at least we can't see it. >> and that's the big question, why fight so hard to hold on to the documents, what is in them and what did he want to retain the possession of and for what reason, and is their claim legitimate based on that. bret, thank you. i have a feeling we'll be seeing each other throughout the course of the afternoon. i'll be back at 3:00 p.m., and bret at 6:00 p.m., covering this breaking news. stay tuned for more on fox news. >> sandra: martha, bret, thank you. as we begin "america reports" with the release of that redacted version of the affidavit, connected the fbi raid of mar-a-lago. all of this after a federal judge rejected the doj argument to keep the entire document sealed. it is a breaking news friday, hello, everyone, sandra smith in new york. great to be with you. >> john: john roberts in washington. the affidavit is heavily,

understatement, redacted, we are learning some new details about the fbi justification for the search of the former president's home. >> sandra: one part reading "after initial review of the nra referral, the fbi opened a criminal investigation to, among other things, determine how the documents with one classification marking and records were removed from the white house or any other authorized locations for the storage of classified materials, and came to be stored at the premises." >> john: david spunt is live at the justice department, 38 pages in total released in regard to this, including some attachments. so far we are getting an idea what the documents were or at least the category in which they fell. but we are not getting a lot in terms of the why they thought it was so urgent to go in there and unprecedented fashion and the

fbi conduct a raid of mar-a-lago. >> david: john and sandra, that is the detail we have wanted to know since we first learned agents were going inside mar-a-lago but we don't have the information and we suspected we would not get that specific information. so it's 38 pages as you said, some of the pages look like this, some of the pages also look like this. and then you turn it around and looks like that. not to be surprised because of the sensitive nature of what we are dealing with here and to mention, unprecedented even to be seeing an affidavit at this point in the investigation. out of the 38 pages, read something important. we have been reporting on fox news for the last several weeks, john and sandra, that in january of 2022, earlier this year, the trump team down at mar-a-lago voluntarily provided 15 boxes of material that was taken from the white house back to the national archives. this section talks about what is inside those boxes as far as how they were marked on the

classification scale, stand by. from may 16th to 18th, 2022, fbi agents conducted a preliminary review of the 15 boxes provided to nara, the national archives and records administration, and classification markings in 14 of the 15 boxes. 184 documents, including 67 documents marked as confidential, 92 documents marked as secret, and 25 documents marked as top secret. several of the documents also contained what appeared to be, it says, f potus, former president of the united states, handwritten notes. so, while this includes definitely more information than we knew before and new details about breakdowns and classification systems of what was inside those boxes, it specifically does not give us what was inside those boxes. the content of those documents. there is also a letter toward the end of the, i have it right

here, toward the end of the affidavit, this was dated may 25, 2022, being and this is from evan corcoran to jay bratt. evan corcoran is president trump's attorney in this case, jay bratt runs counter intelligence at the department of justice. this indicates that former president trump knew at least over the spring that he was under investigation. we all did not know until the fbi went in just a few weeks ago in august. john, sandra. >> sandra: david, we are all sort of making our way through this, although some pages you can skip entirely because some pages are redacted in their entirety. we could get some reaction from the white house, president biden set to depart the white house a short time from now, we will monitor that in case he says anything about this. president trump is also reacting via radio interview a few moments ago, so we are also trying to dig through that to find out what he is saying in response to this.

but as far as the affidavit relates to the storage of these documents and the trump florida home, the affidavit specifically stating that the home did not have a secure place to secure these documents, so agents were asking him to lock the basement where they had been kept. >> david: in the basement. yes, in the basement of mar-a-lago and that's something via the search warrant and via some of the other discussions that were in court when magistrate judge reinhart held court. we have known boxes were stored in the basement. there was a concern about some of the items being in the basement. the "new york times" also reporting that the fbi currently is looking to get more security footage from inside mar-a-lago, a lot of security cameras inside the estate and the "new york times" is reporting the fbi wants to get some more of that surveillance video, specifically there is a focus on that hallway of people walking in and around that hallway where some of those documents were located.

i want to go back a few months to may, that's when jay bratt, the many mentioned that works here at the department of justice received this letter from trump attorney evan corcoran, a few weeks later in june jay bratt and other doj officials went down to mar-a-lago in person, met with members of the trump team and the former president himself even came into that meeting and spoke during that meeting. specifically what happened between that meeting and the raid in early august shows, according to sources with the federal government, close to the investigation, that negotiations broke down. >> john: david, i find this quite interesting. you've been reading from page 17 of the affidavit. if you go back to page 8, the 15 boxes of materials that were handed over to the national archives and records administration says that they contain newspapers, magazines, printed news articles, photos,

presidential correspondence, records and a lot of classified records, of most significant concern was highly classified records were unfoldered, intermixed with other records and improperly identified. a jumble of documents all contained in these boxes, and while we don't know because it's all blacked out, did somebody who was stationed at mar-a-lago, maybe in a security role, say look at, this stuff is crazy, it's not being properly stored, it's being stored along with a bunch of other stuff anybody could go through and we have to get it now otherwise god forbid it falls into the wrong hands. that's just speculation on my part. but the fact it was not archived properly in terms of, a lot of the stuff was sensitive information according to the affidavit. maybe they had a legitimate

concern it could fall into the wrong hand or maybe the concern was overblown because it had been there for, you know, 18 months and had not fallen into the wrong hands. >> david: well, you know, you mentioned this page which is page 8, it talks about kind of a mish-mash of letters and pictures and momentos that may have been taken from the white house. and then you see pages like page 20 as you mentioned that are just completely blacked out. that's the difficult position that the department of justice, the judge, even team trump is in right now because nobody can explain, you know, no matter what side they are arguing, what is in here, whether someone is going to be exonerated or whether someone would be charged. that's the problem, we don't know specifically what was in those boxes, what kind of documents they were concerned about, obviously there were negotiations going on for several months. there was a subpoena issued several months back, but there are so many more questions and it's just so unique to see an affidavit that's released at

this point in time and judge reinhart said in court one week ago in west palm beach that releasing an affidavit that's heavily redacted like this may actually do more harm than good, but in this case there are several sections that are not redacted where we are learning new information, as far as in those boxes, the 15 boxes that were taken. we know 14 out of the 15 boxes had some classified information and there is now more of a breakdown there. so many unanswered questions we want to know, john. >> john: and we should point out, the 15 boxes were materials turned over in january and continued to be a back and forth. donald trump weighing in on truth social security saying affidavit heavily redacted, nothing mentioned on nuclear, total public relations, close working relationship regarding turnover, we gave them much, and that was in january. judge bruce reinhart recused

himself two months ago based on his animosity of your favorite president, me, and what changed, obama must be very proud of him now. the latest from former president trump on that. sandra. >> sandra: and we'll get back to david spunt as he continues to dig through that affidavit. karl rove with reaction. joining us by phone is jonathan turley, law professor and fox news contributor. i was digging through your most recent reaction on twitter, and you're saying having read through this affidavit it leaves more questions, most questions unanswered. also raises further doubt over the court's acceptance that the doj found the goldilocks point of getting this just right. explain. >> well, i was a little concerned when the court just simply accepted the first cut of the department of justice on the redaction after the same

department said it did not believe that any information, not a single line should be released previously to the court. some of us have been in litigation with the department of justice on overredactions and overclassifications. i've never seen a first cut from the department of justice that really hit that goldilocks point. and i think this really does sort of show that. i'm glad that the court did release some of this information. it confirms information that has been previously leaked or released by the government. recites what the media has said. the key point we are all looking for was what happened after june 8th, and the only thing that we were given is that on june 9th, the trump counsel said thank you for your letter. we got one day and one rather

unnotable reference. what they do not detail is whether the trump team just wholly was uncooperative or noncommunicative. they -- it does confirm that the court was told that president trump had raised with them his declassification authority. so that was revealed to the court. it does not appeared to have shared much on that point. there are some parts here sort of intriguing. there's a reference to some documents that were handed over voluntarily by the trump team that included fisa markings. you know, whenever you see fisa and donald trump in the same material you assume russian collusion investigation. that is sort of interesting. trump said he declassified all of the russian collusion

materials. so we don't know if that document or documents was part of the group he believe he had declassified. so there is a lot of stuff here that we simply don't have, but i think that what we do have strongly suggests to me that the judge should have pushed back a little bit and said we need, you know, there's likely material here that you really could disclose. i mean, you go through this account all the way up to june 8th. obviously what follows are communications with the trump people between june 8th and the raid, they already know that. can't you at least reveal some of that to give an idea of how this progressed. >> john: you know, jonathan, looking at this letter from evan corcoran sent to the national, sent to the department of justice back on may 25th of this year, corcoran reminds about the

principle the president has absolute authority to declassify documents, the current white house seems to have an argument with. but he writes here and relates back to january when the 15 boxes of material were turned over to nara from former president trump, corcoran writes when a request was made for the documents by the national archives and records administration, president trump readily and voluntarily agreed to their transfer to nara. goes on to write the good faith demonstrated by president trump was not matched once the boxes arrived at nara. leaks followed. and once the doj got involved, the leaks continue. leaks about any investigation are concerning. now we have page after page after page in this affidavit of redacted material and i'm wondering, do you expect that as the media, including fox news, covers the fact that there is a, what, but not a discernable why here in terms of the raid that more leaks will follow to frame this scenario here as to why the

fbi felt they were justified to go into mar-a-lago in an unprecedented raid of a former president's home? >> jonathan: that is the overriding concern. follows an all too familiar pattern for those of us who had these things in court, the government leaks information and then they basically give you a redacted document that contains the information they strategically leaked and very little more. there's no indication that attorney general garland is upset with these leaks and that he's taken an effort to find out who is responsible. they have been steadily coming out of the government. and i would have thought that would have pushed this judge to be a little more active, to challenge the first cut on the redaction and say let's look at these sections and see if there's a little more here in

terms of transparency. so you know, i think that what we have right now is a useful release. it does confirm material. it follows what i said earlier that i expected they would release a lot of the legal background that is common in affidavit, and then some of the background in communication. they pretty much did that, and it's good to have that confirmation. could they have been more transparent, i suggest they could have. >> john: thank you. if you could hang with us as the afternoon unfolds, appreciate it. >> sandra: and come back as you are able to go through the entire document as many of us still are. karl rove, former deputy chief of staff and fox news contributor. karl, your reaction as we learn more about the reacted affidavit was released because there was huge public concern about the

raid of a former president's home and the american public wanted to know about why this happened. >> we learned a little bit more but not a lot more. also we are missing an important point. what i take away from the document is this. the president leaves office, president trump leaves office on january 20, 2021. shortly thereafter, requests are made to mar-a-lago to return documents. i want to return to that in just a minute. by january of 2022, they finally return 15 boxes of documents which we now know from the affidavit included over 100 some odd classified material. we then have in february a referral by nara to the justice department, a criminal referral. why did that happen? we have to go back to the beginning. there were public reports about boxes being taken to mar-a-lago, but more importantly, we have not focused on the role of an

obscure office inside the west wing brought about by the passage of the presidential records act of 1978 called the office of records administration. it basically keeps track of all the documents that go to the president. so shortly after president trump left office the national archives received the, in essence, if you would, catalogue of documents that the office of records administration said had gone to the president. they then began checking the documents that they received from the white house, from president trump's administration and probably quickly realize there were large number of documents, significant number of documents that were catalogued but were not in the boxes of material they received. that's what began this discussion with the former president of do you have documents and please may we have them back, they are under the presidential records act you are not allowed to take them. and when they get the documents, 15 boxes of documents in january, they then compare them, january of 2022, they then

compare them again to the log they have of what should be in those documents and realize that there are classified documents that are missing. that is to say they are on the log as having gone to the president but they are not in the 15 boxes. that's why i think they make the referral on february 9th, they say we have spent almost a year asking for the material back, a large number of classified documents we did not get back in january and the only way we think we can get them back is to put this in hands of the people of the department of justice, responsibility of maintaining security of classified document and ensues between february 9th and may and june when we have this meeting at mar-a-lago and exchange of letters back and forth, but remember, the fbi in all likelihood is operating off a list of documents that the office of records administration say these classified materials went to the president but nara says they are not in the material that we got from the trump white house. >> john: so karl, i mean,

clearly there was a sudden urgency to go in there, to take the unprecedented steps as opposed to continuing negotiations or some other method of getting the documents that nara wanted back. what do you think is contained in page after page of these blacked out lines in a sense of urgency to do it as quickly as they did it? >> i'm not a lawyer and i've listened carefully to both professor turley and to andrew mccarthy and learned a lot from them. i would suggest from an untutored angle two things. one is, there is a letter, don't know who it came from, but one of president trump's lawyers apparently comes in june that says you got all the classified material. we don't have any more classified material here at mar-a-lago. well, in all likelihood they have a suspicion it might be there because of the -- of the office of records administration

catalogue, but i think there is one other issue here, too. the secret service, and this is just -- my own personal conjecture, no information other than simply knowing the secret service is there, they have no statutory responsibility over classified material, but they are sworn federal law officers. they are law enforcement. and they have a responsibility to report a crime. and particularly after a letter is sent from one of the president's lawyers saying we don't have any more classified material and president trump told the june 3rd meeting, you can get anything you need, just say, we'll get it for you, if somebody sent a letter and said we don't have classified material and somebody in the secret service said i have seen classified material still in the walls of mar-a-lago and had a responsibility to report that through the chain of command or maybe directly to the counter intelligence division, they would have somebody who, you know, had said in essence you have been misled, whether it was deliberate lie or a lie based in

ignorance, somebody told you there's no more classified material here, there is classified material here. >> sandra: jonathan turley was joining us and said yes, the affidavit does confirm a couple points it did appear in the leaks we have seen come from the press throughout this process. also says the affidavit did not establish that the trump people were wholly uncooperative or noncommunicative while noting that they were asked to turn over material and did not do so. there seems to be still a huge piece missing there in the timeline and the affidavit does not appear to clear that up. going back to the new york post headline in the middle of all this, you could have just asked. >> first of all, i agree with jonathan turley about the leaks. they are very troubling. what we don't want to see out of a process like this. but look, it is clear that beginning some time in early 2021 through january of 2022, nara, the national archives and records administration was

continuing to ask for the return of all material. the presidential record act is clear. a president does not have the right to leave the white house and pick and choose what documents he wants to take with him. he can ask for copies, but those are the property of the american people and since 1978 no president has left with sort of picking and choosing their own documents. so they were asking. how many times we don't know, but the impression in the affidavit is that they asked for multiple times and in january were given material back. they again began to ask the federal government asks the former president for return of anything else he has there and he knows there is material there. they go on june 3rd and view the boxes of material. they have a general sense of how many boxes are there. so, you know, maybe we ought to ask the government, how many times did you ask for the return of the material and president trump has said several times. all they had do was ask. well, my sense is they were asking for a year and a half, and why he was holding on to these materials when he had no legal authority to do so under

the presidential records act is beyond me. >> john: all right, karl rove with his thoughts on that. karl, appreciate it. we may come back to you, depending how the afternoon unfolds. right now let's go back to david spunt, with the latest from the justice department. you've been pouring through this affidavit. so much that we don't know about this. but you know, looking at what they have redacted, you can sort of see the rabbit trail of where this goes. but we don't have the specific why again as we discussed with karl rove the urgency. what have you found? >> david: we don't have the why. something i want to point out and you can read the document for everyone at foxnews.com and follow along. out of the 38-page affidavit, page 30, section why the government wants to seal the affidavit, ultimately it's unsealed now with redactions but why they believe it should be sealed, and an important part here. premature disclosure of the

contents of this affidavit and related documents may have a significant and negative impact on the continuing investigation and may severely jeopardize its effectiveness by allowing criminal parties an opportunity to flee, destroy evidence, stored electronically and otherwise, change patterns of behavior and notify criminal confederates. the government is not directly calling the former president a criminal, mentions allowing criminal parties, and he owns mar-a-lago, an opportunity to flee, destroy evidence, so there was a concern, a clear concern here from the government, from federal prosecutors that not only obstruction, but destruction of documents was to occur at mar-a-lago. john. >> sandra: david, could you weigh in on that last comment from karl rove. he was just saying he's getting the sense from everything we have learned so far that there were multiple attempts by

authorities to ask the former president for the documents that they clearly were indicating they knew were on the premises, that were not turned over by the former president and his legal team. are you getting any more information in that document that would reveal that they were asking continuously and that they were not receiving this back? >> david: not yet in this document but we know independently that conversations began back in 2021 between the national archives. obviously the investigation went from the national archives to the fbi, once they learned that some of the documents may have some sensitive information, but the actual conversation between the national archives and the trump team goes back to 2021, shortly after the president left the white house. so, there were conversations going on for a long time as karl mentioned the negotiations seemed to break down at some point in june after jay bratt, who runs the counter intelligence section here at the

department of justice went down to meet, former president trump was there and then the gap over the summer and then we saw this raid happen in august. but this is not something that was just going on for a few weeks or a few months, this was going on for many months between the government and between team trump. >> sandra: all right, david spunt live at the justice department. jonathan turley with us as well as we continue on the breaking coverage of this story. john. >> john: sandra, bring in special report anchor and executive editor bret baier. back to page 17 of the affidavit, in the documents, the 15 boxes turned over from the former president to nara back in january were included 184 documents bearing classification markings, including 67 documents marked as confidential, 92 marked as secret, 25 marked as top secret. so, they had an idea what might still be at mar-a-lago if the president had not turned over everything. but as sandra and david were

just talking about, negotiations over the return of these records had been preceding for the better part of 18 months, and we are wondering what is it in the redacted sections of this affidavit that had the doj say fbi, you got to go in, you got to seize this stuff now. >> bret: exactly, and that's what we don't see and probably what's in the redacted section. this is the point. what is the purpose, what is the goal of the doj. if they know in january from the 15 boxes, 14 of them contain all of these classified materials in various stages of classification, why not initiate the raid right then. where does the negotiation stop, why is there not another subpoena? that's what we don't see in these documents. there is this part where it says there is probable cause to believe that additional documents that contain classified ndi, national defense

intelligence, or that are presidential records subject to record retention requirements currently remain at the premises, and says also probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found at the premises. obstruction. so, did they find evidence of obstruction that the president was purposely trying to obstruct either their efforts or some other effort? we don't see that in these documents, and there are page 24 to 27 are essentially all black. and i assume there is some of that in there. they say they are protecting witnesses of the grand jury and methods for intelligence services but there is, on the outskirts of this concern about where the documents are held in the basement of mar-a-lago, in the pine room, and that there were foreign nationals at mar-a-lago that had access to that area or near that area, and

that suggests, on the outskirts of the blacked out portion. >> sandra: and page 26 of the 38 pages, section 70, probable cause to believe that documents containing classified ndi and presidential records remain at the premises. that's when full redactions begin after that, it leaves a lot of room -- >> john: i got the instruction. >> sandra: for speculation there. bret, to your point there, could there have been and was there room here for another subpoena to happen before the raid of a former president's home and to that, that's the question you've had since the release of this redacted affidavit. >> bret: yeah, it's the timing this affidavit, because of the redactions doesn't show us, doesn't tell us why that all fell apart. did they believe that there was a reason that the former president was somehow holding them off? there was a reason in their justification that they had to move now? why didn't they, when they find

the documents in the 15 boxes in january, move quicker to, you know, go after these highly, highly sensitive documents they believe were still on the premises after looking at the 15 boxes that they retrieved in january. why does it take until june to get a subpoena and to august 8th to then launch this raid. that is not laid out in these documents, at least in the part that we can read. it may be in the part that we can't read. >> sandra: bret baier, thank you very much. more on how it's going to impact the midterm elections, virginia governor glen youngkin. your reaction, a lot of redactions here but learning more about the documents seized from former president trump's home. >> well, i can't comment on the documents that have been received. what i do know is that

transparency is the key here, and my criticism of attorney general garland has been lack of transparency. and what really is a clear politization of the attorney general's office and whether to investigate parents in loudoun county or not enforce code and keep our justices safe in virginia. and so transparency is the key. i know there's a lot more to come here, and so i would just caution folks to not draw too many conclusions from today's release and yet continue to ask for more transparency. that's going to be the key here. >> john: governor, the reason why we had initially booked you and we want to get into that, too, and while we continue to cover the news about the affidavit, new fairfax county public schools policy in which students can change certain issues regarding gender, how they want to be addressed in terms of gender, which locker room they use, which washroom

they want to use at any school in fairfax county and the teachers are not required to get parental consent before they go ahead and do this. your thought on this. this idea of parental consent, involvement, notification was a huge one in last year's election, at least in part led to you now occupying the governor's house. >> this is in fact the kind of topic that will materially impact the midterms and it's because parents matter and it's a lot more than a slogan. it's in fact the law in virginia. and to see a school system in fairfax county begin to brief teachers on how to cut parents out of these most critical decisions for their children is not only wrong but it completely contravenes law and federal law. there is clear, clear law that says parents have a fundamental

right to make decisions with regard to their child's upbringing, education and care. and this contravenes it directly, and we will bring full authority with the governor's office to make sure parents are protected. and what we did in virginia over the course of the last year. we were elected because parents felt cut out and saw politicians and bureaucrats between them and their children, and a bipartisan basis to empower parents whether children should wear a mask or whether materials were consistent with their family values. this is the future i believe of the parents matter movement, stand up for parents. >> sandra: we have seen throughout the pandemic and beyond parents know they want to be in charge of their child and what their child is being taught in the classroom. governor, do you believe this will emerge as one of the top issues in 2024?

>> it was one of the top issues in 2021, it will be a top issue in 2022, and i think until we in fact address it clearly that across america, just like we are doing in virginia, parents have the primary role in making decisions for their children. and we consistently see the left liberal progressives try to inject themselves between parents and their children. it's wrong and we are not going to let it happen in virginia. >> john: governor, yesterday we had on deborah tisler, a former special education teacher and she has children in the system. >> circumventing parents rights and 100 years of child development, weaponizing it not in the best interest of children. >> john: and not in the best interest of parental oversight and rights as well. you said your office will do everything it can to address the

situation. what can you do? school systems across the country have a fair degree of autonomy. >> in fact, there is federal law that says your child doesn't belong to the state and in virginia our code is very clear that parents have the fundamental right to make these most important decisions. and so we will, in fact, enlist the support of the attorney general who i know is incredibly supportive of this approach to make sure that parents' rights are fully, fully protected. again, this is a bipartisan issue in virginia that has received support from democrats along with republicans, there is no confusion in virginia, and yet progressives believe they can in fact instruct teachers on these approaches and do it quietly without telling parents, without fully disclosing it. this is wrong and this is why

the attorney general's office will be used to make sure parents' rights are protected. >> sandra: a lot of people hear you and wonder what your political ambitions are. are you planning a run for the white house? >> well, this is a topic that we really have not even begun to consider. my 100% focus is on virginia to make sure that we are the best place to live, work, raise a family and oh, by the way, protect parents' rights. i will be working this year to help republican candidates win governor's races and looking forward to tomorrow to be in michigan to help dixon win. we are sure we deliver on the agenda we laid out, elected to execute again and oh, by the way, have had a great first seven months and in fact getting taxes down and standing up for the blue and restoring excellence in education and standing up for parents' rights and oh, by the way, making a government that works for you as opposed to tells you what to do all the time. so i'm very excited about our

agenda in virginia and 2024 is a long way off. >> john: i should point out i just got my car tax bill again, so -- you know, that -- that's always a thorn in the side of virginians. >> it is, and one of the reasons why we are so consistently to bring the tax burden down in virginia. and why i was so excited to sign a budget with $4 billion in tax reduction and put away another $400 million in order to bring taxes down again for virginians next year. overtaxed, it shows up in financial results and we will make sure we bring taxes down. >> sandra: appreciate your time. thanks for joining us. >> john: thanks, governor. the big topic of the day, the affidavit that was just recently unsealed, though heavily redacted. mike davis, former law clerk of

justice gorsuch, and article 3 project. mike, you went through some of this, some redacted, much unredacted, we know some about the what, but not the why in terms of the urgency. your thoughts. >> mike: this affidavit heavily reacted affidavit, it further evidences that this home raid on president trump was unprecedented, it was unnecessary, and it was unlawful. and again, what i've been saying since august 8th, the president has the absolute constitutional authority to declassify anything he wants for any reason he wants and he doesn't have to get permission from any bureaucrat at the national archives do that, confirmed by 1988 supreme court case, department of the navy versus egan. so, there goes the underlying potential charge for espionage

that was in this warrant. second point, the president has the sole statutory authority to make the determination whether a record is a personal record that belongs to him or a presidential record that goes to the bureaucrats at the national archives and almost certainly gets sent back to the president to put in the former president's library and that is confirmed by a 2012 decision by an obama judge related to judicial watch and tom fenton's lawsuits of eight years of president clinton and eight years of tapes in his sock drawer. it is impossible for a former president to obstruct investigations into noncrimes. the justice department did not have the power to even look at these crimes because it doesn't matter what the evidence shows in this affidavit, no matter what that evidence shows as a matter of law, it is legally impossible for president trump to have committed espionage or

to have violated some presidential records act. the presidential records act actually contemplates that former presidents have classified records. congress gives former president's secure office space, give the former president staff security clearance, and secret service protection to guard these paper records and there's no allegation that any of the records got into the wrong hands, unlike hillary clinton's home server, had foreign governments hack, and what was so urgent to cause the justice to get the records and i think it's because president trump made personal his copy of the crossfire hurricane records, russian collusion records and the justice department never made them public, so damning on obama, hillary, the fbi and the intel community. >> sandra: it did reveal 14 of

the 15 boxes retrieved from the former president earlier this year did contain 184 documents with the classified markings, we learned of those documents, 67 were marked confidential, 92 secret, 25 documents top secret. so, if the president was being, and once we -- if we were able to see a trail of that actually happening, it does not appear in this document, or at least it's redacted if it is in that document, if there is a trail of authorities asking on multiple occasions the president to turn over those documents, which they apparently knew were there, isn't that a problem, mike? if the president had the opportunity to hand these documents over when asked? >> mike: the librarians are asking for copies of the overdue books, they are not overdue. the president has the legal right to declassify these records and keep a personal copy. the former president had every right to keep these records and

the bureaucrats at the archives did not, as confirmed by 1988 supreme court decision, department of navy versus egan, and the 2012 judicial watch case against president obama with the tapes in his sock drawer. they can demand them all you want. and the question you have to ask, they are demanding these records and attorney general merrick garland leaked that he was waiting for weeks, and reinhart recused himself because of a 2017 facebook post where he bashed president trump's integrity, if he had weeks to deliberate, why didn't attorney general merrick garland get an opinion from the department of justice office of legal counsel or olc, and the reason he did not get it, he would not have gotten the answer he wanted. this was a political raid on a former president and someone who is almost certainly going to be a political --

>> when you say presumably, do you know that to be the case? >> presumably he's going to run for president? >> sandra: no, there was a trail of him not wanting to ask because he was not going to get the answer that he wanted. >> mike: well, i mean, why else -- if he had weeks to deliberate on something this unprecedented and consequential, why would he not seek an opinion from the office of legal counsel on this? this is -- this is a political raid by -- that was -- and they said the attorney general did not personally authorize this raid, he absolutely did. also said the biden white house was not involved with the raid. they absolutely were because white house deputy counsel of the president, jonathan su had to relay that president biden waived president trump's assertion of executive privilege, paved the way for the raid. and so the president -- president biden was absolutely involved in this raid and so were his officials in the biden white house counsel's office, jonathan su. this is a political hit on a

former president. >> john: mike davis for us with the latest on that. mike, thank you. bring in david lee miller and david, as we go through this document, which includes page after page of blacked outlines with these redactions and we try to determine and it's difficult to do that what is underneath the redactions, what are you finding out there? >> david: we have heard from the former president on truth social, two words followed by three explanation points, he said simply witch hunt. and earlier today a sort time after the redacted document was released, former president sent out a lengthier post, up on the screen, it says "affidavit heavily redacted, nothing mentioned on nuclear, total public relations subtrafuge, and

document turnover, we gave them much. judge bruce reinhart should never have allowed the break-in of my home, he rekufd himself based on his animosity and hatred of your favorite president, me, obama must be very proud of him right now. and just for purposes of clarification, addressing, the former president was, that in june the federal magistrate did recuse himself from litigation trump had filed against hillary clinton and other democrats dealing with the russia -- what the former president is citing in this post a short time ago today. and nothing mentioned on nuclear, that is seemingly a reference to news reports a short time ago, a few days ago, that suggested that these documents may have some link to

classified nuclear documents. that is not clear from the redacted affidavit and that appears to be what the former president is addressing. and also a posting today of donald trump, jr. on his twitter account, he said "they tell you with a straight face they want transparency knowing their media lackies will run with it," and then they run this. familiar from the former president and his son, nothing new here, they say they cooperated and from the former president's perspective, a witch hunt. >> sandra: and president biden is set to leave the white house about eight minutes from now, maybe he'll stop and talk to reporters on his way out. although this white house has maintained the president and the white house staff had no advance notice of this raid, correct? >> that's absolutely right and i

think it's unlikely we are going to hear from president biden but one other thing to note here, sandra, i neglected to mention is that in the former president's posting, he mentioned president obama. he said obama must be very proud of him right now. you know, this is a federal magistrate, a federal magistrate is not appointed by the president of the united states, the magistrates are voted on by the district court judges. so it's really unclear what point he's trying to make by bringing up president obama in his post today. sandra. >> sandra: ok. >> john: david lee miller, thank you. and we should point out, even though there was no specific reference to nuclear in any of the materials being sought or ones that had been collected in that january 15th dump of document back to nara from the former president, they do talk

about national defense information, much of which is highly classified and it could be that somewhere in that information, we don't know the contents reference to nuclear but just speculation, in all the redactions here we are not given any information about what might be in the documents that they were seeking, and we certainly have not heard anything since the raid about what was in the documents that was seized. >> sandra: a lot of questions unanswered, and we have a lot unanswered from jonathan turley, he'll join us after the break. a chance to dig into this a bit more what this means for the american public who would like some transparency as to why it happened in the first place. >> john: looking forward to that. a quick break, stay with us, there is a lot yet to come.

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>> sandra: fox news alert, we continue to report on the released redacted affidavit connected to the raid of former president trump's home. digging through it live from the justice department, david, a chance to dig through it, what else are you learning? >> david: i've read through the document and the last time i was on a few minutes ago and we talked about how long the national archives and the

government had been speaking to team trump and we know that they were speaking at least since may 6 of 2021, so just a few months after the former president was out of office. there is also a section on page 4 which is curious that mentions sci, sensitive compartmented information, one of the highest levels of classifications, means classified information concerning or derived from intelligence sources, methods or analytical processes, that's the only mention of sci in this document that we can see because there are a lot of pages like this. so, typically this is mentioned in a part of the affidavit, you know, toward the beginning on page 4, which essentially gives somebody reading it an idea of what these terms mean that they will see them later on. so it's a preview of what we

will see later on in the affidavit and we just don't see it written out later on except multiple pages of this black. so, that's curious part of the affidavit there, sandra. >> sandra: ok, david spunt, jump back in as soon as you have more breaking news live from the justice department. >> john: and looky looky what the cat dragged in, you are usually in a little box, but today jonathan turley is here with us in the studio. >> jonathan: it's a treat. >> john: here is the affidavit, and the attached letters. page after page after page of blacked out, and as we were speaking with you before, when you were in the little box and now here in the studio, we know about the what, literally nothing about the why. we can sort of surmise that communications broke down in june between the president's office and nara, national archives and records administration but don't know what led to the sudden urgency

they had to take the unprecedented action. a chance to digest this and look down the beginning of this rabbit trail. what do you think? >> jonathan: it looks like that, and the same process of looking at an abstract painting. you know what you can see and the rest is interpretation. here it stops on a dime. literally stops at the full extent of these prior leaks and disclosures by the government. particularly the leaks. and what we can confirm is that obviously there was a breakdown, there was a request for the return of these documents from the archives. they did not believe it was fully complied with. but then they seem to go to the nuclear option, you know. you had these missing documents and a criminal referral to the department of justice, but there was also this period of cooperation. clearly a lot of material was turned back over to the archives and it still leaves us with this question, you know.

the last thing that the affidavit tells us is that they wrote to the trump team and said if you store it in this area, make sure you add that security, which the trump team did and then it goes black. and the question is well, what happened next? if you had this inventory, which we believe the archives had when the, at the end of the trump administration and had specific documents they were looking for, we are still in the dark as to why they didn't say we have these documents they have to come back, can we come over and see if they are in the storage area. all of that we just don't know. but what we do know, by the way, is that the original claim of the justice department, that they could not possibly release any part of this affidavit was obviously untrue. many of us said at the time if you are familiar with the affidavits, it's clearly an exaggeration and this proves it. they released all of this

information. it would not compromise anything in terms of the investigation. indeed i think they could have turned over more. >> sandra: if that's the case there, and good to have you respond in realtime, if that is indeed the case and they change your mind for lack of stating it a different way and decided to release some portions of this affidavit, heavily redacted, is there a chance there will continue to be more public pressure to release more of it and could we see another version of this less redacted in the future? >> jonathan: this is a pretty leaky ship that garland is steering. i mean, there is a lot of leaks that have come out that were detrimental or intended to be detrimental towards trump and we may see the continuation of that. i still find rather concerning is the fact that the court just simply said ok, well, that was your first cut, and that really

hit the goldilocks point, that's just right. that's not the experience most of us have in dealing with the justice department over redactions. they stop on june 8th, where we were saying we really would like to see some background after that, and it's good to have confirmation what happened before. the only addition we got was one line on june 9th saying the trump team received a letter and said thank you. well, clearly what follows that line are communications between the department of justice and the trump team. they know that already. so how is that going to undermine their criminal investigation? that's the type of thing that the judge could have said look, we all agree, at least the court agrees, that there is a public interest in greater transparency and i don't see how you just blackout all of those communications on that day, or after that day. that's what concerns me.

i think there could have been greater transparency. >> john: in terms again of the why, you know, maybe i'm getting stuck on it, but i still don't see anything in this that gives a sense of urgency as to why the fbi had -- and the doj and the attorney general signing off on it, judge bruce reinhart signing off on the unprecedented action to conduct an fbi raid on a former president's residence. we get something here in a letter sent to evan corcoran, the former president's counsel and f potus counsel 1 in the doj counsel, pointed out mar-a-lago does not include a secure location authorized for the storage of classified information. accordingly, we ask the room at mar-a-lago, the pine room in the basement, where the documents were stored to be secured and remain there preserved in the room until further notice. there's no urgency in that.

so, what happened between june 8th and the 8th of august to suddenly ring the fire alarms and say send in the swat team because we have to get this stuff. we have to get it. >> jonathan: there's no reference to the nuclear codes or nuclear information. if you read it just on what we have, this reads like an effort just to get the material back. it does not read like we are building a criminal case. but we also have not read all those blacked out sections. >> john: did somebody say it's been this long and still not a lock on the room and people are going around. >> jonathan: that's the why you are talking about. i'm not too sure. what we know, there was a level of cooperation and continual communications, and also the possibility of other means. you could get injunction from the court, a second subpoena specific to turn these things over and does not explain why they had the open ended search where they could vacuum up everything in the room.

>> john: and we'll read that coming up. jonathan, thanks for hanging with us. fox news alert as "america reports" rolls into a second hour and continuing coverage of our top story, highly anticipated affidavit from the mar-a-lago raid now public but full of black lines as it's heavily redacted. hi again, sandra. >> sandra: sandra smith in new york. breaking news continues, the release of the document coming after a federal judge rejected the justice department argument to keep the entire document sealed. the affidavit, of course, was used to justify the search earlier this month at former president donald trump's florida home. and even with all the redactions, we are still getting a picture of what investigators found and potentially what case prosecutors may be building. >> john: according to the affidavit, 184 unique documents with classification markings but they were turned over in january. in addition to that, also probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be

found at the premises. a lot more to cover this hour, starting with david spunt live at the justice department. i remember that there was a redacted document that was released some years ago that if you put it into a pdf file and clicked on it, all the redactions came off. no such luck in this case. >> david: wouldn't that be fun. that would be fun. these are solid and i think maybe there are not as many redactions as people thought, john and sandra, given the fact that justice department was so reluctant to even release much of this at all when attorney general merrick garland spoke at the justice department two weeks ago, it was a lot to get thim to go ahead with the search warrant let alone the affidavit. affidavit has pages you can read and find out a little about why the government wanted to go in, we don't know specifically what they were looking for because as you mentioned at the top, there are a lot of pages that look

like this that unfortunately you can't put into a computer and have all the black lines move away. i want to read two key parts of this affidavit, john. you mentioned 184 unique documents, 67 of those documents marked as confidential, 92 documents marked as secret, 25 documents marked as top secret. this is another interesting tz part i want to read on page 30, it says premature disclosure of the contents of this affidavit and related documents may have a significant and negative impact on the continuing investigation and may severely jeopardize its effectiveness by allowing criminal parties an opportunity to flee, destroy evidence stored electronically and otherwise, change patterns of behavior and confederates. and the agent with the fbi is using the word criminal parties

when talking about the former president and some of his associates down at mar-a-lago, believing that obstruction occurred, john. sandra. >> sandra: david, just as we continue to make our way through this going back to jonathan turley's point a few moments ago, it's routine the affidavits would be sealed during pending investigations. this is sort of unprecedented the judge decided to reveal portions of this. he actually acknowledged extraordinary public interest in doing so about this investigation. obviously involving a former president and someone who could be running for office again, david. so, is there a chance, are you hearing, that there will be continued build of public interest to know more about a heavily redacted document, perhaps they will release more of this down the road. >> david: i've asked that and cannot get a straight answer. it's a perfect question. is -- this is a unique time, and

we are seeing unique measures here. this is not a usual case. this is a very unusual case and unprecedented case, and it calls for unprecedented measures. not only do we not see the attorney general of the united states come out and say i ordered this, let's release the search warrant and not the affidavit, a few weeks ago we thought this affidavit would never come out, just a few days ago possibly the affidavit would never come out and now we are seeing this affidavit out there, which is significant. a significant turn, although the affidavit is missing some of the key components of why agents went into mar-a-lago, why -- what documents they were looking for, and i want to read this part, which is i think fascinating on page 4, section 11, sensitive compartmented information. at the beginning of an affidavit it lays out definitions so people kind of understand what they are going to be reading later on. this mentions sensitive

compartmented information which is classified information concerning or derived from intelligence sources, methods or analytical processes. layman's terms, it's very, very high level of classification. sci is not mentioned anywhere later in this affidavit that we can see. so perhaps it's likely behind these black lines here, and that's what we are not seeing, sandra, john. >> sandra: david, keep us posted. back to you as the news warrants. thank you, john. >> john: bring in karl rove, former deputy chief of staff and fox news contributor. karl, we know what the president had in terms of a lot of documents based on the return of the 15 boxes worth of material back in january. 184 unique documents bearing classification markings, 67 documents marked as confidential, 92 marked as secret, 25 marked as top secret. you used to be a deputy chief of staff at the white house. you know how important it is to

keep classified documents classified, keep them in a secure location. how much of this do you think was legitimate in terms of national security concerns and how much of it might have been political? >> my hope is none was political. take a look at the documents that were received in january. the confidential is the lowest level, classified above that, top secret above that, top secret sci above that, 184 documents, including many that were above the confidential level. in june, or excuse me, in the raid we know that there are 11 packets of material, some of them confidential, but most of them classified top secret or top secret sci. we don't know exactly, we don't want to know, they are never going to tell us, hopefully what those are. but that's a lot of documents. we are talking about 184 in january, and 11 packets, which

could be anywhere from 11 to god knows how many as a result of the raid. and so look, the government had an interest in retrieving all of the documents, presidential records under the presidential records act but it had a clear interest in determining -- in retrieving all of the classified documents. and again, i go back to the point i made earlier, in all likelihood when they got the box of the 15 boxes in january, they knew what they were looking for in the way of classified material. they compared what they got out of those 15 boxes to what they knew that they were looking for and realized more documents were still missing and hence the criminal referral by the national archives and records administration in february and why we had the fbi now suddenly become involved. director of the counter intelligence agency, or division even making his way to mar-a-lago for a meeting, so yeah, there is a lot in there, and it is important to get them

out of -- they were in a basement in a building that was -- that lots of people who had never been properly vetted were coming and going. we know for example chinese national with sophisticated electronic equipment was detained and turned away from mar-a-lago, we don't know what other people like that attempted to get in there. >> sandra: get this news in here, we were anticipating perhaps president biden when he was departing the white house for maryland a few moments ago whether he would be asked about this, he was, karl. asked about the classified documents and said, he said that the former president trump should have declassified the documents, pool notes, so it's a rough read and not ver bait, laughed and joked about declassifying the whole world, and did not answer the question whether it was such a national security threat he would need to be briefed. asked if it's ever appropriate to take classified material from the white house, biden said

something along the lines of it depends. karl, your reaction to that and also going back to your earlier comments about you saying that you are getting the sense the former president was asked on many occasions over the timeline for these documents with authorities knowing they existed inside that mar-a-lago residence. there were multiple opportunities, you are suggesting that he could have just answered those requests and turned these documents over. if that was the case, and the president's legal team was stiff-arming authorities' requests for those documents, couldn't, many are wondering, another subpoena have been -- couldn't a subpoena have been issued after those multiple attempts? >> well, we know one subpoena was issued and we know that there were -- we don't know how many contacts were made, but clearly between sort of early 2021 and january of 2022 there were a number of occasions back and forth. we have started to see in the affidavit evidence of some of

the communication between the president's lawyers and the doj after the referral to the fbi, but we don't know how many. but it should be, frankly, in all due respect to the former president, one. one request. you took documents that under the presidential records act of 1978 should not have been taken from the white house, please give them all back. now, they obviously asked him a number of times and he gave 15 boxes back. why he continued to hold on to almost a dozen more boxes is beyond me. >> john: you know, karl so far until the release of this heavily redacted affidavit, this story really has been framed by leaks, either coming out of the doj or coming out of the fbi. and as we cover this and we say look, there is so much about the what involved here that we still have only scratched the surface of the what, the big question, the why still remains. do you expect these leaks will continue to try to frame out the why here, and without the former

president saying anything about it, that will be the defining factor in terms of framing this overall investigation. >> yeah, i'm with jonathan turley on this. merrick garland ought to go out of his way to make it clear he does not like the leaks from the fbi and do everything to stop them. unfair to everyone, unfair to president trump, unfair to the american people, we do not want to have these kinds of activities conducted in public light in order to discourage, in order to potentially impact directly or indirectly an election. this was our problem with james comey talking about things he shouldn't have been talking about in 2016. so i'm with turley on this. the leaks are abysmal. and look, i think it is up to -- i think it would be in the best advice to the former president to leave it to his lawyers and not further comment on this for two reasons. one, it lowers his exposure

legally, and the other, let the election conversation get back to what it ought to be about, which is about inflation and the economy and the direction of the country and people's views of president biden's competence, not, you know, we are now into the third week we are talking primarily about the former president's retention of white house records. and what that has brought about and it's not healthy for republicans, not healthy for former president trump, better for him to stop commenting on it, leave it to the lawyers and let it be resolved. >> sandra: thank you for joining us both hours. david lee, what do you have? >> david: we have heard from the former president about the redacted affidavit that was released a short time ago and the latest tweet said witch hunt with three exclamation points. earlier he went into further detail about his view of the released document. he said, posted on truth social,

nothing about nuclear, nothing about the close working relationship regarding document turnover. we gave them much. judge bruce reinhart should never have allowed the break-in on his home, he recused himself a few months ago based on his animosity toward your favorite president, me, obama must be very proud of him right now. and we have heard a short time ago from donald trump, jr., posted on twitter, they tell you with a straight face they want transparency knowing the media lackies will run with it as though it's fact and then they release this and you can read the last line for yourself. and also posted well, this really clears things up and brother eric put out a tweet, one word, saying simply transparency, what a joke. some, those are the latest

reactions from the former president and his children, repeating essentially the same refrain that was said earlier that, which took place regarding the mar-a-lago raid was in his words a witch hunt. sandra. >> sandra: david lee miller on that. thank you very much, david lee, and back to you as you have more. >> john: andy mccarthy, the president departing the white house did not comment specifically on the affidavit, he did say something about declassifying material. karine jean-pierre at the white house briefing was asked about this moments ago. how she answered the question. >> relates to, and i understand why folks have an interest in this. we totally get that. as it relates to any comments on anything related to this independent investigation, even

underlying materials, we feel that it is not appropriate for us to comment on this. this is an independent investigation that the department of justice is leading. that's something that the president finds is an important thing to do for the department of justice to have that independence. we are just not going to comment. >> john: that's why we have you, it's your job to comment on things like this. you've had a chance to digest the affidavit and the attached materials. what are you thinking now in this hour? >> i'm increasingly convinced, john, that the justice department doesn't have any intention of prosecuting president trump for classified information violations or record retention. unless he talks himself into being charged by the kind of stuff that they are saying now. it just seems to me that in a normal case, you know, all the problems that you've been

discussing with jonathan turley would not arise. you do the searches at the end of the case the same time you do arrest and then the underlying affidavits get disclosed in discovery to the defense and they become public anyway. so it's difficult to understand the order with which they are fighting disclosing information if this is a case where they anticipate filing charges in which case the affidavit is going to become public anyway. and the other thing i think we should focus on which we have not spent a lot of time talking about is how very hard it is to do prosecutions that involve classified information. you know, before president trump is out there saying you know, there's nothing in here about nuclear weapons. well of course there's nothing in there about nuclear weapons, that's classified. they don't want to talk about the classified documents because to describe them would be to do the very damage to national

security that is probably the impetus for doing the search in the first place. so this vigor to not disclose the stuff that's in the -- the interesting stuff that's in the affidavit makes sense to me only if they think that they are actually not going to charge a crime in this case and maybe this affidavit will never have to see light of day, at least those portions of it that they have redacted. >> sandra: give the viewer's a head's up, about to hear from president biden in his own words how he is reacting to the release of the affidavit connected to the raid of the former president's home. he took questions a few moments ago as he was departing the white house. obviously on the affidavit, he also took questions on student loans and the one-year anniversary of the war in afghanistan coming to an end. so, andy, we are going to play that out for the viewers, if you could stand by with us.

he took off 2:08 and he said this. listen. >> actually down, economy is looking good, so far we are hanging in and i feel good about it. we have a long way to go. >> people take advantage of the student loan program. do you consider success if only 75% -- >> i'll consider it success if only 10% take advantage of it. look, people need help and by the way, the end result is as i met with everyone from the former secretary of treasury to everyone else, it's not going to cause inflation, number one. number two, it would generate economic growth, the opposite. because you have people now freed up to go borrow money to buy a home, to be able to start businesses, do the things that

need to be done. and i found it absolutely fascinating some of the folks talking about this is big spending are the same people that got $158,000 in ppp money, including what's her name, the woman who believes in -- anyway, a whole lot of republicans got a lot of money. the very people that criticize it. so it's just not -- i think it's a good thing. it frees a lot of people up. it's going to grow the economy. we still have a way to go, but i'm optimistic. >> mr. president, have you spoken to any of the family members of the 13 soldiers who died last year in afghanistan? >> not today but i have spoken in the past. >> declassified all the documents, could he have just declassified them all? >> i want to know, declassify everything in the world, i'm president, come on, declassify everything.

i'm not going to comment. i don't know the detail, i don't want to know. let the justice department take care of it. >> you need to be briefed on it [inaudible] >> mr. president, in simple terms, is it ever appropriate for a president to take home with them classified and top secret documents? >> depending on the circumstance. for example, i have in my home a space that is completely secure. i'm taking home with me today, today's ped, it's locked, i have a person with me, military with me, i read it, lock it back up and give it to the military. >> without a specialized area declassified documents, is it ever appropriate for a president to bring them -- >> it depends on the document and depends on how secure it is. thank you. >> what do you mean by semi

facism, sir. >> election two days and and everything went good. you recently announced $2 billion investment for angola. everybody is very excited. your comment on that. >> that answers the question. you think we would give $2 billion if we were not excited about what happened? thank you. >> how is the first lady feeling? how is the first lady feeling? still positive? >> john: all right, he's going to beltsville, maryland, going to visit the u.s. secret service training facility, interviewing jay leno and then heading to wilmington another weekend. not a whole lot there, sandra. >> sandra: it struck me at the very top that he referenced the economy looking good. i'll draw your attention to the bottom corner of the screen, the big board up. a 745 point drop in the dow

right now. federal reserve chair, jay powell, is at a meeting where he just spoke and he warned of some pain ahead as the federal reserve tries to fight to bring down sky high inflation, powell noting it's still at the highest level in more than 40 years. he added that the higher interest rates will likely persist for some time, talking about the historical record cautions strongly against prematurely loosening policy. so you are talking about interest rates continually having to rise to bring down inflation that does not seem to be budging. we have been identifying the key economic reports led to some economists questioning whether or not inflation may be peaking. listening to jerome powell, you are not really getting that indication. he's talking about the continue -- and student loan

forgiveness, he said people need help. take what you will from that, reaction coming up. >> john: and the same time all of that was happening, committee for a responsible federal budget which yesterday said the student loan forgiveness could cost more than a half trillion dollars says it would exacerbate inflation, and it could potentially double the deficit reduction the president has been looking for, which he said would pay for the student loan reduction. so you are not saving any money at all. at the very least, breaking even in terms of the deficit staying the same. according to cfrb, it will make it even worse, and make inflation even worse. >> sandra: and bipartisan criticism of implementing this level of government spending at a time of sky high inflation. and the federal reserve that's having a hard time taming it. quite a story developing there, we'll keep watching the dow.

a recent selloff, down 760 points. >> john: we now go from this departure back to our regularly scheduled programming on the affidavit being unsealed. jonathan turley remains here in the studio. i know you have to get running, you do have another job besides this one. the president refusing to comment on it in any specificity, which in an open investigation is prudent, but the idea that the fbi took the unprecedented step going into a former president's home and raiding it to take documents out of the home. and when you look at the affidavit as it's been presented to us with so much of it unknown, have you been able t figure out a reason why they went in and raided the place? >> jonathan: no, look, they are going to respond when the former president said this is a wicht hunt, they will say we found

witches, we found classified documents and you are not allowed to have them. >> john: you are not allowed to have them, but if you do have them, curated properly. >> jonathan: that's right. and president biden's comments, he said twice, it sort of depends. when can you take classified material, it depends. not exactly the clarity of a criminal case and president biden is correct, presidents take back classified information all the time, a great variety of classification. he said the president cannot declassify the world that's true, but can declassify the united states government. the question is, did he do it properly. he has declassification authority and that was raised with the court and the court did not buy it. your question really reveals the tension here in this timeline. you know, we know that the key

fbi official went to mar-a-lago and sat down with the trump people. we can presume that he gave them that list. we know the archives had a list of stuff taken from the white house. they compared, presumably, what they got voluntarily in those boxes. there was missing material. all of that seems fairly clear and concrete. so, they have this meeting and presumably that list was given to the trump people or shown to the trump people and said we need to see these things. what we don't know is what the response was. the trump people said we were cooperating and would have continued to do so. and getting back to what president biden said, we are in the sort of murky area. i don't see the evidence in what we have in the affidavit, maybe it's in the interesting blacked out portions. >> john: i'm sure it is, plenty of material we can't see. >> jonathan: this is watching the movie, and ten minutes in

they say go, just when it was getting interesting. so there might be something that establishes what they are after in terms of criminal case on what we have in the affidavit, looks like they were trying to get material back, that they were responding to the archives and they used this means to do it. but the problem with prosecuting a case, this goes to what andy said earlier, i've been on the defense side of national security cases, andy has been on the prosecution side and he's right. it's difficult to litigate the questions, and more difficult when you have someone with declassification authority. and the question is, do you want to bring that type of prosecution, you have to make new law, at least clarify it. it's not what people would anticipate the first case against a former president. the assumption everything is clear and established, unasellable. >> sandra: bring in chris

swecker, former assistant fbi director. welcome to the coverage here, jump in. you've had a chance to read through this. your thoughts. >> yeah, i agree with jonathan. i read through the affidavit and doesn't really tell us anything new, other than there was a dispute over the records, they were removed from the white house, they are sensitive records, they are stored in an improper, insecure location, but that's not really a revelation. reminds me of hillary clinton and you go back to the 2016 press conference jim comey held he talked about her removal of information and putting it on a server not in the control of the government, classified documents stored on the server, how easy it was to hack the server, it may have been hacked and she was a bad person or careless and had handled the documents improperly but no reasonable prosecutor would prosecute it.

i think those documents were far more exposed than the documents the former president had in the double locked closet at mar-a-lago. i don't know if we learned a whole lot about the affidavit. other parts -- one part that says that the doj counsel told them to keep the records there until further notice. >> john: and that's what i thought was curious, chris, an order for them to further secure the documents in the pine room down in the basement, and we don't know if that order was complied with or not, and was that what led to the raid? but in terms of the raid itself, we do get an idea what the fbi was authorized to do when you look at attachment b, the very back of the affidavit. they were allowed to go in and seize any physical documents with classification markings along with any containers, boxes, including any other contents. so, they were basically saying go in there with a vacuum cleaner and anything you find that is even remotely attached

to what it is that we are looking for you can take. so, we have not found out yet what was included in what they took. but you can surmise they got a lot of material. >> yeah, in my 24 years in the fbi, i executed a lot of search warrants, drafted a lot of search warrant affidavits i don't think i ever saw a search warrant that was this broad. i think jonathan has pointed that out several times. incredibly broad scope of this. basically take every do you want that's in there and you saw where the presidential, the 15 boxes returned earlier had magazine articles, extraneous information. they vacuumed up everything, took it and sort it out later. i think that's a good argument for having that third party, a special master, if you will, go through the documents and make sure they only get what they are entitled to get, the classified information or the highly sense tisue national defense

information referred to in the statutes. >> sandra: chris, what happens next. what do you expect to see on the part of the justice department. obviously you saw a judge reacting to what was growing public demand to have some transparency here as to why this happened. what do you think happens next? >> yeah, i mean, i don't think we are going to see an indictment, i agree with andy mccarthy. i don't see it happening. i think this was the government doj in particular flexing its muscle. i think the former president was being obstinate, and they went in and grabbed the records. if there is prosecution, we will see the rest of the affidavit and other things, but even if there is indictment, a lot of things to go through and legal arguments to be made and i think

trump's defense team, if he were indicted, i think they would get it dismissed early in the process. >> sandra: chris swecker joining us us on the breaking news. thank you. >> john: thank you, chris. shannon bream, the new anchor of fox news sunday, and first time i've seen you in person since the announcement. huge, huge congratulations to you. >> sandra: i believe i was the first to congratulate her on the air, but not in-person. so you've got me, john. welcome. >> john: first time i've had a chance to see you, terrific assignment for you, i think you are the perfect choice for it, you'll do great. >> can't wait to get started. >> john: you heard chris saying an argument for the special master here, you look at the 15 boxes of documents the president surrendered back in january of this year, there were all sorts of other materials in there besides classification related

materials, newspaper articles, writings, things like that. does president trump have a case here when he's asking a judge to appoint a special master and say take the stuff out of the hands of the doj, and into the hands of a neutral third party to determine what the doj and the fbi should hang on to and give back. >> folks would say you should have asked for that right away, shouldn't have been a delay. the documents are out there. in the material that was not blacked out there was a plan to go through with teams to separate things out that, is what would happen in these cases anyway. part of what happened in authorizing this raid. and so it goes on to say there are going to be different teams, separate things out, decide what is attorney/client privileged and what goes to law enforcement personnel. at any point law enforcement personnel assigned to the investigation, then identify any data or documents they consider

potentially attorney/client privilege you have to stop review immediately and get rid of the documents. much like what they asked for with a special master, one of the things the fbi and doj was trying to do in advance of the raid they had to know would attract a lot of attention to say we already have the teams in place, this is how we are going to handle the information, to make sure the objections are met. >> sandra: and the irony, the fact this redacted affidavit was released because the public wanted to know more why this happened. shannon, perhaps you can make the case it leaves more questions than answers at this point. >> interesting piece yesterday by a former counsel to one of the top house committees and said i don't think you should let anything be released, it's going to do that, it's going to fuel conspiracy theories or more questions. all of those dark blacked out pages will lead people to their own assessments about what they think may or may not be there. so the argument of not releasing at all, but the trump team, "new

york times," you don't often see them aligned. they were together in the court battles to make sure they could get as much information released as possible and the president's team and legal team have said we are not worried about what's in there. there's a lot we can't see but now we know the basic gist of what was going on and from what we know so far, i think it leaves more questions than answers for a lot of folks, sandra. >> sandra: great to have you here to break that down for us. >> thanks, see you later. >> sandra: and that's a live look at mar-a-lago. continue to have reaction throughout the hour and i'll draw your attention to the dow, corner of the screen, down 751 points right now, after the federal reserve chair jay powell just pledged to forcefully fight inflation that is still running near its hottest pace in 40 years, warning of economic pain ahead. we are going do have brand-new reaction, a quick break. we'll be right back. for every veteran homeowner who needs money

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>> sandra: fox news alert as we look live at the dow jones industrial average right now, down 2.3%, it's a hefty selloff and it is after the words of the current federal reserve chairman, jay powell. he just put out a message, a

concern on the economy warning of economic pain ahead, pledging to combat inflation forcefully. jackie deangelis, we are seeing the markets react to his words. what's the thinking? >> well, he's a very powerful person, when he speaks the markets react. what he's speaking about, talking about 40-year high inflation that we have been saying consistently will probably get worse with all of this reckless spending. sandra, in the last 19 months, this president has spent over $4 trillion. he capped it off with the so-called inflation reduction act that really was the skinny build back better and now adding student loan forgiveness on to this, another 300 to 500 billion perhaps, the estimate. we don't know how the last two pieces are going to impact inflation, they have not been baked into the cake yet. we know the fed is supposed to be independent, i understand that, and they are not supposed to sabotage each other and that's what the president is

doing when he looks at powell and says you are the janitor, you have to clean up my mess here and clean up my spending mess by hiking interest rates and what's crazy to me is i hear this president talking about the student loan forgiveness and how the people who are getting the money, they should be able to buy homes and they should be able to function within the economy. good luck with 6% interest rates. >> sandra: on that note, the president just spoke and many economists on both sides of the aisle point out this is an inflation crisis of this white house's own doing. part of the reason is because they ignored inflation for so long and paint a rosy picture of a struggling economy and the president just did that again a few moments ago. top of his remarks he said this. >> economy is looking good, so far, we are hanging in and i feel good about it. we have a long way to go. >> sandra: economy is looking good and i feel good about it. as the dow reacts to jay powell saying i'm going to have to act

very aggressively to tame inflation. in the middle of all this sky high inflation, the president just announced more spending in the form of loan forgiveness for students. >> and ceos and corporations are warning, they are guiding lower, being very cautious, they know there are head winds ahead and the commentary is cautious as well. on monday, the dow dropped 643 points that day when it realized the head winds are coming and we have to get through labor day and then we are going to assess how much this spending actually impacts the inflation. what happens when jerome powell raises rates, it becomes harder for corporations to borrow. their cost of borrowing goes up, they pay more on their debt. what do they do then, sandra, they lay people off. we have talked about the long list of companies that have started to do that or said we cannot hire anymore, or thinking about layoffs in the future. so the president that stands up and says the economy is fine and hanging in there is in denial.

what else is he supposed to say to justify what he's done here. >> sandra: you can look at the polling and the way the american consumer feels about this, don't like the direction the country is going in. many americans, majority of which report they are living paycheck to paycheck. more americans are reporting they are working two full-time jobs to pay for the cost of inflation. so the very people this administration says they are out to help the most are getting hurt the most. quote jay powell on that note a moment ago when he made the news moving markets. higher interest rates slower growth and softer labor market conditions will bring down inflation, they will also bring some pain to households and businesses. these are the unfortunate costs of reducing inflation but a failure to restore price stability would mean far greater pain. he's saying this is -- this is the situation he's been handed, and to tame inflation you have to be aggressive. we have moments in history where

we can all read and look back on. we are to get those prices down. you are going to have to act to act aggressively. it's going to be a lot of short-term pain for long-term gain. >> and powell was hoping for a soft landing, that the president would rein the spending in and would not have to play whack a mole, but he'll have to go back to the volker playbook and more aggressive. >> sandra: and anybody who lived during that period knows it is a lot of short-term pain, but it works, you have to suffer. jackie, we will watch the market reaction, lows of the session now, reacting with about an hour left in trading. >> john: fingers crossed on what you just said there. biden administration accused of hypocrisy over oil. fox news is learning that energy secretary jennifer granholm asked u.s. refiners to cut down on exports to europe, despite

countries like u.k. bracing for skyrocketing energy bills because of ukraine. aishah hasnie is joining us live on set to break it down. white house has been on a victory lap over gasoline prices recently. this would seem designed to further drive prices down at the cost of our allies. >> aishah: worried about the prices going back up and according to the secretary, all about hurricane season around the corner. but i want to show you this. fox obtained this letter sent by granholm to major u.s. refiners calling on them to limit their exports in order to shore up their domestic supplies. and in this letter, which by the way has not been made public by the administration, she writes this. given the historic level of u.s. refined product exports, i again urge you to focus in the near term on building inventories in the united states rather than selling down current stocks and further increasings exports.

so oil and gas experts are saying it could raise global oil prices and of course, it would hurt our european allies as energy bills for u.k. households were announced they are going to spike by 80%. >> you know, seems like a few weeks ago when the president was probing around the rest of the world trying to get other countries to try and increase production to benefit the u.s., and that's what's, it's a little hypocritical to be selective in your willingness to help out your allies. >> aishah: wyoming senator john barrasso also weighing in now, he tells me this, america is stronger as a nation when we are selling energy to our friends, not buying it from our enemies. we have plenty of american energy in the ground to both power our nation and help our allies. democrats are blocking american energy workers from producing it

here. by the way, john, we reached out to the white house to try to get a response to this letter. haven't heard anything yet. >> john: this goes back to the argument what do you do, do you tell oil producers to increase production or do you tell them to stop exporting and refine gasoline to the allies. take a look at the situation the u.k. and france and germany and other nations are in in terms of ok, don't buy oil or gas from russia, you know, we'll sell it to you here from the united states, help to shore up your supplies and oh, by the way, don't export anymore. >> aishah: especially when we told them we would be alongside them throughout the way, we were going to help them. u.k. has some of the worst inflation rates of any of these democracies we are talking about. they are in a lot of trouble. >> john: i spent the better part of two weeks in europe and the price of gasoline there. it makes your wallet hurt looking at it and we here in the united states even with gas as

high as it is are so fortunate in comparison to the european allies. it will put more pressure on those folks. >> sandra: the biden administration not saying who will foot the bill for the student loan payout. so, when will americans get an answer? alexandria hoff is live outside the white house. what did the press secretary say about this? >> a short time ago, it was not the press secretary, actually, but the white house was speaking to the fact they have an estimate of how much the student loan relief plan will of the could. right now, $260 billion difference between what they estimate it to cost and the committee for responsible budget has predicted, even so, the white house is saying that this plan is paid for. >> paid for and far more by the amount of deficit reduction that we are already on track for this year. like i said, we are on track for $1.7 trillion in deficit

reduction this year. that means practically speaking, 1.7 trillion more dollars are coming into the treasury than going out. >> told a more accurate score on the price tag of the policy will be issued soon, but last night the president spoke with confidence and celebration. >> and thanks to our historic deficit reduction, we can afford to cancel $10,000 in student debt and $20,000 if you are on a pell grant. for tens of millions of americans, making under 125 -- this is a game changer. >> administration's rough estimate of student debt relief costing $24 billion a year assumes a quarter of eligible borrowers will opt to not take advantage of the program. cost an individual american at the very least, $2,000. senator tom cotton. >> no such thing as loan cancellation or loan

forgiveness. it's just a matter of who pays it. now it's hard working taxpayers who are going to be paying the bills for this. >> of course as we have heard, several democrats have been critical of the plan and the white house is gearing up for some legal challenges, mainly because they have chosen to bypass congress with this, instead hitching this plan to covid-19 emergency status. sandra. >> sandra: alex, thank you. >> john: while many americans will have thousands of dollars worth of student debt erased, it is not stopping the cost of college tuition from going even higher. some people suggested this debt relief might make things even worse. madison alworth is live in new york city, she has more on this. education costs going up, people are not making any more money. >> that's right. you are seeing the costs go up and wonder if the value goes up. when something skyrockets in cost you expect in turn that you get more out of it. that's not exactly what we are

seeing with education. 1970s, when you adjust for inflation, in the 1970s, making $69,000 when they graduated, that's $10,000 more than recent graduates today. even though the graduates are leaving school with more debt they are not necessarily leaving with more earning potential. and this one-time payment does nothing to incentivize colleges to lower costs, if anything, it's a green light to charge more. so much money intuition from the borrowers, and picking up the tag. and the one time, hundreds of billions of dollars effort, also going to be wiped away in just four short years. that's how long the committee for responsible budget predicts will take for the student debt levels to return to today's levels. >> it will add to the cost of higher education, which is a real problem and it's so disappointing. this policy will make things worse. not a single policy expert sort of impartial and cares about the

real problem of the unaffordability and higher ed who says this is the right solution. not going at the root causes, not going to make the problem better. >> take a look at the ten most expensive colleges in the country, all charging over $70,000 a year. this is a far cry from what they charged 50 years ago. price tag of a private college, average of just below $3,000 in 1971, to an average of $51,690 in 2021, if you adjust for inflation. you would still be paying $20,000 in 2021. you know, i'm here at nyu, the university here in the city, they are charging $74,000 per year of undergraduate education. john. >> john: $74,000 a year, wow. that's more than harvard. but nyu does not have bill de blasio teaching. madison alworth, thank you, in new york city.

not only are people making less but the dollar is worse less because of inflation, they are hit twice. >> sandra: and the dow as a result, selloff continues. you can see the red shows you this is the lows of the session. there is big concern over how the fed is going to handle this, john. to tackle inflation, you have to inflict some short-term pain and it could be severe economic pain on the american people to bring those prices down. the federal reserve chair, jay powell, hinted at that. pledging his words to forcefully flight inflation in the form of higher interest rates. so you can expect the interest rates to continue to go higher, to bring the prices down and you know what that means. he's going to bring interest rates to a level that crimps demand so it gets -- he has to inflict such economic pain on the american consumer that you stop buying stuff. you stop buying houses and cars and more goods at the store that you don't need, things that you only buy things you need rather

than what you want. he said we are moving our policy stance purposefully to a level that will be sufficiently restrictive to return inflation to 2%, suggesting restoring prices stability will maintain a restrictive policy stance for some time. when markets don't have certainty, john -- say it another way, they don't like uncertainty and there's a lot of it out there. the markets are sinking to now lows. >> john: it could be the folks in the administration have not a handle on it, dire announcements, a couple months ago jay powell said he was going to do everything he could to get inflation under control and now more. >> sandra: that is something we are all living through and watching the fed try to deal with. meanwhile, facebook founder mark zuckerberg dropping a bombshell with joe rogan, admitting his

platform censored the hunter biden story after the fbi reached out. an a lot of attention on twitter during the election because of the hunter biden laptop story. so you censored that as well? >> the fbi basically came to us, folks on the team and hey, so you know, you should be on high alert, we thought there was a lot of russian propaganda in the 2016 election, we have it on notice that basically there is about to be some kind of dump of -- similar to that. i think it was 5 or 7 days when it was basically being determined whether it was false. the distribution on facebook was decreased, but people were still allowed to share it. >> sandra: quite a revelation there. susan, what else did he have to say?

>> zuckerberg says he still views the fbi as a legitimate institution, very professional law enforcement is how zuckerberg describes them. when they came to facebook warning of russian propaganda before the 2020 election, not specifically the hunter biden story, he says meta was on heightened alert, they did not outright ban the story like twitter did, but limit the amount of sharing and viewing. >> our protocol is different from twitter. what twitter did is they said you can't share this at all. we didn't do that. distribution on facebook was decreased but people were still allowed to share it. so you could still share it, you could still consumer. fewer people saw it than would have otherwise. so -- >> by what percentage. >> i don't know off the top of my head. it's meaningful. >> despite reducing the distribution of the "new york post" hunter biden story, zuckerberg described the process as reasonable, that he would be

criticized for not censoring or censoring too much. bad position, he says. >> sandra: thank you for that, susan. i don't know if we could have jam packed any more in there. what a two hours it has been. >> john: it has been, and a lot of questions about the affidavit and why the fbi saw the urgency to conduct the unprecedented raid. we'll see what we get in the days to come. >> sandra: indeed. our coverage will continue. i'm sandra smith. >> john: i'm john >> martha: thanks very much, you guys. good afternoon. i'm martha maccallum. so the underlying information that the doj used to get the search warrant and to carry out that unprecedented raid at mar-a-largo is out. sort of. we have 24 of 38 pages that are partially redacted or fully redacted. we got mor