yamiche: trump, legal blows. russia's military woes. >> donald trump falsely inflated his wealth to cheat the system. yamiche: the new york attorney general announces a lawsuit against former president trump and his children for committing fraud. and the justice department can regain access to classified documents seized at trump's home. pres. trump: if you are the president of the united states, you can deal classified just by thinking about it -- can declassify just by thinking about it. yamiche: and russian president

vlimir putin issues an ominous threat that escalates the war as ukraine's military makes territorial gains. pres. biden: wherever you are, wherever you live, whatever you believe, that should make your blood run cold. yamiche: at the united nations, president biden condemns russia and raleigh's world leaders to support ukraine -- rallies world leaders to support ukraine. next. >> this "washington week." corporate funding is provided by -- consumer cellular. additional funding is provided by the yuen foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. sandra and carl delay-magnuson. rose hirschel and andy shreeves. robert and susan rosenbaum. 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 welcome to "washington week." this week, former president trump had to endure a number of legal challenges. on wednesday, the new york attorney general announced the state is suing the former president and his three eldest children for fraud. the civil lawsuit alleges trump and senior management of the trump organization fraudulently inflated the value of his real estate assets for financial benefit. the ag's office is requesting that trump, don jr., eric, and ivanka be barred from borrowing money or conducting business in the state. they would also have to pay back the money they allegedly obtained illegally. the investigation could lead to criminal charges for the president. >> we believe the conduct

alleged in this action also violates federal criminal law, including issuing false statements to financial institutions and bank fraud. and we are referring those criminal violations that we have uncovered to the united states attorney for the southern district of new york and the internal revenue service. yamiche: in an interview with fox news, the former president responded to the charges. pres. trump: she campaigned on it four years ago. it was a vicious campaign. she justalked about trump. we are going to indict him. we are going to get him. this was just a continuation of the witchhunt that began when i came down the escalator at trump tower. yamiche: also on wednesday, an appeals court ruled the justice department can resume reviewing classified documents seized from trump's mar-a-lago home. this comes as the special master appointed to review the files has given trump until next friday to back up his claims that he declassify the documents

and that the -- he declassified the documents. join amy, peter baker, co-author of the new book -- joining me, peter baker, co-author of a new book, hugo lowell, vivian salama, and in studio, just the two of us, nancy cordes, the chief white house correspondent for pbs news -- cbs news. hugo, it's your first time on "washington week." i'm ing to start with you, also because of your expertise. when you look at the legal problems former president trump is facing just this week, what are possibly the most serious now and in the long term? hugo: the two potential charges -- the charges that came up this week are significant with the new york state ag civil suit, but also the doj's into his -- investigation into his

mishandling of classified documents which were stashed around mar-a-lago. they are equally potent. if you look at the state ag suit, that would end the trump organization in its current form. it would permanently barred from and his adult children from -- bar trump and his adult children from holding office in new york. there is a referral to the southern district of new york for potential federal charges. the fact that the doj has regained access to those 100 documents marked classified in the mar-a-lago investigation is also significant, because that's the primary evidence when they are investigating the potential willful retention of national defense information and the obstruction of justice charges that are on trump's doorstep. the combination of those two were a double whammy for him this week. yamiche: that is definitely a double whammy. peter, congratulations on your new book, with your wife, susan. in your book, you conclude that trump, quote, "emerged from

defeat, impeachment" as the dominant force in the republican party. how does it connect the legal challenges that he's facing now and the fact that he is accused of fraud and of course allegedly unfairly and illegally taking classified documents to his home? peter: it's rather extraordinary that through all these troubles he actuay seems to be perfectly healthy within the republican party. he still has such a strong base there. what's really interesting and the through-line of our book, what we saw again and again was a president who tried to bend reality, to shape it to what he wanted it to be. this is the heart of what letitia james is accusing him of in this lawsuit. he makes up facts to suit whatever his interests are at the moment. you think my apartment is only 10,000 square feet? i'm telling you it's 30,000. you think it's only worth x. i'm going to tell you it's 10

times that. he insists that the facts he put in the public space are real and that the people bend to his desires. we saw that from his presidency, when he told us there were larger crowd sizes at his inauguration than ever in history, which wasn't true, all the way to the end, when he said the election was stolen, which also wasn't true. there may be some fatigue factor setting in. it depends on where these investigations go. what he's done successfully, why we call the book "the divider," he makes this about dividing the country. that's been his successful approach for 5, 6 years. yamiche: i want to come back to you, hugo. peter is laying out the quirks trump has. if letitia james is successful, cannot he just move his businesses to florida? how important is the criminal referral, even if he can move his businesses? hugo: he can try and move his

businesses. what letitia james was saying at the press conference, his business empire in new york would be at an end. he could still move hi businesses to florida, but he wouldn't be able to do any business dealings in new york. he couldn't get any commercial real estate. he couldn't get any sort of loans. but i think the fact that the referral has been at the southern district complicates things, even if he wanted to move to somewhere like florida, because then he answers to federal charges if they decide to investigate. bank fraud is the referral that's been made to the southern district of new york. that's really serious. that's a potential maximum 30-year jail sentence, if he's convicted on something like that. the 11,000 to 30,000 square feet, that gap in valuation, either your apartment is 11,000 square feet or 30,000. using that to make misrepresentations, that's as

clear-cut as it gets. that is what's causing problems. yamiche: talking about former president trump, we have to talk about his response. he went on fox news. but he also went online and wrote this about new york attorney general letitia james. he said, "another witchhunt by a racist attorney general." what do you make of trump's response, given what we know about who he is and how serious these legal challenges are? nancy: some of the claims are laughable, the fact that he can clean -- declassify documents with his mind. it's obviously not true. it speaks, democrats would say, to the increasing desperation of a man who is kind of running out of excuses and certainly is running right up against the special master, who his team asked for, who is asking very basic questions. like, did you declassified these documents -- declassify these documents? what process did you go through?

is legal team is not providing -- his legal team is not providing answers. this is against the reality of a midterm election and a former president who is becoming a bigger issue in that midterm election than a lot of republicans would've hoped. yes, he has a stalwart supporters who will be with him no matter what, but what is happening for him, not just in florida, but now new york, all the legal challenges he is facing are propelling him into the spotlight at a time when republicans would vastly prepare -- prefer for the economy to be the spotlight in the midterm elections, particularly with some of the big drops in the stock market we saw this week. yamiche: certainly. vivian, to get at the justice department case you have been covering closely, the justice department won some big wins this week. you have them winning the appeal. you also have a lower court now amending the appointment of a special master, taking out the classified documents.

what is the significance of these developments, these legal blows, as we put it, for former president trump? vivian: they are very significant. the justice department can continue its investigation without having to worry about someone who is not legitimately qualified to be looking at such highly classified documents. specifically the trump team lawyers. they were saying even some officials at doj have not gotten the proper classification that's needed, the proper classification they need to be able to look at those documents. it's a really intricate process that obviously goes to the heart of national security interests, according to the department of justice. that's obviously a win for them. more broadly, it's interesting to see that the federal courts are essentially going and saying that this is a matter that cannot continue as far as the president going on and saying that he has declassified something at a whim.

obviously, there are very technical issues that the president has been citing, as far as his ability to declassify, and this is something the biden administration going to be looking at in the coming months, because presidents do have a lot of discretion when it comes to declassification. the u.s. court of appeals, the 11th circuit, said prove it. you have to prove you did something to declassify this. you cannot just say you declassified all of this. all of this was brought on by the former president himself. none of these issues would have come to light. the doj would have prevented a lot of these details from coming to light and going into the public had president trump not actually gone after them and sued following the search of mar-a-lago. some of these details that we now know are coming and being exposed to the public only because of that lawsuit and because of the fact that there was so much political tension around this particular case.

now it is litigated in public. nancy: i think it's really important, in addition to what vivian is saying, to point out, even if he were able to produce some kind of proof that he had declassified these documents, doesn't put him outside the realm of legal jeopardy, because it still doesn't explain why he had these documents that were the property of the u.s. government, that both doj and the national archives had asked for f a year -- it doesn't explain why they were sort of inboxes, unsecured at mar-a-lago, a place that a lot of people have access to. yamiche: peter, there's a lot of discretion, as vivian put it, in terms of classification and what the president can do, but you've covered a number of administrations. can presidents declassify documents by thinking about them? hugo: if the well-known mental telepathy -- it's the well-known mental telepathy exception. obviously not.

the president does have executive power, but nancy is right. in some ways, it's a red herring. obviously, the classic nation level is important -- the classification level is important. it does not get him off the hook. he does not own these documents, whether they are classified or not. he was not entitled to tell the government that he didn't have them. which is what he did. his lawyers signed statements to that effect. that brings the issue of obstruction to the court. which is not about classification. we ought not forget that. yamiche: this is moving quickly. there are so many people who are saying that trump was trying to delay this process, and now there is a special master who is setting deadlines aggressively. what do you make of the timeline and also the idea that trump is being asked to provide real evidence to his claims? hugo: i mean, trump tried to get a special master because he thought it could slow down this investigation. if you talk to people close to the former president, all of his

advisors and aides were quite worried about how perilously fast the criminal investigation was moving. some of the lawyers were taken by surprise when mar-a-lago got searched. they were searching for insight into what doj had and where they were going next. that is what burst -- birthed this special master request. the fact of the matter is he tried to delay it. this 11th circuit ruling has upend all of that. he and his lawyers were hoping that, if the 100 classified documents remained into play with the special master, then that could take weeks to resolve. lawyers need potential security clearances. there needs to be a way to handle them. they were hoping that could remain for weeks, if not months. the fact that the 11th circuit has taken these out means the extent of the delay that trump has been able to get has amounted to nothing more than 2 1/2 weeks.

now doj can resume that investigation, and that's significant. two weeks is nothing. i spoke to a couple of former u.s. attorneys. they said the length of time that it would take to screw up an investigation of this nature is months. two weeks is not going to cut it. he is now going to have to go before the court and say whether or not he actually declassified them. he didn't bring any evidence that the fbi planted those materials. my understanding is he probably can't. yamiche: it's a lot to watch. we are going to be seen what evidence, if any, they can bring forward. thank you for sharing your reporting and for coming on for the first time. we will have you back on "washington week." this week, there were also big headlines on the international front. on wednesday, russian president vladimir putin responded to a successful counteroffensive by ukraine in a televised speech to the russian people, who announced -- announcing the mobilization of 300,000 troops.

he also hinted that his willingness to use nuclear weapons if ukraine continues to retake territory that he believes is now part of russia. >> [speaking foreign language] translator: in the event of a territorial threat to our country, we will certainly make use of all weapons systems available to us. this is not a bluff. yamiche: later that day, in a speech, the united nations general assembly, president biden addressed putin's threats. he rebuked him by name. he also affirmed the u.s. commitment to ukraine's independence. pres. biden: the once this war to end on just terms -- the united states wants this war to end on just terms. we will stand in solidarity with ukraine. we will stand in solidarity against russian aggression, period. yamiche: vivian, i want to start with you. you've been back and forth to ukraine. we've had y on several times to talk about it. tell me a little bit about where

the war stands right now, especially how ukraine has been able to take back some territory and really make gains in this fight. russia, seeming like it is really struggling here, at least based on the reporting. vivian: the simple way to put it is that western assistance is working. ukrainian forces have made some significant gains, surprising gains in recent weeks, and that's largely due to the fact that the u.s. and its allies in europe and elsewhere have been pouring billions and billions of dollars of weapons into ukraine. this is why the ukrainian military today is leaps and bounds better than the ukrainian army that took on russian forces in 2014. there is no comparison. we have provided these long-range missiles that so many people have probably heard of. these have been a game changer. they've been able to recapture approximately territory the size

of connecticut, but it's still a slog. the russian forces still hold a large chunk of territory in ukraine. and now, as you said, president putin, doubling down, saying that he wants to hold these referendums because he wants to justify, essentially, the russian territorial claims over that territory. but a lot of observers looking at this, looking at the fact that he is now trying to call up another 300,000 conscripts, saying these are desperate moves. these are not moves of someone who is doubling down because he thinks they're winning and he wants to seal the deal. these are moved by someone who is getting desperate. and all signs are pointing to that. the last couple days have been really interesting in washington. men of conscription age fleeing the country by land, by air, anyway they can. there was a spike in google searches for how to break an arm, because young men were

afraid, reportedly, to sign up for the military. a lot of these young men know that they are going into the fi ght essentially to their death, because of the fact that the ukrainian forces are starting to make gains. and that is starting to get back to people in russia, despite the fact that they have such a grip on the media. that's where things stand. it's a long way to go for the ukrainians and for the russians. but the ukrainians are making gains, and that's something people at the u.n. this week and in washington are sharing. yamiche: peter, you lived in russia. i wonder what you make of putin's strategy. you've been talking to rusans, who will say there hasn't been a lot of talk about the war on tv. but now we are seeing arrests for people who are protesting. putin essentially trying to draft people into the military, so that he contrived to continue to fight this war. peter: vivian puts her finger on an important point here. up until now, he has basically tried to shield the russian

public from this idea of a war. he hasn't allowed them to call it a war. it's a special military operation. i talked to a friend in moscow who said nobody here would tell you they know much about the war at all. i talked to people and they say, what war. he tried to pretend in effect that this wasn't happening. when you call up 300,000 men, and it may be more, and you are reaching into these villages and families, taking away their husbands and sons and fathers, that has a different impact. that means the war is actually coming home to them, and that's a danger for president putin. that's a point when people are asking the question, why are we doing this. my colleagues talked to the wife of a 38-year-old man, father of five, who is suddenly put on the bus, no military experience, not a member of the reserves, being shipped off for 15 days of training, to be sent to war, basically cannon fodder. that's not a prescription for victory. that's not a sign of a health government, by the way. that brings up questions about putin's own staying power, at

some point. these protests may only be the beginning of something larger. then there's the other side. the other side are the hardliners who think that putin has screwed it up, that he has lost where they should've won and embarrassed the country on the international stage. yamiche: nancy, i want to bring you in. you were reporti at the united nations. we did some research. we realized, in late february, you asked president biden about how worried americans should be about nuclear threats and nuclear war. at the time, he said no. what you're thinking of the threat -- what is the white house's thinking of the threat? nancy: they don't seem to be concerned about some of this new rhetoric coming from vladimir putin. they say he's been talking this way all along. he's always bellicose. he is always making these veiled threats. they don't see anything in the intelligence that leads them to believe that he is any more

likely to unleash nuclear weapons now than he was six months ago when i asked president biden that question. it doesn't mean they are not concerned at all about the prospect. anytime you've got world powers all focusing on one area, the possibility for some kind of misunderstanding, some kind of escalation always has to be a concern. but they don't see anything right now that leads them to be more worried than they were a month or two ago. yamiche: what are you hearing about president biden's thinking when it comes to aid to ukraine? they have -- the american public, there are other things on their mind which could become a liability. nancy: they argue it's working. they have sped up their pace of aid every couple of weeks. we are seeing a new tranche of weaponry, artillery going to the ukrainians, because they argue they are turning the tide of the war with the material that we are giving them. they are not seeing a lot of

pushback from members of congress, particularly at the moment when we are heading into october and most of these members are focused on their races back home. yamiche: vivian, our producer talked to you about the enthusiasm and the potential for waning support among americans. what are you hearing? this aid has been critical to ukraine. vivian there is a growing concern on the hill that house republicans are starting to find that their constituents want other priorities. they see billions of dollars going to ukraine, and all the while, they cannot afford gas or groceries. so, they are coming under pressure, increasingly so. 've spoken to dozens now of moderate republicans in the house who told me that they are just concerned that, at some point, perhaps after the election, especially if republicans gain control of the house, that there's going to be a lot more pushback for the aid packages to ukraine. that's definitely something to watch in the coming months. yamiche: certainly. definitely top of mind when i

talked to white house officials, thinking about what the american public thinks about a war that has been in headlines, but also a war that is very much taking away resources, in some people's minds, from other things that the united states could be enthank you so much to our panel for joining us and sharing your reporting. don't forget to watch pbs news weekend on saturday for the latest on the ground in puerto rico as the island continues to recover from hurricane fiona. thank you for joining us. i'm yamiche alcindor. good night from washington. >> corporate funding for "washington week" is provided by -- >> for 25 years, consumer cellular has been offering no contract lands to help people do more of what they like. our u.s.-based team can help find one that fits you. visit consumercellular.tv. >> additional funding is provided by -- the yuen foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences

in our communities. sandra and carl delay-magnuson. rose hirschel and andy shreeves. robert and susan rosenbaum. the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy.]

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