good to be with you. i'm katy tur. we have big breaking news out of of the department of justice. attorney general merrick garland will be, quote, making a statement today at 2:30, just 30 minutes from now. no details have been released on the substance of what he will say, but we do know it will be about the search of mar-a-lago. garland has been facing heated calls from republicans to reveal why the fbi obtained a search warrant for mar-a-lago and as nbc news confirmed last night a source inside d.o.j. there are even calls from within the department for garland to say something.

there are new reports from "the new york times" that there is a subpoena. also, the subpoena suggests that the justice department tried methods short of a search warrant to account for the material before taking the politically explosive step of sending fbi agents unannounced to mar-a-lago, mr. trump's home and members-only club. also, as we come on the air, the fbi is in a standoff with a man in ohio. law enforcement sources tell nbc news the man entered an fbi field office in cincinnati this afternoon, fired a nail gun at personnel and held up an a.r.-15 style rifle. he ran away, got in his car, and

took agents to a pursuit in a second location where he is now barricaded and we just learned the officers have exchanged gunfire. only yesterday fbi director christopher ray told reporters he was increasingly worried about the safety of his agents. >> i'm always concerned about wry lens and threats of violence against law enforcement. any threats made against law enforcement, including the men and women of the fbi, as with any law enforcement agency, are deplorable and dangerous. >> reporter: how concerned are you that after the raid that that could embolden, maybe even incentivize some of the same bad actors from january 6th doing something similar? >> again, violence against law enforcement is not the answer no matter what anybody's upset about. >> let's repeat that. violence against law enforcement is not the answer no matter what anybody is upset about.

ray is talking about the reaction from donald trump supporters to the search of donald trump's mar-a-lago home and private club. merrick garland is going to say something about this in 30 minutes but as ben collins has been reporting, calls for civil war started trending in the hour after that news broke, phrases like "lock and load" and "take up arms" floated to the top of the forum. and the former president is egging them on describing the lawful search from a raid to calling it an army of agents making it a surprise attack. we've seen this before. there was similar rhetoric in the buildup to january 6th as donald trump kept repeating the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. news today from "the washington post" that a group of historians

went to the white house last week to warn president biden that america's democracy is teetering, comparing the threat facing america right now to the pre-civil war era and pro fascist movements before world war ii. joining us now from west palm beach, across the lagoon from mar-a-lago is vaughn hillyard. he has new details on why the d.o.j. might have suspected there were more sensitive documents at mar-a-lago. from washington, ken dilanian on what's happening at the d.o.j. and what merrick garland might say. also what's happening at fbi headquarters and cincinnati. we've got a ton of news today. and cornel belcher, pollster and political analyst and tom nichols, contributing writer for the atlantic, both on america's increased acceptance of political violence. and presidential historian michael beschloss, who is one

who went to the white house last night to warn president biden. there were increased calls from even within the department, according to our reporting, that merrick garland needed to say something about this. >> there were and he will say something but now whether he'll say anything substantive or whether he's going to make a more generic statement explaining why the justice department doesn't talk about pending criminal investigations, perhaps denouncing violence and adding that, by the way, the fbi doesn't plant evidence in the face of these really irresponsible charges made without merit or evidence that that may have happened in this case. you know, it comes after days of the justice department resisting saying anything and really putting out the message that they are following this near iron-clad policy that the justice department has of not commenting on pending criminal investigations. it's not illegal for him to talk

about it. this isn't a grand jury situation with a search warrant. if it was, it would be a felony to talk about grand jury information. so he's free to discuss certain matters around it but, again, it's against their policy because they say it could compromise parts of the investigation and be unfair to the people who are under investigation but never charged. in this case, that second consideration seems a bit moot since the trump side is making a lot of wild charges. this is obviously a really fraught moment. it will be interesting to see if he says the violence in cincinnati played into his decision to make a statement. we're seeing a huge increase in direct threats. >> the suspect was apparently wearing body armor but so far that suspect is not in custody.

no word on whether he went into that fbi office with any motive that had anything to do with what we're seeing at mar-a-lago and what we're seeing with these increased threats. we don't know that right now but the timing is something intriguing, let's put it that way. ken dilanian, thank you very much. i know you've got to hop off. tom, there were a lot of calls from republicans from within the department about merrick garland needing to say something. this is such a sensitive topic at a sensitive time. clearly the fbi needed to go to the highest levels of the justice department to get sign-off on this, including a federal judge. they couldn't do it on their own. but it has reinvigorated donald trump's own political prospects, potentially for 2024. >> it's reinvigorated those prospects until we know what was seized. the immediate story is this is

donald trump heroically taking stand against an oppressive government that's investigating him but the real question is what made merrick garland do this now? i think, and we're all guessing without knowing what was in the search warrant or what was seized, it seems like there was some kind of time pressure to do this after trump, apparently as the "times" reported defied a subpoena. i don't know if this helps him any more than it could him with his dedicated base, they are already completely in his grip. i'm not sure that it helps him with anyone else, especially now that it's clear that his supporters are, you know, becoming hysterical over this. it may actually back fire on him and his prospects later down the road. >> he's using the absence of information to his advantage. he could have filled some of

those holes by releasing the subpoena that was given at mar-a-lago or releasing the inventory of what was generally taken. chuck rosenberg, what do you make of this news that merrick garland is now going to speak in 22 minutes? >> i think ken explained it so well earlier. there are rules about talking about ongoing grand jury investigations but there are other things you can say. while it is the general policy not to fill all the details, there are times when it's absolutely appropriate for the attorney general of the united states to step up to the podium and tell us what's going on. so i'd like to know what's going on. earlier, katy, you mentioned something really important, too, you always do, but trump has some. documents from the search warrant. he would have the warrant itself, which is usually a

one-page order permitting agents lawful entry into his home and he would have the inventory or the item the thing we all want to see and need to see and we should reserve judgment until we see it, is the affidavit. that would be a 20 or 30-page that lays out the probable cause for the search and background of the case. but he does have other stuff and he can fill in the details and he's obviously chosen not to and i think it's a fair question to ask why. maybe we get some more of those details froms attorney general today but ken's reporting on this has been excellent and he understands a lot better than i do so i'm not sure why you. >> there have been a number of requests, the judge has said, from media outlets to unseal the

affidavit. are we going to get that sooner or later because of public pressure? could we hear more about that today from merrick garland? >> very possibly. let me explain that. that affidavit is the other part of the warrant package, the document that's not yet public. it is okay for it to be sealed and often it is. and i've done hundreds of these as a federal prosecutor. in most -- ask that it remain under seal until we can release it publicly. when there is no longer a reason to keep it sealed, it becomes public. usually it's because of some ongoing sensitivities. obviously you wouldn't file an affidavit in public if you're looking a the a large, far-flung multi-conspiracy because you would be giving other

defendants, conspirators a road map to your case. i'm talking here about the hypothetical case, witnesses get hurt, witnesses get threatened. so if there's a legitimate law enforcement reason to keep an affidavit under seal, you do so. and when there is no longer a legitimate law enforcement reason to keep an affidavit under seal, you unseal it. i expect that will happen relatively soon and when we have the affidavit, we'll know a heck of a lot more than we do now. >> so we're making some educated assumptions -- education we had on what had led up to this pornt. walk us through that subpoena. >> yeah, i was just talking with a source familiar with the matter here who contends from

the chump side of things that the june 3rd meeting that we had been work by turning over the documents that were requested from that subpoena. it's technical but i'm told the subpoena was technically to the cuss custodian. that's when they started to gather the materials to turn them over to the department of justice. the source says d.o.j. officials were on site and there was a conversation that took place about where these materials had been kept. they asked if they could go and see this area. that's where the lawyers went to donald trump, donald trump authorized it and approved. they did not have a search warrant at that time to go and see this particular area but i'm told trump brings the thread up.

days later after this june 3rd meeting, when those subpoenaed documents were turned over, trump's team received an e-mail requesting that room to be and that's when trump and his team went at it a second lot, i'm told. and it says trump was neff notified that the subpoena, that they were hoping to secure anz that is where from the source trump was caught off guard by ultimately this week the search taking place here at mar-a-lago. >> what about the reporting from "the wall street journal" and "newsweek" that the justice department got a tip-off from a human source, from a potential -- i don't know what the term would be. the writer is throwing out terms like informant, they're throwing

out terms like mole. what does the reporting tell us? >> i do not have and nbc news does not have that information here there's been intebl conversation but i think this is a situation here in which donald trump's team around him is now quite smaller than it ever was previously here. he has a tight oo also down here, working on i think that calls into question ultimately what did they expect they were going to obtain or and that uls mat and they would ultimately execute. >> so this, as we said at the top of the hour, feels like

we're on the cusp of something. with all these increased calls for political violence in the hours and days after the search of there's also just enough flood of example ut there about the times we're currently living in and the turn toward more autocracy, a more palatable response toward autocracy in this country. michael beschloss, you had a meeting with president biden last week. i know that meeting was off the record, but you've come on our air a number of times and spoken about the concerns that you see. lay those out for us. >> well, that's exactly right, katy. i think it's fair to say since "the washington post" has reported it that i and my fellow historians talked to president biden about the fact that the most overwhelming issue of this

and you reporting about the attack on the fbi installation in cincinnati. different magnitude but how did the civil war begin? the civil war began in 1861 by confederates firing on another federal installation at fort sumter in south carolina trying to get the union to leave and abraham lincoln was trying to enforce the rule of law, which according to the oath he took to defend the constitution, the south cannot secede, that's against the law. that's draktly everything suggests he was trying to enforce the law of getting thot out of in the absence of a

statement by merrick and they said the important fact to know is that the fbi went in there and committed this raid without provocation. >> yes, the fbi had to do a search and see where those documents were to make sure those documents were in a safe place that obviously those negotiations have been unsatisfactory and justice was forced to resort to this effort. >> all right. it gives me a little bit of discomfort making comparisons like this. it almost feels hieber bol ib, it it almost feels like maybe we're taking it too far. but there's been videos about how people feel about political violence. this is a u.c. davis poll and

i'll put it up on the screen. more than 20% feel political violence is justifiable. this feels like a change. >> well, you know, it is jarring but it's also, katy, something we've been picking up in qualitative research going back quite some time. you'll remember after 2008 and 2009 we started hearing, you know, this ideal calls that we have to take our country back. you heard those chides and it became a roar going into 2010 and the birth it look likes it

was seated in those ideals of taking back -- the idea that we're fearful that we're on the brink of a civil war and what is all this division and this divided america mean, especially for moms talking about their children and sort of what does this mean for our children, if we're divided, can we continue on like this? so we are picking this up and, look, i think it's real and michael can speak to this better than i can, but the seeds of this really are in sort of changes that we're seeing going on in this country. so those demographics changes that a lot of people are un comfortable with. we're go b a decade and a half away from a real tipping point in this country where we're

awfully gro this rise of violence, does it from how many western democracies have we seen -- western powers have we seen go from a majority white country to a majority minority country and has sort of a peaceful transfer of power in a democratic way? it's all a big question mark. >> some of the best reporting i've seen on this subject, some of the best analysis on this subject i've seen come out of "the atlantic," tom, and you've been on some of those bylines. what do you make of where we're at right now? >> the problem is that you have millions of americans who doesn't just have a political disagreement or even a disagreement about a philosophy of government. michael is the historian here but i pish back a bit on those

1865 parallels because in a sense the confederate knew exactly what it wanted. it wanted to govern itself and be out of the union. this is an incoherent, rage driven, nihilistic movement whose enemy is anyone who thinks of disagreeing with them because they live in an alternate society because they're pumped full of cortisol eight hours a day with stories and fantasies that make communication and negotiating with that impossible because you don't understand even the functional reality.

maga people believe that there are italian satellites affecting venezuelan voting machines and, you know, other kind of ideas that you simply cannot penetrate because there's a group of people dedicated to just layering on layer after layer of madness on to these people by saying anything they want, whether it's alex jones, tucker carlson, you know, the fox primetime group. it's just that they keep pushing that on to citizens who then literally don't believe in anything except whatever they think they heard in the last five minutes. >> it's a charged word but it almost sounds like you're describing a cult. >> oh, i think it's definitely a cult and i think the republicans, my former party, have become a cult of penalty. but also, i think the way information is passed through

that ecosystem, it is entirely cultish. if you look at somebody like michael indel -- this july the world is going to change. no, not july, august. they move the date of rapture down the calendar whatever it doesn't happen and that is very cultish and it's being manipulated in many cases by people who know exactly what they're doing and who do it for profit. >> there are varying degrees of this, the mike lindell and then there are republicans in congress who don't say anything. mitch mcconnell says something but not much. i guess how do you square that? how do you loop them all together? >> because they're terrified because the people -- the republican electives in congress like kevin mccarthy and mitch

mcconnell and others, i'm going to steal a line from george will here. we've never had a case where a major political party feared and hated its own constituents as much as the republicans do. these republican electeds are afraid particularly of their primary voters. they don't want to be voted out of office, they don't want to go home and live among their own constituents. they're living in washington, living well and they want to stay there and they're going to say whatever it takes to stay in washington and that meshes very closely with the mecca ecosystem that will allow them to stay in washington as long as they're amplifying the craziness that comes out of those particular outlets. it becomes a deadly synergy that doesn't stop because everybody has an interest in upping the

ante over and over again. it's very dangerous. >> we are five minutes from merrick garland. and the white house is saying they have no knowledge of what garland is going to say, no knowledge that he was going to speak and, again, no knowledge of what he's going to say. >> andrew, what do you expect here? what do you think he needs to say? >> i think that the violence that happened in cincinnati today is the thing that probably tipped him over the edge and caused him to think that combined with the fact that the target of the search warrant, that is donald trump, has already made public that there was a search, that that tips in favor of his saying something to try and calm the waters. i don't think he's going to get into a lot of detail about the investigation or what was found in mar-a-lago, but i do think he's going to try and talk about

the rule of law and compliance with rule of law and try to basically have everyone take a deep breath, particularly people who have been very critical of the department of justice and the fbi with zero evidence that they did anything wrong. so i think he's going to try and give sort of generalities but i also commend him -- we'll see what he says but i commend him for actually going on air to try and do that. >> you know, it's the absence of information, the absence of detail that's allowed donald trump and his supporters and his allies to fill that void with conspiracy, to claim that maybe the fbi is planting something at mar-a-lago, that there's an army of them that they invaded. i wonder where the line is between being responsible to the investigation and again trying to cool the waters because, as you said, cincinnati was the

thing that spurred him into speaking, if that was it, if cincinnati has anything to do with the search of mar-a-lago, i mean, it's a dangerous time. >> yeah. you're speaking to somebody who worked on the special counsel investigation. >> you're so perfect for this answer. >> i'm aware of the asymmetry of the defense gets to speak and say whatever they want and it could be truthful or not truthful. you know, usually the rule of the department of justice is that you speak only through your court filings. this is a different situation because the nature of the investigation was made public by donald trump and i do think there's some things that he can talk about. but it is a fine line he wants to protect the regs and people who are under investigation, you

always have the jim comey view out there where you look at what happened there and nobody wants that. so i think that merrick garland is i think very carefully try and draw a line between giving certain information, making sure people understand that he complied with the rules and went to court and established probable cause and then also speak about the rule of law and that not taking the law into your own hands by resorting to violence. i mean, the irony is that this is in many ways a repeat of what happened on january 6th if you have people fomenting that there's a grudge and that something went wrong and we saw what happened on january 6th and if you have people who are irresponsible making those kind of claims again, even if cincinnati as it turns out not

to be a de facto response to a search warrant, it is exactly the risk that is run by people sort of fomenting that kind of anger when there's no factual basis for it and i do think that's something the attorney general can speak to. >> 2:30 is the time d.o.j. told us merrick garland would come out and speak. as soon as he comes out, we will go there. just stick with us. we also have msnbc analyst lisa rubin. i'm bringing you in to the conversation for the first time. what are your thoughts? >> i totally agree with andrew that what happened this morning is probably what put merrick garland over the edge. the justice manual says that in an ongoing criminal investigation that hasn't matured to an indictment, it's not appropriate for the department of justice to comment

on that investigation except in one or two circumstances and one is where necessary to protect the public safety. i would note that what happened this morning at the fbi's office in cincinnati resulted in a threat to and ohio state troopers that engaged in a car chase to the public at large. they shut down highways and right now the suspect is surrounded in a corn field in clint, ohio. there are a whole bunch of people that could be affected. in order to preserve and protect the public safety, merrick garland may find it necessary to give the public some modicum of detail about the status of the investigation and how we go to that investigation, that the former president and his staff were ignoring and disregarding subpoenas lawfully served on them in search of the documents

that the fbi ultimately collected on monday. >> merrick garland is not there yet. as soon as he starts talking, we'll take it to you live and full. how much of a link -- is it just the appearance alone of somebody going and attacking a field office that would be enough to get him to go out there and get in front of it? >> i think that's right. i think the appearance alone. irrespective of what this suspect's motivations are, it suggests to other people they can do it, too. given the rhetoric on the right, and given the accusations that the justice department has been weaponized, that the search is evocative of what we would see in a banana republic or third world dictatorship, the threats against the fbi are

unacceptable. and merrick garland may feel it is incumbent to do something different. the man who threatened john bolt bolton's life, they didn't want to take questions about what happened monday. the fact that the attorney general is coming out to make a statement today is itself a statement that violence and threats of violence against federal law enforcement will not be tolerated and that there is a time to tamp down on the rhetoric and de-escalate. i think merrick garland is uniquely capable of doing that. he's a serious, understated person. >> it's a real stress test on our system. you're talking about the bible and the way things have always been done but right now we have a former president and his allies who are willing to exploit that system, exploit those rules to their advantage

and use the lack of information again to their advantage and to try to wind people up and fire up their base and egg on these violent threats against our system. do the rules still work today? >> so in the main, yes, they work. as lisa and andrew have noted with respect to the policy and rule that we don't normally talk about ongoing investigations, part policy and part rule, there are exception and perhaps we'll see one made today. but in the main, they work. the thing we're dealing with right now and it's a big thing, it's trump and his mignons and their lies and their rhetoric

and the violence is so different than anything we've encountered in recent past, it's hard to adjust the rules. do you change the rules for this one man? you have to be awfully careful if do you that because you don't know it's what going to look like in one or two or three years. i was in the justice department for a long time. the rules made sense. even with one-off, they worked. and i don't know that we want to rush into a sea of change right now. the problem doesn't seem to be the rules at the justice department, the problem seems to be donald trump and his mignons and we have to keep that in mind. >> talk to me again. this is not merrick garland, as you can see. it looks like they're doing a mic test with a justice department aide. talk to me about the difference between going to the grand jury

and getting a subpoena from a grand jury and conducting a search like this. in your sense of things, why would the justice department not go the route of trying to get another subpoena for these documents? >> you know, you can -- good question, katy. you can certainly get a subpoena. a subpoena is a compulsion, it's a court order to even though i'm peld to produce stuff and you give me a grand jury subpoena and you trust i will give you what's required by the subpoena. if the subpoena fails, you have to do something else. i've been involved in search warrants as a federal prosecutor where we hand the subpoena to someone at the exact same time. but if you really, really need to get your stuff back and you don't trust that they will abide a subpoena or you tried a

subpoena and it doesn't seem to have worked, you're only left with one other thing, a search warrant. can you ask nicely and give me a grand jury subpoena and if that doesn't work, then you're left with the search warrant. and did they ask nicely? did they ask multiple sometimes? did they issue a grand jury subpoena, another one or a third one? what are you left with? a search warrant. it's a radical proposition when you're dealing with the home of the former president of the united states. i don't know what the affidavit says. we'll find out one day, as we discussed earlier. but if you really, really, really need your stuff back and nothing else seems to be working, then you execute a search warrant. >> all right. it's 2:37.

merrick garland is now a little bit late. once he arrives, we'll go to him. i was asking about a tiktok and a reporter reportedly read an e-mail from the department, from the d.o.j., about securing a basement storage area and the official end of the letter by saying "very truly yours" and please and thank you. seems like it was asked nicely. i want to ask about one other piece of their reporting and there could have been a person inside donald trump's world who tipped them off to maybe the fact there were more documents inside mar-a-lago that the president and his team weren't admitting to. >> yeah. and so that goes to another doctrine bound up in search warrants. your probable cause, your information, can't be stale. so, katy, another example. you're a dea agent and an informant tells you there's a

meth lab in my kitchen but he told that you 18 months ago. he can't get a search warrant on that information. that information is stale. it wouldn't surprise me if information was provided to the fbi that freshens up the situation. documents have long lives. people store them for years but you still need probable cause that is fresh, that is current. and i don't know really know what the right an informant, some helpful citizen, a if you were to provide reliability information, it helps freshen up the p.c. and gives the judge some comfort that the search

warrant he's going to sign is going to be appropriate. remains to be seen. >> andrew, this is a question i've been thinking about a lot lately -- over time, actually. maybe you can answer it. i know you weren't in charge of the mueller investigation, but you were high up there. looking back with 20-20 vision, are there things that you would have done differently or you believe would have gone better had you gone about the investigation differently? anything that might be appropriate or advice to merrick garland and the investigation that is currently under way? >> the answer is yes. i think that's probably true for anyone who's done any long-term investigation. there are things that you kick yourself and think you could have done differently, but to something that's relevant to today and i've written about this, is the public education function ofle job is one that, you know, is not typically something that you think about when you're in the justice

department. you think of the rule is put up or shut up. you speak through your indictments and court filings. i really command merrick garland with his interview and just sort of the cookie cutter of i'm going to slavishly follow a general policy that may not be applicable and i don't think it's applicable here. an example of that was i think it would have been very helpful for the acting attorney general to make clear right up front that under no circumstances could the special counsel indict a sitting president. that's simply not something that the department of justice rules and it would have been useful to

give the parameters and educate people about what it was we could and got and educate in public about what we would speak about and wouldn't speak about and why. i do think that educational function that the press takeson and people like chuck and lisa and you take on is really useful to hear directly from people in the justice department. and it's clearly going to be the case in something as extraordinary as what we witnessed this past week, which is a search of the home of the former president and what appears to be a real concern about the national security interests of the united states because it still remains unanswered why the former president had these documents in mar-a-lago, why did he have classified information and what was he intending to do with it? so it appears that there is very good reason for the justice department to act and it would

be useful to hear some of that and to reassure the public on that score and also to quell at least the pos bt of violence, whether or not cincinnati is an instance to that or not. it's something that you can be sure that the justice department and the fbi are ind and making sure that and offices around the country are batoned down, paired or the augmentation of threats against them. >> how high is the bar, do you believe, for whatever materials were found inside or even suspected to be inside mar-a-lago? top secret information -- i mean, is it a birthday note from somebody? what is the bar here that would

make conducting an operation like this worth it, politically worth it. >> my guess is there is information that is not only top secret but compartmentalized. even if you have top clearance, you don't have access to some of the sources of the government. i suspect for merrick garland to have approved something like this we are talking about highly sensitive, compartmentalized information that was so singular and unique that it needed to be repatriated and brought back to the government and should not have been in the hand of any civil i don't know and certainly in a location where many people

could have access to it. >> neil, you're just coming into this conversation for the first time with us. give us your thoughts. >> i agree with andrew. i think the only reason the justice department -- they've made the determination that the documents are so sensitive, they couldn't risk leaving them where they are. in two administrations i handled documents like they're talking about. it's hard to square this up. the markings are all over the documents. you get briefings every week or two. some documents get put on the wrong pile and sent somewhere? no way. this stuff is under not only lock and key but the most extraordinary lock and trees imaginable. i suspect these documents are

very sensitive. and there know there have been reports of, for example, chinese intelligence trying to get in to mar-a-lago. i can see why the government would be so worried about this and it really does underscore something which i just felt from the start of this. anyone i ever worked with with sensitive information took it so serious live because it's not about you, it's about the nation's secrets and sometimes lives are lost to get that information. and the idea that you can be cavalier about it and bring it home, particularly for somebody like donald trump, who lost his security clearances, president biden didn't renew them. you know, that is unforgivable. and it is a serious offense. >> how do you get those documents home with you if they are above top secret, if they are compartmented information? how if there's markings all over them, is the president left alone with those documents at

any point? i assume they would be. but isn't there somebody who might be in charge of keeping track of those documents below the president so make sure they are refiled appropriately or destroyed appropriately? >> 100%. there are logs that log in and out any time you look at it and when you bring it back. and can you never, ever bring it home. >> i was deciding about working in the justice department or the white house. in the white house my job would have been a national security job and i couldn't bring the work home and with small children that was just impossible. obviously the president is different, he's living in the white house and that has secure facilities for this information, but i am sure every time he's looking at that information, there's some sort of log that's kept of that and you certainly can't just kind of keep the information sitting on your desk or in some card board box.

it goes into very specialized areas that we call skifs, specialized to handle that specific information. this is not a minor mistake. this is something done intentionally. the reporting from "the wall street journal" says even after the documents were there and after the fbi went and said, hey, we think you have some additional documents, trump didn't turn them over. i understand the republicans are getting all upset and saying you can't do this raid and the search but what choice did the justice department have if they've gone to him politely through the normal request and they didn't do it. so then they want to a federal judge and the judge authorized it. so i suspect the facts as they come out in the days to come will be even worse for donald trump.

the tell on that is trump knows what documents were taken for the fbi. he's left with a. he is insinuating that the fbi is planting material and all sorts of garbage and nonsense because it looks like he doesn't have a leg to stand on. >> so my question is you say that you're pretty confident having been in these positions that this is going to be top secret or compartmented information. we don't know that right now. we've gotten no confirmation about that. we might get a little bit more information from attorney general merrick garland when he takes that podium. he's now 20 minutes late. i'm sure he's got a lot going on so no shade there. you say you're confident. what if it's not? what if it's not that level? how does this damage the department? does it damage the department? >> i think it is likely that level, but you're absolutely right. we don't know what it is.

i think we should reserve judgment until we know. it is striking to me that, you know, donald trump knows what this information is and if it were low-level information, i suspect we would have heard that by now. but, look, if it turns out that there was a search and, out the was a search and trump was doing everything right, maybe for the first time ever, but if he really was, then i think that doesn't look good for law enforcement. now, ovbls when you're sitting in that chair sometimes you're going to have to take operational decisions. if you have a source that says there's big information there, sometimes those sources are wrong. and you know, that's part of the job of law enforcement, is to try and drill down, get the information to the best of your ability, but sometimes it's not going to pan out. you know, let's wait and see. i suspect that it will pan out. but you're absolutely right, we should be cautious. >> what about him speaking about something without charges? what about him speaking about an investigation, just looking into it? this was -- not to make the

comparison. it's not a parallel comparison. but this is what got everybody up in arms about hillary clinton in the 2016 campaign. >> right, no, i think merrick garland is doing everything right here by not going off and insinuating certain things about any particular individual at this point. and i know that silence is incredibly frustrating for people. but that is, and andrew was saying this earlier, that is the way the justice department operates. that's the norm. which is you speak through indictments, you don't speak through press conferences that insinuate. obviously, as lisa rubin was saying, here there is now starting to be a compelling case under the department's rules for saying something. i don't know that garland will in the end. i wouldn't be shocked if what we hear today is just about cincinnati and the about the need to protect and stand up for law enforcement generally and not to go attack them willy-nilly for silly things like planting evidence on the basis of nothing. i think garland can do that

without talking about the specific facts of this particular search in any way, shape or form. but that rule that the department has, which is so frustrating for you and me, serves a lot of good sense. garland has adhered to it so much so that it's frustrated people including all of our colleagues on our network. but this is where i think if we are going to deal with -- if it is the case that the former president is breaking the law and breaking it in serious ways and you need an attorney general to take the dramatic step for the first time in american history of indicting a former president, you want someone like merrick garland, someone who is hypercautious, not a partisan, not bloodthirsty, someone who is incredibly respected by both republicans and democrats alike throughout his career. obviously in the last little while there's been an attack machine against him. but let's let his actions speak for themselves. let's see what they are. >> if you were in that room and

merrick garland was taking questions, neal, what would you ask him? >> well, i would try to ask him what the status is of the investigation against trump in january 6th as well as this classified information stuff, and i suspect we'd hear nothing. >> andrew weissman, speaking of january 6th, i think there's a lot of surprise around that of all the investigations that would lead to a search of one of donald trump's homes that it would be one surrounding classified documents. there are so many investigations involving the president right now and some pretty serious stuff. not to say this is not. but trying to overturn the 2020 election. are you confident that these are all separate moves? >> i am. but i don't think we should be surprised that it would be a concern over national security and particularly if it turns out these are highly compartmentalized documents, that that's the kind of thing that merrick garland and lisa monaco and chris wray would be

saying, that that is -- that has to be something that is vindicated. that is extremely important. and to your comments with neal earlier about not repeating the sins of jim comey, it is really important to remember here that it is donald trump who made the search public. not the fbi. not merrick garland. so when you have the target of the search making it pun, the interest of saying oh, we don't want to hurt the civil liberties of the target of the investigation by casting aspersions, that carries a lot less weight to acknowledge then that there in fact is an investigation because the target of the investigation has himself made it public. so i'm sure that weighed in on merrick garland's decision today. i'm going to take the other side of the wager from neal and say that i do think that he's going

to talk about the search. i think it's pretty hard to come out and not say something. even though i'm confident that everyone will be left with a lot of questions because i don't think he's going to go into a lot of detail. but i think it's pretty hard to come out, not say anything and neal will certainly at the end, when this is over, you know, chastise me if i got this wrong. >> we will see. tim nichols, i know we only have a for a couple month minutes, so i just want to get you in one more time. your thoughts on this discussion. >> one of the things that i'm wondering about is whether the documents needed -- there's been this whole discussion about what level of classification, could trump have taken emthem. the problem is almost anything he could have taken out of the white house office is highly sensitive in some form and it is the property of the u.s. government. and so you know, i was a federal

employee for 25 years in the defense department. you know, every year we had to go through training about records management and what constitutes a federal record. this wasn't just some oversight. and that leads to the question of why exactly did trump do this. and i think in the absence of any other explanation i'll speculate as well, you know, maybe we'll all get on neal's list for a correction later. but i'm wondering if he just was worried about what's in those documents and in true trump fashion said, you know, i'm just going to take them all home with me and lock them in a basement in mar-a-lago and that's it. and i think that's one of the reasons there was that warning in the times piece this morning where people in trump world were saying don't pound too heavily on the fbi or law enforcement because some bad stuff is going to come out. and i think that's probably related to why he took them in the first place. but i think it speaks well of the entire process of american justice that we're cutting all of these things so finely in talking about the need to be

respectful of a former president and to make sure that all the ts are crossed and is are dotted. but that's not going to matter to the republicans or to maga world, who are already, no matter what garland comes out and says now, are going to spin this into a really dark conspiracy. and i don't think anything's going to wind that back. >> tom, thank you very much for joining us today. we appreciate it. and just a note to our viewers and everybody that we're talking to right now, donald trump himself back in 2018 signed a law that made changes to fisa, to the foreign intelligence security act, that strengthened and increased penalties for mishandling of classified information. so he himself signed a bill that made it -- gave it a higher penalty to mishandle information, which could be something that he is running afoul of right now. again, the foreign intelligence surveillance act, fisa, i know you remember that from all over our discussions about the mueller report. andrew weissman, i know you

report that as well. >> thank you. >> i think that was tom saying thank you, not andrew. but andrew, i know you remember fisa certainly factored heavily into all of the discussions around the mueller investigation. >> yeah, absolutely. and you know, that is a good reminder. you know, one of the things that happened there is there was a fisa warrant prior to the appointment of the special counsel related to roger stone and that was not the fbi's finest moment. that was a circumstance where there were lots of mistakes, mistakes that were found to have been material, by the inspector general and the court to obtaining that warrant. so it's not the case that law enforcement is always correct or always gets it right.

they can make mistakes. i strongly suspect here with that history and merrick garland being so concerned about learning from history, i think that i'd be really surprised if this warrant application wasn't fly specked to a fair thee well. and the question of why do a search versus a subpoena was answered loud and clear to merrick garland's satisfaction, that there was no choice but to do a search because they could not trust that a subpoena would be complied with or they knew that the subpoena had not been complied with. but all of that remains to be seen, and it will be interesting to see to what extent merrick garland addresses that if and when he appears to speak to the nation. >> so it is about 30 seconds to 3:00, very close to the top of the hour. attorney general merrick garland

was supposed to speak at 2:30. obviously, he is delayed. as soon as he comes out, we're going to go there live. we will take his remarks in full. he is expected to talk about the search of mar-a-lago. that is what we anticipate he will be talking about. the detail that he will get into is still unknown. kelly o'donnell at the white house has said the white house was given no prior indication that merrick garland would be speaking at all, let alone any indication about what exactly he would say. but again, he is around 30 minutes delayed right now. as soon as it begins, we will go there. andrew, you're still with us. i just want to ask again on this, could it be merrick garland comes out and just says we were just trying to retrieve this material, we needed to have it back, it is sensitive information, we needed to make sure we could handle it ourselves, it couldn't just be at mar-a-lago behind