aloha, namaste and it is 4:00 in new york city. i'm in for nicolle wallace who really missed -- missed a hell of a week this week, i hope you're having fun out there. an extraordinary week at the nexus of law and politics and national security. federal judge bruce rinehart has just unsealed the warrant that was the basis for the unprecedented search of former president donald trump's south florida residence and private club, mar-a-lago, on monday. nbc news, among other news organizations, obtained a copy of the search warrant a whool ago along with the inventory of the items seized by the fbi from mar-a-lago granting the government search warrant, judge rinehart affirmed that the

government had established probable cause of potential violation of three federal statutes. number one relates to the unlawful removal of government material. number two relates to the law prohibiting the destruction or concealment of documents to obstruct an investigation. number three, potentially the most explosive, the espionage act. the inventory of what the fbi seized includes around 20 boxes of items including four sets of top-secret documents, three sets of secret documents, and three sets of confidential documents. the list does not provide any more details about the substance of those documents or what might be in them. in addition, there was binders of photos, signatures of the former president, executive grant of clemency for roger stone and my personal favorite quote, info. re the president of france. can't wait to find out what that

is. the vagueness of that inventory will leave people wondering exactly -- what exactly is in those boxes. there will be room for speculation and reporting in the days ahead. today we focus on those three criminal statutes invoked by the judge, and they make this a very big deal, historic deal, and a deal potentially enormous legal consequences for donald j. trump. for his part, he spent the morning crying hoax, denying new reporting from "the washington post" that indicated that fbi agents were looking for classified documents related to nuclear weapons among other items when they searched mar-a-lago. nbc news has not confirmed that reporting. again, we may very well know the full truth about that in the days ahead. joining us now, "washington post" deputy national adtor and analyst phil rucker. also the former acting solicitor general of the united states, now an msnbc legal analyst and law professor at georgetown university. my friend, thank god you're here. and ben rhodes, another friend, deputy national security

adviser. phil is my friend, too, by the way. deputy national security adviser for president obama as well as an msnbc political contributor and olivia troy, a fourth friend, also here, former top aide to vice president mike pence. neil, we've got to start with you. you're the man with the law degree here. walk us through what we learned -- walk us through the warrant and the inventory and what you on the basis of everything you know take away from it. >> yeah. so to me the big headline is the former president of the united states is under investigation by the fbi for a violation of the espionage act among other things. so that to me is the headline. then it's supported by two different things. the warrant and the inventory of what was found at mar-a-lago. i'm going to start with the latter. because you know, yesterday when there were all these reports of fbi going and trying to find nuclear information or signals intelligence information, i said, look, we got to be cautious because that's just

what the fbi is looking for. we don't know what they actually found. today we learned what they found, and we learned that at mar-a-lago was some of the nation's most serious, sensitive information, what is called top secret, sensitive, compartmented information. that was at mar-a-lago. it ain't no hoax. it's there. and there's no reasonable argument that could be advanced for why that material is at mar-a-lago. the president's not -- donald trump's not the president anymore, he has no need for that information. so that is a damning fact. we then have the second document which is the warrant. that's what the fbi went to the federal judge with and said, you know, here's what we need. the judge then signed off and said here's what you are allowed to do. now in the warrant which the federal magistrate judge signed, he said there has to be -- there has to be probable cause to believe that there are documents at mar-a-lago that are relevant to three specific crimes.

one is 18 usc 793, the espionage act, taking defense information against the interests of the united states or grossly negligently removing it from its proper place of custody, aka the white house. also, it covers the failure to return classified or sensitive information when demanded by the united states. that has a ten-year sentence. second crime is 18 usc 2071 which is concealment, removal or mutilation of defense information. that's a three-year penalty, but it also bars you from running for future federal office. then the third crime enumerated that the magistrate judge signed off on is 18 usc 1519 which is a surprise to us. this is a statute about the destruction or alteration or falsification of records in an active federal investigation. so that's like maybe trump was

flushing documents down the toilet once he learned the government was looking for them. who knows? that's the one that probably does require inside source, a mole or something like that, working with the fbi. otherwise, it's hard for me to understand how the fbi would have thought that that would have been a potential crime. so those are the three. and it's looking incredibly badly for donald trump at this point. >> so neil, i'll stick with you for one question here. there's obviously going to be a ton of focus -- i'm going to ask ben in a second and phil about the -- about the classifications, what top secret means, what these various things mean, and the espionage act is the thing that's the eye-catching thing and maybe the most -- probably the most consequential thing for our politics and for donald trump's legal liability. but am i not right in thinking that the lesser statutes, the basic ones about how you're not supposed to take classified material out of the white house, that the fact that they have discovered documents, what's in those documents was claimed in the inventory is things that are

top secret, things that are secret, and things that are confidential, that those are all that ought to prima fascia basis, we know -- i shouldn't say we know, we can conclude that if those things are properly marked that donald trump's violated the most bake of those three federal laws already? >> you're absolutely right. you don't have to go there. these three crimes that are isolated in the warrant don't actually require classification. they just require defense information. and there are two sections of espionage act 793 dmf which cover people who actually did have the authority to have these documents, and it bars them from mishandling that even if they had the authority at one point. you know, there's so many problems with this whole president automatically declassify the documents, i don't know where to begin. i mean, one is he didn't go through the proper procedures for doing so, and the court of appeals said even presidents are bound by those procedures.

and another is if it's nuclear information, the president actually doesn't have the ability by law to declassify it. i think here the justice department was pretty careful in isolating these three statutes which don't even require classification at all. so it's -- it's an argument that i suspect we'll hear a lot about. but should this go to a criminal -- federal criminal trial, and honestly my view now is it is going to go to a federal criminal trial, i don't know how you could look the other way on something of this magnitude. but we'll let the facts play out. if it does if to criminal trial, i don't think these classification defenses that trump is trying to put out on social media is -- are going anywhere. >> can you just remind me, i know you said a second ago, what's the potential penalty for that? how many years in jail on that one charge? >> so each of the three crimes has a different one. for the espionage act it's ten, a ten-year sentence for each violation of the act. these are big sanctions. the other ones are three years

and 20 years depending on the statute. >> okay. ben, i come to you now. for a lot of people the questions of these, what these classifications mean, what are the kinds of things you worked closely to the national security apparatus for barack obama, so you will be able to characterize in general what's the difference between top secret and secret? what are -- give us examples of things that fall into one category and fall into the other. i also noted in the inventory there's a notation early in it that refers to classified/ts/sci documents. i'm curious if you can decode that for me. >> yeah. so i think it's important to unpack what each of these classification measures means. and first of all, i also want to say that if you have a classified document, secret or top secret or confidential, that is stamped on every page at the top. you can't not know that this is a classified document. they make sure to put that stamp everywhere. now a secret document could just be an analytical judgment of the

united states intelligence community that kind of pulls on a bunch of different sources and is putting forward a report on something that's of interest to the united states. a top-secret document usually derives from or quotes something that reveals an intelligence source or method of collection by the united states government. so hypothetically, if you're talking about sensitive collection on foreign conversations or things like that, if there's a roadmap for that document that can demonstrate where you got the information from or if it's potentially discussing aspects of u.s. defense policy that we obviously want to keep a secret, that's going to be in the top-secret category. that's important because you don't want to mishandle information that could reveal the classified sources and methods of intelligence collection by the united states or classified judgments that we've made about foreign adversaries. that is very valuable

information if one were to try to profit from it. it is very valuable information to our adversaries, if they can gain access to it, if it's in a nonsecure facility like as far mar-a-lago. when you get into top-secret sci/ts/sci as you asked, that's a secure compartment. that means only a very small number of people could even be read into a certain activity of the united states government. so that's something that the u.s. government decides it wants to restrict even beyond those with the top-secret clearance. you have to be read into the capacity to gain access to that information. so we run the full spectrum of classification here, even confidential is a classification that usually has to deal with things like decisions before the president, but he's got the full spectrum in these documents. and given the volume of them, this is deeply, deeply strange and unusual behavior for someone

to do because, frankly, you didn't take these things home when you're in government. these are things that stayed in secure facilities that are literally built to protect that information, to be under supervision. once those documents leave a secured government facility, that's when you get this kind of legal liability. in is something -- this is something that is briefed to anybody who gets security clearance on the day you get your security clearance. this is not something he wouldn't know about. >> ben, if i interpret you correctly, and i'm going to make this as like talk to me like i'm a 5-year-old, which is kind of how i am with things, you say as we go up the rank of classification, confidential at the bottom, secret in the -- the next step up, top secret and then above top secret is this sci designation. those are top-secret documents that are beyond top secret, they're like -- super special, secret probation top-secret documents that you got to go to

a special place to look at them, right, is that what you're saying? >> well, i think for any of these documents. certainly anything that is top secret you need to be in a certain facility to be able to review those documents. >> right, but -- >> sci is just a different level that is more restricted. >> okay. that's -- i got that right then. phil rucker, i want to come to you. you know, the thing that we all woke up to this morning was two pieces of reporting. one before the "wall street journal" got hold of this -- warrant before anybody else, we had two pieces of reporting overnight that were kind of rocking the world. one in your paper with i believe you're one of the many people in the biline of the story that said that there was -- some of this had to do with nuclear weapons, that some of these top-secret documents had to that with nuclear weapons. we had a report in the "times" where they talk about special access programs. again, saying these are some of the classified materials, highly classified materials here, a designation typically reserved for the operations of u.s. abroad or closely held

technology capabilities. last night laura ingram, amazingly, on fox news, got trump's attorney, one of them. it was an amazing moment to see someone from fox news, laura ingram of all people, doing some actual journalism here with the president's lawyer. the president's o'hare did not fare well. >> is it your understanding that there were not documents related to our nuclear capabilities or nuclear issues that had national security implications in the president's possession when the agents showed up at mar-a-lago? >> that's correct. i don't believe they were. and if they thought -- >> do you know for a fact? do you know for a fact? have you spoken to the president about it? >> i have not specifically spoken to the president about what nuclear materials may or may not have been in there. i do not believe there were any in there. >> now, my question to her, phil, would have been have you ever met your clients, could you pick him out of a lineup. that's a separate issue. as we look at the inventory now

that we've seen, that is now public, how does that inventory stack up with what "the washington post" reported last night and what -- won't ask you to report for the "times," but the stuff you were talking about related to nuclear information could fall within the classifications that are laid out that ben laid out for us? >> let's be clear about what the "post" reported last night. by the way, it was reported by a team of great colleagues, i was just an editor on the story. i'm not actually on the biline, a correction there. but we reported at the "post" last night that the fbi, when they did the search at mar-a-lago on monday, they were looking for among other items a classified document pertaining to nuclear weapons. what we didn't know is whether that pertains to u.s. nuclear weapons or the nuclear programs of any foreign countries. we also didn't know based on our reporting whether those

documents that they were looking for were actually recovered in the search. what we now know this afternoon because we see the inventory and the search warrant is -- is, you know, there were four boxes of documents that were marked at this highest classification level. we, of course, don't know in any sort of detail what those documents contained, what they were about, whether or not they did pertain to nuclear programs. that's not spelled out in the court papers that we're all able to see publicly. we never expected they would be spelled out in those court papers in part because of the sensitivity of the matter. we stand by our reporting from last night which is based on rigorous beat reporting that the fbi when they went to mar-a-lago to conduct the search on monday were looking in part for classified documents pertaining to nuclear weapons. >> phil, i just -- i'll say i did not mean to disrespect your colleagues. here's the reality, like you're

the -- whenever you edit something it's like the ghost biline. you make everything you touch so much better. olivia troy -- >> it's not quite that, but thank you. >> 20 boxes of items, binders of photos, a handwritten note, stuff about emmanuel macron, got knows what donald trump wanted to know about macron. got me in my -- the curiosity's killing me. all of those things are all in donald trump's possession. the question has been throughout this has been that's been for donald trump why did you take those things, what were you doing with them, why did you lie about it repeatedly, why did you defy a subpoena to turn them over, and now the question what's in them and what his game was. for a lot of people in the country, there are still people saying why do i care about this. so i'd love for you to explain on the basis of all your history and in your work for vice president penn like why the average american should be like it really matters that donald trump decided to hold on to these documents, and maybe should face -- and should

according to the justice department face potential criminal liability for having done so. >> look, there's a reason there's a presidential records act, and there's a reason that when you actually work in the white house they go out of their way to brief you on it, on how you maintain your records, what you're supposed to do, what you can take, what you cannot take. it is a very deliberate process because this matters for continuity of government and for many reasons for archiving purposes. and when it comes to the information in these boxes, i've got to tell you, i have been sick to my stomach thinking about the extent of damage that could possibly be done with whatever information was in these boxes. and to, you know, to follow up on what my other colleagues said here, you know, the extent of this could be information about foreign countries, foreign governments. i was thinking about this and thinking about world leaders who are watching this develop and thinking to themselves what kinds of information is in there about our own weapons systems,

governments, intelligence sources. and also, it could potentially put a lot of lives at risk. we're talking about sources and people throughout, you know, the international community here that if this information got into the wrong hands, their lives would be this danger. and i'm thinking about all the officers, military, intel, we're talking across the board here, about how the incredible danger they could be in if it fell into the wrong hands. that's why this matters. this is a gravely serious thing. also when it comes to intelligence, i want to be clear about this, it takes a long time sometimes to develop some of these sources. and a long time to develop some of these intelligence programs. and especially at the highest level. and should that be derailed, we could be losing years, years of operations and things like this. it's a very serious thing, and honestly to think about the fact

that a president of the united states held that with such disregard is so upsetting on so many levels, but this is what we've come to see about who donald trump is and his complete disrespect for any of our rule of law, any -- any of our intelligence community, our government institutions. he has repeatedly shown that he does not care and does not ever, has not ever taken the role of the presidency and the oval office seriously. >> neil, i want to come back to you. search warrants are -- i will say i've never seen a search warrant. i won't say i've never had one searched against me, but i'm not that familiar with them. i can't tell you whether this seems like it covers a lot. when you're reading the attachment a of the search warrant, you do -- you're struck by the language. i'll put up how broad this was in terms of what the fbi was allowed to search. i'm going to read this. it says the locations -- notes

that the property, mar-a-lago, is 58 bedrooms, 33 bathrooms, on a 17-acre estate. it's not a small place as we know. locations to be searched inside include 45 office, all storage rooms, and all other rooms or areas within the premises used or available to be used by f potus and his staff in which boxes or documents could be stored including all structures or buildings on the estate. all it basically says is the only place they can't go are things used by -- areas occupied, rented, or used by third parties, meaning mar-a-lago -- basically mar-a-lago members. so is that broad? is that unusually broad area to be able to search? or is it normal that a warrant like this would be more specific about, you know, here's this room, that room, the glove compartment, here's the safe you can look in, or is that common in terms of issuing these kinds of search warrants where you basically sort of blanket the whole residence and go wherever you want? >> so before answering that, i want to say a little more about your question to olivia about why should the american people care.

because if you've handled this information, as i have in two different administrations, you're kind of keenly aware that this isn't your information when you get it. it's a privilege to get it. and it is the property of the united states governme, lives are often lost or on the line in producing that information. and you're keenly aware also that -- you know, that very few federal workers will get this, but anyone who gets access to this information is the target of foreign intelligence services both in terms of spying on them and also bribery and things like that. and so if you have a former president of the united states mishandling our nation's most sensitive information and who's the obvious target, i mean, you know, in a way that some lower level person wouldn't be, he's obviously the target for active operations, for him to mishandle it in such a way is such a betrayal of everything you know about when you handle this information. and you know that it's not -- we

talk about like nuclear or signals intelligence, it's not just the documents themselves because if a foreign adversary or enemy gets access to it, they can reverse engineer it and understand the sources and methods that were used to produce it in the first place and endanger, you know, lives in the field, electronic capabilities, all sorts of things. that's what's at stake. that's why the government if the reports are true, i think in my judgment we'll have to prosecute. now, with respect to the warrant, i think the warrant here is commensurate with the gravity of the crime. you're absolutely right, it's a broad search. i think that reflects the fact that they probably did have someone on the inside who was saying, you know, there are documents in various places, but i don't know necessarily everywhere. and so it's a broad roving warrant within mar-a-lago itself. obviously not for guests of the hotel or something like that.

but for any area within donald trump's control, that seems to me absolutely appropriate here. the warrant -- you know, as far as i can tell, it looks like other warrants in serious cases. >> so i want to go back to neil's -- the point that neil wanted to make before making -- answering the question that i asked which was his wont to go high, and i'm betting there's some things you might want to see yourself in terms of why this matters and -- and how we should -- how americans should properly think about this as we proceed into -- we've been saying all week, uncharted territory, the territory's going to get more uncharted as we go forward here. i think people are going to struggle to figure it out. give us a sense of what we should be paying attention to, what really matters about this as we head into that incognito. >> you can divide this into two categories. there's what we know and what we

don't know yet, okay. now what we don't know yet is what he was doing with this information. was there a maligned purpose for him taking these documents? and you know, we'll have plenty of time to speculate. if he was seeking in any way to profit off of these documents, you know, either, you know, in a financial way, either because it gave him information that he could leverage people with, if he wanted to put his personal interests above the national security of the united states to make use of these documents, that's next level. that's something that profoundly endangers the united states when the former president of the united states is using the resources and classified and sensitive information of the united states government for some sort of personal interest. it begs the question why take all these documents if you didn't have that -- >> let me -- i just want to ask you -- let me ask you one quick question. can you think of many examples when donald trump hasn't been trying to personally profit from every situation he's been in?

i ask that in a serious way. i mean, i can't think of a lot of instances where that's not ultimately what trump's been about, financial gain or other kind of gain. he's been -- that's been kind of the north star of his entire existence on planet earth. >> no, that's right, john. and there's plenty of -- you think about the saudi government, you think about the russian government, you think about questionable relationships trump's had in the past, i think we need to scrutinize whether he was pursuing a personal interest here. i'm sure that will be part of this. even without that, though, if the idea is that these rules don't apply to everybody and that if you're donald trump or you're in donald trump's circle that suddenly like you don't have to abide by these rules, that up ends the system, it doesn't work. the rule of law doesn't work. the national security doesn't work. classification doesn't work. if some people are allowed to break the rules and other people aren't. the reality is as neil said, having the documents in mar-a-lago is incredibly dangerous. you don't think mar-a-lago's

been the target of every foreign intelligence service for years? it doesn't look like a hard place to get inside and walk around. these were in boxes. even if they're behind a locked door, it's not like they're not foreign adversaries who are able to get their hands on that information and learn really important things potentially about our intelligence collection, our nuclear programs, and as neil said, another point to make here is when he makes the classification argument he's not just talking about information like at the magazine or something. as neil said, this is a roadmap. any top-secret document likely is a reverse engineered roadmap where you can determine how would the united states gather this information or what is the united states doing with its own military intelligence resources. so is donald trump arguing he declassified all those programs with the underlying information that was in these documents, it's a lot more complicated than saying i have a ten-page document that's classified and just declassified it. what that document could reveal has profound implications for potentially troops that are in the field for the united states, military resources and plans,

nuclear programs. if the "post" report is true, intelligence collection around the world. this is serious, serious stuff. and he's defied the laws of gravity when it came to the law and came to his own violations of national security for? time now. i think what we are watching before our eyes is gravity is beginning to exert its pull on donald trump. he's done something profoundly wrong, and he needs to be held accountable. >> so phil, student of donald trump that you are, having written books about him and covered him for a long time, i ask you, you know, what we saw last night, people wondered -- there was speculation that trump's lawyers might oppose the unsealing of this warrant. he then jumped out on that platform how uses that i refuse to name, but it's not twitter, the twitter thing for -- that's even more poisonous than twitter. where he came out and said no, i'm going to have them come out. i'm for it. i'm for it. he puts out a statement this morning which -- it's like -- a classic of the trump genre, it

goes immediately to barack hussein obama kept 33 million pages of documents, much of them classified, of course, as usual, also not really english. how many of them pertain to nuclear? word is lots. i mean, this is kind of hilarious on so many levels and so very trumpy. the national archives respond to that by saying the national archives and records administration assumed exclusive legal and physical custody of the obama presidential records when president barack obama left off in 2017 and n accordance with the presidential records act. naa moved 30 million records to a stilt in the chicago area where they're maintained exclusively by nara. additionally, nara maintains the classified records in a nara facility in the washington, d.c., area as required by the pra, former president obama has no control over where and how nara stores the presidential records of his administration. so that's basically just a full-on national archives beat-down to donald trump and saying you're just -- you're completely full of it.

it is indicative, phil, i would say, of how donald trump is going to proceed here now that this information is out in public in terms of his communication strategy, his spin strategy, talk about that, about where you think this goes from a president who for much of this week thought he was winning politically. >> yeah. well, this is somebody who throughout his life has thrived on casting himself as the ultimate victim, right. he has this persecution complex where he tries to play victim and use it to his political advantage, and we've seen that all week where he's campaigned about the -- complained about the alleged intensity of the search as if they were somehow busting down doors at mar-a-lago each though by all accounts it was conducted in a reasonably professional and orderly manner. but he -- he ratchets it up with his statements and his rhetoric to get his supporters on his side and to make them feel like he's being unfairly targeted by the government.

and this is just an extension of it, the statement today. the comparison to obama is obviously not valid. you read that statement from the national archives. by the way, there's certainly no evidence that obama was withholding any documents pertaining to nuclear weapons at his home or his country club. obama doesn't have a country club and doesn't live in a country club. that being said, i think this is indicative of the approach that trump is going to be taking in the days and weeks ahead which is to play the ultimate victim and, you know, complain about how unfair he thinks this is and try to deflect and try to point to examples where other politicians in the other party, democrats, have come under fire for similar circumstances, but the reality is there are no historical parallels to what we're witnessing right now. there's simply no precedent for a former president holding documents like this and having this kind of a search undertaken. >> olivia, i'm going to get to you in a second.

ben rhodes is the one leaving at the commercial break, i want to get one more to ben before we lose him. you know, ben, i don't want you to spend any time responding to donald trump on barack obama and his behavior because it's a waste of our time. the president -- donald trump's lying, that's fine, it's been proven. it's all -- more trump crap. what i do want you to talk about is this argument that we're going to get into now certainly on the basis of what we can see from trump and many of his enablers in the republican party come is to say you know what, he's like -- he declassified stuff by fiat on his way out the door. that he -- all these things -- yeah, maybe they were marked top secret, but that was like a tale that this -- for the past, as soon as donald trump walked out the door, he basically had the authority before he was still president, just before the clock struck 1:00 in the afternoon on inauguration day, he basically declassified all these documents. what would you say to that? again, we're starting to hear, we're going to hear more of it next week. >> first of all, as neil said,

that doesn't get him out from under any of the legal -- he's under, right. but i think secondly, i made the point that he is making a claim there that he didn't just declassify these documents, but i think based on what's in these documents he would have to be declassifying underlying ways this which the information in the documents was obtained. and that leads me to the point that there's no way that donald trump went through the normal protocols of declassifying these documents and whatever programs are described within these documents on the way out the door. i don't think any of us believe that he did that. he's using a postfacto justification to say, yeah, i actually declassified that. that's not how it works. you have to go through a protocol of declassification and review what is being declassified by taking a certain document. i would add we're going to hear contradictory things. we've gone through the cycles of denial, first that there was nothing there, then that there was planted evidence.

now that it's barack hussein obama, he uses the middle name. we're going to hear this is by accident. we've heard this from defenders, oh, he must have taken documents by accident. how can both things be true? how can he say he declassified them but they were taken by accident? i think what we're going to hear is just -- to paraphrase steve bannon, a lot of sewage dumped out into the discourse on this stuff that is going to be contradictory. the bottom line is if he didn't go through the proper protocols of declassifying that information and being clear about what he was taking, then it's a meaningless defense. it's a talking point. it's not anything that should be taken seriously. again, it begs the question, the glaring question, why did you need to take this information. you know, like -- you leave government, you don't need to take top-secret boxes with you as mementos. the question that is glaring from this is why was it so important for donald trump to have boxes and boxes of classified information with him

in mar-a-lago. what was he aiming to do with them? what's his possible justification for them? and why when he was asked to give them back did he not even comply with that order? okay. so the declassification thing is i think nothing but a smokescreen for the fact that he's done something really wrong and gotten caught. >> i would say not merely asked to give them back. he was ordered to give them back under subpoena. i'd also say that i would -- i would offer to bet you $50, ben, that at some point donald trump is going to say, you know, barack obama withheld his birth certificate for three years in office while i was demanding it. it's basically the same thing except i know if i offer to bet you $50 you wouldn't take the bet because you're certain that is what's going to happen. >> right. >> ben, thank you for joining us. everybody else on the panel. stick around. we'll have more on today's momentous news. the search warrant for donald trump's private residence, mar-a-lago, revealing that the fbi's investigating a number of potential crimes including, including the espionage act. later in the program, the extraordinary and unprecedented week that was. we will break it all down with

the one and only historian michael beschloss. all these stories and more.

we are back with our panel, minus ben rhodes. we've switched out ben roefds for another ben, ben collins, nbc news senior reporter. like the duke of the dark web. phil, neil, olivia are back. oliia troy, i promised to come back to you. here i am. i want to put up a graphic here of the inventory so anybody can get a picture of this.

i'm going to read through this. this is a totally intriguing document. it is also a very vague document. there are -- raises more questions than it answers, but it's certainly -- answers a few questions as we've discussed prior. the invocations that secret things at various levels of classification are in. it starts with the executive grant of clemency to roger stone, that's the first thing in there. and then there's this reference to info. re: the president of france, my obsession for a while. we've got boxes of documents, the first mention of that ts/sci classified documents we talked about with ben rhodes in the first block of the show. potential presidential records, binders of photos, handwritten notes, boxes that all it says is how they're labeled. you get to -- you get into the miscellaneous secret documents, that's 10a, 11a, the latest top-secret documents. more top-secret documents, more confidential documents, secret documents. you really are like as you start working through the latter half of this list, you have a bunch

of boxes that said -- there's no information whatsoever. and then all the sudden you hit these repeated references to either con any dental document or documents, secret document or documents, and top-secret document or documents. that gets you all the way to the 28th entry down here which is, again, miscellaneous, it says tope secret documents, they had to cut the e off there. olivia, you came across documents, we talked about in the last block. but you came across documents at all this level of classification when you worked for vice president pence. and when you look at the length of of that list and look at the numbers of times that things of various level of classification pop up, various levels of secrecy, what -- again, we can't draw a lot of conclusions, but i think we can draw some conclusions. i'm curious what conclusions you draw as you look at the scope and variety of it and how it matches up with the laws that are invoked as justifications

for this warrant. >> look, i mean -- first i have to say like is there anything he didn't take? i mean, other than -- he didn't take the kitchen sink. there seems to be a lot of stuff missing between text messages, call logs, there's a lot of things that disappears it seems in trump's orbit here. and now we've got boxes of that that really has no business being down in mar-a-lago. the fact -- the bottom line is none of these documents should be down there. that's bottom line number one is that these are presidential records, these are government records, these are government stuff, even the photos should have been left intact. if he wanted them, there could have been special requests for it. really, grave he more concerning, of grave concern, is the fact that these are -- this is top-secret government information possibly in these documents. that if it fell into the wrong hands, it could be very damaging and dangerous to our country, and it could expose all sorts of

information about people, locations, weapons, i mean information across the board that has taken a long time to develop here. so i'm going to tell you, look, there's a responsibility as a national security person and intelligence officer to handle this as appropriate. i found classified information in the ladies room of the white house one time, the eisenhower executive office building, and i immediately walked it right up to security and said "i just found this in the bathroom," i covered it up, put it in a folder, it wasn't marked properly. the folder wasn't because i was not expecting to walk in the ladies room and find a document like that. i marched up, gave my name, information, i said i don't know -- i can't tell you, i can't track how it got there. you know, i'm happy to sit down and discuss it. that is a level of effort that when you're an intelligence officer you have a responsibility to really protect this information. so the fact that these boxes were just sitting down there in a place where a lot of

foreigners tend to traffic -- lots of traffic in that area. where clearly i mean prime target for counterintelligence operations and things like that. again, i'll say this -- what information is there about international sources and also, you know, we have intelligence exchanges with our foreign partners. i am sure that people like the uk, people like france, and other partners are sitting there thinking what information is possibly in those, and who has gotten hold of it now. this information, i'll tell you this -- when it comes to the compartmentive things, for people like me who had high clearances, and i've worked at the department of energy, i'm familiar with nuclear information and things like that, you go in, you sign, and you read it, you walk out. you don't -- you don't just roll

out with it and carry it back to your office. that's the type of sort of protection that you are expected to carry out and exhibit. so i just think that this is all very gravely concerning, and i'll tell you this -- many of us in the national security community and those of white house worked in the trump administration, we worried about this. we worried about the fact that there was clearly not a great understanding by the president of how to handle this information when trump was in office, and we worried about the fact that he would disclose things in conversations, and you didn't know what he was going to say. so clearly there was a disconnect across the board here of the importance of this type of information and how to protect it. >> right. so neil, i have -- a series of questions, i'm going to start with neil, then phil and get to ben. ben's -- maybe has the most serious element of this. i do want to review our week in some sense. it's been a bad week for right-wing gas backs. if you were -- if you were an

elected republican or someone who lives in the fever swamp of fox news and the areas to the right of that, you said a hot of things this week. you said this was no small thing, doesn't relate to anything, all they had to do was ask trump, he would have given it. if they thought it was serious they would have subpoenaed him. he defied the subpoena. the worst example of all was the planting evidence meme started by donald trump himself and taken up by republican congress people, many of them, a couple of senators including rand paul, and everybody in right-wing media, everybody, right? then we got to last night where donald trump's lawyer, christina bobb, was on something, god knows what this is, called "real america's voice," and she said this about donald trump being able to watch the actual search of mar-a-lago. let's watch this.

>> i think the folks in new york, president trump and his family, probably had a better view than i did because they had the cctv that they were able to watch. they were actually able to see the whole thing. so they actually have a better idea of what took place inside. >> so here's the president's lawyer, neil, the president who's basically said we were not allowed -- all done behind closed doors. she comes out and says on television that, yeah, there's actually closed circuit television thing, the president and first lady were watching it the entire time. they had a better view than i did, and i was on the premises. i ask you, you know, given what we now know is in the warrant and what was in the inventory, is this -- is there any possibility that we'll be able to -- the facts now that they're being -- they're coming out, that we'll be able to -- that we'll stop, that -- some of these things are pernicious, some were funny. obviously this lawyer on behalf of donald trump is terrible. is there some chance now that we know more that there will be -- that some of these people will find it impossible to make the

ludicrous air that filled -- claims that filled the air this week. >> i almost feel bad for all these republicans who have hitched their wagon to donald trump even in the face of stuff early this week and just made -- made these cockamamie arguments about planted evidence or abusive search or this or that and now realize, boy, you know, they really -- these things are fizzling. and trump's own lawyers, as you say, completely undid any notion of planted evidence. they were watching it while -- she was, of course, on the scene at the same time as the search warrant was being executed. the idea that -- it's so irresponsible, what these folks are saying about, you know, the fbi and endangering their lives. and it looks like perhaps donald trump's team leaked to conservative media the un-redacted warrant today with the names of the fbi agents who are now being, you know, attacked on social media and hopefully, you know, will be

physically safe in the days to come. this is a really tragic thing. the other thing i want to point out is we've so far talked in the show about what was found at mar-a-lago, but the search warrant actually has this other crime that i mentioned at the outset of the show, 18 usc 1519 which covers the destruction or falsification of records in a federal investigation. so that to me suggests it's not just what was that they found at mar-a-lago but what they didn't find. and you know, with trump, you know, he's so into his cover-ups. it's not just what he does which is always -- often problematic, but it's what he does afterwards to try and prevent the investigation, you know, whether firing james comey or whatever. so if it -- just reading between the tea leaves here, it looks like maybe the government thinks trump was destroying some documents which now don't exist at all. so there's two different sets of crimes here.

both what he took and retained and they found, but also what he took and might have destroyed. the latter one is a really, really serious crime of 20 years in jail per violation. >> so ben, i got to say i don't know what prescription medications you take you to keep yourself safe and healthy. you spend all your time in the fever swamps, but the fevers sewers. the worst possible place to be. i am deeply indebted to the toccata corporation. easy is coming that a lot of us do not see. you know, we have seen the judge attacked an anti-somatic ways. he got docs to. the host on fox news went on

television last night and presented a picture of him trying to kill him. people saying they want to hang him and see him carotid. fox news goes on and puts up an image of him superimposed on jeffrey epstein's body. very responsible, for sure. there is a lot of bad stuff happening. they are focused on another element of that that these sbi agents went into mar-a-lago. they are trying to figure out who they are and you what potentially? >> yes, right now they are trying to find -- leaked by some member of trump's camp. that is what happened here but it was unredacted in includes some fbi agents names. they do not think that is enough in these forms. we are targeting those people. they want to find out all of it. to sign off on this thing.

at the end of the day did not believe it is darlin' because everything has to be the opposite. once they find out who they are they want to find out and put them on helicopter rides. >> they are searching for the fbi agents who went into mar-a- lago. >> they said they want to throw him out of the helicopter, by the hundreds, at sometimes. that is the worry here. yesterday, this is not hypothetical. yesterday a man in ohio into the fbi office, had his very stupid plan of trying to nail gun his way through bulletproof glass, succeeded. each had an ar-15 trying to shoot up that fbi office. these are not hypothetical things but he was at the capital on january 6. a lot of these people are known actors. they are talking again like the days before january 6th. some of them really want to go there with us. >> the guy in ohio just confirm

i am right about this. not only was he a january 6. he seems to be somewhat motivated by the mar-a-lago search. by some of this rhetoric that we have heard >> the difference is this guy for months was angry. he was responding to marjorie taylor greene and donald trump jr. saying 1776 was coming again. this week he had a target. every one was focused. they were focused on the apparatus and the fbi was the gestapo. that is the difference. on tuesday, he changes to from generalized violence to we have to shoot fbi agents on site. that is what he said. >> you know, i mentioned that

last night with the judge reinhardt thing. that took place after this they had happened at the sky field office in ohio. the behavior on the part of these congresspeople, certainly people in the right media ecosystem. it is this bond irresponsible. it is beyond dangerous. it is one of those things where they are going to have blood on their hands but i don't think they care. i don't think they care about that. but they are going to. we are heading there inevitably. still, i ask you something happened yesterday in line with this. it was that suddenly, after all of that hot rhetoric four days, there came a shift in the way some republicans, with some of these members were trying to be circumspect in. they basically were like, we

have got to stop this. you sought doug ducey in the morning trying to confront the police on television. that is really dramatic ship towards let's focus on the irs and stop talking about law enforcement. what is your read on how republicans in washington, d.c. are engaging the potential political consequences of continuing down the roads that they were raising down for the first three days this week and that some of them are slowing down a little bit, right now, in terms of attacking federal law enforcement in these ways. >> yeah. that is a smart perception, john. clearly some of the more veteran leaders of the republican party, mitch mcconnell is among them they have been rather circumspect in their comments about what happened this week with frump in the fbi. it seems like they are taking the long view. they are being strategic. they

are calculating that the fbi would not have searched the former presidents home in private club if they did not have something of really serious and substantial national security importance. they are not searching for it throwaway documents. they are searching for important stuff. there was a really significant step for the department of justice and the fbi to take, clearly. you know, i obviously cannot speak for senator mcconnell and i never would. but, i assumed that one of the reasons they have been so cautious about not getting on that marjorie taylor greene bandwagon, the fbi, the gestapo, et cetera. they see the public actions with a genuine private concert in assumption that this could escalate. that donald trump could be in fact very damaging. >> the possibility that your

paper reported that donald trump was classified in nuclear secrets. that is what the trump of the republican party, there were it is sometimes when sticking with donald trump is really dangerous. i may be one of those moods. thank you so much, i do not want to spend a lot of time with your life. of course, the one and only, the byline from the heavens. sticking around for the whole hour, the next hour starts after this quick break.

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>> tgif, everyone that i have never felt so good to get to the end of a week. it is 5:00 in gotham city. i am in for nicolle wallace. we are breaking the coverage of the newly unsealed storage warrant. items have been seized during the raid of the mar-a-lago property. joe biden would call it a bft. the search was very broad. the items can be search on the property this way. 45 office. donald trump. all storage rooms, all other rooms within the premises use or available to be used by himself and staff in which documents can be stored. it is like the entire property

can be searched except in places where other visitors are watching. we also learned what was seized 11 sets of classified documents including four sets of top- secret documents, three sets of secret documents. three sets of confidential documents. the massive take away, even more than all of that secret material that we have been talking about for the last hour. the criminal statutes that the former president could be in violation of or the probable cause that was determined by the judge him there for a search warrant that was granted. the first two, the ones that we kind of expected to be in there pertaining to the improper removal of records and the can stealing or destroying of records to obstruct investigation. here is the third window. the one that no one was necessarily expecting. this is a big deal. bft. the espionage act. it applies to activities to an

unauthorized person or using information pertaining to the natural defense and conspiracies to commit such offenses. joining us now, the wall street journal reported covering the doj and one of the report is to first break the story of what was removed from mar-a-lago but also our friend harry littman. former u.s. attorney and former assistant attorney general. plus, we have don edwards here with us. finally, clint watts. former consultant of the antiterrorism division. he is also an msnbc national security analyst. i start with the lawyers can always come in these moments. >> maybe someone in this group, but they are not practicing attorneys. but, you are the man. tell us your big takeaways from the warrant itself in the inventory.

>> okay. really, it is just what you said. it was combined with the warrant, they could have everything. so, i think it became pretty clear by yesterday, they needed to just get those documents back. now, it is a different time and law enforcement folks will be poring through quite a treasure trove of arterials that could bear on other kinds. second is espionage. over the course of the week, leaks were coming out. that is what i was surmising and others might as well. could the former president of the united states be charged with espionage. also, do not overlook the 1519. that was part of it. that was brought in order to shore up the espionage act. what that tells me, by the way, they had real concern. remember, they had to show the magistrate not just probable cause, but fresh probable cause that recent events gave rise to worries that he was going to

conceal or destroy this stuff. finally, the level of security. some of the documents here, especially that word says binoculars, compartment. you see the department of justice, your head goes 360. what is is even doing here? that has to be in a special room that i cannot even enter. so, no way you can do that casually. somebody probably had to help him print it out and take it away. that person is very nervous today. >> i stick with you to ask you two questions. you talked about leaks and reporting. right? we talk to a reporter about the nuclear. the united states or someone else's. and then the new york times talked about special prosecutions in u.s. programs. i know we do not know that either one of those things have been confirmed by what is in the inventory. is there anything in the

inventory that knocks down that reporting or suggests a reason that we should be skeptical about it? is that consistent with what we have seen in the inventory? >> perfectly consistent. if you look at the inventory it is bare-bones and elliptical. it is significant because you are taking this crazy lawless proper defense. i declassified everything on my way out. he could not do that legally. he would be wrong, anyway. as it turns out to be nuclear material, he cannot do that with a wave of his presidential lawn. he needs congress and their authority, also. >> one more quick question. i am on a roll here. when i read the instruction of this. it feeds the sense to me that troop was freaking out nothing has been proven in any way. but there is something about all of this that starts to lead towards the question that donald trump new he was in the wrong and started to take

actions to try and hide it, cover-up, destroy documents. i don't know what. but, that is part of what they doj was worried about is that he was panicking and might do things and was doing things to try and get out of the gym he put himself in. >> 100%. that is where the confidential informant, if they find him or her, he will draw and quarter them. they come in. they have reason to think, really concrete reason to prove to a magistrate that is what he was possibly doing. >> luna, congratulations. i saw the washington post. i was not in any way trying to leave it out. it was the winner of the day in terms of our news competition. you guys were first on putting out the information that was actually in the warrant in the inventory. you guys got some news breaks throughout the week, too. it is

not the first one for you this week. so, you too have been on a roll . tell me about what your day was like today. everyone was in a mad dash trying to get this information out first. what do you think on the basis of your party are the big questions that we have to focus on going forward? >> hi, thank you for having me. this whole week has been pretty crazy for all the reporters in washington. today we all knew that this word was going to be coming out at some point. we just did not know when. everyone in washington was trying to get a copy of this today. we were lucky enough to be able to get this a couple hours in advance. in terms of the big questions going forward, we are all trying to figure out what exactly were in these boxes in terms of the classified documents. the inventory list is pretty vague. it doesn't provide any

sensitivity to the substance of the documents. so, what was there was some nuclear level information in these. was there something in there that the former president did declassify? we don't really know the answers to these questions yet. that is the predominant question that we are trying to answer in the coming days. >> donna, as you look at this, because i, you know, i am fixated. obviously i am focused on the legal term consequences. but i want to know about the president in france. what stood out to you as you surveyed this document in these hours that we have had it. where do you think our attention is missing right now about where this could all be leading? >> i don't know. i do not think we are missing a lot. i think the sheer volume of the materials that were removed

from mar-a-lago. i mean, remember, this follows on the heels of a couple of dozen or so boxes that were removed previously. the former president was in possession of a wide range of documents that he should not have been in possession of, just under the presidential records act. but, now, we see in this warrant and the receipt, that there were many documents that were of highly sensitive nature. i know i am someone that i held secret clearance in my previous life and is a member of congress. that viewed top-secret documents. we know that there are procedures for doing that. clearly removing any of that from the government in your personal possession is is a basic violation of the law. so, when i look at the list in

the categories of documents, i want to know what was behind some of those documents. what is in them? what mr. trump was planning to do are already did with the information that he had. >> so, we had a conversation in the last hour about one of the most intriguing entries in the inventory. then rhodes clarified for us. it is number 2-a. this is a little bit more about what is in it. it says various classified tfs ci documents. as ben went on to describe has to do with documents that are supersecret in has to be looked at in specified places. george conway has a tweet to which raises the question that occurred to me last hour that i get to ask you about. he says a question for higher

national security types. in a normal in ministration, would a notice potus for sei materials. you know the answer to that question? i'm very curious. >> i cannot give you absolute 100%. but that sounds to me like documents that you would normally show in the situation room. those of be compartmentalized facility. one that is secure from the outside world. i would think of rare circumstances where maybe an sci level document would be careered. usually in a locked bag or secured bag, presented to the president for some time and then would immediately be taken back out and put into a secure location. that is the only exception i can imagine where that would happen. they would not be left around or laying around under any circumstance outside of the skip. a secure compartmentalized information security.

just would not happen. that is what is curious about this. when i look at the listing of the boxes. it is various top-secret documents. and then it says a selection of or several different pieces of sei material. that is highly unusual. this would suggest you that is handpicking of information from different sources or different places that this was not one of those things where, i picked up a box of stuff did not really realize what it was and it happened to be top-secret. right? this would need to me that something went there and selected these documents. this is not an accident. this is deliberate. >> harry, does that sound right to you? >> yeah, exactly. that is what i have been thinking of more and more. he cannot just look in his lower left tour and take it if he is leaving. he would not even know how, they have to go into a room to print them out. they have to have identified them. this cannot be done. this cannot be done casually. >> one of the questions we have

forgotten about, this was just a few days ago when donald trump started this whole thing by saying they broke into my safe i don't see any mention of the safe anywhere in these documents. what do we make of that? >> well, i think what he said was they broke into the safe, and that i think has been set at one point there was nothing in the safe, maybe. so, it could be one of the bundles of documents that is referenced that might have been taken from the safe. but, it is a little bit unclear. this does not tell us where any of these things were taken from. so, we do not quite know if anything good come out of the safe. >> harry, i will come to you. i am looking at the twitter feed which is probably not the most normal twitter feed for most people. but just hello george, there is lindsey graham.

where is the affidavit? we still need the affidavit. this is the goal post movement with republicans. we want to hear about the reward. where is the affidavit? can you imagine as a student of politics that we will see that? if so? when? >> we all want to see it. >> we will see it. >> everybody does. it is the mother load of information. of course, it would compromise the investigation. it would reveal who the confidential informant was. they charge trump they will get it in discovery. even if they don't. they will eventually see it. but, i think no time soon. >> donna, it is, the republican reaction to this has been extraordinary on a bunch of friends. there have been a lot of incendiary rhetoric over the last couple of days present interest rhetoric attacking law enforcement officials.

we talked with ben collins about the dachshund of the judge. and then threatening physical harm but i'm curious what you think republicans will do now. i will play a little bit of mike turner from ohio. now it is unsealed. mike turner said that. this is what mike turner says with classified materials this is what the congressman has to say. >> i can tell you there are a number of things that are classified that fall under the weapon classifications but many of them you can find on your phone. if they fall within that category, they are not imminent national security threat that would rise to the level of you have to raid donald trump's home and spend nine hours there.

>> i meant to say dogs breakfast. honestly. if i read this out loud i have no idea what that man is saying. things are classified under the umbrella of nuclear weapons but i did not know nuclear weapons had umbrellas. they are truly classified. that is a thing now. truly classified against semi classified. it feels like some of them have woken up to their hot rhetoric against law enforcement is such a political problem for them. where do we go now? what do we imagine republicans will do now that these facts -- we know they are out there. where is the argument for the excuse for donald trump trying to justify which is a federation will law violation. >> they will concoct the information. here is the reality. even if something is classified and happens to appear in a news report, it still does not give mike turner or anybody else including the former president of the united states the ability to abscond with that information, to hold onto the

information, to give out the information. so, it really does not matter. the job of classification is to make sure that we can maintain our secret information and, it is under a strict set of rules by which that is classified. donald trump did not follow any of those roles. republicans can make this up as they go along, but they are going to find themselves deep into a rabbit whole if they continue to defend the president of the united states for things that are wrinkly for the rest of us, those of us who are living in reality see as unsuitable. >> i want to come back to nuclear weapons. they like to talk to me about things that scare me and keep me up at night. that reporting got a lot of attention in the washington post, as we said before. there is nothing that confirms or refutes that that is what

this is all about. but, in the last hour, ben rhodes made the point that information about nuclear arsenals, whether it is in the united states or for nuclear arsenals is really valuable. where there are nonstate and state actors trying to get their hands on nuclear weapons, at. that raises the question of donald trump, a man that has always tried to profit off anything he has ever done. was there some motivation here where he might've tried to cash in on these documents? i ask you, with your knowledge of all of that nefarious mess out there. is that anything you're thinking about right now when you try to answer the question of why the trump have these documents? why did he lie about them? why was he holding onto them? do you think that is where this is going to go? >> yes. i am worried in the sense that why would anyone take anything relating to nuclear weapons and , really, in terms of the

nuclear umbrella, that you mentioned, john. there are three separate student about. one is policy. nuclear policy either in the united states or, john bolton was the one that wanted to cancel a lot of the nuclear treaties to renegotiate in bilateral ways. they were really worried about china in other contexts. it is capabilities, nuclear capabilities. it could be anything from how it could be used in nuclear devices, both for energy purposes, which is a huge factor that we haven't really explored much in the conversation, or in weapons. and, the other party's position. i just always go back to whether it is russia and the u.s. we look at those two countries, one of the most contentious things, what is the nuclear positioning of the u.s. weapons in europe and turkey that come up time and time again. i see it in misinformation circles all the time. those three aspects all concerning me. why would the president who spent so little time studying foreign policy want those documents unless it was for personal gain?

>> you covered the doj. i think it is fair to say that merrick garland, outside of strengths and weaknesses. he is not someone as a political player. he is not into the messaging wars and all of that., this week, he got dragged into the middle of it, as everyone does who gets into contact with donald trump or the doj did not want to talk about this search of mar-a-lago. donald trump made it public for his own reasons. suddenly you have a situation where there was a lot of talk, i think it was accurate, he was out there winning throughout most of this week. i thought this was good for donald trump, at least politically. >> on the inside of the department of justice right now, how does he, garland, feel about how this week played out now that we come to the end of it here in the this warrant is public. it has been unsealed and we are where we are? >> right. they clearly deliberated for many weeks whether to take this

step. they felt like they have exhausted other means with all of these documents. they decided to go ahead with the search warrant. they tried to take steps to de- escalate it, a little bit. they major folks showed up without any weapons and gear, you know? they had to give people a heads up and trying to do it somewhat discreetly. they thought hey, maybe this will not get out, because it did not come out while they were there. and of course, the former president put it out later that night after they had left. so, i think they were a little bit caught off guard but how quickly it snowballed. that became clear with the attorney general can yesterday. he made the statement and then moved to unseal it pretty quickly. so, i think at this point they have kind of gotten out some information that they feel shows why they took this step. i mean, as you can see from the inventory list, there was

potentially, almost 12 sets of classified documents that were still a mar-a-lago that had not been turned over. so, anything from their perspective, they at least got out what they could get out about why they had to take this unprecedented step. >> when merrick garland became the attorney general of the united states there were many people watching say this would be a snooze beat. he is a very cautious and methodical, kind of boring man. now, the hottest in the country and crushing it. thank you for being with us. the rest of the panel is staying with us. there is a lot more to get to on the story with what we are learning. what they were looking for when they searched mar-a-lago on monday. we will talk with sean patrick maloney about the search and what the democrats find themselves in now. a big vote in the house is going on now on the inflation reduction act. whether or not president

biden's string of victories it will give his party a fighting chance against the head wins of the midterm and those republicans that are hovering like vultures up above. my conversation with michael in history unlike any, any of us have ever seen before. we will continue after a quick trick, so, please, stick around. (vo) at viking, we are proud to have been named the world's number one for both rivers and oceans by travel and leisure, as well as condé nast traveler. but it is now time for us to work even harder, searching for meaningful experiences and new adventures for you to embark upon. they say when you reach the top, there's only one way to go. we say, that way is onwards. viking. exploring the world in comfort.

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>> as the entire world is focused on donald trump's promiscuous relationship with secret in the papers that contained no secrets, we have a

new analysis by mark mezzetti for the new york times that describe a disgrace for the former president and poisoned relationship with the fbi, cia, and the rest of his intelligence agency, that they call the keepers of u.s. secrets. from that story, mr. trump and his behavior led to his trust with the intelligence agencies, but they get classified things. he said that officials were cautious for the information provided information to the president himself that showed is a security risk. what you know? with israel and russian officials inside the white house. at other time when he tweeted millions of dollars of a classified surveillance footage. don't forget about the time where he tested a ballistic missile out in the open at mar-

a-lago. hotel patrons all entered the conversation going on. unsurprisingly he notes the least surprising thing that donald trump did during his final days in office was ship boxes of material from the white house to his oceanside palace in florida. we are back with our panel. you know, donna, these things, you were thinking, really, the intelligence community basically look at this threat at the time. it does raise a question of if they thought he was a potential security risk, was there something they could have done about that to keep him from doing what we now have learned he has done? >> i don't know. i mean, what are you going to do about a president of the united not sharing information

that should be shared with any president. i mean, as it is, it is being revealed that over the period of the presidency, that the intelligence community was very cautious in terms of what was provided to the president and when. we can remember from the early days, i think it was later during the 2016 campaign when president trump had briefings that every presidential candidate and nominee was entitled to. there was a lot of skepticism about him dangling the prospect of sharing intelligence information. now, we have confirmed by the search warrant that he was a security risk. he carted out dozens and dozens of boxes of documents that he should not have to mar-a-lago

to the white house. >> i want to come back to the republican responses of all of this. we have seen chris ray on the record this week, talking about the deplorable attacks on the fbi, specifically, but also utter a law enforcement in general. i want to put up a tweet from liz cheney here. a rare republican in some ways. but in this way she says i have a shame to hear members of my party attacking the integrity of the fbi involved in the recent mar-a-lago search. these are sickening comments about their lives at risk. that was made all too tangible yesterday when the armed gunmen showed up at an fbi field office in cincinnati, ohio. so, tell me about what it is like? i know you are not currently working there. but i know you know a lot of agents. how did the fbi handle this moment? the hostility towards

the republican party has been growing for years. but, it has been reaching towards a new peak. they are above reproach, one of the most admired agencies and government. something like half of the voting public is totally corrupt. >> it is a bizarre swing, john. i mean, if you did not know, the fbi is a great organization. they wear white and loose shirts and blue and charcoal suits. if you look at a party that is upset with the fbi right now, they mostly would be republicans or republican leaning, at least until recent years. there is a lot of confusion, too, because you cannot be the law and order party and always be going after law enforcement. that is a really weird twist in all of this. if you are out trying to make your cutie safe, for example, you hear a lot about crime in chicago and things going on

around the border. well, guess who enforces those laws? that is the fbi. they personally lead a lot of those taskforces. the other part is we need informants, we need witnesses, we need people to help the fbi in providing tips. every time you have a political party picking aside against an institution like the fbi, that turns down everything nationwide. it makes it more difficult to prosecute cases to reduce law, to reduce crime. it all falls in on it. the last part which is really troubling is the fbi also has to do its job which is dangerous. it has been further endangered the fact that these threats that are made in the media result in more people more dangerous. you have the fbi signing warrants or affidavits. who is out there helping protect the fbi agents when they go home at night? at the same point, if you are encouraging people to attack fbi agents you really cannot take a worse group of people to attack in the united states fbi agents who have tons of training. so, think about these terrorist attacks? the man that goes to the fbi

officer tries to do a one-man assault against agent office. that is crazy in and of itself. what is law enforcement supposed to do? it is very hard to do that when you cannot work with the public. i am not a lawyer, but sometimes i play one on tv. you are not a political strategist, so, here is a quote from david axelrod. cheney says not able to open public threats in wyoming because of her safety. you should think about that. she basically speaks out against idiots in the republican party attacking the fbi, this is what she gets. she cannot compete in public now because she too fierce for her life. talk about how we got here and how we can get out of it. >> look, it is amazing. even in crediting, i tried with the support for trump with people that think he can only

take them to victory. i cannot understand why they also take on this water of attacking law enforcement. you asked briefly about garland , it was a home run in the department. there was the 40 out of 180 words at the end that made it. he stood up and really talked for the fbi. i am not the problem here. they cannot really talk for themselves. they wear their charcoal and blue suits. they stay silent into their jobs well and professionally, but when someone attacks them, they really need the defense. that is what garland provided. how did we that get here? how are they going to get out of it? this is a dilemma for the republican party. >> you are both leaving, thank you for coming hello. my favorite of the three of you, donna, is staying with us as we continue to learn more about what was moved from mar-a- lago. the inflation reduction act, the legislation that lowers healthcare costs combat climate, raises taxes on large

companies and is expected to pass shortly with every single democrat voting in favor. it is a big legislative victory that the democrats will help to get renewed energy and renewable energy. expect to head to signature biden's desk for a scooter later today. patrick maloney of new york with the congressional campaign committee, with a number of the house committee. i have got to start before we talk about how things are going for joe biden and the democratic party right now. give me a sense of what you are feeling at the end of the state. the end of this week in which we get the search warrant. it looks like we have seen how this has played out over the course of five days. we are still early in the story, but what is your take away in terms of donald trump, mar-a-lago, in the doj arrest ? >> it is sad and it is serious that we are in a place where we had a former president keeping classified information in the basement. let me tell you something.

we're on the verge of the legislation, right here. i think maybe overdoing the relative importance of these two stories. my constituents care a lot more about what is in their paychecks than what is in doldrums basement. the action going on in the house for which is one 800 is one that is going on under pelosi's leadership. it will change the world. it will get us back to the 2005 levels back in the next eight years. we are taking on big pharma and negotiated the medicare. taxes on every corporation in america. that is real progress. that is the work that we are sent here to do. democrats are getting it done. it is a good day. >> i know you don't want to assume that he took the documents down with him and broke three federal laws is not worthy of his coverage.

that is not your position? >> the level of attention you are paying to that against what is going on in the house for. i think we should often focus on that. i know that it is magic in the business model of cable news and twitter. but, in the lives of the people i represent come out there, in the real world, it is not as relevant to what is going on in their lives. what is relevant is if they can cap their prescription drug costs at $200 a year, that is what is going to happen now. a kid can know that we are going to have a climate they can live and raise a family of their own in. i am asking for perspective on the relative importance on what is dominated the coverage in the history being made right now on the house for. >> point taken. when they put me in charge of all cable news i promise i will do something a little bit different than the rest of what the world does. but, i will say this. it has been bad timing for joe biden to have all of this going on. the man has been on an incredible role. let's talk about that role. those victories all week.

knocked out of the park. things people said he would never get done, including this bill which people said was that for a year. it is not called that anymore. maybe it is better, for your point, politically. tell us about the signs you see, not just talking about rhetorically, or the signs you see with what democrats are constantly telling me now. the tide has turned. momentum is on our side. we understand there are headwinds against us. but we have the upper hand right now with all of these victories. >> the world has changed since june 24th when the mother party ripped away the reproductive freedom. it is not just that. right? the republicans will not do anything while kids are getting gun down in the classroom. that matters. we know that they will not do anything about the climate and that matters. we know that the hearings on january 6 really laid for people in ways they have understood how serious the threat to our democracy was pizza, what you are seeing, i

think of all of these chickens are coming home to roost. meanwhile, back at the ranch, it is been a summer of success. it is been a summer of great accomplishment for the democratic party and our president. gas is down, not just because it is lucky, but because we have a strategy for lowering gas prices. it is down more than a dollar a gallon in 60 days. look at what we are doing on the house floor? prescription drugs, taxing corporations at a minimum rate, finally. of course, climate action. what we did for our veterans with healthcare, we know that the republicans raised the -- we're trying to get vets care. the rescue plan, the other major compliments and accomplishments. building solar conductors here. not all just happened in the last few months. pretty good record for 18 months. we have more to do. those results are getting results in the races, you better believe it. we have seen the tide turned. we are on a come back. >> i was all going to make a

joke. i know you have got to go. come back on the show next week, we will talk about all of this stuff in much more detail. hopefully all of this trump stuff will be behind us and we can really go through and really what needs time on all of these issues. i could not be more interested with everything than what i have. >> i know you are, and you are doing an amazing job. you are my favorite guesthouse. >> thank you, very much. you are my favorite guest congressman. john edwards is back with us. you know, i feel for the guy. the biden administration was running the timing on this mar- a-lago stuff this was going to be a huge week for him. putting aside media critique and the reality of this is a historic story of what is happening right now. they never wanted to time it this way if it were up to them. the question is, you are out there in america land.

there is no doubt that democrats receive momentum and they are playing a better hand than they were playing eight months ago. i want you to try and get your perspective on whether it is enough with the incredible importance. is it enough to kind of counteract all of the stuff that we know is going to be -- >> they will be working for this in the midterms. >> i think we have to remember in the house and in the senate that these elections are going to be won, not overwhelming. they will be won by 1% or 2% of the vote. the democrats have to be very focused talking about what they have done and not what wasn't done. i think it is starting to do a great job of that. we hear that from sean patrick maloney. also, the democrats have to go

back to the gun legislation. the first time that we passed gun legislation, the safety legislation was the first time in 30 years. played out well in the suburbs and in communities. the string of victories over this last month culminating with the inflation reduction act, which is so much more than that. i think about that in this way, john. it is the first time that i can remember in a really long time that a major piece of economic legislation in the past that is not in response to a crisis. not a housing crisis, not a covid crisis, not an economic crisis. i think that is what is really important, because it really is about the future. i think democrats are always in the better position talking not about the past, but about the future. >> i believe as we were speaking, the representatives just past the inflation reduction act.

i will be heading to president biden's desk. he has been, a guy that was coming out, i got a people said he cannot get things done. he was out of his mind to be bipartisan. he passed the law with bipartisan support. he kept pushing and pushing along with chuck schumer and others of course, he was mocked being like the next roosevelt or lbj. when you look at everything he has done over the first two years, he has an amount of domestic policies as president, i think you have a right to get credit for it. we will see if it pays off politically in the fall. we will talk about that more for sure between now and november. michael is one of several historians who visited with biden and told us the biggest issue that the country faces is the notion that our democracy is not secure. we will ask him about that and the unprecedented events of this past week after a quick

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washington post. historians met with resident biden last week, the was warned that american democracy is teetering. those historians by historians painted the current moment as among the most perilous in modern history for democratic governments according to multiple people familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of the enemy. the source added, a lot of the conversation was about the larger contact with the institutions in the tends towards a trucker see going up. let's bring in the president historian. it was part of that group of historians and met with the president must be pretty you are going to meet with historians, of course you had michael to the room. you and i have talked a lot about the steaks at the moment, right now. tell us about can you talk a little bit about this because it became publicized. tell us more about the meeting. i'm really curious to hear about what joe biden with the historians a with the state it

is. >> this is his choice to bring in historians who are likely to talk about this. you have to take from that the fact that he understands this moment. we have seen this in public, too. he has talked about the fact that there is tension in america betweenspeaking, not hi. and the historians who are there, including myself, most of us pretty much agree that 2022 is pretty similar to two moments in history. would be 1860. the kwuntz absolutely divided over slavery. the south was about to succeed. the result was civil war. we barely made it back from that. lincoln, rather than pretending that the big issue was land grant colleges or transcontinental railroad, as important as those things were, said this is a moment that america has to choose whether we're going to have a new birth of freedom. and the same thing in the 1930s. i would say and i think my colleagues would pretty much agree that this was a time when

because we had a great depression, because hitler and mussolini and the imperial japanese were on the march around the world, it was no obvious result that freedom was going to survive, especially after 1940. so roosevelt rather than saying let's wage these elections in the 1930s over small issues, basically said this is a moment to choose between light and darkness. that fits in very much with what joe biden has said in public about what he sees as a threat to democracy. >> so michael, here's the thing. this week, right, we keep saying it's unprecedented. we keep saying that it's -- that a lot of things happened this week that we had never really seen before. but you can say that the search of mar-a-lago, of the home of an ex-president, the department of justice thinking that that ex-president has maybe violated the espionage act, has probable

cause to think that that's fresh, gets a search warrant, goes in and does that. you see the reaction on the right demonizing federal law enforcement. you pointed out the other day that the thing in cincinnati was, you know, not to channel rate, but is the kind of thing that reminds you a little of fort sumter, the kind of thing that could lead to civil war. and then the passage of this ira, joe biden's big climate and other inflation fighting measure. how do you look at this week, if you're like michael beschloss 20 years from now looking at this era, how big is this week? and what is the proper perspective and proportion to be given to these various events that have played out over the last five days. >> well, i think the lesson from those two earlier moments i mentioned was if you have a leader who accomplishes something, that makes a very big difference. for instance, in lincoln's terms, lincoln had a vision for what this country could be if it

were unified, even if it took a civil war to do it. fdr came in the early 1930s. unemployment was at 25%. people were starving. came in with a new deal and was able to wage war and show people that our american system works. if we've got a president who does the kind of big things that joe biden did this week on you're just saying them, john, taxes and climate and the economy, very basic human needs and shows that a president can get things done and make things better for people, then the kind of anger, the kind of feeling of frustration that led directly to donald trump in 2016 might dissipate. if biden fails, it's going to be the opposite. it's going create an atmosphere for a donald trump or possibly something worse. >> i got say, i hope that's right, michael. and obviously, i would like to not see the country be in open civil war.

to me, some of the scariest stuff, the things that i will remember from this week are not going to be the mar-a-lago search or the passage of the trump-focused thing or the biden-focused thing. it's that moment when so much of half of the political establishment decided that they department care about -- seemingly didn't care about the consequences of attacking the attorney general, the justice department, the fbi, law enforcement. and suddenly it felt like we were teetering on this place where, again, every time we get close to political violence, it makes the hair, what little hair i have stand up on the back of my neck. that's what i remember from this week, is the feeling that things were totally out of that control, dangerous and potentially things could turn bloody real quick. >> yeah. look at people in his own party. people like cruz and rubio who like their views or not, in 2016, when they were running against donald trump, they did

so with fervor, and they were pretty independent people. six years later, they're almost unrecognizable. they're like stepford wive, mesmerized by trump, afraid to say a word, as is true of most of their party. you know, john, when you and i grew up, conservatives in this country i believe were devoted among other things to three things -- rule of law. wanted to preserve the institutions of our democracy, and protect our national security. all those things were involved in that issue this week about whether donald trump had taken illegally nuclear secrets to mar-a-lago and maybe shared them with a hostile foreign government. we still don't know that yet. the traditional republican conservative would have said this is awful on all three of those counts. yet you've got this amen corner that's going bless anything he does, no matter how bad it is. >> and if in doing so it means that potentially people lose

their lives in law enforcement, they just don't seem to care very much. and that is the part that makes the pit of my stomach -- >> that is scary. i agree with you. >> sink even further. michael beschloss, on that cheerily note, try to have a good weekend, my friend. thank you for coming in. one last quick break for us and we'll be right back. the lows of bipolar depression can leave you down and in the dark. but what if you could begin to see the signs of hope all around you? what if you could let in the lyte? discover caplyta. caplyta is a once-daily pill, proven to deliver significant relief from bipolar depression. unlike some medicines that only treat bipolar i,

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from the company that powers more businesses than anyone else. call and start saving today. comcast business. powering possibilities. salman rushdie, one of the great writers of the english language, a man who has lived in fear of a terrible thing happening for the past 35 -- 33 years, that very thing happened today in chautauqua. who at this moment was s alive, thankfully. was violently attacked at an event he was speaking, stabbed in the neck and abdomen and transported to a nearby hospital. rushdie, one hopefully will remember was delivered a fatwa, a religious decrease that sentenced him to death by iranian supreme leader ayatollah khomeini back in 1989 for the horrible sin of having written a

book, exercised his free expression. the book was called "the satanic verses" which khomeini considered blasphemy. we do not know at the moment the motive of the suspect in custody. we do know russia decidd -- rushdie decided years ago he wouldn't hide. he would live in the open. my old friend christopher hitchins said it wasn't just a death sentence, it would be a life sentence. he'd be living under it the rest of his days. under that fatwa, rushdie has lived a creative and courageous life. we can only hope he not only survives today, but continues to live that way and writes many, many more great books for days, weeks, and monthses and years to come. thanks for being with us on this friday. "the beat with ari melber" starts right now. ari, we made it. >> we made it. here here to what you said and we wish him