welcome to this second hour of a live special edition of "the beat" with ari melber. we're here to cover this confirmation for the first time in public where you could read it yourself. the doj is investigating more than one crime including possible violations of the penal -- of the espionage act. a federal judge unsealing the documents for the search of mar-a-lago. we have the receipts that you see on your screen, the documents include the warrant authorizing the search, the property receipt, and that is

the receipts showing exactly what the agents found, catalogued and took, seized because it wasn't trump's property from the property compound you see on your screen. that includes 11 sets of classified documents, some at the highest level of classification. one set marked top secret sci, top secret compartmentalized info and they are only to be viewed at special facilities and mar-a-lago is not one of them. there are three sets of secret and three confidential. all of this comes after donald trump returned what looks like the partial amount according to the government not authorized to be there. 15 boxes that went back in january. now on this basically third go around, they're still finding top secret documents. property receipt does not explain the substance because the government doesn't want everyone to know what is in there. washington post reporting fbi

agents were looking for classified documents that could relate to nuclear weapons when they carried out the search. nbc news has not confirmed that harrowing wash post story. as for the search, the warrant said that the locations include the 45 office, storage rooms and other areas within the premises used by the former president and his staff. that is seeming to suggest that the fbi had some idea not only what it was looking for, which it found, but where to find it. did they have an inside tip? that is one of the many questions still on the table. while for the first time we have the receipts. i am joined now by ben rhodes, and tally weinstein, former federal and state prosecutor who clerked for then judge garland. welcome to you both. ben, we've been covering this now. we're in live coverage. there is a lot we learned and some things we still don't know. in terms of what we learned, when you go through these receipts what, do you see?

something that is concerning, but typical, something a little atypical, or a very concerning security breach that apparently was ongoing? >> i mean, i think, this is very concerning. it can't get more concerning than the levels of classification that are in these documents. when you talk about top secret documents, and you talk about top secret secure compartments documents, you're talking about the most secret information that is derived from or is sensitive methods of intelligence collection or perhaps assessment of foreign adversaries or defense nuclear information as the washington post reported. this is really secret stuff. and it is also stuff that is very clearly marked secret. like, this is stamped on every page. these had to be printed out and to be taken out. these are not the kinds of things that are just lying around. and this stuff cannot leave government facilities.

when i was in government, i had a security clearance for all of this kind of information, but it never left my office at the white house. that is not the kind of thing you took home to work on when you're in government, never mind when you're out. so this raises the question of why did donald trump want this information. for what purpose did he have boxes of this information with him in mar-a-lago. why did he not return it. but the national security information, these receipts confirm this is the sensitive stuff that you don't want to fall into the wrong hands and that people could aim to prop from in ways that are harmful to the u.s. national security. >> ben, you could ex pound on what the high level stuff might be. not that we're asking what it is in this instance on the property, but in general what kind of material is that? >> well, again, in general you're talking about material that is not an assessment of the u.s. government. it is not just the intelligence community writing a report about

something. it is material that would be a blue print to intelligence sources and methods. how do we collect that information. what is the underlying intelligence that informed it or what are the positions of u.s. defense or intelligence resources. it would not be top secret if there was just some finding or some report about an interesting issue or something from the intelligence community. that classification indicates that the revelations of this information could provide adversaries or anybody with an interest in this information with not just proprietary information, that is confidential and secret, but the blueprint, the manner in which we collected that information or a defense program that we want to stay secret. in the case of a secure compartmented piece of information, even if you have a top security clearance you have to be read into this program of u.s. intelligence. they make levels for a reason and the whole system depends upon people abiding by the rules and donald trump clearly acted

as if the rules did not apply to him when he took this information with him out of the government facility. >> yeah, you say they're levels, i'm sure you know kendrick lamar said there are levels to this you and i know. and it sounds like everyone involved knows the levels which brings us to tally and why it is legally on notice and under subpoena. but let's start at the beginning. i'm old to remember monday. and i remember a lot of people around donald trump and on the right on monday saying, well what are they going for and is this even valid and what was this political persecution, as if this might never come out. the attorney general who you once worked for played this outlegally, lawfully, but it is out. and the first question is, does the warrant in the material

suggest this is a valid search? >> oh, ari, there is know request that everything here was by the book. it is tightly written in terms of where they wanted to look for materials and what they wanted to look for. and they cited three really serious federal statutes. now, i should say that it is not required and not really the practice to cite every statute that you're thinking about. so there is probably even more where that came from. but those three are serious crimes. these are not sort of technical violations. and at least one of them was very surprising to me. the citation to the obstruction statute, 1519 which i think we'll talk more about. >> go ahead, yeah. >> yeah, well, so, i think we had all anticipated that there would be reference to some of the very statutes that prohibit the concealment and the destruction and passing to others of government records, but that one, 1519, that is just

a garden variety obstruction statute. it is part of the u.s. code that has a list of crimes that people commit once they've committed other crimes and they're trying not to get caught. so things like tampering with a witness, or destroying documents, or concealing materials. and that was a surprise and it raises a bunch of questions and i also think it puts donald trump or whoever may be the target of this investigation in a pretty precarious place. it raises questions because what is it that he was trying, if it was him, to obstruct, was the hoarding of the documents itself some kind of obstruction? he didn't want people to see these documents. or once he started to hear, look, you can't have this stuff and he wouldn't do that and that is the reason for citing that statute. and the reason it puts him in hot water is because that is pretty guilty behavior, right.

if someone said to you, well you can't have this and then you say well i'm not going to give it back to you. it is going to make it hard for him to say i didn't realize that this was illegal. >> right. because he's so on notice. he clearly thought, from what we could tell, that he could continue to run this out. that they wouldn't really go in and conduct a search or raid, whatever you want to call it, that they wouldn't send the agency. did he fundamentally misjudge your former boss, merrick garland. >> absolutely. he did. and you know, let's not call it a raid first of all. because, a raid suggests something unlawful and there was nothing unlawful about this. he misjudged judge garland, excuse me attorney general garland, that is what i used to call him and how steely he is and i think he sort of

demonstrated the casualness about national security that is at the heart of everything going on here. we still don't know if that -- the execution of that search warrant was an end in and of itself, to go and get the stuff out of danger out of an insecure place where people are walking around who knows who could have access to it and who knows what he wants to do with it or if it was a step in a criminal investigation that is still unfolding. but i think it was at least the former and maybe both. and it just, it sort of tells you, i think, something about the state of his mind and the people around him that they didn't understand what kind of insecurity this creates for country if these documents are lying around for all of the reasons we just heard. >> and as you mentioned, legally authorized and valid measure, what garland called a more assertive measure, this very

interesting material, does not reveal to us whether, as you say, it is a measure to obtain the documents back for all of the reasons stated, or whether there are other potential charges. and we've been careful tonight because people are even some are jumping to say this must mean something. well no, a warrant doesn't tell you who the target is. although people might want to infer and people could speculate. but the warren itself doesn't necessarily confirm that. i appreciate your precision there. let's take avenue listen to trump's lawyer in this case who was on cite from fox last night. >> 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 is correct. i don't believe they were and if they thought -- >> well do you know for a fact? dube for a fact they were? 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. >> ben, there is a lot of things i dope believe in. i'm not sure how probative that is. as tally might say or judge garland might say. what would it take expertise wise and time wise for someone to go through all of the material and make that determination, and does it matter as there are people in and around this for donald trump, whether they're legally defending him or charged with dealing with this stuff, there is other unauthorized, i guess would be the word, people dealing with this material in the first place. >> well, there is so much going on here. i mean, first of all, part of what is interesting, is that part of the claim you heard out of the trump people is that he de classified this information. he clearly didn't. it is classified. they're not detailing what it

is. it went through no process of declassification. so let's put that aside. and yes, i think in the national security cases you have a clear number of people, the lawyers are working on the case because they need to get security clearances themselves to review the underlying documents. in terms of figuring out what these things are, it is not hard. you could take a look at this really fast and know what was taken out of the white house. i think what is more concerning potentially and this gets to the conversation you were just having, is for what purpose was this removed from the white house. because i could tell, ari, no part of me sentimentally, and maybe you want to take your white house baseball with you, i can't think of any reason to pack up boxes of top secret information just to have some mementos around mar-a-lago. >> yeah, let's zero down on that. that gets obscured. you're making a deep point. let's put people's opinion of donald trump aside which could get in the way of the facts. you're saying its -- it is weird

or suspicion or worse to amass this much material of this nature and march it out and go to those lengths to hide it and after you turn some stuff back in, continue to keep some extra part of top secret stuff. you're saying this doesn't seem what to you? >> well at a minimum, it is reckless and illegal to take that information, those documents out of the white house. that is just the whole system of classification is set up so that never happens. so those documents never leave the custody of a secured government facility. that is the baseline that we're already starting from. and then the question becomes to what motivation do you take that out? and if the motivation is i'd like these documents, they remind me of something when i was president, i like to have this em around. that is not a justification. but anything beyond that, is more dangerous territory. was he seeking to profit from this information or see it as a leverage he had on people, if this was stuff he wanted to show to other people, that is a

flagrant violation of national security because we only entrust certain people with this kind of information. so really there is no justification what so ever for him taking it. and we may hear he didn't know, but this is a lot of boxes and pieces of paper stamped top secret. so i don't think that flies, and then the question becomes what was he doing with this information and that is i think the most important thing to be filled in in the coming days what, was his motivation for having all of this sensitive information at mar-a-lago and instead of where it belonged in the custody of the u.s. government. >> after listening to both of you tonight on a story that has so many layers, i don't feel better. but i do feel more informed and that is my honest reaction. in that spirit and with those materials, gosh, what were they being used for that long is what ben rhodes is leaving us with. i wish you a great weekend. appreciate your expertise. let me tell folks what is doming up. because you have a history of

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these records that the fbi got from mar-a-lago have classifications that include top secret and sensitive compartmental information which

is a category that was designed to protect secrets that could harm u.s. interests. the fbi executed that search warrant and based on sell laws as we've reported, but we don't know who would be targeted or if this was, as we were discussing with our experts at the top of the hour, gist a focus effort to recover materials and there might never be any charges. donald trump has the power to de classify which classifying this after he left office. given the issues of intelligence here, having done what is in there in the receipts, and what is the law, we turn to, well, a co-equal branch of government that also diesels with intelligence. congressman raja krish northy is here. when you decide the difficult intricate questions around the

enforcement of the intelligence laws which have been used against many senior officials, democrats like sandy berger and in the clinton administration and general petraeus and what do you see as the national security risk here if any based on the new information we have. i'm looking to pick it back up. based on the new information we have in this rather remarkable list. >> well, i think that what draws my attention, more than anything else are the statutes that are at play here. including the espionage act and that the portion of the espionage act related to defense information. and when you mix the classification ts/sci and the words defense information, that raises a big question. because members of committee, intelligence committee such as myself and others, we deal with those ts/sci documents but there

are people looking over our shoulders as we review these documents an never have we taken those documents out of a secure facility. in fact they keep an inventory to make sure that every single document remains in the possession of the folks who are the custodians in this secure facility. >> would they have specific material, and again year not asking to you reveal or speculate on what is in there. we've been careful about that. because we're in acronym soup, you've given me five letters twice, if we were in a movie or a hypothetical, are we talking about an assessment, the locations of things, what kind of thing are we talking about? >> it could be any -- any of those issues. it could also be about covert action programs, it could be about -- in fact it would be about programs that not even all members of the intelligence community even at senior levels are aware of. that is how sensitive that

information is. when they say compartmented, that means that only certain people, even within the intelligence community, are allowed to see those documents and others are not. so, we're talking about stuff that is quite frankly that our adversaries should never get ahold of. >> republicans have had a couple of different points of attack this week. take a listen. >> when you've got an attorney general that has a history of going after parents, because they go to school board meeting, but not to talk to the american public, that creates real problems. >> i do not trust the fbi, i don't trust the upper echelon at the department of justice. this corruption has run deep and it has been running deep since the hillary clinton email scandal. >> the fbi raid of president trump is an abuse and overreach of authorities and before you jump to conclusions and accept information from sources who are not the attorney general who are not the director of the fbi,

let's see what facts are. >> let's see. i mean, this is what i guess some people didn't know. that it would come out and it would appear again -- this is subject to the courts. and i will report if there is a court proceeding that cast doubt on any of this, if this material is not substantiated we'll go beyond the warrant. but we are already have more information now that we did yesterday. that does suggest that the fbi found a lot of material that was in their view improperly taken or stolen by donald trump or others around him and held even after it was under subpoena and that is what they took. if they took any of his personal property that they don't have access to, as you know and i think viewers understand, he could go to court and try to get it back. what is the evidence showing you in response to what we heard from some of your colleagues. >> well, look, i don't think the

fbi was there to take his bowling trophies from the white house. i think this was stuff that obviously they at some point they asked for it back, it appears. it appears that the national archives working with lawyers tried to get it back even had a subpoena issued for this information and it didn't get returned. and so, given all of the other concerns we have about the president, people who are surrounding him, their expensive foreign ties, their financial distress, there are always a concern about just a counterintelligence risk associated with people like that when they have access to such precious information. can i just suggest one other thing that was mentioned in some of the comments, which is you hear a lot of vitriol and a lot of rather sometimes violent rhetoric from those folks. and when they do that, it leads to the problems that we saw yesterday at this fbi field office in cincinnati.

and i think that they really need to cool their rhetoric big time. >> are you saying that -- >> my colleagues -- >> are you saying that we just heard from -- from house leaders, mccarthy and are you saying they contributed the cause that violence. >> it feeds a climate where pretty much people engage in what i think is politically violent rhetoric. and we all know what that -- what happens when you have a -- a kind of a echo chamber of this stuff, especially on social media. there are nuts out there who will basically act upon that rhetoric. >> yeah. i appreciate you raising that. we've been covering and tracking all of that. final question. these are major intelligence breach as cord -- breaches according to the fbi. what will the intelligence committee that you serve on do about this. >> i think first of all we'll

probably want to ask for an update or a briefing on these materials and a little bit more depth and what if anything is being done to make sure that anything related to those issues is safeguarded and of course we want to know if there were any consequences associated with any potential breaches that occurred here. suffice it so say that i'm sure their professionals are right now as we speak in the intelligence community trying to figure this out. and of course, as part of intelligence committee, we have to exercise over sight with regard to that process. >> understood. thank you for making time. we're going to fit in a break. you're watching a special edition of "the beat" with ari melber. as we track this breaking news, next we turn to the lessons from history and why some of them make trump look even worse. of m make trump look even worse but, at upwork, we found him. he's in adelaide between his daily lunch delivery

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this fbi search for documents has spanned many topics. we know some of them from the fbi's description and you have the washington post reported on nuclear information. you have to remember as president, donald trump revealed all kinds of intelligence to top russian officials about a plot that israel had provided to the u.s. this was a big deal. he tweeted a image of a failed rocket launch by iran. some people said that would have been classified. now then he was president so he

had the power, that doesn't mean it was anything positive or a good idea. so for years in plain sight was those type of problems calling them sloppiness or seriousness about the job and then you have the total attacks on anything that could be a check on his power. so donald trump clearly and publicly said this, this sounds like criticism but it is how he operated, was attacking independent intelligence, national security officials, the fbi and the doj, as basically bad because they were somehow a check on his power. he raged against the intelligence chief, we talked about cyber threats of russia and china. and, and this is quite clever and i thought this was quite funny, perhaps intelligence should go back to school. i'm now joined by peter struck and sarah kenser, scholar who specialized in authoritarian states and the author of "they

knew how america keeps complacent" and a lot going on but we could all agree that was a funny and sick burn the president's play on the word intelligence at the time. just real hot stuff there. >> yeah. >> having said that, the pattern and the history here does seem to matter. it matters for security, it matters for some of the aunl or -- some of the authoritarian issues and further legal process that looks at whether or not this was somehow quote/unquote an honest mistake or somethinge else. your thoughts tonight? >> this was not an honest mistake. we've had a very clear pattern of illicit behavior, destructive behavior from trump not only in his time in office but going back to the 40 years beforehand. trump has been linked to organized crime for my entire life. and i was born at the end of the carter administration. there is no reason that he

should have been able to ascend to the presidency given his illicit foreign ties, his bankruptcies, all of these -- i don't want to see conflicts of interest because they're more serious than that, all of the offenses that he cared out with people in his circle like roger stone and manafort and other people indicted and then pardoned so it was very serious and always a national security threat. it remains so in office. and it remains so after he left office. and all of this, the taking of documents and refusing to hand them over was entirely predictable. and my question is why something was not done earlier, say in the '80s or '90s. >> peter. >> i think that is a great observation. the irony of this is that throughout his administration, the intelligence community bent over backwards to try and get him interested in intelligence. to try and get him to sit down and review the president's daily

brief, the most sensitive and most relevant intelligence information collected across the government. he could care less. it got so bad where they went to a point they have to build diagrams to get them interested in what their seeing. yet, at the end of the day, having left the administration, he's taken box after box after box of the most sensitive intelligence that our nation has and for what? he didn't have any use for it when he was in office. why on earth does he need it down at mar-a-lago? the fact of the matter is, trump is conclusively the largest counterintelligence threat that we've ever faced in our nation's haste. and so, you know, it is not surprising to me that this information was found. what really i'm dying to know is why on earth did he keep it. the man doesn't read. the man doesn't have a sense of curiosity about the intelligence process. what on earth possessed him to want to take it down to mar-a-lago. >> you make such a great point

there, peter. that is separate from what i would say are the more urgent points, the top of the broadcast were seeing what is in it. we're talking to the lawyers an the prosecutors but you're going to the theory of the case which sooner or later comes up if. if you find that someone has a criminal stockpile of rancid meat and maybe it is not this level of national security concern, but it is still for whatever reason bad. and then you find out they are also vegan. when you are investigating this case it is even weirder and you have to -- unspool what is going on. and sometimes you might find something worse. oh, they're in some criminal conspiracy hiding something that is worse related to whatever else. you're saying that donald trump was, when it came to the hard serious work of reviewing intelligence, he was a vegan? he wasn't taking it in on a regular basis? and then, now when he leaves office and we all know under the cloud he left, having failed at a coup and cheered on a violent

insurrection which remains under investigation in multiple jurisdictions, he suddenly stockpiles the stuff he wasn't interested in when he had the lawful obligation. as a theory of the case, what are you pointing at, what would you want to investigate given that you've just identified an odd gap? >> well, there are two big bucket to that. the first is for him, what does he stand to gain by having this. we know back at a meeting he had with prime minister abe of japan that he reportedly took out information about a north korean missile launch and showing it in the balcony of plain view of everyone who have enough acceptance into mar-a-lago that evening. and notwithstanding his attraction to kim jong-un and vladimir putin, we know the saudis just gave $2 billion against the advice of their investment advisers to the son-in-law. we know the saudis are promoting his properties as part of the

new golf tournament. we know in addition that is the first bucket. the second question is every president, and former president is a huge target for foreign intelligence services. so the question then extends to mar-a-lago, separate and distinct from trump, where were these documents stored? are they under the buffet line, the pancake station there at mar-a-lago. every intelligence agency worth its salt, whether it is the russians chinese or cubans and others are try to get people around mar-a-lago. that might not be a mar-a-lago member, but it would be a custodian, electrician, someone delivering the food. that is the kind of things that foreign adversaries are trying to penetrate. so if you have dozens of boxes unsuckured just sitting there at mar-a-lago, who is keeping track who have has access to that and what they're doing with it. >> and sarah, i want to broaden

out, the final question to you. there are authoritarian tactics used by donald trump, okoed on the right that are designed right now on a host of issues to intimidation, to threaten violence, and to delegitimize the actual court supervised independence law enforcement. where does that fit into all of this at the end of the week where the facts actually did come out, partly boomeranging on them, but they are continuing those kind of tactics. >> yeah, we have reached a crisis point due to the failure to act earlier. when you have an unpunished seditious coup which was a failure of officials to act earlier and the previous crimes committed in office, people become emboldened. they want the same elite criminal impunity that trump has been granted and he's given a signal to his followers, if they obey and fall in line they too will be protected. that is the great appeal of him.

now this is, i think, the most serious raid or investigation of him that has happened in the past. as i mentioned before, he's been under investigation for my entire life. i don't quite know whether he will get out of this. if he does, you should still expect that base to be emboldened. whether it is average americans or the elites in his circle who also remain unpunished. michael flynn, steve bannon, roger stone, paul manafort, this is about a crime syndicate and that we've never come fully to terms with. >> yeah. sarah and peter, thank you to both of you. here we are on a friday night. we're covering this story, this special edition of "the beat." we're going to broaden out and take a breath and take this word we keep hearing, unprecedented, unprecedented and there is reason why we've been working that this week. well michael beschloss will walk

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that means lower energy bills for families, jobs for our communities, and the boldest plan to take on climate change we've ever seen. the inflation reduction act will “bring relief to millions of people” congress: let's pass it. unprecedented. we might over use that in the press. but coy show you exactly why and historians will be talking about why. this week has been unprecedented, not once or twice, but thrice. that is our fancy lingo for three times. today you have the confirmation of the department of justice is actually investigating these

multiple statutes including an espionage act. and that they used that as a basis for the search of a former president's home and they unsealed the actual receipts, we use that term receipts i mentioned. they call it property receipt. when they seize items that they say were allegedly improperly taken or stolen by the former president so we have all three of those things in one week and we bring in our friend nbc presidential historian michael beschloss. i said we'll take a breath. because it is a lot but we're going to slow down and do this sweep of history. welcome back. >> thank you. great to see you. >> monday you have the search. wednesday the president invoked the fifth amendment which just reminding people because that was just two days ago, it is something that you could only do legally if you could actually demonstrate that there is a real possibility that you would be criminally investigated or indicted for the things you would say, for telling the truth under oath, and apparently that

is the standard that he feels he's met. thursday the attorney general called him out and friday we have this. before i get into my questions juxt tell us where your mind is at when you think about history tonight. >> this sounds like something out of the godfather than out of some statesman like frank capper movie and it sounds more like that all of the time as you think about these documents in the basement of mar-a-lago. you could almost see it on a rainy night with the lightning above. and it calls to question, presidents don't do this, ari. this is never happened before. dwight eisenhower in 1961 went back to gettysburg, pennsylvania, had this wonderful house at the edge of the battlefield and he was beginning to write his memoirs and he wanted to consult classified documents that he had written and used when he was president. the documents were not in the basement. they were at port richey, which

is a military base across the maryland line, not too far. and because eisenhower is a military man, from world war ii, abided by presidential and military rules, he had to apply for every single classified document he wanted toand it wasf around the wrist of military officer that was attached to a briefcase. it was shown him. the document was taken back. that is the way it is supposed to happen. you don't just have an ex president flying down wherever he lives in palm beach with an armload, figuratively and a leather bound box. it almost sounds like a horror film. leather bound box, as you noted, was on that inventory. and put that stuff in the basement with nuclear secrets. that is bad enough. because if those things are vulnerable someone can easily break in, take a look and

danger every american, and every american child. above and beyond all that, why did he do it? was he planning to sell them? was he planning to share them with friends and foreign governments from whom he wanted money or other favors? we don't know that yet. but we've got to ask those questions. and forgive me for the long answer, but this is so unusual. , but that's why he's being investigated for possible criminal violation of, just as you were saying, espionage act, possible obstruction of justice, just like richard nixon. >> yeah, you are forgiven. you mentioned presses. we wanted to get your views of a republican known for a real intensity about national security, ronald reagan. take a look. >> espionage, theft and diversion of our technology and soviet active measures threaten us as never before. this part of your duty, about which i can say little in detail here, is vital to our

national security. and i ask that you continue to devote the special attention which this difficult task requires. the fbi's record of fidelity bravery and integrity is a long and distinguished one. at each turn in your history, when criminals have engaged in new or advanced forms of criminal activity you have led the law enforcement community in responding to these threats. >> this was one of those things that, across many presidents it would seem, was a bipartisan tradition. yes, debates over how to use intelligence -- >> right. >> but this breach at this level, is it hard to think of any other modern ex president going here this? >> no, you are absolutely right. donald trump is in one category of his own. every other president is on the other side. and the other thing, ari, is that ronald reagan, we may have disagreed with a lot of his policies. but as a conservative, he did

what conservatives in american history tend to do -- support the rule of law, protected our national security, respected the institutions of our democracy. those are things that progressives can agree with. and if that's what conservatives did these days, you would not have this deep, national chasm. what you have got is not conservatives, but someone like trump -- remember what i would call, the radical right -- that wants to destroy. doesn't care about the rule of law. it wants to take an ax to our institutions of democracy. and as we have seen during the last 24 hours, it doesn't give a damn about national security. >> right, right. are you familiar with the slang term flex, michael? >> i certainly am. >> you are going to have to tell -- us >> [inaudible] use it. >> you are going to have to tell us, i'm going to put the headline up, is it a historian flex, when someone like you, who is esteemed, is part of a meeting with the current

president meeting with historians and looking at this threat from that larger perspective, from pre-civil war era to the fascist movements that led up to world war ii? i am sure you have your own ground rules about what you can share. but the silly question is is it a historian flex? you tell us, your business your industry. and to, what can you share about the type and the level of concern, of independent historians and perhaps the current president have, given what we are up against right now? >> yeah, i would like to think, -guests-ari it's now the historians flex. presidents have been seeing historians for 30 years. i first did this under bill clinton. -- everyone else had meetings with historians. that sort of what we do, to some extent. but as far as what joe biden was trying to do, this was a two-hour meeting. we were in the map room. he still had covid eight days ago. he was upstairs, in his office,

so this was by video link. and he has said in public, he feels that we are at a time that is like, i would say, 1860 or the 1930s, when people were dissatisfied. 193there were outbursts of violence. the country was terribly divided and we were in danger of civil war. it really happened militarily, of course, in the 1860s. and i don't want to say that he agrees with everything i say. but he is has in public said, feels that this country does not succeed if our society, if our system, does not seem to be working for everyone's benefit. we are in danger of losing our democracy. and i would agree. >> yeah, and that is important right now. michael, thank you. we will be right back. >> my pleasure. >> my pleasure rr talent. hundreds of freelancer skills like web design. head to fiverr.com today and get something started.

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us on this extended edition of the beat with ari melber. you can always find me online on our e melber got, come that's ari melber.com. the best way to connect with me, or on ari melber on social media. all in starts right now. >> tonight on all in -- >> there are laws against the improper handling of this material. >> the mar-a-lago warrant unsealed and the twice impeached ex president under investigation for possibly violating the espionage act. >> i have not specifically spoken to the president ab