that is the $1000000.00 question here. we don't know that why the department of justice may know that, and that's going to be the key question they want to solve, just to be clear for any other federal employee. if you had that many classified documents at your house, and particularly if you had these documents, you know what happened to you initially, i'd certainly get my house search that, that there is no question about that. and then i think that quickly to try to determine with what was mindset, what was my purpose? that volume alone would at least support some sort of inference of malcontent and might result in me as a normal federal employee receiving charges given the volume and sensitivity of those documents. so i think that standard probably is not here, particularly because he was given to opportunities to return them. that's what you hear. so tell us about that because that's an element here with regard to the issue

of declassification, of the president asserting that these documents were treated differently. earlier. his staff, his lawyers had signed documents that they had returned everything that they had. and that you made the point in your, in your tweets, that they did not say that they had declassified in these documents. is that an important part of the story? i think so for sure, because again, you would, if you're the trump team, you want to tell that story 1st to the national archives, which would be the 1st request of those documents. because you know, if you're smart, that's the 2nd, they get a classified document in their position. they're going to go refer to the department of justice for prosecution, which is exactly happen. see what have told them. they certainly would have told the department justice because he would not have wanted all this to transpire. and again, you would convey that the judge cannon and florida who's overseeing the special master proceedings because it would be highly relevant to her if there was some question about the classification of these documents. that might be an issue for the 1st we throw these term special master. i had, this is a new and this is not

a dungeon. and dragon's, this is, you know, especially do you know, anything about special mastercard? thing is, if i could think about the muller report and how special prosecutors were in, but it speaks to what the public knows about this, right? they just think we have a global audience right now. wondering what is a special master? why is the special master in this trump one did one? ah, i think most of the rest of the commentary it did not want one. a judge appointed by donald trump gave this leeway to say yes, we must have a special master in place because of the acknowledgment by the department of justice in part that some of the documents may be covered by what's called executive privilege, which means documents that are you know, to, sorry to take the weeds with this folks, but that are privileged and not public because they involve private communications between the president and other people within regard to doing his, his work. so given that is just is, is this inappropriate action by this judge,

or is this a partisan effort or a favor that the judge is giving president trump? we have to see if everything is going to be fair and just moving forward. but some of the criticism has been around this decision and heard just deciding, well yeah, he has some level of executive privilege and even post presidency. and i'm going to respond in that way that that's what i've been hearing. some of the criticisms around her decision trying to my reading of the judge's decision is it was an all a slam dunk for donald, that he didn't. she did not agree to return the documents to him. she did not agree to stop all the parts of the movement, particularly the damage assessments of the potential damage assessments of the these top secret documents. what is your judgment of the judge's action? because a lot of people in a partisan way that are already been slamming her. you think she's credible or not?

yeah, i mean, i don't think we should be focusing on the fact that she's a triple point, a judge or might be politically motivated. i like to look just look at this on the legal merits and there i think her opinion is lacking in many different ways. and so i do agree with a lot of the substance criticisms, and there's even more out there that people haven't really focused on yet. you mentioned she sort of tried to split the baby by saying, the intelligence community assessment of these documents could go on. but the criminal investigation with respect to these arguments needed to stop to me that doesn't make sense in a couple ways. one is, let's say they told us, going to get the document. it's very sensitive, has especially source revealing or question method revealing information about it. their 1st question is going to be, who saw this document when under what circumstances then held us community can't answer that for themselves by law for a very good reasons. they need the f b, i to do that. so then they go call up f b. i and say, hey, can you tell us this, f, b i why this special master proceeding is going to going on? it's going to say no, i'm sorry, we're not allowed to engage on these potentially privilege documents right now.

that alone is something that could hinder this. i see assessment that's going on. and also just doesn't really make sense to me that that she would permit that to go on. but not the criminal investigation, which i would argue is just as important. in fact, could lead to more discoveries of other damage to national security. that is the one who's going to discover, you know, people are speculating. what within those 43 empty folders, right. maybe there were just other documents in room, but maybe those are somewhere else. now that's the needs to be able to do a job and maximum leeway going forward. could dia recently at the end of august on fox news lindsey graham made this falling, same as it is, is a prosecution of donald trump from his handling classified information. they'll be riots in the streets. so this is obviously a politically infused moment. it matters not just in the legal sense that brian is outlining here. but in the way people look at political winners and losers and actions of what's going on. now i remember very well when donald trump was running

for the presidency the 1st time. and the big issues were hillary's e mails and ben, gauzy, and, you know, various issues like this. and i'm just interested in how we can have such he voluminous amount of classified information in the private residence of donald trump and see how many americans, lindsey graham says, are going to go to the streets and protests, abuse in type. what kind of contradictions are, is the american public holding in its head at the same time, in that marriage, exactly, with the division within the american public? right? democrats or people on the left are chomping at the bed in. think that this is going to be the last draw and trouble. this'll stop him from going, you know, running for president or get him arrested. so they think this is great. absolutely . most democrats on the right or wrong, i said this is great. and on the right it, it's, they the polar opposite where they are suggesting this is

a which hind and that, you know, you even see it, like i said earlier, playing out in the legislative or the congressional in congress. where republicans are already gearing up for next the next session, $118.00 congress and deciding that they are going to base most of their committees on investigation, investigating the department of justice or anyone that has persecuted the former president in the past. so this is not changing. what will be interesting is the independents who are just sick of the noise and who don't want to hear about a former president and or someone they voted for going to prison or being indicted . this is and let's not forget, this isn't the only thing that president of former president trump is facing right now. so it'll be interesting to see if there's enough fatigue around that wear madison in the mid terms. well brian, i mean, i know this is a political question,

but you know, for a while, could you and i were kind of covering the malays about donald trump. we sort of saw fox news, you know, sort of a home base for a lot of trump supporting news watchers kind of slowly divorcing themselves from trump. and then this rate happen. it's very hard if you were to be a novelist or, or write a great screen play with a thriller movie to imagine how you would reverse donald trump's growing irrelevant that you know, fading star and bring it back. other than having this massive rate on his home. and i'm just interested in the pull it, i mean you're, you're being attacked and celebrated all at the same time. but do you feel the right, i mean, we're talking about donald trump. we, we barely mentioned present by, you know, just video did once, but i mean, we're talking about donald trump. he's stealing the air in the room again from every other possibility. do what do you feel like this is done to restore his the possibilities that he'll return in 2024? i would certainly defer to be honest with you as well,

but it's certainly going to put him at the for me that has put them on the floor, but that is all we're talking about today. we're not talking about other economic issues or nash curity issues. i do think though, that even though it's, it's given the public and amazing you know, transparent view and how these investigations work. it's actually really unfortunate that it's playing out in the public. the way it is. criminal investigation should be kept private for very good reason. you don't want to a unfairly turner someone, but it's important for the justice department to be seen as being a political to be allowed to do with work because they may ultimately conclude this without charging them. in my opinion, what while they did that they had no choice with the carry out that search, which obviously did the re, the profile a little bit. it's donald trump responding. who has been the one to ratchet up, all the rhetoric to go to court over there. so he's the one who's not we struck as he's the one who's making this into a political issue earliest initially. not necessarily department of justice, ministration. i mean, i'm sure you're in a, in a situation now where your tweets have become so prominent that may be,

folks are sending you information covertly or privately to sure to share with you where it's at. i think the thing that really interests me as a, is a tweet that you have that saying he had a lot of memos that were confidential, that were not top secret. they were just nuanced. maybe they were kim jong and love letters, whatever a be, or that they were keepsakes or small things, which hasn't really been part of the story very much. i'm interested into the degree of maliciousness. now a lot of people who are thinking the worst the present from you know, thinks that he wants to take macro material and put it in vladimir cancer. the other people have leverage over global leaders. now that focuses entirely speculation on other people's parts, not my own. they look at donald trump is someone who is not interested in information unless as a transaction involved. is there any evidence whatsoever that is out there right now? the donald trump was a transactional list with any of this information. well,

we don't know any, we don't know because we don't know what's behind all these reactions in these doc . we hold that. so this is, these black lines are things we can't read under. ok. ok when i was at the p, i with someone who would apply and there's only a heading on that page. right. ok. when i was at the thea with someone who would apply and defend reactions like the one thing i learned from watching, sort of public reaction sometimes is people can try to guess what's behind there. but there's really, it's difficult to guess and it's pretty dangerous game to go. so i would say like, it's, it's difficult to know what's behind there. but i think knowing the department of justice and knowing even some of these prosecutors how small c conserve, they are there, they're not going to stick their neck out. they know what uproar this is going to create. i think it's fair to assume they have very direct evidence in that by now, at least they know they've looked before the judge halted them. they've had time to look through these documents. they know is there a potential story to tell? are they related, or are they just re, right? did it look like you just randomly compiled some documents, in which case still crime, but there's not

a story to tell. or are they all related? are they all about, or is a significant talk about mac crone or, nor 3 or saudi arabia. if they see that combined with all the information that we don't know, and they have a story to tell, and i think it is going to be very bad for donald trump. could you let me ask you? you noted that donald trump has called the f b. i vicious monsters. and we don't know what will happen in the upcoming mid term elections in november of 2022. but a lot of people speculate that historically, of the opposition party to the president at that moment comes back pretty strong. and a lot of people suspect that the republicans may take control of the house. how much of this do you think is going to become part of the agenda of an ascendent, republican leadership in the house? and what do you think that will do to the country when you're calling the f b? i vicious monitors particularly, you know, after we saw blue lives matter law and order as a response to the presence complete, you know, complaints about black lives matter, et cetera. what do you think is going to happen in that?

in that discussion, greg question, we talked about the president gaming a bump for 2024. what's not working in favor of republicans is they don't get an opportunity to talk about inflation, higher gas prices, or any of that. because donald trump has sucked all the air out of the rooms. no, this is not great for republicans trying to gain back the senate trying to gain back the house. i do think they'll take the house, but this makes it very sticky. i've republicans, i talk to me privately and said they haven't been on t v into 2 weeks because they don't want to talk about they don't want, they don't want to, they don't want to answer that question. so that's a big thing going into november mid terms that they don't want to talk. they want, they don't want to be asked about president trump and the f b i investigation doesn't give the big fodder for the upcoming mid terms. and like i mentioned before, if the house, the secure, the public in securing the majority in the house,

you're going to see all investigation that's totally going to be there. totally going to pivot. i think they're in a precarious position right now though. but let me ask you a met a question just as we get close to wrapping this up. and it's really about secrecy in america and very prominent and interesting writers like dana priest of the washington post, you know, have written about the intelligence industrial complex. how sprawling it, big and unaccountable it is. i remember when bill casey was head of the ca, under president ronald reagan, he was a big advocate of growing the boundaries of official secrecy. and you know, despite what many people thing i didn't see president obama or press and clinton really walked back, that usual secrecy very much. how much have we had to acquiesce to the fact that there's this whole other secret world out there that the average public doesn't have a right to? and that's part of what's going on in this discussion about what secret and what's

not. and what, and what should be legally actionable, has the intelligence community, and it's enforcers like the f b, i overstepped its bounds too much. there may be some cases where that's true. i certainly don't think this one, as we've talked about, is that case. you know, i think about this issue if we're going met 1st. second is what, what do we want the ca and then essay and other intelligence community elements to do what i think congress gives money. the ca for is to go steal secrets. what same thing with an essay. so when it's discovered like through the stone disclosures that the n s a was really, really, really good at stealing secrets to me. i get why that's newsworthy, but that should not necessarily be scandalous. that's what it's paid to do. the disclosure there was putting aside the u. s. person issue that he disclosed, but i think is a separate issue, but in terms of their overseas intelligence collection abilities, that's what they're supposed to do. and the only way that they can do that effectively in the see i can do that effectively is by doing it in secret. and by

being able to promise to with forces in its foreign partners, which can include foreign governments. that we will take those secrets to the grave . what's happened here with president trump has sort of yet again, cause people to question that. and i think that's why it's so troubling. but certainly that is a mean. all secrecy is good or that the u. s. government has drawn the line the right way, have it. and that's one of the reasons i'm trying to speak out a little bit is to explain the aspects that i'm talking about how these prosecutions work. we can be transparent about that. there's nothing that's really speaker about that. it's important for the american people to understand that particularly how professional is done, typically k d f. finally, you know, gut reaction. how likely is it donald trump ever sees a day in jail for any of this? i see, i think very unlikely. brian, i don't like making predictions. like i said, if they can tell a story, i think it's much more likely that we'll see charges, but we've also seen numerous senior officials get off in the past. well, i'd like to thank brian greer as former lawyer at the cia who handled the

classification issues there. thank you so much for joining us. could be a go, but political correspondent for some of, for congratulations on your new role there. when i'm looking forward to working with you, so thank you both very much for joining us today. so what's the bottom line? the one silver lining, and all this drama is it underlines the thing that really makes america strong. no one is above the law. whether you are the poorest and meekest person in the united states, or you're a billionaire and a former president of the nation, you do have rights, but you will also be held accountable if you mess with the law. i am not sure that former president, donald trump learned that lesson in elementary school. the fact that he simply took boxes and boxes of documents of the highest classification, some potentially a risk, the u. s. national security, if they fell into the wrong hands, is still so baffling. maybe he really believes that the rules don't apply to him. but there are 2 takeaways here. first is hypocrisy. trump spent a lot of energy during his campaign, accusing hillary clinton being reckless with national security documents. and he

made her private e mail server that server that sat in her bath tub famous. and 2nd is america gives its leaders a huge amount of leeway to do what they need to do. and the law is not black and white for them. trump is popular for breaking the mold in using his presidential powers, but he also exposed a lot of gray areas that need to be severely diminished. and those are the bottom line ah. debating the issues of the day, frank use as always been criminalized around the boundaries of rights. i'm just numbered. there people are a family and a friend, american member on our on line i jewel, voice this made it to me. i don't believe in dialogue. go political crisis, most vsoft with a political solution as climate change progress is there some people who are in place in that they're just coming after me. there's no recognition about what we're ready facing the street on out to

a 0 from imprison dissidents to inspirational leader. from founding the independent states to fiercely defending his people from ethnic cleansing. in the conclusion of a to blog documentary seems a jesse a world expose the wise to power of the 1st independent bosnia herzegovina is a beggar which from prisoner to president. on a jazz eda, the u. s. is always of interest to people around the world. people pay attention to what with on here, and i'll just, he was very good at bringing the news to the world from here. lou, i'm how much am jill. wonder how these are the top stories on al jazeera.