national leaders, in the early 1970s, the u.s. just department department bumbled its way stating for itself, putting into writing a new rule, this wasn't a rule in the constitution in any way, an issue that had never really been seriously considered and decided one way or the other, before the justice department was confronted with it urgently during the nixon administration, but thanks to this again sort of odd series of things happening all at once in the early '70s, the vice president may be going to prison, the president, richard nixon may be removed from office against his will by impeachment, thanks to those things coming

together, all at once in a big felonious mess because the american people in our infinite wisdom thought it would be a good idea to elect guys that crime-y to the white house twice, thanks to that mess around nixon and agnew, the justice department in the early '70s had bumbled their way into putting down on paper that it was the policy of the justice department to not ever bring criminal charges against a sitting president of the unite and that's like an important landmark moment fort nixon years, it's never a good sign that your presidency is so crime-y and forces a look at the rules whether you can a be president from in a prison cell. even i though that landmark was reached in theen nixon years, a they clarified mess on paper because of m nixon and agnew, t

rule, the nuts and bolts of it never got tested at that time, never got tested by the events that surrounded the eventual downfall of nixon and agney, nixon resigned as president before beinged forced out and never criminally charged while president and got a pardon as soon as he resigned so he was never criminally charged as an ex-president either so he nixon avoided testing that principle. same thing withst agnew, they tk great pains to not test it with nixon's criminal vice president, spiro agnew who was running an ex portion and bribery ring out of his office in the white house and got caught by federal prosecutors while doing so. federal charges were brought againstde him but they negotiat thisey sensitive deal where agn resigned the vice presidency immediately, right before, seconds before, he walked into thehe courtroom to formally fac those federal charges.

and the importance of that is that it means technically they never tried to charge nixon as a sitting president, nor did they ever try to charge agnew as a sitting vice president. they avoided testing that prospect with both nixon and agnew, each of them basically by the swing of their teeth. so the rules about not charging a sitting president, those rules were created, they took shape, they were formalized and put down in print during that crisis ofin criminality in the white '70s.in the early but that rule wasn't really tested at that time. that rule wasn't really tested until almost 50 years down the road, until our time in the history books, hooray for us, three years ago, 2019 when special counsel robert mueller completed the report of his investigation into russia interfering in our presidential election in 2016, to help the trump campaign. that was what volume one of

mueller's report was o about. andmu then volume two of muelles report was about obstruction of thaton investigation. and it laid out in detail steps that trump took as president to try to block that lawful investigation into what russia did in 2016 and how they did it. when mueller turned in that two-volume report to the justice department in 2019, he said basically, you know, there's this long-standing written justice department policy that says we are not supposed to bring charges against a sitting president, so we're not going to bring charges against this signature president, but we have nevertheless done this investigation, we've collected all the facts, we've preserved the evidentiary record, so if charges are warranted here, because of trump's behavior, those criminal charges can be him.ht against once he is no longer president. once he is no longer protected by that justice department rule that says you can't be criminally charged while you're serving as president of the

united states. so that's what mueller said when he turned in his report. that's what mueller's report said. mueller turned his report in to this guy, to trump attorney general william barr, that's who received the reportll from mueller, and right after he got the report, you might remember, william barr released a statementel about it. and in that statement, he said i've reviewed this report from robert mueller and i as attorney general, i have carefully reviewed all the evidence that mueller and his team have presented here, all of the evidence they havees presented to whether or not trump committed crimes, barr said specifically that he was disregarding the justice department policy that said a sitting president can't be charged with a crime. he said i'm notar going to get into that. he saidg regardless of that policy, ignore that pour, regardless of that rule, i william barr have reviewed all of the evidence, and i have determined that no way should trump face any charges. not just because he's president. not just because of this rule

that says no charges can be brought against a president. but regardless of that, trump shouldn't face any charges because my william barr review of the evidence in this report indicates thatre trump committe no crimes. barr tells the congress, tells the public, i can tell, i checked it out, i looked at the evidence, i say as attorney general and theev justice department backs me up on, this this the professional view of the u.s. justice department, trump did no crimes. and that's how the mueller report thing ended, right? it's over. thet? justice department lookedt all of the evidence that mueller turned up and the justice department said in its professional estimation trump should not beof charged. and barr made it explicit. even if there wasn't this rule, because you can't charge a sitting president, regardless of that, just based on the evidence, trump still wouldn't face charges for anything. that's how bill barr broke the neck of the mueller investigation in 2019. that's why even after trump left

office, and he was just an ex-president and therefore no longer protected by that justice department policy that says you can'tth charge a sitting president, that's why there was no clamor to a charge him then, with any of the gazillion instances of alleged brukz of justice that wereeg described i great detail in mueller's report. because barr said, he signs his name s to it, he said we lookedt everything here, regardless of that ruleer that says you can't charge him, trump definitely committed no crimes. he should not beit charged. barr's letter said quote, the evidence developed during the special counsel's investigation was not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction of justice offense. our determination was made without regard to and is j not based on the constitutional considerations thatst surround e indictment and criminal prosecution of and sitting president. that's what barr did. that's what bar said. turns out, that was a lie. at least a federal appeals court in washington has just ruled that that was a lie.

according to a unanimous ruling from the dc circuit court of appeals, a three-judge panel, robert mueller turned his n-his report to the justice department, attorney general bill barr and the justice department never actually considered at all whether or not trumpid committed crimes or whether trump should be charged. they literally never even looked at that possibility despite what they said they were doing publicly. barr lied and told congress and the public that the justice department did consider that and after that careful consideration they definitely concluded trump committed no crimes and shouldn't be charged but the appeals court says that barr lied about it. this is from a, again, a unanimous three judge ruling from the federal appeals court in washington, d.c. quote, the department's submissions indicated that the memorandum conveyed advice about whether to charge president trump with a crime. but the courts in camera review of that memorandum revealed that

themo department in fact never considered bringing a charge. d.o.j. never in fact considered bringing any charges against trump. they never even looked at it. we find out now. three years after the mueller report came out, five years after most of the potentially criminal activity described in exquisite detail in that report, they said at the time, they considered charges against him and no charges were warranted, but they never actually considered charges against him at all. they never once did that. so, you know, that happened, okay. apparently we just move on. apparently we just move on. because, you know, crimes in high places don't matter much, right? and you know, if you're fully cognizant of the fact that you've gotten away with a bunch of crimes without facing any charges orwi any consequences f those crimes, probably that has

a really cautionary effect on you, so you never try any other potential crimes again, right? i'm sure that's how it works. you think ooh, close call, i betteroo shape up. i'm sure that's how it works. a lot of news tonight, i keep waiting for the lazy hazy dog days ofzy summer to roll around where the news is slow. thater is not what is going on right now. that federal appeals court ruling, that federal prosecutors actually never f looked at potential charges against trump, that was like a little speed bump in the news, it was like a little rattle and we rolled over that, hey, what was that? tonight, we got a new filing from that same former president, filed with a federal court in florida, former president is askingfl for a special master t be appointed by the court to review the materials that the fbi recently seized from president trump's home in florida. trump is also demanding that the fbi give back to him the materials that they seized from his home.m which is really something.

i mean you will recall that amongll the statutes under whic the former president is now investigated are portions of the espionage act, dealing with aunauthorized retention o national security information that could harm the united states or help a foreign adversary. whichar means, you know, dude, whatever happens, you're probably not going to get this stuffis back, not when that's wt you were being investigated for. theti chairman of house intelligence committee will be our guest in a few minutes. there is new reporting today that he and other very senior members of congress have asked to actually see the material that is included in the classified materials that trump had taken and was hiding in his home before the fbi had to go in andth take them back. we're going to ask him about that. we will also him about this brand new reporting that has just droppedbr from "the new yo times," the headline, trump had more than 300 classified

documents0 at mar-a-lago. this is theag times for the fir time quantifying the amount of reportedly classified material that trump has apparently been keeping in his home in an a unauthorized way. here's the lead, orquote, the initial batch of documents retrieved by the national archivesby from former presiden trump in january included more than 150 documents marked as classified, a number thatas ignited intense concern at the justice department and helped the criminal investigation that led fbi agents to swoop into mar-a-lago this month seeking to recover more. in m total the government has recovered more than 300 documents with classified markings on them from mr. trump since he left office. that first batch of documents returned in january, again, that was more than 150 documents marked classified, and then another set ofie documents provided by trump's aides, in june, and then also the material seized by the fbi in the search this month. also reports that following the search of

mar-a-lago on august 8th, investigators have since quote sought additional surveillance footageht from the club. we knew that investigators had asked forto surveillance tape before the search warrant was executed at mar-a-lago, and we now know according to the times' reporting at least that investigators have since sought additional surveillance tape of the time leading up to the august 8th search warrant execution. quote, the tape revealed people moving boxes in and out, and in some cases appearing to change theme containers some documents were held in. the footage also showed other partse of the property and seeking a second round of security footage the justice department wants to reve tapes for weeks leading up to the august 8 t search. again, that's the times report, just within theai past tue minutes, for the first time, quantifying at least according to the times reporting, the number of classified documents we're talking about here, more than 300 documents being held by the former president at mar-a-lago despite the fact that marked as classified.

more than 150 of those documents classified marked documents being taken from mr. trump in january, more provided in june, and then yet more seized by the fbise in their search a couple weeks ago. so we will ask the house intelligence committee chairman about all of that and try to get his take on these bizarre and murky claims out of moscow about a car bombing. a far right and there's no better word for him, a far right fascist philosopher, this man, alexander dougan, who has been a major influence on valz vapz, one of the cheerleaders for starting the war inle ukraine a russia seizing territory from other countries, this man is credited with giving putin his arguments and pseudo communication for invading neighbors and createng a trans-national russian empire. alexander dougan, his daughter

was apparently murdered in a car bomb assassination in a rich neighborhood outside moscow this week. no one knows quite what to believe about the reports other than the fact that just like clock work, just as you would expect, russia blamed ukraine for her death, and is citing that killing as all the justification they need for some of new escalation, some kind of new ruthlessness they will bring to bear on the war in ukraine. again, i think caution is the word here, it's not an all clear, what has happened, there is no reason to trust the russian government on, this any moreia you trust them on anythi else, but as putin's war in ukrainear turns six months old this week, it does seem like this dark murky weird incident, this reported assassination, might be priming us for some worrying behavior from putin anr russian forces in the days ahead. potentially in ukraine, potentially elsewhere on russia's borders. we will talk with the intelligence community chairman

about that. strange newsty as well in just fews minutes. but our first guest tonight, i'm very pleased to say, is somebody who has no parallel at all, just a singular figure in american public service, in a good way. somebody who spent 38 years in one of the most important and most difficult m jobs in americ public life. somebody who has borne criticism, a lot of it, because his field, his work is high stakes, it is often controversial, challenging, personal, but for all that he's been through in his decades in public lie, hebe has never befo now had to have security detail protect him all the time because of the death threats he now gets from those on the unhinged side of the screen door on the american far right. so remarkable turn of events over his long career. because it's not like he doesn't know how to deal with legitimate criticism. dr. anthony fauci was first appointed to lead the national institute of allergyea and infectious diseases in 1984,

which is just as the aids crisis was taking hold. this was a fatal disease at the time, an irretrievebly, inexorably, always fatal disease, no effective known treatment, but there were lots of potential treatments in development being studied. and a drug development process that took forever while peep kept dying by the dozens and hundreds and by the thousands andnd by the tens of thousands. that confluence of things in the '80s and into the '90s, no good treatments, drugs being studied, slowly, everybody dying in the meantime while the drugs were studied, that confluence of things was absolutely intolerable for hiv positive people and forut the communitie that were being shredded by that virus. right? i mean it was just, you just put yourself in their shoes, it was a i life or death moral calamit to know that you would definitely die while maybe the drug that might keep you alive was being tested on other people in a study that wouldn't wrap up

and produce its findings for years by which point you would be long dead. it was just an intolerable, impossible thing. which ledim to relentless criticism of dr. anthony fauci who was the head of the part of the u.s.e government that is responsible for fighting infectious diseases. dr. fauci was all but burned in effigy, he was the target of big urgent spectacular protests. and while he was being targeted with that criticism, he headlight presence of mind and the strength of character to listen, and to realize that his critics were actually right, that not only do clinical trials and drug approval need to be sped up, but people whose lives were at stake needed to be able to get access to drugs that were still being staten islanded while the studies were still going on. they did not have time to wait. and they should not be forced to wait. it was very, very fierce criticism of dr. anthony fauci. which he heard, he understood,

and he ultimately accepted. and that ultimately made him change the way the u.s. government worked and the way that drug development worked, and that forcibly u-turned to the futurebl of the aids epidem in this country.ds how many other people could do that? dr. anthony fauci has now spent 38 years as the head of niad, the visible and active leader of the nation's response to infectious zooedna diseases of l kinds from hiv and aids, tose t ones we don't necessarily remember off the top of our o heads, ebola, or zika, sars, mrss, bird flu and now monkeypox and polio, and of course, covid, these past two and a half years. today dr. fauci announced he is retiring at the end of this year. heth will turn 82 before he goe in 8 december. dr. fauci first joined the nih in 1968 when he was 27 years old and lbj was president, it was ronald reagan who put him in

chargehi of infectious disease response for the government in 1948 and held that position ever since and advised seven presidents and hailed as hero by the first president and the presidential medal of freedom by the second president bush, where he created the pet-bar program, the hugely successful government program to make expensive aids drugs iniv countries that can't afford them and credited with saving the lives of more than 20 million people who would have authorized died. that nonpartisan record, those bipartisan bona fides, of course these days don't mean much on the right, republicans running for office today say they want to lock up dr. fauci or prosecute him for something, he said that is not why he is now stepping down but honestly when you're 81 years old and still at your job and people are wound up trying why on earth to define

why you're leaving your job now probably isn't paying close attention but it is worth appreciating as he is stepping down that dr. fauci is a singular figure in american history and american public service. there has never been anyone else like him and there never will be again. and he joins us for an exclusive live interview here next. ve live interview here next

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by treating the multiple symptoms of psoriatic arthritis. don't use if you're allergic to cosentyx. before starting...get checked for tuberculosis. an increased risk of infections some serious... and the lowered ability to fight them may occur. tell your doctor about an infection or symptoms... or if you've had a vaccine or plan to. tell your doctor if your crohn's disease symptoms... develop or worsen. serious allergic reactions may occur. watch me. today, the doctor, the accomplished researcher, who has helped lead our country through public health crises of all stripes, including the coronavirus pandemic, today he announced his retirement after 38 years as the nation's top infectious disease doctor, dr. anthony fauci said today, he's stepping down by the end of this year, ending his decades-long career in public life. he says he is looking forward to his next chapter, this coming december, but we don't yet know what that will be, joining us now for the interview is dr. anthony fauci, director of the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases and

chief medical officer to president biden which was a job that was created for him at the outset of this presidency. dr. fauci, it is an honor to you here tonight, thank you. >> thank you for having me, rachel. good to be with you. >> why now? why now after all of these years, after these presidents, after these epidemics that you have served through, why is it now time to go? >> well, you know, rachel, it's never really a good time to leave, but you have to leave sometime. i have been wanting to pursue another chapter in my career as you mentioned a bit ago, because i've been wanting to do things outside of the government, particularly to do things be they lecture or write or get involved in situations where i can serve as hope and inspiration to encourage young people to go into public service, particularly in the arena of science, medicine and public health, i was thinking of doing that right after the trump

administration ended, but when president biden was elected, he very quickly asked me, and i accepted with, you know, with a great deal of honor to do that, to be his chief medical adviser, i thought that was going to last one year, because like so many other people, i thought that the covid outbreak would be over at the end of the first year of the biden administration, but obviously, it's not, so having said that, since things look like they're starting to stabilize a bit, and i believe in the next few months, we will do better than we're doing now, i felt again, i might as well do it now because i want to make sure that when i do leave, i still have the energy and the passion and the health to do the kind of things that i want to do. so all things considered, rachel, i thought it was the right time. >> there are very few people who served in government, who, when you hear they're going to write a book, you think oh, good i'll probably learn something from

that, no offense to all of the public officials who i've had on here to talk about their various books over the years but you're an exception to my cynicism on that in part because it is rare for one person to head up an important part of the government's capabilities over such a long period of time, over so many different challenges through so many different presidencies so i want to read whatever you have to write about, i want to read whatever you have to say about that, but i wonder if you can just kind of tell us in broad strokes if you feel like in your part of the government, in public health, and dealing with infectious diseases, we've gotten better over time, we've been learning the lessons learned and evolving and getting better at this, or is this one of those situations in which our capacity is actually been eroded and in some ways we used to better resource these fights and we used to be be better at handling the basics of how to deal with these challenges. >> i think it's a mixed bag, rachel. i think in some respects, we

have learned lessons from outbreaks in the past, like hiv, and ebola, and pandemic influenza, and the challenges of the possibility of bird flu turn nag a pandemic. but in some respects, the situation has eroded. and i think it has in the sense of neglecting of the capabilities of the local public health officials. because if you want to respond to an emerging infection, you do need leadership from above, you need central support from the government, and at the local level, you also have to have the kind of resources that will allow you to respond. you know, when we learned, and i hope we are still learning, a very important lesson, from covid, is that we never, ever underestimate an emerging infection in which you don't know where it's going because we've been fooled before. we didn't fully appreciate the

magnitude of hiv back in the early '80s when i first got involved, when the first cases were recognized, and there were so many things we learned on the run, with covid, i mean the things that we thought we knew in the beginning, turned out as the months went by, to not be the case, which really forced us to adapt and to change some of our policies and recommendations. that was interpreted by many as flip-flopping, or not really knowing what's going on, when it really was the evolution of the science, so one of the lessons that i hoped we learn is that we've got to be prepared, we've got to be able to respond, but we've also got to be flexible, you know, some of our military colleagues have told us, it's kind of like when you are at a war, you can plan what you're going to do, but when the bullet goes off and the cannons started firing, then it becomes the fog of war, and you've got to be

flexible enough to respond. i hope that that lesson has been learned, and as we look forward through the inevitability of future outbreaks, we will not forget that lesson. >> are we facing an increased pace of threat from emerging infectious diseases? i mean obviously the world changing nature of the covid pandemic is enough on its own, but you know, now, also, monkeypox and the re-emergence of polio, and you know, in recent years, it's ebola and sars and zik and and all these others, is there an increased pace of threat from new and resurgent viruses are we just sort of more aware of it with these recent ones? >> no, it's not just more aware of it, rachel. it is, and there are probably a number of complex reasons where that's the case. if you look at the outbreaks that you just enumerated a

moment ago, it really follows a pattern that we've known for some time, that about 70 to 75% of all the new emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, namely they jump from an animal species to a human. we saw that with hiv. we saw that with ebola. we see that with monkeypox. and we're seeing with this historic pandemic, the pandemic of covid-19, which almost certainly evolved the way sars-cov-2 sars-cov-1, from an animal environment from a bat, that jumped species. so if we want to pay attention to how we can mitigate this, we have to pay much more attention to the animal human interface and what we are doing doing intentionally or inadvertently or perturbing that animal/human in face by encroaching upon rain

forests, by getting involved in interfacing with weapons such as in the wet markets which occur in china when you bring in animals where you don't have any idea what disease they're harboring and you put them in close touch with humans. i think that's one of the things we really better pay more attention to looking forward, is attention to that animal-human interface. >> there have been a lot of theories and conspiracy theories and accusations and more or less wild claims about the origins of covid in particular, it seems like that's when people on the political right really started getting their claws into you, and targeting you personally during this pandemic. i mean as i said, sort of a visible and singular leader on infectious disease issues over all these years, you faced criticism, sharp criticism before, it does feel a little different, there is a weird

obsessive violence ongoing demonization of you by the right that is hinged on covid. i just have to ask, from your perspective, is that kind of attention, that criticism, feels qualitatively different to you than previous criticism? if it is coming from a different place, if it is indeed more dangerous than the kind of criticism you've had in the past. >> rachel, it's phenomenally 100% different. it's apples and elephants difference. it really is. back in the day, of hiv, and you showed some of those clips, which were quite accurate, what we would were doing in the federal government, while we were being too rigid and restrictive in a disease that needed a great deal of flexibility, and input, from the community. the aids activists that you saw on the clips that you saw. when you examined that they were saying, and what they were asking for, they were entirely

correct, so they opened our eyes, my eyes, particularly, which made me actually turn into one of them, an aids activist, because we learned from them, and we learned that we were being too rigid, from a clinical style standpoint, and from a regulatory standpoint. and the fda modernized their approach based on that, too. what we are dealing with now is just a distortion of reality, rachel. i mean conspiracy theories which don't make any sense at all. pushing back on sound public health measures. you know, making it look like trying to save lives is encroaching on people's freedom. that's a big difference from the aids activists who really had a good foundation for their objections. >> do you have any insight into what we ought to do as a country to deal with that? i mean i feel like it's, it's

part of what is going on in the right, where you know, you want to sort of separate the politics from reality, that you want the measure of truth to be what the ruler says is true, and so anybody citing science or facts or objective reality or nuances by definition the enemy. i feel it is tied to politics in some way. and even, you know, making objections like that, it doesn't necessarily give you a way to fix it, it doesn't give you a way to fight. it having been the target of this kind of really specific, really different attack, do you have insight into what we ought to do to protect public officials like yourself, and to try to be more rational about this as a country? >> rachel, i wish i did have a positive constructive answer for you, but i don't. i think you and i are talking about public health issues right now, but what has spilled over and really maybe im peded a

proper response to a public health challenge is something that we see that goes well beyond public health. it's a complete distortion of reality. i mean a world of where own truths have almost become normalized, how we can see something in front of our very sighs, and deny it's happening, i mean that's the environment we're living in. you can look at january 6th on tv, and you have some people who actually don't believe it happened. how could that possibly be? and it's now spilling over in denial about public health principles. so i wish i had an answer but i don't. i mean i do, have as i've always been, someone who is cautiously optimistic and always feeling that we will be able to ex tract the good out of people and there are the possibility that we will see, as i say, the better angels in our society prevail, but what's going on out there now,

with the distortion of reality, is very troublesome, and i don't have an answer for it right now, but it's certainly interfering with the proper approach to a public health challenge. >> dr. anthony fauci, the director of the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases, for the past 38 years, currently now the chief medical adviser to president biden for a few more months, sir, thank you for a lifetime so far of service, i can't wait to see what you do next, and thank you for being with us to talk about it tonight. thank you. >> thank you for having me. i appreciate it. >> all right. much more ahead tonight. stay with us. >> all right much more ahead tonight. stay with us have you thought about your wish? i wish that shaq was my real life big brother. awe.

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today marks two weeks since the fbi executed a search warrant on former president trump's estate in florida. and as i mentioned at the top of the show, "the new york times" is out this hour, with some striking new reporting. the "times" is reporting that former president trump had more than 300 classified documents at his palm beach home. that's over 300 documents marked as some level of classified retrieved by the government starting with the initial batch of more than 150 classified documents that they got back from him in january. but ultimately totaling up to more than 300 total classified documents, including those taken in the fbi search just two weeks ago. and again, it's just two weeks

since the search happened, but the more we learned about what happened here, it does start getting worse by the day. this is not, i mean you don't end up with 300 classified documents because they were accidentally tucked in with your grocery list, you know what i mean? this is a lot of stuff. nbc news has confirmed -- this is a little might from the times story, the 15 boxes that mr. trump turned over to the archives in january nearly a year after he left office including documents from the cia, the national security agency, and the fbi, spanning a variety of topics of national security interests. also this. quote, trump went through the boxes himself late last year, in late 2021, according to multiple people briefed on the efforts, before he turned the boxes over. he went through the boxes himself. i.e., trump did it personally. which means no passing the buck and saying it was somebody else who did it, you had no idea, and

that's the kind of crime you leave to the little people and for him, with his big old hands, big hands, his hands in the boxes himself. "the new york times" report tonight gives us this curious detail that in addition to finding these documents in that storage area that's been described at his estate of mar-a-lago, fbi agents also found documents in a separate contain ner a separate room, specifically they found more documents in a closet in trump's office. . again, new breaking news, from "the new york times," this evening, the chairman of the house intelligence committee joins us live to respond next. joins us live to respond next.

joining us now live is the chairman of the intelligence committee and the house of representatives, california congressman adam schiff also the author of the number one "new york times" best-selling book "midnight in washington, how we almost lost our democracy and still could," it has just come out in paper book. congratulations on that. mr. chairman, thank you for joining us tonight. >> great to be with you. >> let me first just get your reaction to this breaking news from "the new york times" tonight. quantifying for the first time the amount of classified information that was in question about the former president's estate in florida, the "times" is reporting that the fbi has now obtained more than 300 different classified documents from trump's home that reportedly include documents from the cia, the nsa, and the

fbi. what's your reaction to that reporting? >> it's staggering and for all of the reasons you mentioned, just the shear volume of classified documents, it wasn't like there was a classified paper mixed in with a bunch of unrelated information. it seems that it must be quite deliberate if the volume is that great. and if the reporting is accurate, it covered a broad range of topics, there goes frankly, rachel, my theory, which was that he is bringing home a bunch of russia-related documents that he thought might be beneficial to him somehow, if they covered a wide variety of topics, it really begs the question, what was he doing, what was he thinking, what was the purpose behind this, and then finally, evidence that he reviewed them himself, is going to make it much more difficult to place responsibility on others, which as you point out is a favorite past time of the former president. >> that is striking reporting, if the "times" reports are

accurate, that last year, so before the government was able to start getting this material back, they are saying trump personally went through these boxes, meaning he personally reviewed this material before withholding, before deciding to withhold more of the material marked classified and not handed over, that would seem to indicate personal, that the president is potentially personally implicated here in a way that can't be passed off like a systems problem, or a staffing problem, or a communication problem. right? >> i think that's exactly right. what has struck me about this story from the beginning, and of course, we had no heads up about the search or anything like it, but is the degree in which evidence seems to be coming forward of willfulness. i'm particularly struck for example by the reporting that one of the trump lawyers signed an affidavit saying that they had turned over all of the classified documents when plainly from the search inventory that wasn't true.

that was not true because the lawyer was looking to deceive people? was it not true because his client had literally misled him? i'm sure the justice department is trying to find out. >> from an intel committee perspective though, we are frightened of what is in that stockpile, particularly those that are marked top secret sensitive information, because those generally mean that there is a very sensitive source involved, a human source who is likely to be named or a technical source, that if it is discovered means we will have a blind sight where we used to be able to see, so we're deeply concerned about all of this. >> as intelligence committee chairman, do you believe you should be allowed to see the material that was returned from trump's home, you say you're concerned about the specific content of some of that material, there's been reporting today that some members of congress, some of the leadership of congress, have formally requested access to see those

documents, have you made that kind of a request? do you think you should be allowed to see those documents. >> the first so far is a damage assessment by the intelligence community and something we traditionally do to determine okay if this material is compromised, if it does get into the wrong hands, what is the damage and how do we mitigate it and if a source is at risk and how do we protect a technical source and that i think we should be briefed on, i would at some point like to see the documents themselves, i realize that what complicates that is a criminal investigation that i want to make sure that nothing impedes that criminal investigation but i would hope that if we can't see the documents themselves, we get a full briefing from the intelligence community about essentially what's in them what are the risks, what needs to be done to protect those intelligence sources. >> as intelligence committee

chairman, your oversight role, you have a better claim to them potentially doing, that almost anybody else. congressman adam schiff of california, the chairman of the intelligence committee, thanks for joining us tonight. i know there is a lot going on, i appreciate you making time. >> thank you, great to be with you. we'll be right back. stay with us. ight back. stay with us

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tomorrow's a big primary day in florida and new york. it's 7:00 p.m. eastern when polls close in florida. there's definitely big high profile races in florida. but really banana stuff is likely going to be though in new york tomorrow. thanks to a sort of botched redistricting process, there are big democratic primaries in new york tomorrow in which more than a handful of incumbent democratic members of congress might get primaried right out of their seats. so the florida results will be dramatic. the new york results will be really dramatic. the polls in new york close at 9:00 p.m. eastern tomorrow night. which means you will be able to watch coverage of those races as

polls close on msnbc's brand new show which is called alex wagner tonight, alex's show premiered last week on what was a big primary note, you don't want to miss her tomorrow night, 9:00 p.m. eastern, be there, or be full of lasting regret. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is up next. "the new york times" apparently just reporting just now to your point about the number of the scope of this, there were 300 classified documents apparently at mar-a-lago, which again i think, you know, what do you make of that number? >> we think that's a lot. and so 300 pages, you know, just, you know, of basement stairway away, in an open, you know, beachhouse, is not where you would want that information. especially in the hands of somebody who president biden deemed should not even be able to receive classified