went forth with the investigation. he's not talking about that, he's saying it was secure because it was with the locked car. the door goes up, that's how you get the door out. >> the lock is broken no matter what. >> anyway -- always great to see everybody, sherry, leslie, bill, thank you for being here. em, it's been good. "america reports" now. >> john: harris, thank. the news rolls on, fox news alert, two big events out of washington, d.c. as the biden administration scrambles to address growing controversy over classified documents now being discovered at two locations tied to the president. hello, john roberts in washington. a big friday eve today, sandra. >> sandra: jam packed two hours coming um. great to be with you, john. this is "america reports." attorney general merrick garland is set to make that statement. it should be happening any moment now as calls grow for him to appoint a special counsel to

investigate biden's handling of these classified documents from his time as vice president. we are also at this hour awaiting a white house press briefing where the press secretary to the president is very likely to be pressed on these issues. >> john: very likely indeed. all of this comes after the white house counsel revealed that second batch of documents was found in a garage at one of the president's delaware homes, which you can see in the campaign ad from 2020. even a glimpse of a stack of papers toward the end of the ad. top house republicans addressing the matter moments ago. >> i think congress has to investigate this. here is an individual that's been in office more than four years, sat on "60 minutes" so concerned about president trump's documents locked in behind and now we finds it as the vice president keeping it for years out in the open in different locations. >> we are not gonna let up, and we were already investigating the biden family influence scheme, this is another facet to

it. >> unfolding on capitol hill just over the last two hours or so. in a moment we will speak with the incoming chair of the house intel committee mike turner and whether he plans to launch a separate probe into this document's scandal. first to fox team coverage, martha maccallum is here, jonathan turley standing by, and david spunt is at the justice department. >> john: peter doocy, what is the president saying about the documents that were found next to the corvette? >> john, we had a chance to ask him a few minutes ago as we were hoping to answer the age-old d.c. question, what did the president know and when did he know it? >> mr. president, classified materials next to your corvette? what were you thinking? >> let me -- i'm going to get a chance to speak on all this, god willing soon, i said earlier this week, and by the way, my corvette is in a locked garage,

it's not like they are sitting on the street. >> locked garage. >> yes, as well as my corvette. >> the video that inspired that question we remember seeing posted during covid to the campaign's account at one point he backs the car into the garage, you can see a stack of boxes and what looks like some papers. we had a chance to ask the president after the special counsel to the white house said this. during the review, the lawyers discovered among personal and political papers a small number of additional obama-biden administration records with classified markings. all by one of these documents were found in storage space in the president's wilmington residence garage. 1 document, 1 page was discovered among stored materials in an adjacent room. no documents were found in the rehobo beach residence. the chairman of the judiciary committee in the house not sold on any of this. >> why was it lawyers doing the

moving from the first location, i mean, normally when we move something you get the relatives together, you buy pizza and get a truck and move things. but no, no, lawyers were packing boxes and looking at things. >> still a lot of unanswered questions. we are going to hear from both karine jean-pierre the press secretary and john kirby so if there is a national security implication to the classified materials found in places classified materials shouldn't be we will get white house reaction to that this afternoon, john. >> john: the briefing is pushed back to 2:30, we will carry it when it happens. thank you for the update. >> sandra: peter at the white house. and the justice department, await attorney general merrick garland set to take to the podium any moment. david spunt is there. what are the attorney general's options with all of this? >> well, he has limited options, especially because we are learning new information. the attorney general expected to take the microphone in about ten minutes at 1:15, that could be

delayed because things really are a moving target here as we are finding out more information. one of the options he has and i tell you the options are limited is to appoint a special counsel, someone to come in and look at this situation. merrick garland is in a virtual pressure cooker. not only investigating his boss for these classified documents, but new information is coming to light about this second traunch of documents which does not put his boss in a very good light. now, as far as special counsels are concerned, it was not even two months ago, sandra and john, when right here at the justice department attorney general merrick garland announced jack smith as the special counsel to oversee the donald trump document investigation. now, two weeks before that biden lawyers notified the national archives about a reported stash of ten classified documents at the penn biden center. doj was notified, don't know when. sandra and john, it is possible attorney general merrick

garland, very possible, knew on november 18th when he announced special counsel jack smith would investigate donald trump that joe biden, the current president also had some difficulties with classified documents, we don't know the specific timing of that. we do know that merrick garland referred the matter to john lash, a trump-appointed attorney in general. garland felt initial comfort in knowing a u.s. attorney appointed by donald trump, john losh, looked into the initial review. and david weiss in delaware is continuing his review of the president's son hunter biden. so right now nobody could be in a more difficult situation here at the justice department than the chief law enforcement officer. he's dealing with investigations of donald trump, of hunter biden, and now joe biden. the big question, will he appoint a special counsel in ten

minutes, what republicans and some democrats are calling on him to do. >> john: ohio republican congressman mike turner, so much to unpack here, congressman, hardly know where to begin. maybe we start with what do you think merrick garland is going to do, he finds himself in very much the same position, jeff sessions did at the beginning of the trump administration. >> the facts and circumstances are absolutely outrageous. this is completely mishandling of classified information and documentation. when you look at what happened with former president clinton and hillary clinton, the home brew server that had classified information transmitted on it was not secured. and former president trump had classified material and then president biden. you see an unbelievable, unequal treatment by what we have here is both of them, both for collective and biden, democrat

attorney generals. garland will have to rise to the occasion of trying to rehabilitate his image after what i believe is a complete abuse of discretion of raiding trump's home. >> appoint a special counsel or rescind the current special counsel. >> he could do either. comparison, we heard trump's attorneys signed an affidavit saying there were no further documents. has he asked biden's attorneys to say there were no further documents? on congress, this is outrageous even if trump never had classified documents and the unequal treatment and comparison issue. and that is why did he have these documents. when did he get them, did he get them when he was vice president and take them with him when he left? he clearly has mishandled them. what is the subject matter, relate to the biden family financial dealings or hunter biden's dealing? we have asked for a damage assessment, what are in the

documents. >> john: are you going to hold hearings? >> our hearings are in secret because we are classified session, so it is possible that we will hold hearings on them. other committees will also -- it's not we won't tell you. >> john: adam schiff let the world know what he was doing. >> we will deal with classified spaces. did he request them when he was vice president, someone give them to him after he was vice president, who did he share them with, putting them in the garage near to the corvette and the leaf blower are not secure. >> john: the president's argument was after the question from peter doocy was well, the garage was locked and not like they were sitting out on the street. according to national records and security procedures, there's no difference if they were out on the street or in the garage. either in a skiff or not. >> it's still not secure classified space, where it's supposed to be. and why did he take them. and the ones he had at the penn biden center, that's not a secured space. who has access -- we want to

know chain of custody. when did he get them, why did he have them, who did he share them with, who else had access, and what is the relevancy to him after he retained them. >> john: and reaction to democrats. >> talk about the classified documents found in president biden's think tank. >> no evidence of deliberate intent or obstruction of justice as we see in the case of donald trump and mar-a-lago. >> you think it poses a national security threat? >> no. >> why not? >> i don't think so. >> do you have any comment on president biden keeping classified documents? >> i'm sorry. >> john: not even worth putting the cookie down to answer the question. i mean, these are people who lost their minds when classified documents were found at mar-a-lago. now we have two troves of documents, in possession of the current president who had them when he was the vice president.

there seems to be a double standard here. >> completely, and the thing that's amazing, even biden's own statements about the double standard. he was dismissive -- of course he has never mishandled classified documents, he had them in the garage, and there has to be an understanding that he had the documents, we hope he recalled he had them. but that aspect of his indignation, what irony such a condemnation of former president trump for having documents, and he had them stuffed next to his corvette. >> john: how could anybody be so irresponsible what the president said. good to talk to you, we will maybe or maybe not hear more from you as time goes on, but i expect you will be looking into it. sandra. >> sandra: jonathan turley, george washington university professor and fox news contributor. you say the american public should not believe biden was

"surprised" by this discovery of these classified documents. explain why. >> well, first of all, when documents are removed at the end of a term they generally are removed by request of a president or vice president. usually an archival record listing the documents that you are taking. what i raised in this column is a lot of issues with regard to the dates here. the penn biden center office did not actually open until i believe 2018, he moved in after that. so it's very clear that these documents are likely to have been moved, maybe divided or distributed, on repeated occasions. they likely move from one location to another. that increases the number of people who had access to them. and that makes things more difficult for the fbi, and with the president saying my lawyers don't even want me to ask what the documents were is perfectly bizarre. he's the key witness, he's also

the person who would be accused of the underlying violation. the fbi needs to know if he has a recollection of what he did with these documents. now, i've got to tell you, that is one hot car, but the arguments [laughter] that i protect these as safely as my corvette is not going to cut it when it comes to the criminal code. >> sandra: you know, we are looking live at the justice department, we are expecting a.g. garland any moment, planned for 1:15, they are a few minutes behind but should be happening in a few moments. and also waiting a white house press briefing scheduled for 1:30 eastern time -- update, pushed back an hour, it's 2:30 eastern time. so of course some time to breathe potentially after we hear from merrick garland. but this was k.j.p. at the white house yesterday after we learned of the first batch of documents discovered, and she was getting

pressed by multiple members of the press yesterday. here was sort of a glimpse of her explanation. >> has he asked his lawyer, has he looked into whether any other documents have been taken to any other, any other office that he has, whether in wilmington or rehobeth, any audit that's been done? >> i'm not going to speak to this from here. it is more prudent and more appropriate for my colleagues at the white house counsel. >> sandra: what you heard over and over again, jonathan. how do you expect the white house to step in here half past the 2:00 hour eastern time, we will hear directly from them. >> well, the use of the lawyers to excuse the president from answering questions was transparently weak, you know. this idea that i was asked not to even determine what the identity of the documents are

makes no sense at all. if the lawyers told him to not make a statement because he might be charged, that is fairly consistent, but they did not want to argue that, argue that they are being restrained by counsel. if a special counsel is ordered up by the attorney general, i expect they are going to refuse to answer all questions and say this is now in the hands of the special counsel. for merrick garland, he could not be in a more conflicted position. willful blindness not to apoint a special county point. on november 18th, the reason he appointed special counsel on the reason cited, i should say, that president trump had just announced that he was running for president. he says well, that creates a real conflict for us, he could be the future president so i ordered a special counsel. joe biden is the president. that would seem an equal if not greater conflict. so i don't think there's any room for him to maneuver around

the need for special counsel. in my view, he's two years past due on a special counsel, he should have ordered special counsel to deal with the hunter biden controversy which directly involves the president himself. with the discovery of these documents, i think he's run out of -- he's going to have to take off. >> sandra: jonathan, the attorney general has just stepped out. >> special counsel pursuant to department of justice regulations governing such matters. in keeping with those regulations i have today notified the designated members of each house of congress of the appointment. i'm joined today by john losh, u.s. attorney of the northern district of illinois, conducted the initial investigation into the matter. on the evening of november 4, 2022, the national archives office of inspector general contacted a prosecutor at the

department of justice. it informed him that the white house had notified the archives that documents bearing classification markings were identified at the office of the penn biden center for diplomacy and global engagement located in washington, d.c. that office was not authorized for storage of classified documents. the prosecutor was also advised those documents had been secured in an archives facility. on november 9th, the fbi commenced an assessment consistent with standard protocols to understand whether classified information had been mishandled in violation of federal law. on november 14th, pursuant to section 600.2b of the special counsel regulations assigned u.s. attorney losh to conduct an initial investigation to inform my decision whether to appoint a special counsel. mr. losh has served as u.s. attorney in chicago since 2017. before that, he spent more than

a decade as an assistant in that same office. i was confident his experience would ensure it would be done professionally and expeditiously. on december 20th, president biden's personal counsel informed mr. losh additional documents bearing classification markings were identified in the garage of the president's private residence in wilmington, delaware. in the service of the president's service as vice president. the fbi went to the location and secured documents. on january 5, 2023, mr. losh briefed me on the results of his initial investigation and advised me that further investigation by a special counsel was warranted. based on mr. losh's initial investigation, i concluded that under the special counsel

regulations it was in the public interest to appoint a special counsel. in the days since while mr. losh continued the investigation, the department identified mr. herr for appointment as special counsel. this morning president biden's personal counsel called mr. losh and stated additional document bearing classification markings was identified at the president's personal residence in wilmington, delaware. when i first contacted mr. losh about the matter he said he could lead the initial investigation but unable to accept longer term assignment because he would be leaving the department in early 2023 for the private sector. u.s. attorney losh and his team of prosecutors and agents have conducted this initial investigation with professionalism and speed. i am grateful to them. earlier today i signed an order appointing robert herr as special counsel for the matter i

just prescribed. the document authorizes to investigate whether any person or entity violated the law in connection with this matter. special counsel will not be subject to the day-to-day supervision of any official of the department but he must comply with the regulations, procedures, and policies of the department. mr. herr has a long and distinguished career as a prosecutor. in 2003 he joined the department's criminal division where he worked on counter terrorism, corporate fraud and appellate matters. 2007 to 2014, mr. herr served as assistant u.s. attorney for the district of maryland, prosecuted violent crime to financial fraud. in 2017, mr. herr rejoined the department as the principal associate attorney general. 2018, nominated and confirmed to serve as a u.s. attorney for the district of maryland. he supervised some of the

department's more important national security, public corruption and other high profile matters. i will ensure he receives all the resources to conduct his work. as i have said before, i strongly believe the normal processes of this department can handle all investigations with integrity. but under the regulations, the extraordinary circumstances here require the appointment of a special counsel for this matter. this appointment underscores for the public the department's commitment to both independence and accountability and particularly sensitive matters. and to making decisions guided only by the facts and the law. i am confident that mr. herr will carry out his responsibility in an even-handed and urgent matter and in accordance with the highest traditions of this department. thank you all. >> have you ever spoken to the

president about this investigation, sir? >> sandra: all right, gave it a beat to see if there is a response, and the statement is made, it is official. merrick garland has appointed a special counsel to investigate president biden's handling of classified documents. it's something to watch. robert k. herr has been named, currently a litigation partner in a law firm, the 48th united states attorney for the district of maryland and it is official announced by merrick garland. >> john: and some of the back story to how long the investigation has quietly, and stressed quietly been going on, since november 4th, when the doj was first notified the documents had been found at the penn biden center and subsequent to that, more documents were found in his garage at his home in wilmington, and then at the beginning of this year, the fbi

came to merrick garland, or sorry, losh, the special counsel came to garland and said this warrants the appointment of a special counsel and see where it takes us. what a big day this is. >> martha maccallum is still with us, and bret baier joining us. reaction to what we just heard from the attorney general there. >> bret: this is big news, and as jonathan turley said, it was expected because the attorney general was backed into an attorney here. if you are going to have a special counsel on the former president's documents at mar-a-lago, this would have to be, and that's what it is. it is now an investigation that deals with mishandling of classified information. now, to jonathan's point earlier, he could have done a special counsel for the hunter biden investigation as well, but that's in the hands of an

attorney in delaware. karine jean-pierre will be able to say that is in the hands of a special counsel and we have nothing to comment on as the investigation continues. so, she did not have much to say yesterday, less to say about it today. >> john: peter doocy, martha, asked the president what were you thinking having classified documents stored in a garage in your home in wilmington beside your corvette, seemed to downplay the idea saying the corvette was in a locked garage and it's not like the documents were sitting on the street. but according to the rules for hanging on to documents, there really is no difference between them being in a locked garage or the street. either in a secure location or they are not. >> it was an interesting response. i doubt that was on the card is that he brought in in terms of what he wanted to read here because he seemed to be suggesting that the corvette is just as precious as any documents, you know, and he takes good care of both of them, all locked up and that is not anything to worry about.

also very interesting, now you have this flip of where this, you know, who this is an investigation of, because as jonathan turley pointed out, you heard the president say, you know, my attorney said, you know, i shouldn't really even ask what's in the documents that they found. one should assume that he knows what is in the documents that they found. these were selected for some reason to be separated out from the rest of the group and included in the documents that he kept in his garage and also at the penn center. so, now the president is the subject and the documents that he took are the subject of this investigation. and we'll see how it plays out and as bret said, it will give a lot of cover in many ways to the white house. they are expected to come to the podium at 2:30 but will not stop the questions and peter doocy will be in there as well. i would sort of step aside for one second, guys, take a look at the politics of this. because now you have, you know, one person who has declared that he's running for the presidency,

the former president donald trump. he is in the middle of a classified documents investigation. the only other person that seems to be very close to making that kind of announcement is the current president, joe biden. he also now is under special counsel investigation for taking documents that you are not supposed to take and keeping them in unsecure locations. so they both are dealing with this, and you have to wonder when you look at the democrat side of the equation and the republican side, you know, who is watching and see i'm going to see how it plays out, no more announcements of people running for a while, we want to see where it's going, and all corners are watching right now, guys. >> john: martha, bret, stand by if you could. right now, andy mccarthy, fox news contributor and former u.s. district attorney. andy, you wrote at length about this today in the national review and the thing you key off

of is president biden's statement in the "60 minutes" interview a little while ago in which he was asked to respond to president trump having classified documents in his possession at mar-a-lago. here is what the president said about it back then. >> how that could possibly happen, how anyone could be that irresponsible. >> john: you took a ginsu knife to what he said in the national review article. >> well, you know, i think one of the key rules of politics that we see is what goes around comes around, and it's coming around big time at the moment. i think what biden said has to be taken not only for the importance of it being said by the president of the united states in a very judgmental way, but i think you also have to consider it in conjunction with how the justice department has handled a number of these cases. about three weeks ago "the

washinton post" did a report where they laid out many of the current cases involving people who merely hoarded classified documents, former officials or government contractors who did that. so not talking about people who were traitors, tried to sell out the country to the russians or the chinese, these are people who basically had trusted access to classified information and then brought it home whether to keep it as momentos or what have you. but had it stored in a place where it was not authorized to be, and the justice department came down on them like a ton of bricks. they had a couple people looking at ten-year prison sentences for this. so, you know, this is not just something from the president. in terms of if you are not, you know, joe biden or donald trump or hillary clinton or david patraeus, you know, the ordinary people who have jobs in the executive branch and are trusted with classified information and

mishandle it get treated very seriously. >> sandra: andy, in your piece this morning as john mentioned, you say so far the classified documents have received all the attention. the reporting, you say, is thin on what other government documents may have been among the sundry files biden's attorneys were packing when they stumbled on the materials marked classified. you reference the cbs news reporting by informed but unidentified sources saying the classified documents were "contained in a folder that was in a box with other unclassified papers." why do you raise that matter, andy, why does that matter? >> because, sandra, in connection with the donald trump investigation, remember we had a lot of talk about the fact that the presidential records act is not a criminal statute. it does not have criminal law provisions. so, in order to try to criminalize it against trump, what the justice department did was refer to another statute in

the federal penal code, section 2071, which essentially makes it a crime for public officials to take documents away. and they said that if you attach that to the presidential records act we can turn this into a felony even if it does not involve classified information, which covers, i guess, about, you know, probably 11 or 12,000 of the documents they say they took out of mar-a-lago. so they turned it into a case involving not just classified information, but the government files that were not classified but were removed in violation of federal law. and i must say during the clinton email scandal a lot of us noted that wholly apart from the classified information she had destroyed thousands of government records and they just let her skate on that. clearly were not going to do that with trump. >> john: andy, it brings us to this point here.

if both donald trump and joe biden had classified documents and documents not classified but part of the national archives and records administration collection post presidency, and there is no precedent for indicting a sitting president, could the department of justice legitimately try to go after donald trump on a criminal prosecution? i mean, or would that really be an absolutely glaring double standard? >> john, in every single case where you have to make a decision, an exercise of prosecution discretion, two factors come into play. one is how strong is the case. in other words, do we have enough evidence that we could convince a rational jury beyond a reasonable doubt the person is guilty of the crimes. and the other thing is, is this a meritorious prosecution under the circumstances and with respect to that, you not only have to weigh the facts and circumstances that inform

whether the person committed the crime or not, but what are the ramifications for the public interest if you bring the case. and here i think with respect to both trump and biden they uniquely have to weigh how it's going to affect the country, the public, the electorate, to bring indictments against not only people, you are talking about the sitting president and the former president, but both of them essentially are candidates in the 2024 election. so this has tremendous ramifications in terms of the politics in 2024 as well. >> john: we saw on the split screen pictures of somebody our folks at home may not be familiar with, that is robert hur there at the white house podium and in other pictures, and he will be the new special counsel. >> yes. he's well regarded from what i understand. i don't know him personally, but you know, people who do know him

speak highly of him. >> sandra: andy, we are sort of going through the pool notes from what we heard from a.g. garland and i don't know if you heard the same thing that the attorney general may have suggested there were three document discoveries. did you hear the same thing, identifying the investigation timeline, it was november 4th that doj prosecutors were notified saying docs secured at nara and then biden's personal counsel informed losh additional documents were found at biden's private home, discovery number two, the fbi got them. was there a third discovery then? january 12th is when obviously this being today, biden's counsel called losh and said additional document was

identified. so were there three discoveries? >> the way i thought i heard that, sandra, that on the 5th there was a discovery of one document that the lawyer alerted the, either the justice department or white house -- >> sandra: january 5th, losh briefed garland on the investigation advised a special counsel was warranted. >> yeah. i'm still -- i'm not much clearer than i was this morning about whether we are talking about three batches or two batches. and the only thick i w-- thing would say, initially it came to light on november 2nd, a considerable amount of delay between the time they knew about the time they reported on it. i continue to be very surprised that if you were going to have delay, why not do all of the searching and every nook and cranny and try to find what you could find and then make one

disclosure. i just -- it baffles me that we are getting, you know, multiple disclosures and that they don't seem to be in control of what they are, you know, of what is out there, what the world of documents we are talking about. >> sandra: andy mccarthy if you could stand by on this continuing coverage, jonathan turley jumping back in here. our team got off the phone with a senior official at the department of justice weighing in on this point, that we appear to be able to confirm that is correct, that a third discovery was a single document. according to this official to fox news, the doj just found out about that one this morning, and it was found at his residence. >> yeah, i was just replaying the announcement from attorney general garland because i was surprised about one thing about the timeline. first of all, it did not seem to have a sense of urgency about it. on the second, highly classified

documents, had been found in the penn biden office, it was not until the 2nd that someone called over to the department of justice. it was not until a week after discovery you had the assessment done. what was really striking is the final document thus far was disclosed on december 20th. but that was by personal counsel to the president. so the question is, why wouldn't the fbi have been going through this material by this points. you had discovery of classified material in an unsecure location, at least two of them, and yet it was still private counsel who was going through the material. now, in fairness to the fbi, they did allow the trump team to go through the material to identify classified evidence. but eventually they asked to be able to do so themselves.

but it strikes me as being odd by december 20th you are still getting personal counsel who may or may not have had a clearance identifying this type of material. so we have to learn more about that timeline. in terms of the appointment of special counsel, there was no alternative in my view f for merrick garland, it's rather belated. but only for the purpose of these documents. with trump he expanded it to include january 6th allegations. and one thing that many of us have suggested for two years is that we are well past the day when you should have appointed a special counsel on the biden influence peddling investigations. >> john: we have two special counsels right now, jack smith, looking into the documents

housed at mar-a-lago and now b robert hur and the documents that biden had. and jonathan, we talk about this a lot. the case against donald trump, and whether or not there really is, even is a criminal case. we talked about that with andy mccarthy a second ago. what do you believe the implications of the biden document discovery are for the trump case? >> we would, andy makes really as usual insightful points about the use of the presidential records act and shoe horning that into the criminal case. there are issues here that will have to be litigated. one of the things that the department of justice looks at on a final charging decision is consistency and continuity to look at like cases. now, there's been this just absolutely planetary spin that has taken hold of washington to say these are apples and oranges, there's no comparison.

that's obviously ridiculous. i mean, these are apples and apples, they just happen to be different apples. the example, you can have someone charged with bank robbery and another charged with bank robbery and stealing a car. they both have the underlying offense of bank robbery. so there is a comparison here and not lost on the department of justice. if they don't charge biden, a question whether it's consistent and whether it undermines the integrity of the department to bring that charge against trump. so these are -- this is going to make it much more difficult for the department of justice. there are differences in the case, the department of justice has said they believe false statements were made and that there was obstruction with regard to mar-a-lago. but anyone who does not think this complicates the situation is rather delusional. >> sandra: if you could stand by with us, jonathan, bret and martha are with us as well. bret, we are trying to dig through what we know, when we

knew it, and how many of these discoveries there actually were. it would appear when you dig through the timeline the third discovery is the one, the garage announcement we got today. but we still would not have clarity on the second discovery then in his private home. where are you at with all of this? >> right. well, as i listen to the attorney general, that's what i heard in the presentation, so we are going to have to dig in and ask officials to clarify exactly what that is. i think jonathan's points are great. you know, both mar-a-lago and this deal with classified material, and the statute is really clear. both of these men were citizens at the time, vice president had left the office, and he was a private citizen, and had this material. the president left office and he was, former president, obviously different in how you handle classified information as president. you can declassify documents and

that's part of their argument that is all part of the trump argument. but both things are bad inherently for holding on to these documents in this way. now, what's interesting is the coverage of all of this and the republicans saying there are two tiers here in the way the administration is dealing with it and the media is dealing with it. and that's fair. there were news organizations that had 3d layouts of how many people could have gotten to the documents in mar-a-lago. well, will we see that with how many people could have gotten in the garage at wilmington? remember, this president and the first year in office spent, first and second year spent more than 200 days out of the white house in wilmington or rehobeth beach. and they said there were no secret service records of who visited the president in delaware during that time, it's dark and don't know who he's meeting with. they wanted to know and the secret service cannot provide

those documents. so, there are all kinds of questions about access to where these classified documents were. the penn center, the garage next to the corvette and possibly as you mentioned, sandra, a third that the attorney general mentioned today. >> john: bret, i saw the same 3d and animation in the "new york times," this was the chamber, the door that entered the chamber that led to the blah blah blah and people were here and might have had access to the door, and again, i wonder in fairness, will the "new york times" do the same thing about the penn biden center and biden's garage. i don't expect they will. >> and the corvette, who had keys to the garage. >> exactly, and were the fumes have deleterious effect on the documents themselves. how deep do you want to go here.

idea in difference of how this story is being handled compared to mar-a-lago, and the difference in reaction. i want to play again, martha, the reaction from a few democrats here that we played a little while ago, and get to respond on the other side. >> second to talk about the classified documents found at president biden's think tank? >> i see no evidence of deliberate intent or obstruction of justice as we see in the case of donald trump and mar-a-lago. >> do you think it poses a national security threat? >> no. >> why not? >> i don't think so. >> do you have any comment on president biden keeping classified documents? >> john: nancy pelosi would not even put down her cookie to answer the question. but now we are going to get the questions answered by robert hur. so, you know, when james clyburn just dismisses the idea whether or not there was a national security threat, you've got a special counsel now looking into that question. >> kind of reminds me of when

then president obama said there was no criminal activity on hillary clinton's part as that was under investigation and ethical answer to the questions is we have to wait and see. there's an investigation we know about over the recent days, and now a special counsel investigation into this as well. if i may, you know, jonathan turley still with us? i have a question. because i was reading something earlier today, jonathan, that basically said if you launch a special counsel it means that the doj believes there is potential criminal activity. can you confirm that that has to be the underpinning of naming a special counsel? >> that's right. that's one of the reasons why the attorney general initially appointed the chicago u.s. attorney to look into this, to establish might be a basis for a special counsel.

there is obviously a basis for criminal charges, you know. the trump indictment cited three different provisions under the criminal code that may have been violated. and they also obviously cite the presidential records act which andy has done a good job in laying out. but the department of justice has already said that the mishandling of these documents can most certainly be a crime. they said in court with regard to donald trump. >> and one of those, the first of those three charges being considered in the trump case is the espionage act, on its face, people think of spying but also in this definition would mean removing government documents, right. taking things that you do not legally have the right to possess. >> that's right. and we have had cases where people were charged. the one often talked about, one of the most agregious, former

national security adviser sandy burger put documents in his socks to remove them. he was charged with a misdemeanor. but notable, when this first occurred, many people, experts said this is a crime just based on possession and further said that donald trump should be barred from running for the presidency even if he pleads to a misdemeanor. it's not clear they are going to make the same argument in that sense for president biden. >> sandra: bret, an update from our justice reporter david spunt. what we are hearing right now is that when stopped in the hallway by our own team, the attorney general, he was walking out after he spoke, he was asked if he ever spoke to the president about this investigation, he did not answer that question but per someone familiar with the situation, the attorney general has never spoken to the president about this incident, even when they were in mexico

together earlier this week. the white house was not notified about the special counsel appointment prior to garland's remarks a few moments ago. your thoughts and reaction to that. >> bret: not surprising the special counsel announcement may not have been communicated. kind of surprising there would not have been any communication from the attorney general to someone at the white house about what was going on with the documents, especially considering what the president had said publicly about the mar-a-lago documents and getting back again to the coverage of all of this, remember the fbi layout of the documents at mar-a-lago with the picture, all laid out on the floor. will we see that in the documents that are recovered in both penn center and in the house. i think, you know, just a lot of questions that have yet to be answered and now it falls into this kind of dark hole where we won't get answers because it will be shrouded in the special

counsel investigation. but politically it is a really bad couple of days for the biden white house on this front and when you put it up against, as martha mentioned, the only other person running for president currently and president biden considering running again it is politically a negative. >> john: as jessica tarlov remarked yet on "the five" this has ruined the president's border bump, and she was correct about that. whatever bump he might have gotten from visiting the border has gone away, not sure he got any bump from going to the border. martha, one of the big questions a lot of people have, when joe biden instructed his team to move documents he did not call two guys and a truck, he got the former white house counsel to go retrieve these documents and if you didn't know that there was sensitive material contained in something that you had in a place that you wanted to have

moved, why would you send someone of that rank to do it? >> martha: and john, this touches on something very intriguing. i was going back and looking at the august 8th coverage of the mar-a-lago raid, and you have to wonder when all of that was happening what kind of discussions were going on or thoughts were going through the president's mind about whether or not he had anything. he's been in government a very long time, two terms as vice president now president with this stint in between at a think tank in washington, d.c. and you wonder if someone was asked to take a look, let's make sure that we have everything that we need to be aware of here, and remember, there was a lot of back and forth between the trump attorneys and the fbi. they were given many opportunities, they came in, you know, so let's secure this room, please, put another lock on this, there was a lot of back and forth discussion and i think we are going to need to dig in to how much back and forth

discussion there was in this case as well, or the alerting that we have come across a few documents we are concerned about. so, there is also a sound bite that peter doocy played yesterday where he asked karine jean-pierre i believe around the time of the trump raid, does president biden have any classified documents and she would not comment on that and she moved right along. i think it's one of the next lines of reporting here to figure out how much back and forth there has been. i understand he did not know the special counsel was about to be announced, what did he know and how many times was he asked to look and turn things over in this case, and i also just circling back, it sounds like there are three different situations. there were two locations in the trump situation, this is two for sure, and possibly three locations where that third single document was found. >> sandra: bret, i suppose we are left wondering how the white

house is going to respond, that they had no head's up for the announcement of the special counsel, a white house press briefing pushed back to 2:30, with 40 minutes from now, fresh white house reaction. what do you suppose we can hear. >> i can guess, i can guess that it's not going to be much, and it's going to be about the same answer again and again and again that this is now in the purview of the special counsel and the president was not aware this announcement was going to be made. i do think that there will be many, many questions that come forward because the house has changed hands, and you are hearing multiple committee chairs and also the speaker of the house now saying that there is going to be a lot of digging in here. remember you have now this federal investigation of the classified handling of documents of the president as vice president and former vice president in these different places, and at the same time you have a federal investigation led by the u.s. attorney of delaware

of the president's son and part of that investigation deals with influence peddling with a foreign government. part of this is donating to the penn center and penn the college, one of the leading foreign donors is china. all of this raises all kinds of questions and they will be bubbling up in investigations that will be very public in the house, they will not get answers at the white house, i'm sure. >> john: you brought up what we can and cannot expect to hear in the upcoming white house briefing in less than 40 minutes. this is what we got with yesterday's briefing, listen here. >> you are the one here. >> yeah. >> talking to us about this. that's why we are asking you. let's just remember that. >> ed, ed, ed, i'm -- we don't need to have this -- we work very well together. >> we do. >> we don't need to have this kind of confrontation. ask your question and i will answer them the best that i can.

>> part of the reason we are laying that out is because you are laying out your part of the job. >> i know, i know, i'm saying we don't need to be contentious with me here. >> john: i'm stone walling here, you don't have to get contentious with me, martha. >> martha: well, you know, i mean, this is an uncomfortable position to be in, especially since there was, you know, a lot of very sort of sank -- and you played the sound bite of president biden, how could anyone be so irresponsible, and two wrongs do not make a right here. the point is both of these situations have some parallels, and it really boggles my mind it's so complicated to leave the white house or the vice president and make sure you handle your documents properly. this is a big deal and perhaps we need to have the secret

service handle the moving oversight of these situations. we have seen a lot of sloppyness over the years and other examples have been raised in this conversation but it does feel like the residents of the white house seem to think the rules apply to everybody except for them, and i think that's something that's going to be felt on both sides of the aisle. >> bret: can i just say one thing about the press conference upcoming, and that is what karine jean-pierre can answer is the communications prior to today between the justice department and the white house. from november 2nd until now. she can answer that. that's not part of the investigation ongoing, that is communication between the justice department and the white house. and i think it will be interesting to hear an answer to that. i doubt she's going to provide much substance but there will be some questions. >> sandra: to that point, bret, i'm sure you were listening yesterday when she held that

press briefing, it happened during these hours and she was pressed by multiple reporters that perhaps one would not assume they would be pressing her on the issue, they were not happy with the lack of transparency pointing out the transparency promise by then candidate joe biden that he would hold this level of transparency when he held the position of president in that white house, and they were frustrated. clearly frustrated, and this was before these additional document discoveries, bret. >> bret: and it was before the midterms, too, that's a key timing. here is some, a president that made a big deal on the "60 minutes" interview as martha points out. and also democratic candidates that used it as a hammer against republicans about the mar-a-lago handling of classified information, so they don't want to put out that they mishandled classified information, too, just before midterm and they didn't. >> sandra: they were pressing her on lack of answering the questions in the room just yesterday, what i meant, during your hour, right, martha, that

was happening. see how it goes in a few moments when the briefing takes place. thanks to both of you for joining us. bret, martha, thank you. >> john: the white house something of a glass house as we go into the briefing there. we will take a short break and we will be back with more "america reports" right after this. and pray for those who persecute you. -i don't feel any different. -i don't need you to feel anything to do great things. (upbeat music) -jesus, if you do not renounce your words, we will have no choice but to follow the law of moses. -i am the law of moses. ♪

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>> ok. >> classified materials next to your corvette? what were you thinking? >> let me -- i'm going to get a chance to speak on all of this, god willing, soon, but as i said earlier this week, and by the way, my corvette is in a locked garage, ok. so it's not like they are sitting out on the street. >> on december 20th, president biden's personal counsel informed mr. losh additional documents bearing classification markings were identified in the garage of the president'