yamiche: trump under historic scrutiny. >> i approve to see to search warrant. yamiche: former president trump is under investigation for possibly violating the espionage act. the fbi reportedly looking for nuclear documents removes boxes of classified information from trump's mar-a-lago home. >> how do you feel? yamiche: meanwhile in a separate investigation, trump pleads the fifth. what his growing legal challenges mean as he weighs running for president again. >> if you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you. yamiche: the 18 month investigation into the trump administration's traumatizing policy of family separation.

next. >> this is "washington week." corporate funding is provided by -- consumer cellular. additional funding is provided by the ewan foundation. bridging cultural differences in our communities. rose herschel and andy shreves. robert and susan rose and bob. the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> once again, from washington, moderator yamiche alcindor. yamiche: good evening and thank you. it has been annexed ordinary -- an extraordinary week. legal challenges for

former president donald trump and it has been a week since a search warrant at mar-a-lago. trump under investigation for possibly violating the espionage act and possible obstruction of justice. fbi agents were looking for nuclear documents and carried out boxes of classified information. after the search, republicans expressed outrage. >> we now find that justice in america is n equal. whether you want to go after a political person or not. yamiche: on thursday, the attorney general made a rare public statement. >> upholding the rule of law means applying the law evenly without fear or favor. under my watch that is what the justice department is doing. yamiche: former president trump is defending himself. he said, "numb one, it was all declassified. number two, they did not have to

sees anything." something the doj takes issue with. joining me tonight to discuss this big news weekend more, evan perez. and joining me in studio, robert costa, chief correspondent for cbs news. he's also a former moderator of washington week so we are glad to have him back. also, we have philip rucker, the deputy national editor for the washington post. evan, this is a huge week, huge moment for our home, the residence of a former president searched. also using words like nuclear documents and espionage act. what led to this search? why did this search happen? what did federal officials obtain based on your reporting? evan: yeah, it is an extraordinary thing for the fbi to take a step like this. it is important for people to

understand despite what the former president is saying and his team has been saying, which is they have been cooperative, the record indicates there has been some very contentious discussions between his lawyers and the justice department that were increasingly getting contentious before we get to this point. and you heard this from the attorney general. he said in his remarks, he said this step was only taken after less intrusive means were exhausted. and those less intrusive means were subpoenas. they actually served a subpoena. we didn't know this. we have been reporting on this mar-a-lago investigation, these 15 boxes taken by the national archives back in may of 2021. we have been looking into this and everything we heard from the trump team was that everything is fine. there's nothing going on. it turns out they were the subject of a subpoena.

in june, the agents went there and retrieved documents that were classified. even after that, they served another subena to get surveillance tapes from mar-a-lago. and then, of course, the search that happens on monday. in context, it means that this has been a building process before they took this unprecedented step of doing this search. today, we learned there is nearly -- a list of 33 items here. 11 sets of documents that were various levels of classification, including top-secret. this is the highest level, the stuff you have to go into special rooms to be able to read and the u.s. government -- in the u.s. government. yamiche: the washington post is reporting that some of these documents are nuclear weapons. we have covered trump together but this week seems to be a

different kind of moment for him. what is your sense of this moment given what we know about former president trump? >> what my colleagues are reporting is that some of the documents the fbi agent were looking for when they searched his home and private club on monday did pertain to nuclear weapons. but we don't know exactly what programs those were or what the documents said. the big picture is it is really a culmination for trump of two t hreads. he has been fascinated by nuclear weaponry since the beginning of his presidency. it is something he would talk to aids a lot and private, publicly as well. he has been very careless over the years with classified information. he will routinely reveal classified secret 5s at press conferences at times.

you remember the dinner he had with the prime minister of japan early in the presidency when he was openly talking about a secret operation. this is somebody, a president, former president who has had little regard to the levels of classification and the rules that govern these secrets. yamiche: you are nodding your head because i know you spoke to ambassador john bolton, the former national security advisor under trump. talk about what he told you and what your reporting has been. robert: quite a conversation a few hours ago with the former president. when i sat down with ambassador bolton, i said take me back to the room. what was it like when the former president was briefed by intelligence officials? he said sometimes trump when asked for the documents and the brier's would say probably best you not keep them. he said i would like to keep them. i said what did you make of that? bolton said i was alarmed.

he is a trump critic but it goes to phil'seporting that there was a fear, even an alarm at times inside the intelligence community about how this president handled documents while he was president and when he left the white house. we are still curious as to what was a foundational evidence for this decision? what was in the affidavit that led to the subpoenas and the search? yamiche: those are definitely threads we will be following but we should also talk about the fact that former president trump is calling this a witchhunt. there are some sources that say he's treating this like a pr problem when it is really a legal problem. what are you hearing about how the former president is dealing with legal challenges ahead? robert: you saw in his statement that the former president said he declassified all of these documents. we are not sure about all of the details, how he did so, how

exactly this was done. regardless of classification, th is still a legal challenge for the former president. you mentioned the espionage act. it deals with how you deal with defense-related documents. regardless of their classification. he will face legal scrutiny about not just classified documents, but documents related to the national defense as covered by the espionage act. yamiche: phil, we saw a republicans, a lot of trump allies jumped to his defense in the moments after the search warrant was executed. we have also seen some staunch critics -- staunch allies of former president trump shifting. i want to talk about elise stefanik. she says the fbi has been weaponized, but also saying it is important to follow the facts wherever they lead. what does that tell you about the way the gop is handling this? we are rallying around him but also shifting a bit. philip: the immediate instinct for republican politicians is to rally along trump because of his

popularity. the leadership realizes that for the fbi to conduct this search, to take this extraordinary step, there must be something serious here, that this is not a game. i think they are trying to be careful and not get too far ahead of things because this could end up being very damaging for former president trump. if you are a republican official going out there and attacking the fbi, attacking trump, when it turns out he may have had some really damaging information for the country at risk at mar-a-lago, it endangers your credibility as a leader. yamiche: evan, in 2008, former president trump increased the punishment for knowingly removing classified materials with the intent to an unauthorized location. what is the timeline when we will know how serious this issue is for former president trump? whether he will be charged,

others will be charged. what are you hearing from your sources? evan: i think we will be waiting a little while. we are about to go into what is a quiet period for the justice department because we have the midterms coming up. under the rules and regulations, generally, they are supposed to not do things that could interfere with the ection. and we have merrick garland, the attorney general, and he's absolutely going to follow that rule. i think for a while, we are not going to hear very much. probably what we will hear from more is the trump side because he, of course, looks at this through a different lens. one of the interesting things that we saw from these documents -- you notice that the people doing this investigation are actually in the washington field office. these are the same people doing the same investigation of the january 6 investigation.

you have to think this is not an investigation in a vacuum, right? this very well could end up being -- there could be information, we don't know. there could be informati that they retrieve from the search that ends up feeding into the other investigation. so, the former president has a lot of legal issues ahead of him. in the end, i think they are all connected, to be honest. i think they are going to be connected because they are all having to do with the process by which he left washington at the end of his presidency, unwillingly of course, because he believes he won. in the end, this is all going to be interconnected and probably a while before we know the final answer. yamiche: that is really striking and very important information. robert, you wanted to jump in so i will go to you with this. i know you are outside trump tower in new york when attorney general merrick garland was making this announcement.

can you talk a bit about what you are hearing about how this might impact former president trump possibly running for office? we are heang he could announce as early as next month. robert: it was such a historic week, to have someone who almost landed on the supreme court who's known for his low-key personality, merrick garland, step out and talk about an ongoing investigation about a former president and an fbi search at his home. this is something we have not seen in american history. it is hard to say exactly how it is going to affect the former president's possible 2024 presidential ambitions. it is clear that inside his inner circle, people are urging him to make an announcement perhaps even before the midterms. some other republicans like mitch mcconnell have been pretty muted about what this all means politically. they know trump has a lot of political capital in the party, but they are waiting to see how this plays out and what the evidences. yamiche: evan, bob's talk about

how this might play out. i talked to some people who said the doj, there are people who want to see merrick garland come out and really defend the institution and defend themselves. there are also some people who told me they are worried maybe the doj does not have the goods. what might happen if there is political fallout for the doj if trump is not charged, if there's not a more serious second chapter. what are you hearing? evan: absolutely right. both of those things you hear, and i think there's a lot of concern at the justice department. they have been attacked by the people who worked -- the people who work there have been under attack by donald trump since he came down that escalator, when he was announcing to run for president. you do hear both concerns that this could end up ensuring that donald trump returns to the white house. in the end, i think the people

who work there, they believe they have to follow the law. they have to figure out whether there is a violation here and whether there is a case they can bring. not only this one but also having to do with the effort to impede the peaceful transfer of power. those are two various things -- very serious things they feel they cannot turn away from. they were very concerned for a while because the former president had to feel -- setting the narrative, saying there was evidence planted. i largely view it was important for the attorney general to say something. yamiche: we have a couple minutes left, but we have to talk about two other big things. trump led the fifth in a separate investigation. what do you make of that? philip: my immediate thought is thinking back to all those political rallies when he would mock other people for pleading the fifth and he pleaded the fifth so many times in

succession earlier this week. it is a sign he's not willing to cooperate with this investigation into his business is, but it is a reminder that he's on legal jeopardy on multiple fronts. in new york for his businesses. in d.c., not only for the use of classified documents but the fake electors scheme. and down in georgia where the state authorities are honing in a very serious way regarding his handling of the election. yamiche: we would maybe be talking about this big bill that the democrats got across the finish line except we have all this news to cover. where does this leave president biden and democrats who wanted to spend this week taking a victory lap? >> this has been probably the best 10 days of biden's presidency and sometime, yet it has been washed out of the headlines because of this trump investigation. i think the question for democrats is can they build on the accomplishments of this bill to message to voters were very concerned about the economy,

obviously, and concerned about a number of fronts as well. what that looks like after labor day when the messages start to hit the airwaves. yamiche: what do you think of this where this is politically with trump and biden on the news ? >> i think we need to be careful because we could not have predicted what happened in kansas in recent weeks with the vote supporting the position on abortion rights. we didn't see the former president was going to invoke the fifth and have an mbi search -- fbi search at his home. we don't know what's on the horizon. we know the kitchen table issues like the economy is always front and center but in a to mulch it was time like this, i am holding back on any predictions. yamiche: thank you so much for joining us and sharing your reporting. i also want to highlight some incredible reporting in "the atlantic" by caitlin dickerson who joins me now. she spent 18 months investigating the trump organizations policy.

what do people need to take away from your reporting? caitlin: i think the most important take away from my reporting for me is in an administration like that, the substance of agnostic -- up obstensible agnostic -- the advisors who work for the department of homeland security and later justice department, they pushed aggressively and really without -- they were completely unabashedly for this policy to be put into place. but, i also got buy-in from people who told me they didn't really believe in separating families. who said they thought somebody else was going to push back and event this from happening. or said this idea sounded so outlandish, i didn't think it would go anywhere. stephen miller and others who have these harsh views needed

the buy-in from those moderates or needed the moderates to stay quiet for this policy to be put into place. yamiche: what you are saying it took more than just even miller and donald trump to carry this out. there's also this idea that taking away children was the intent of the policy. it was not sort of a consequence. what did your reporting show? caitlin: there is evidence before, during, and after zero that family separations where the goal for those pushing most harshly for it. the first piece of evidence comes from the head of ice under from whose idea it was and he told me that was his goal. it comes out of documents i obtained, records that showed especially when early separations were happening, they were referred to as such in government documents. it was only later the conversation changed. the administration started to argue they were hoping to prosecute parents and not separate them. the last piece of evidence comes

after separation has taken place when documents show officials work to keep those families apart even longer. yamiche: and you report they thought to secure the original intent about this. talk about that reporting, how you were able to get people to explain to you how they were trying to hide this at one point? caitlin: when the idea to separate families was first presented to kiersten nielsen, dhs secretary under president trump, she rejected it right away. she said my predecessor said no to this idea. i agree with him. instead, another version of family separations was presented to her. she was told that we just want to prosecute adults who cross the border, who should not be let off the hook simply because they are doing so with their children. she was also told this had been done before which was not true. she was assured by not only, again, the more hawkish people in the white house, but also by

these career bureaucrats who served under both democrats and republicans. they assured her systems were in place to prevent prolong separations from happening and it was not true. yamiche: there is this lasting impact, trauma that you really detailed so deeply, especially as we know hundreds of families remain separated. what did you learn about the lasting trauma and real-time trauma? caitlin: the real-ti trauma was documented or detailed by a government official who watched separations take place. she reaffirmed what families have been saying for years, that children and their parents were screaming and crying and asking for information about what was going on. they were given almost no information. if anything, they were told something very simple like we are underrders from donald trump to take your kids away. she says she was still haunted by the cries of separated children. these families are still struggling today. some have filed lawsuits for

damages against the government. many have said they are looking for an official apology which i have not received. more than anything, what i hear from separated families, is they want a assurance this will never happen again. we don't have an assurance like that. there is no law preventing it. in fact, many of the people who pushed for family separations during the trumpet administration told me they still thought it was a good idea and they would potentially be interested in reimplementation it. yamiche: it is incredible reporting. in the atlantic, one of the longest pieces ever published so congratulations on that. you detailed it so deeply. people should definitely take a look at the article. don't forget to stick around for the washington week extra. we will dive deeper into caitlin's reporting on family separations. find it on our website, facebook and youtube. ne in saturday for pbs news week and to see how one teenage afghan refugee is pursuing her dream to become a musician. thank you for joining us.

good night from washington. >> corporate funding for washington week is provided by -- >> for 25 years, consumer cellular has been offering no contract plans designed to help people do more what they like. our customer service team can help find the plan that fits you. to learn more, visit consumer cellular. >> additional funding is provided by the foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. rose herschel and andy shreeves. robert and susan rosenbaum. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪

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