from the company that powers more businesses than anyone else. call and start saving today. comcast business. powering possibilities. and good day. this is andrea mitchell reports in washington. the affidavit the justice department used to win approval for the fbi's search of mar-a-lago is being released at any moment by order of the justice department approving it by the federal judge magistrate on the case. much of it is likely to be redacted to conceal critical information about sources and methods the government used to persuade the judge there was

probable cause for him to -- of potential crimes to justify the search of the former president's home. the judge ordered the unusual release of the affidavit in part to de bunk the explosion of conspiracy theories about the search. the escalating threats against the fbi and other law enforcement officials. all of this sharpening the country's political divide as president biden escalates his attacks on what he is now criticizing as, quote, maga republicans, calling the maga philosophy semi-fascist, later speaking at his first campaign rally ahead of the midterms. >> donald trump isn't just a former president. he is a defeated former president. trump and the extreme maga republicans have made their choice to go backwards, full of anger, violence, hate, and division. we choose to build a better america. >> joining me now nbc news

justice reporter ryane miler and nbc news senior white house correspondent kelly o'donnell. ryan, what is the latest on this? >> just to hit the docket just now is a motion to unseal or order rather. this will be unsealed any moment. i think we are all sort of waiting on the federal court docket system, the electronic system basically stuck in the 1990s as we're trying to get this updated and online. we're just waiting for them to formally unseal the document. the docket entries are all there. basically it seems doj has hit their deadline. there is an order to unseal the documents but we are just waiting for this all to get refreshed on the federal court system. >> so, kelly o'donnell, the release is coming a little more than two months ahead of midterm elections. president biden is really sharpening his rhetoric against former president trump and republicans. this is potentially reframing the debate although abortion and

other issues, certainly inflation and the economy, have been the top issues, not this whole controversy over the mar-a-lago search. >> andrea, just a short time ago at an unrelated event at the white house the president was asked by a member of the press pool today if he believes national security has been compromised by what was found at mar-a-lago. we know there were 11 sets of classified information that were taken during the seizure and the execution of the search warrant. prior to that there were other things returned in the back and forth between officials from the federal government and the national archives and the former president. and president biden said, well, let the justice department determine that and see where it happens. again president biden trying to give separation between himself, this white house, and activities of the justice department with respect to his predecessor, saying he had no advance warning

of the execution of the search, nearly three weeks ago at mar-a-lago, and wanting to communicate to the public that there has not been coordination from the biden white house. the fofrmer president has mocked that on his social media and suggested of course president biden must have known and there is a message war over that. what will be so interesting to see when the document does become available to us is what can we discern about what has played out here? we know the most sensitive things will not be included -- names of witnesses, grand jury material which has to be under seal. names of law enforcement. we know the threats have risen against members of law enforcement since the search was executed. but might we learn more about the timeline, might we learn more about the attempts the government made to try to get information, retrieve it from the former president? we know that he has in his own filings talked about the fact there were subpoenas that were

executed and to provide video of the storage location at mar-a-lago, to provide documents. could we learn more about how long this has been going on and what possible other clues there might be in this? typically an affidavit is not released until there are some charges. we have no way of knowing if charges will ever come. it is that early in this case. we just can't forecast it to that future point if that comes. but the judge in this case said making some of this information public is necessary because of the high interest in this case. it has become a political firestorm for allies of the former president. he is using his own social media to talk about this all the time, to proclaim his innocence, offer varied and sometimes conflicting explanations for what has gone on here, and the justice department has spoken through its filings and in a limited way by that unusual statement from attorney general merrick garland who talked about the fact that

he authorized the search himself. and of course we know the judge who has reviewed all of this material was persuaded by the probable cause in the affidavit to say that the fbi had the authority to go in. so there is a lot to learn. it will take us a little time as we get the document to read through it to discern what is new and to put the pieces together so viewers will need to be patient with us a little bit. we expect to learn some things but maybe not the biggest things about this very certainly captivating investigation with so many secrets about secrets and what has been kept at mar-a-lago. >> andrea? >> i know you'll be standing byment ryan reilly as well watching the computer for every post. joining us now, senior member of special council mueller's investigation of donald trump and former fbi general counsel and also with us three former u.s. attorneys, joyce vance, harry litman who also served as deputy assistant attorney

general and the former fbi director for counterintelligence so we have the team all assembled. one thing that most likely -- what are the things we most likely will learn, not sources and methods. some of the classifications potentially. we already know some of this from reporting how top-secret some of these things were, special access documents. but perhaps we'll learn the time frame. how long it has taken for the national archives to get what they were legitimately seeking from any president, all presidents up until now from the former president when he left the white house and how many attempts at cooperation there were to de bunk the narrative from trump world that there was no cooperation and this was a completely unexpected, unwarranted, and illegal search? >> absolutely. one thing just to point out is magistrate judge reinhart did issue the order unsealing the necessary documents and then

promptly the pacer system which is the system in which everything is posted and numerous people and i'm sure msnbc and nbc are included, that system crashed, presumably too many people accessing it all at once. >> you're telling me the justice department's computer system crashed. >> the court system. >> like all of our systems crash, i mean people have experienced this. we've all experienced this. >> yes. >> understandably. >> that's what happens when you have that many people expressing this interest. so we've momentarily will be getting these documents but i agree with you that what we are most likely to get if anything is that period of the negotiations with donald trump and his team and it's really important to note that that really goes to two issues. it goes to the question of why did merrick garland have to authorize a search warrant? in other words, why did it come

to that? why didn't something voluntary or a subpoena, why didn't that all work? but there is a second way in which that is relevant and that is to a potential criminal case because that really goes to establishing the criminal intent that this wasn't an accident. that there were repeated efforts that were rebuffed and while some documents were returned not all documents were returned. so really strong evidence of intent could come out of what happened during that period and that we may momentarily learn more about. >> joyce vance, what are you looking for when these, when the computers get back up to speed and we see what the judge has ordered to be unsealed? >> well, it is interesting, andrea. there are confusing notations on the pacer system andrew has just noted has crashed. that is the court system where lawyers every day file their pleadings in court and judges

enter their orders. this is pretty much the lifeblood of the federal court system. interesting that it couldn't handle the traffic here. when it's finally unsealed and the notations are confusing, there is some indication some sort of an appeal has been taken, but since we can't actually get into the documents, we don't know what's going on for certain. i think the assessment of so many of the lawyers that doj will have been very limited and very careful in what it reveals will prove to be accurate but nonetheless some of the details that doj is comfortable revealing could be very interesting for many of us. one of the chief devices that the former president has used to slip out of responsibility for his acts on so many occasions is to refer to what lawyers would call his state of mind, his mens rea to say i didn't know. i didn't know i was breaking the law. i thought i was doing the right thing.

one suspects this affidavit will contain very convincing evidence that trump was repeatedly advised about what his obligations were under the presidential records act and he continued to violate them despite being warned repeatedly these documents needed to go to the archives. in and of itself that proof of trump's state of mind and that he behaved willfully in holding these documents could be very damaging to his ongoing narrative that he is innocent and a victim of federal investigators. >> the fbi as well as the justice department at large and certainly the judge in this case, because fbi agents who serve the warrant and the judge's name were revealed by people from the trump team and they were not secret names but they were in the original search warrant. they've all been under threat and of course we've seen what happened at the fbi field office in cincinnati.

so this is partly, perhaps, going to be helpful in de bunking some of those conspiracy theories. >> yeah, i think what everybody has been talking about, which is the reasonable kind of lowest expectation or best expectation we could have right now is indeed we get a comprehensive chronology of the history of the timeline that gets us to the search warrant. i think that will for those who choose to read it largely put to rest the notion that this went too fast for doj. that the search warrant was largely unnecessary and that no attempts at negotiation or other techniques were there. but you also rightfully raise the security and safety issue not only of personnel, of course, and as recently as yesterday an arrest made at fbi chicago someone jumped the fence to the property at fbi chicago and started throwing items at the building. so it's there. but not only protecting personnel but protecting even

the nature of the material seized. while i would like to see a hint of course and we may well see the number of top-secret, the number of sensitive, compartmented documents and then confidential and then secret, you know, i'm hopeful there will be at least a hint. i don't think it's likely. but there could be a hint that, hey. in the top-secret realm this got into national defense or this involved plans for war. i doubt that's going to happen but that's in the high end of expectation. i think we'll see a lot of blacked out lines with regard to that portion of the probable cause statement. >> let's talk from your experience about how unprecedented it is to release this kind of affidavit before charges, before a case has proceeded. >> yeah, so it is not -- unprecedented is a little strong but extremely unusual especially early in the investigation,

which we know that it is. of course that is because this was on two tracks. it is early in the investigation because the initial reason was to get the docs back. now that it is unsealed i think we can look to find probably three things. the first is as others have said we knew the timeline beginning and end but all of the mid points of an increasingly exasperated archives and doj saying give us back these documents and the trump team bobbing and weaving. second, as andrew and joyce have properly underscored, when you take out everything the judge says we won't talk about, it's pretty ironic that what will be left are things that trump already knows and that is the evidence of willfulness, knowledge, intent, which has become more and more complete with the public reporting. finally, i'm interested in just how long this sucker is going to be. i think we're looking at a very -- many, many blacked out

pages but we'll be able to see even under the black it is a bit of a parlor game how methodical they were and what is generally there in very, very broad black strokes. >> a document i just read has been released explaining why the redactions have been made if someone can print that but it basically says, hereby is a redacted version of material previously filed in this case, etcetera, in the interest of transparency as well as the principle that limitations on public access to judicial proceedings should be narrowly tailored and they cite several cases, the government will move at the appropriate time to unseal this notice and redacted version of its ex parte memorandum. so that is another preliminary filing that has just been released. we're getting the run up to the affidavit but not the affidavit itself. the former president has escalated his attacks though amidst all of this and we refer

to this with frank about the risks to personal safety but what about the potential risks to national security in terms of these documents having been not under seal, lock, and key, in the basement or in a closet at mar-a-lago for upwards of a year? >> that's right, andrea. i had a top-secret clearance and i know a number of people on the panel have had the very same thing. when you have that kind of clearance you are constantly briefed on the significance and importance of the documents that may come into your possession and how they should never leave certain areas, certain protected areas. here is something else, andrea, that i think former president trump and his lawyers ought to be paying very careful attention to even though it is unlikely to be released in this affidavit. first, this is an ongoing investigation. in other words, it didn't stop at the moment that the documents, these sensitive and classified documents were retrieved. this investigation is ongoing.

and the government has repeated often and in multiple pleadings that there are significant, investigative techniques, sensitive investigative techniques they do not wish to disclose. former president trump's lawyers ought to be asking themselves and the former president ought to be as well what are those ongoing and sensitive investigative techniques that the government doesn't wish to disclose? >> let me just share with our viewers what i am now looking at, because this is the justification for the redactions that have been made. and so this is not the affidavit, itself. i just read you the preliminary pages of this. so this is, and i'll show you what redactions look like because there are plenty here. this is what a typical page shows in this document, which is explaining why they are justified for national security reasons and for legal reasons. and while my legal colleagues

there are going to look through this as i am, because i think they have access to the same document, it is basically saying basically the procedural background of how the case proceeded, how they got to this point. and then it is explaining the argument, the redacted materials must remain under seal as the court has found protecting the integrity and secrecy of an ongoing criminal investigation is a well recognized, compelling governmental interest. it goes through all the reasons. it says the government has carefully reviewed the affidavit and has identified five categories of information that must remain under seal in order to protect the safety of multiple civilian witnesses, whose information was scheduled throughout the affidavit and contributed to the finding of probable cause as well as the integrity of the ongoing investigation. so this is what the doj submitted to the court to justify the redactions. in the attached chart the government has identified each category that applies to information the government proposes to redact.

and it goes through categories, like witness information. so, andrew weissman, when they go through these categories they are explaining why you would not identify witnesses in a potential criminal case while you're still bringing new witnesses in and going through the documents that were finally turned over during the mar-a-lago search. am i correct? >> yeah, absolutely. and so i think it is commendable that the department and the court has done something that we did in the special counsel investigation, which was really making sure they went through everything to unredact, even this, which is basically a legal brief, to make sure everything that could be revealed is being revealed. and to your point about witness intimidation and obstruction, i found interesting and quickly looking at this, that of course that is one of the reasons we knew it would be identified. we knew that the obstruction statute was charged 1519 as a

basis to go in but the brief that was unredacted says these concerns are particularly compelling in this case and then says, unfortunately, as explained in the affidavit, and then it's blacked out on page 9. but it's clear that the affidavit from this gave compelling reasons for obstruction in this particular case, that it wasn't just an abstract concern. so that is just confirming in this brief and what we surmised from the statutory site in the search warrant that was previously disclosed on section 1519, of the federal criminal statutes, which as i mentioned is the obstruction statute. that is at least one hint. >> andrew, just picking up on this, on page 6 i've just noticed it says under witness intimidation, if witnesses' identities are exposed they

could be subjected to harms including retaliation, intimidation, or harassment and even threats to their physical safety. as the court has already noted these concerns are not hypothetical in this case. and then to your point, it's all the rest of that is blacked out. they've clearly given examples of when that has happened with witness intimidation. they then go on to say that other categories are an investigation road map. this is the justice department. this is signed by as you know one antonio gonzales, the u.s. attorney on this case and j. bratt. they go through the investigation road map, through the safety of law enforcement personnel, and here they have a number of other redactions. it is a minor but important redactions are necessary to protect the safety of law enforcement personnel, and they say they are appropriate to

protect the identity and personnel, the safety of an investigative agent, specifically information in the affidavit that would identify the affiants such as by name or through biographical information should remain under seal then that is redacted the next couple sentences. then privacy, premiere mature discloesh of investigative information creates a risk that persons accused but exonerated may be held up to public ridicule. that of course would be to protect people who might be charged in this case. the conclusion is for the reasons stated therein the court should remain under seal the text the government has marked for redaction. that was the argument. so they've released the argument they made to the court and we saw the judge deciding very quickly in agreement, andrew, with the justice department. >> absolutely. >> that these redactions should be made. >> another line is bottom of

page 9 after a redacted section which are clearly as you note examples the unredacted section from the government's brief says in short, the government has well founded concerns that steps may be taken to frustrate or otherwise interfere with this investigation if facts in the affidavit were prematurely disclosed. this is quite remarkable when we're talking about the former president of the united states just to give this a surreal quality of that statement. and as the panelists here, the esteemed group here knows, these concerns can be raised by the government as general concerns which i think are particularly important here. that the government isn't relying on sort of hypothetical, potential concerns, which we have all raised when we were in the government. here they clearly are giving the court specific examples that justify reliance on those general concerns in this

particular case. >> joyce vance, if you've been able to read through this document as andrew just pointed out, they are very specific. there are redactions but it is very clear what they are concerned about and it is a premature release by people involved in the case who could be the former president. we don't know that yet. it could be attorneys or other people in his inner circle. confidantes. >> so one thing that's for certain is that there is nothing good that happens for the former president upon the release of this document. he will be reduced i suspect to arguing that the redactions indicate that doj is still hiding material that would prove his innocence or whatever it is that he is going to say. but the specificity with which doj identifies concerns then redacting examples in the case of witnesses to protect those witnesses from dangerous

situations makes it very clear that there has been a course of action involving the former president or perhaps people around him that leads doj to have concerns that the judge, too, seems to have accepted, in permitting so much of this material to remain redacted. i think important contextual note for all of us. obviously we would all like to read every word of this affidavit but it is far more important that doj be able to protect the integrity of its investigation, that there not be any more public signaling than absolutely essential of where doj is headed next in this investigation, what steps it will take, what witnesses it will interact with. so that this case can proceed to its logical conclusion and justice can be done. we don't know if anyone will be charged as a result of this investigation. much of the evidence we're discussing publicly looks very incriminating, specifically for the former president who was

involved in personal review of these documents. but the important thing here is to be willing to look at the materials that are released today in an unredacted form because this is obviously a serious effort by the justice department to be thoughtful about its legal obligation in a situation like this to balance the public's interest, the public's right to know against the need to protect the integrity of what continues to be an ongoing investigation at this point from all appearances. those are two very hard sorts of principles to balance in a situation like this. we will certainly learn more if this motion providing doj's reasons for what it kept sealed and what it unsealed is an accurate predictor of just how much information we're about to see. i would still expect heavy redactions in the affidavit itself and we should all try to not be unhappy about those redactions because they will reflect the work that doj is

continuing to do to bring a measure of justice in this situation. >> joyce, the former acting u.s. solicitor general, former law clerk for justice stephen breyer. this affidavit being released as was just pointed out is not unprecedented but unusual, rare. it will include all these redactions which in this political climate will certainly lead to more conspiracy theories and more attacks from trump world. >> yes, andrea. that's why i think this document i've been spending the last few minutes quietly reading it, the first document. we don't have the affidavit but we have the justice department's rationale for why they are unsealing and proposing redactions of this affidavit. it is a really sober, careful document i think done precisely because that is the way the department traditionally does

business but also here because of that kind of political climate. i think they had to get everything right. this is a really powerful, balanced document. it begins by talking about the department's interest in transparency. they want to get information to the public but then they say they have serious concerns here because revealing all of the information will provide the target of the investigation, that is one donald trump, a, quote, road map to the future investigation and reveal witnesses. as andrew wiseman just pointed out at page 9 they say those concerns are particularly well founded here. they're talking about a former president of the united states. there is one other part that hasn't been discussed yet which is the last page of this department filing that tries to justify what they're doing here in their position. the last page says that they want to release a letter from donald trump's counsel to the public about all of this. they are waiting to hear from

counsel about that. i think they underscored their interest and transparency but this is also a kind of checkmate move by merrick garland both here and in the earlier documents this week that bill barr memos about the ukraine investigation. attorney general garland has done everything right. he has not leaked. he has not provided any of this information. he is now under court orders both with respect to barr and with respect to mar-a-lago to reveal some information. that information that's coming out is as all the panelists have discussed so far looking really bad for donald trump. we'll see when we see what the affidavit says but i suspect the case is going to get even stronger and much more difficult for donald trump even in the public's eye. >> i've got the first nine pages of an, the affidavit in support of an amation under rule 4 -- application under rule 41-a for the warrant to search and seize so i think you'll all be

starting to get this as i am now getting it. also the list of redactions which is listed by paragraph. so this is the list of paragraphs that have been blacked out. and redacted. one involves agent safety. ryan reilly have you been able to read some of this? are you there? >> i am. can you hear me? >> yes, i can. >> yes. here we are. >> tell us what you know. >> sure. one highlight i want to bring up here is that in this affidavit the nara referral is referenced here, the nara white house liaison division director after a preliminary review of these 15 boxes originally received to the national archives from trump went through those boxes and found they contained newspaper, magazines, printed news articles, photos, miscellaneous printouts, notes, presidential

correspondence, personal and post presidential records, and, quote, open quote, a lot of classified records. close quote. that is what sort of kicked this all off. all of these classified records that were found by the national archives when they eventually received this initial load of boxes that came in from the trump camp after he left office. >> i'm looking even on page two here. it says the fbi's investigation has established that documents bearing classification markings which appear to contain national defense information were among the materials contained in the 15 boxes stored at the premises in an unauthorized location. that is again the initial 15 boxes. further, some redactions then further, there is probable cause to believe additional documents that contained classified nda which is national defense information or that are presidential records subject to record retention requirements currently remain at the premises. there's also probable cause to

believe that evidence of obstruction will be found at the premises. joyce vance, can you pick it up from there? >> well, i'm not all the way through the affidavit, andrea, but i think one of the interesting bits of information we get early on tallies up with what you've just said about this assessment that there's national defense information to be found at mar-a-lago and further on in the affidavit we get a little bit of specificity about where in the espionage act doj is looking. they're looking at a provision in that subsection that doesn't necessarily refer to classified material. of course the former president has already fronted out this apparent defense effort that he somehow magically waved his wand and de classified everything. doj seems to be side stepping that fight and relying on a part of the espionage act that only requires them to prove that the information that he kept in his

possession would be national defense adjacent information. and so that part of the legal rationale for doj's search begins to pop into clarity when we see this information. something that seems i think important to point out is that doj does not engage in an effort like this based on half baked legal theories. they will have tried to lock down with specificity the sorts of legal rationales and specific crimes in the federal criminal code that they're pursuing to ensure that there aren't any sort of -- i'm using the term defense lightly here -- but defenses floating around that the former president could use to establish reasonable doubt. so as we continue to read through the affidavit, we'll get a better understanding of the precise legal theories doj is pursuing and then how they expected the evidence that they found when they searched to establish those criminal violations. >> and let me just pick up on

what you're talking about because in the initial 15 documents, boxes that were turned over when they went to the former president's lawyers and went to him and to mar-a-lago, when they got the 15 boxes that the national archives had been seeking, already all the way back in january, here are some of the classifications that were noted by the fbi agent who was designating the reasons in the affidavit. this is in the document to justify the affidavit. hcs which is human control system, a designation by a report from a cia officer or possibly defense intelligence agency based on conversations with a confidential, human source overseas. that is a spy. and this could be the most alarming of any of the designations of these classifications. another one is orcon, originator control, the agency issuing the

report controls that sees the document, no foreign, that is cannot be shared with foreign nationals indicating high sensitivity. the intercepts of communications. these are sources and methods. these are the crown jewels of the intelligence agencies, i covered intelligence for many years for nbc and i would turn to harry litman, paul, bear me out on this. harry? >> so without doubt. i've had a chance to quickly look at it. it is more or less what we expected. we have a full bodied account of the legal justification, which by the way, andrea, there's legal speak here but it is basically what the government is doing is justifying suppression of speech as in any other context. so they're saying, there is a compelling reason and this is the least onerous alternative we could choose. then on paragraph 47 which you just named we have this

revelation, a year, a year after he has left the white house that the boxes he took with him which they knew had these keepsakes like from kim jong un actually have some 700 pages of some extremely sensitive documents, the sorts of things that will reveal sources and methods. pretty much the rest is blacked out with the important exception starting around paragraphs 52 and 53 of this back and forth exchange. so you see trump basically hanging himself with his own correspondence and we have an appendix that also lays out a letter from trump's counsel and we now know they want to publish another but are waiting for trump's approval. it will be interesting if they get it. that is the basic overview here. law and why they were so alarmed and january when they finally saw what he had taken and some

back and forth between team trump and doj/archives. >> ryan reilly, as you continue reading through this, let's talk about some of the things that are jumping out at you. >> so while a lot of pages do indeed look like this and are pretty heavily redacted there is one part of this that jumped out at me because kash patel sort of at the center of a lot of these charges, one of the people trump wanted to designate as one of his representatives to the national archives gets mentioned on page 19. it cites this breitbart story that ran on may 5th and the article stated that kash patel was basically justifying the reason they found classified materials among the records that the former president of the united states provided to nara

and patel implied it was misleading because potus de classified the material. this idea that donald trump de classified a bunch of documents found at mar-a-lago before he left office. that is actually cited directly in this affidavit as sort of a reason for supporting the reason that they needed to actually go and get these documents at mar-a-lago because it didn't seem like something they were necessarily buying as an excuse. while we got a lot of redacted pages in here, kash patel pops up in this breitbart story from may as one of the reasons for supporting their reasoning for going in to get those documents. >> let me explain who kash patel is. originally he was working for house intelligence when it was run by republicans by devin nunez, then he ended up in the trump nsc, then at the director of national intelligence office and he finally ended up in the

pentagon in the closing months of the trump administration. he has been very aggressive on defending the president. he was designated as one of the president's liaisons with national archives post presidency and now is working for truth social which is the president's social media website, which he placed when he was kicked off twitter. so that is kash patel in the national security arena. andrew weissman can you bring us up to date on what more you are seeing in this extraordinary affidavit? >> following up on that point about kash patel, what is pretty clear here is when we get to paragraphs 52 and 53 of this 37-page document, what the government is doing is they are alerting the court to what is called brady information. they are alerting the court to

information that could be on the other side so that is why they attach a letter from one of the president's counsel and why they make a reference as noted to this interview where kash patel says these records could be de classified. and that the president had the power to declassify them. and so it was improper and misleading to suggest that he was actually storing classified information at mar-a-lago because he claimed that these were declassified. what is notable is after that statement in paragraph 53 the affidavit has an enormous number of blacked out paragraphs that go on from 53 all the way to 62. where clearly the government is disputing that interpretation. they are still alerting the court to it.

they have the dates listed that they, kash patel is making a statement in the article in may of 2022 and paragraph 61 they refer to an e-mail from the department of justice in june of 2022. so the following month where the department is saying there is classified information at mar-a-lago. they're still taking that position and not crediting the statement in the breitbart article. it seems that the paragraphs between 53 and 61 are probably addressing that issue of classification. >> it is so enlightening. thank you so much. this brady material is in every case. the prosecution is required to provide information they have

that could be exculpatory to a potential defendant. required not to keep that secret and to at least provide it and they are making it very transparent to the court at least. >> absolutely. >> that they are disputing the defense argument that the president, former president had the ability to wave a magic wand as joyce was saying and declassify things without any procedure or process on these documents that are supposed to be, many of them, read in a sealed room in a vault basically. a place in the white house that is protected and certainly places elsewhere not in the president's home in mar-a-lago. frank, you are so familiar with all of these designations. these classification designations are as has been reported by us, the "new york times," "the washington post," and others, certainly were reports that the initial 15 boxes last january from mar-a-lago that went to the national archives had all of

these red flags. >> look, i cannot emphasize enough, andrea as someone who held the various clearances referred to here at times in my career how incredibly sensitive this is. you've referenced the "h" compartment. that is human. that is human source. that is often a singular human source that is reporting, perhaps, inside a foreign government. maybe even inside an adversary's foreign government or service. the reading that kind of material could easily give away a conversation that could only have been heard by that single human source. similarly we see references to intelligence, to fisa, electronic intercepts of phone or e-mail conversations, text messaging. again, the most sensitive things the united states government does. but i think joyce referenced

getting us to the espionage statute. the references are national defense information. that is a subset of classified information. not all classified information is national defense information. not only is it sensitive but it goes toward the defense of the united states. incredibly sensitive. number two, we see references to probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found if we get to search this place. that means that perhaps someone, a source, a witness has said, hey. if you look here, you're going to see evidence of attempts to mask, screw up your case, change things. i have seen in my experience, i've seen government employees white out the classified headers and footers on documents. i've seen them destroy documents if they think someone is coming for a search. someone has indicated to the government, somehow, that you'll

find evidence of the obstruction here. that intrigued me for a while, the choice of that charge. we're dealing with the most sensitive information, dealing with a belief, probable cause, that a judge agreed to that there was some kind of obstruction going on and they'd find that evidence of obstruction at mar-a-lago. >> and just for the point on that, we know how powerful president trump in office was with these very, very sensitive sources. we know from all of our reporting that when early in the administration he brought the foreign minister, russian foreign minister lavrov into the oval office and the russian ambassador. he disclosed a human source. these are sources that frank who has worked in the field and others of you know can take decades to develop but this was the source of another allied government, intelligence service who had to be withdrawn because of the revelation to the

russians that this person even existed, which could compromise not only all of the -- of his colleagues as well as relatives. his or her. melissa murray nyu law professor joining us now. what you are reading into this on a legal basis for proceeding with this search of mar-a-lago? >> andrea, you really do have to read between the lines here. there are so many redactions here for obvious reasons to preserve the blueprint for the prosecution if one is to go forward, to preserve the identity of the fbi agents who worked on this as well as any of the operatives who are mentioned here. but what stands out to me is in paragraph 61 where again they speak of this letter from the doj council to the former president's team explaining that the premises at mar-a-lago have not been secured. they aren't secured and they are asking for all of the documents that were moved from the white house to mar-a-lago to be kept where they are and for that location to be left preserved. this i think, which came on june

8th, 2022 reading between the lines, i wonder if this is not something related to the revelation that there is perhaps surveillance footage that the fbi looked at and saw perhaps there was something going on with this room. there is a lot going on here but at bottom this was an order to leave the materials as they were and i think it goes to the question of obstruction. >> pick it up there, paul, in terms of the whole question of obstruction, which is one of the three potential crimes that they were investigating in the affidavit. >> it is an extraordinary allegation, andrea. and in the judge's order, allowing that parts of this affidavit be disclosed he reminded everyone that was one of his findings of probable cause. it is here in the affidavit. the judge reaffirmed that in his order allowing certain portions of this affidavit to be exposed,

to think there was an obstruction, hindering of the prosecution's ability to go forward is extraordinary. i want to add one other thing if i may to andrew's excellent point here that it is part of the dna of the department of justice, inherent to the department of justice that we should embrace and respect that they would share exculpatory information at this point in time. they would anticipate the defense here that the president has raised and certainly did in public articles before this wasn't classified information. you have to admire and respect that kind of careful examination of what may be a defense and what follows on as the probable cause to believe that kind of argument doesn't hold water. i admire that. that is part of our department of justice and why career prosecutors are named as individuals who sign off on these proceedings and underlines the careful nature of the way in which the department of justice first sought to obtain this search warrant and second

protected the information that ought not to be disclosed. >> as we've been discussing this, that the nature of that information is of the highest category of classified secrets involving human intelligence, signals intelligence which is electronic intercepts, the kinds of methods and sources that should never be disclosed to our adversaries certainly and only to a very select group of allies in fact, allied intelligence services if then. tom winter joining us now. tom, you've been all over this affidavit and the justifications and the considerable redactions. whether or not this will put to rest some of the conspiracy theories, unlikely from trump world. >> andrea, it as 38 page document but a couple of those pages are tied to a letter that was attached as an exhibit from trump counsel. in reality it is even less than

that. of that 21 pages by my quick count here are redacted in part or in full. so there is a lot of information here about this ongoing federal criminal investigation the potential subjects of which we still don't know. not surprisin. we weren't going to find that out today, but we still don't have a lot of information as to why this investigation is occurring. you and others have well laid out here the potential ramifications with respect to national security in these documents. i think there's several other things that were unsealed subtle of today's actions, specifically federal prosecutors' arguments for these documents to be released in redacted form if they were to release it as well. one thing i think i do want to point out is that there's a footnote in one of those documents i just referenced that said the court has noted the disclosure of certain information pertaining to physical aspects of the premises

could negatively affect the secret service. clearly it has to do with mow mar-a-lago is secured. namely the fbi agent who signed off on it, where these documents were believed to be was not at all the type of facility that should house these type of documents. another thing i noted in the search warrant is that on the initial 15 boxes that were provided to the national archives, they noted how kind of day-to-day notes and memos, the types of things former president trump might write out or pass to his aides and other top government officials, when you look at those things included in the boxes, among them, then, were these highly classified top secret-type pieces of information that were just mixed in. in other words, there was really no system for delineating what might be day-to-day notes, notes

to an acquaintance or friend or an aide versus these really sensitive documents that are clearly the focus of this federal criminal investigation. so they noted how these things were kind of just mixed together in the boxes and not clearly delineated. that's probably another area of concern for them. those are just a couple of observations that i had in a quick look at these pages. but the devil is in the details and we'll continue to comb through it. >> neal katyal, you had some time to look at those details. chime in. >> while we don't have a lot of this because it's redacted and blacked out, it's a really skeptical of any claim that president trump declassified these documents. there's a contrast between the discussion of kash patel having a standing order to declassify and the letter at the end of the affidavit. this is a letter from trump's lawyer, evan corcoran.

in that letter, trump never says these documents were declassified. if i'm defending donald trump in this, that's the first thing you would say, but this letter goes through great gymnastics and says presidents have authority to declassify, but never once says he actually did it. that makes sense because, as frank and others have been talking about, the material we're talking about here is things like human sources, spies, signals intelligence, our most sophisticated electronic abilities. if trump declassified it for him, you can't just declassify for one person. you're declassifying it for everyone. that means you and i would have a right to see who's out in the field and, you know, what the nsa is capable of doing with cell phones abroad and stuff. it's preposterous, and i suppose that's what's in the blackedout areas we don't have yet. when you're reading an affidavit, you're looking for

kind of characteristics of the personalities. who do they think? even the parts of we have just reveals that the fbi, the justice department think that donald trump is a liar. so if you look at paragraph 25, for example, they talk about how the archivist on february 18th of this year said to trump, hey, we found some classified documents here and identified concerns. that's a formal letter sent by the archivist. later that day, trump's account tweets out saying they, quote, did not find anything, they were given upon request presidential records in an ordinary and routine process as part of the preservation of my legacy. you know, those two things are fundamentally inconsistent with one another, and i think what the affidavit is trying to do is to say don't trust this guy. you can't believe him. >> what's extraordinary is, as you point out, that's laid out

in paragraph 25, and then they have a facsimile of the press release from the save america political action committee. so they show the evidence that he was saying that he had turned everything over and that they had found nothing. kelly o'donnell, you covered this man full time for many years. the m.o. is the man you covered, certainly taking things -- you know, you can understand him taking some mementoes and even a copy of the letter from kim jong-un. some of these things you could defend because they were so personal to him and he loved the so-called beautiful letter. but names and sources, spies, signals intelligence -- there's just no way to justify that being anyplace but in the national archives or some other vault. >> listening to your conversation, if i could knit together a couple of points that i was reminded of listening to some of our other guests here.

on the issue of the public face of the donald trump defense in contrast to what he knew was going on behind the scenes. another example of that is the passports. after he had been notified by the government that they had collected in the search his passports, after he was notified, then he came out with a public statement on his social media saying they had been stolen. very much like the example that neil just gave about his framing of the submission of materials versus what the government knew at the time. in addition, on the matter of the storage area at mar-a-lago, his attorneys in the weeks since this search took place kept referring to the fact that the government asked for a single lock to be put on the storage unit, as if that would be the end of it and the materials would stay there. it is very clear now in this document that they were trying to preserve the documents in place to have no more access to them until they could try to retrieve them.

and clearly laid out here, the number of efforts that have been made to try to get compliance from the former president in what the government believes was his improper handling of this material. it wasn't a case of put a lock on the door and we're good, that was a different framing from the former president and his associates about how that played out when they say he has been cooperative. when tom talked about how there were disparate pieces, we know many of the people in his public life, both as a businessman and in his time at the white house, at the end of the day he would scoop up the things on his desk and put them into a box and take them to the residence. and there you would possibly explain how a personal note, a confidential document, and other things that are unrelated could end up in the same location, including things like his passports. so what this gives us is a window into donald trump's personal practices that are very

much in conflict with what he and his associates have been arguing publicly over these last three weeks, andrea. >> joyce vance is a former prosecutor. where does it go now? >> well, that's exactly the point of this entire exercise. this is all about making sure that doj can move forward. one very interesting tidbit we get from the legal memo that doj submitted to unseal the redacted version of the affidavit is what i think, andrea, is the first effort to quantify the number of cooperating witnesses that doj had when they obtained this search warrant. they're talking about the need to protect their witnesses from any sort of potential harm, and they say that there are a significant number of civilian witnesses. so we don't know, is that five? is that ten? but i think it's important to realize here that doj was not

just relying on one or two witnesses. likely this is, as they say, a significant number of civilian witnesses as well as people in law enforcement who need to be protected as this investigation moves forward. and that puts into context what we're looking at here. we're talking about a former president of the united states who's clearly taken with him when he left office materials, whether they're classified or not, that could do grave damage to our national security if they're disclosed in an inappropriate fashion. and not only is that former president resistant to returning those documents, also doj has legitimate reasons to believe that there are risk to witnesses who are helping complete this investigation. that should be a sobering moment for us to realize we're in this situation with former president trump. >> well, i think we have had an extraordinary hour here sharing

all of this with each other, with all of you, our viewers. this incredible 38 pages that has now been released by the court, order of the court, because of the justice department application, the justification for that all laid out in this affidavit. despite the redactions, we now know as joyce pointed out, finally, the importance of the secrecy here. stay with msnbc throughout the day, digging down into the significance of this. follow us online, on facebook, and on twitter at mitchell reports. yasmin vossoughian now. >> hey, good afternoon. we got a lot going on this afternoon. we have it. i'm yasmin vossoughian here in for chris jansing in msnbc headquarters in new york. coming on the air with breaking news. we have the affidavit the doj used to request a