for former felons, it's about putting a target on every ex felon, and telling them if you even try to participate in our democracy, maybe get dragged away by or swatting. >> mark joseph term, who's been running for us for slate, thank you so much. that's all in on this tuesday night. if you still watch him go to a search of mar-a-lago that took place over three weeks ago. in the filing, the doj says that some of the documents seized were so sensitive and classified that in some cases fbi agents and doj attorneys needed additional security clearances just to review them. with that, i want to bring in ryan riley, justice reporter for nbc news, chuck rosenberg, matt millernb joins us, former speci adviser on communications for the nsa and jeff mason, white house correspondent for reuters. ryan, you had the very difficult challenge of speaking to us moments after this document dropped. you've had a bit more time.

tell us what else you've learned. >> i mean, i think it's significant especially the photos yout discussed last hou that show just how this was organized. i think a key part of this is essentially them not trusting the trump team because after they had that initial grand jury subpoena that was delivered, you had this filing that was signed by a trump lawyer, name is redacted in this latest filing, so weis don't know based on the filing who it was, but has been reported publicly about this trump lawyercl said there was n responsive documents left. lo and behold when they went and executed the search warrant there were allec these document left. so there's still information we don't know about how they got the source of that information. but the key part of it is that they were right. we can see by the product what they were able to seize from donald trump's mar-a-lago facilityag down there that the information they had about himt continuing to hold onat to classified information was indeed correct. obtained all of those

filings, those classified documents from mar-a-lago. and i think had a pretty good reason for going down there. i think make an argument that with regards to executive privilege is where this is all going to go. the trump team is going to make thisak about more than just attorney/client privilege information, a subset of these overall documents and try to make this about this idea of executive privilege and try to insert another trip wire in here but doj is arguing it's not necessary. they set aside those attorney/client privilege documents already. >> okay. because you brought up attorney/client privilege, i have to torture matt miller who must be dying to speak right noo as somebody who knows the department of justice so well he has to be chomping at the bit, but i have tot ask chuck, this argument attorney/client privilege, isn't the doj going to argue, none of these

documents belong to trump to begin with, so what grounds does he say bring them back to me, they're not his? >> well, stephanie, don't confuseie attorney/client privilege with executive privilege. some documents might actually be communications between trump and his attorney and the government already said we found a few of those, small subset and set those aside.e with respect to executive privilege, i don't think that trump will have any leg to stand on. here is why. communications between a president and his or her i hope her one day very soon top advisers can be privileged under certain circumstances. we wantrt a president to have candid advice from their advisers. but executive privilege belongs to the person who is currently president. so right now, mr. biden is the one who makes decisions about executive privilege, not mr. trump. trump tried to argue there's some residual executive

privilege for a former president, but by and large the courts have said that's just not true. so twoot different types of privilege at issue here. attorney/client privilege and there may be some merit to some of that that some documents are genuine communications between trump and his attorney and the government has said we already found those and we set them aside. with respect to executive privilege, i think that claim has to fail because mr. biden has said he will not assert that on behalf of mr. trump and those documents. >> matt miller, what are you thinking tonight? >> as usual chuck lays out why the former president's claims are likely's to fail on executi privilege. the most damming thing to me in this pleading from the government is the way they recount the former president concealed information from the

justice department. and i think it is not only the most damning, it's the piece of information that puts him in the most legal jeopardy. i think if you had a case where a former president had taken documents either by mistake or willingly and they were found to be classified and that former president then returned them to the engovernment, it would be vy hard for the government to make a g criminal case with that setf facts. but when you have the facts as they're laid out in this pleading, wheren not only did e former president hold on to those documents for h months, delay giving them back to the justice department, then not return them when he got a subpoena not only that but seems to have concealed them and according to the justice department, removed some of the documents from the room where he said or r his attorneys said th were being stored and some of them show up in his office and the government only finds them when they come in and execute a search anwarrant, that's a very damning set of information for the formernt president. i think when you look at that evidence of potential obstruction combined with

mishandling classified information, it ends up much more likely he ends up facing a criminal charge than he just return this information the first or second t or even the third time the government came calling for it. >> jeff, what must be happening among trump's inner circle tonight? right? thele department of justice sai that they seized more than 100 classified documents. originally the d national archives, they didn't know they were looking for that many. it is almost impossible to believe there wasn't someone inside trump's inner circle saying as an informant saying you need to come back, you need to see what's in here. >> yeah. and i think the answer, steph, to your question about what's happening within ther inner circle is damage control. and preparing for damage control and also possibly trying to prevent the president or encourage the former president

rather not to go on to his truth social account and go off. i spoke a to a person in that orbit earlier tonight who was dismayed by the president's remarks on truth social several hours ago about wanting to be reinstated and saying that he was actually stepping on what this person considered a good story with regard to hunter biden and then him just changing the narrative back to himself and his false claims about the 2020 election. tying all that20 together, step looking at theseet things and wt the other panelists just described, this is not good news for the formersc president. this is not a positive story. i think you'll see him and others compare this perhaps to hillary clinton and that's something else i heard from this other source i spoke to earlier saying that the fbi's model with hillary clinton is they don't

indictment. of course i think others will argue these things are not apples or apples at all. what i suspect is where you'll see some of the comments from trump world as part of that damage control. >> chuck, forget team trump figuring out how they do protect him and figure out their next communication tonight, don't an awful lot of him, especially their lawyers need to worry about their own hides tonight. i'm pretty sure months ago some of his lawyers signed off on what they were sending back to the government saying we're clean. we have nothing here. aren't they worried they could be on the hook. >> ldpotentially, yes. this goes back to matt miller's really important point about obstruction. so if a lawyer told the united states department of justice that there's nothing else here, there are no classified documents, there's nothing pursuant to the presidential records act, you have everything. we turned it over and that's not true, the next question is why

isn't that true, stephanie? is it true because they're just really bad lawyers and they didn't do due diligence? is it true because they asked trump and trump lied to them and they repeated the lie? did they know it was a lie? or did they not know it was a lie? or did they actually have eyes on these documents and wrote a letter to the department of justice that was false? so, again, this is why you do investigations. could the lawyers be on the hook? conceivably yes. do we know that now, not yet. but, matt's really important pointt' and i want to put anoth sort of gloss on it, is that we always talked on your show and others about how hard it is to prove intent. it's the hardest thing to prove in these types of cases. not that someone did something but that someone did something intentionally. but when you cover that thing up, when you lie about that thing, when you conceal that thing from the department of justice and the fbi, it tends to

prove intent. my bad, i realize i have a whole bunch of classified information in my basement. here you go. i don't want it. it's yours. you should have it back. to matt's point, that's not really a prosecutable case anymore. when you culie, when you obfusce and mislead the fbi about what it is you have, that's obstruction and helps to establish intent which is the hardest thing to prove in these types oft cases. so, matt, i understand why he was our head communicator. he's really good at this. >> matt, then how would trump make the argument, if he chose to hide the boxes, i didn't see it, it was reported a couple weeks ago, that he might not have read every word, every letter in those hundred documents seized. but trump already rifled through them. he knew what he had. he knew what was there. and as a former president of the united states of america, he

damn knew well none of it belonged to him. >> well, if he didn't know, he certainly should have. i think that's exactly the right point, e stephanie. i'll add to that the fact that as this document the justice department filed made clear tonight, theseed documents that they seized from mar-a-lago were not just held in the storage room where trump's lawyers had told the justice department they were goinghe to be but also in trump's personal office and in his personal desk. the idea he didn't know he was holding on to classified information and they were sitting in hisan desk, in his office, not just in the storage room, it's veryt hard to make e argument not just when you have made the previously the points that you referred to, but when the justice department comes in and finds evidence of top secret information, lying around your office, this picture you have up on the screen right now, it's very hard for the former president to say he didn't know that he had these documents. i don't know how you would possibly make this claim. and i m will say just looking a thisus picture, anyone who has worked in the national security establishment is very familiar with the documents that you see

in front of you. these cover pages marked top secretrk and secret. they're obviously screaming at you -- they're screaming at you that these are documents that need to be handled with special care and they need to protected and kept inside secure government facilities. i just completed a tour inside the government the national security council and dealt with these documents everyday. if the fbi came into this office, my home office where i'm sitting now and found documents like that spreadfo across my floor, you would have no doubt what would happen to me. i would be prosecuted for mishandling of classified information and just about any other person, i would dare say any other person, in a similar situation could expect the same type of charges from the justice department. >> ryan, you obviously cover justice for us. what does it say that the department of justice had a week, had a week, to come back with their response and they -- and it was all the way down until the wire that they came

back. does that not say that they went through every single document, crossed every t, dotted every i meticulously because they knew they were facing off against loads of baseless claims. they gotas it down to the wire when they handed this thing in. >> yeah, what i always love about these nights all us journalists get together and sort of rubble rouse about the idea the doj waits until the very last minute to file something which is what journalists do wait until the very last minute to file something. look, i think they made a very strong argument eyhere. this is how doj likes to speak. they like to speak through the four t pages of not the indictmt in this point, in this case, but the filing. they speak through the court process. they t like to make their case this matter, lay out the facts as they see them. they're not going to make these -- not going to go on socialng media and truth social and make all these claims that

donald trump is going to bela making. they're going to keep this within the confines of their court filings. they make a very compelling case here and assisted with that visual element. >> jeff, i keep saying to you, you covered trump for year. youtr covered him for years. >> d yeah. >> over the last 24 hours he has loved truth social. he's posting all sorts of things. yet this comes out and we have not heard one word from him. his last post was two hours ago pumping people to buy jared's book. >> so what's he doing? io can't explain that. unless, perhaps, as i was suggesting earlier, he's listening to some of the advice from people in his circle to just hold back and not use some of the n techniques that he usually does. but i mean, you referenced how long i've covered him and you've covered him as well from your

perch, he doesn't usually listen to that kind of advice. so i suspect we'll hear from president trump and i suspect we'll use -- we'll see him use some of the same techniques that he has for virtually every investigation, virtually any v accusation, virtually anything that does not go his way. he'll try to change the conversation. he'll point to someone else. he'll use what aboutism. and we'll see to what extent that w is effective. >> he'll use what aboutism. he'll say many people are saying. but matt, what will lindsey graham say? lindsey graham, who earlier this week said people would riot, they would take to the streets. lindsey graham is a former jag attorney. he deeply understands every word in this 36-page document. can he continue to go on conservative media and throw out this red meat now that the truth ist right out there in the ope? >>re well, you would hope not b i expect in the next 48 hours we'll find out that, yes, he

absolutely can and he'll go on andnd make claims about hillary clinton despite the fact that these casesit have nothing to d with each other and he'll continue to threaten lawlessness in the streets. i think the job of the people in theth justice department is jus to continue to pressnt forward with this case. and continue to make their arguments in court. they don't need to grand stand. they don't needd to come out a make a bunch of flashy public statements but they can continue to investigate quietly and continue to present evidence to the court. if the evidence at the end leads them to conclude they ought to pursue charges, they have to pursue charges. the one thing i would say about the threats that lindsey graham has made, that there will be riots in the street if donald trump is indicted in this case, if he's treated like any other former government employee, which is what he was who left the government and took classified information with them and then concealed his actions from the government, if he is treated like the rest of us will be treated, he's prosecuted, and there are riots in the street, then law enforcement will have a job to do and that job will be arrest those rioters, charge

them in the same way they charged the defendants from the january 6th. for their riots, their insurrection. the response to lawlessness is not to surrender in the face of it. it's to investigate and prosecute lawlessness. i think the justice department has to be very clear and i think they will be very clear they're not going to back down in the face of those kinds of threats. >> you know, it's almost easy for us to forget tonight's document and this special -- i was just a told we have to take break. sorry. this is what breaking news coverage looks like. things get crazy. all of you stay right here. there's a lot more to go through. there's a lot more to cover. stick around. we're special breaking news coverage tonight on msnbc. king coverage tonight on msnbc. longew you can sell your policy - even a term policy - for an immediate cash payment. we thought we had planned carefully for our retirement. but we quickly realized we needed a way to supplement our income. if you have $100,000 or more of life insurance, you may qualify to sell your policy. don't cancel or let your policy lapse without finding out what it's worth. visit coventrydirect.com to find out if your policy qualifies. or

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only from xfinity. nah. unbeatable internet. made to do anything so you can do anything. ♪♪ welcome back. you are watching special coverage. i'm stephanie ruhle. we are reviewing the department of justice's 36-page document that they have submitted to the judge, their response to former president trump's request to have a special master, a third

party review the documents that were seized at mar-a-lago over three weeks ago. i want to bring in andrew weissman to discuss. former fbi general counsel and former senior member of the mueller probe, now a law professor at nyu. andrew, i can tell you since this news broke, my twitter feed is a flutter with people saying, we need weissman. so i'm just going to sit back, give you the mic, walk us through what your take aways are tonight. america wants andrew weissman. >> yeah. yeah. good evening. and good morning. so a quick read of this on the boring side but it's important for the judge, they really get the law -- it's dead on, as to why executive privilege doesn't work, why there's no special needed for the handful of attorney/client documents.

all of that is somewhat less important in terms of big picture. let's just turn to the key here, which is that the department got approval from the d.c. chief judge barrel howell to review some grand jury information. and they do. they also go ahead -- >> i don't know what that means. >> so, goods to interrupt me. grand jury material is protected by a rule that the government normally is not allowed to share grand jury material. so for instance, a grand jury subpoena is not something that the government can usually just go ahead and reveal. well, it's attached here to this filing to help explain the timeline and what it is that donald trump received, what it is that he was told he legally had to produce and they got permission from the chief judge

in washington, d.c. to do that. and one of the ways they say they did that is they said, look, this has been revealed by donald trump's counsel already. so we should be able to reveal it. and she agreed. so, it helps fill in the timeline, which is that a grand jury subpoena in may was given to the former president. why is that relevant? because what then happened and is really clear from this search, is they found just tons and tons of classified material at mar-a-lago, and not just in the storage facility but in his personal home office. so the big take away -- just to not -- i sort of buried the lead, is there are just classified documents everywhere and the government comes out and says the idea that they could have done a review, a search and certified to us that all of this material had previously been

produced is farfetched. what they're saying on this second part of this is that there was clear obstruction of justice. when they put a certification to the department saying they produced everything and they did that in june before the search was conducted saying we have done a diligent search and everything was found, the department says, we developed evidence that that wasn't the case and we know from the search and from the photo that you're displaying that that was clearly not true. so, the key take away here is donald trump and the two lawyers corkran and bobb have to be saying, this is not a good development because two lawyers certified -- either drafted or themselves certified that they

produced everything and donald trump, the idea this happened without donald trump knowing is, you know, implausible and you can be sure those lawyers aren't going to say they did this completely on their own without checking with their micromanaging client. so that picture that you're showing to me speaks volumes both in terms of obstruction, the 12519 charge, a failure to comply with the grand jury subpoena, which is 18 u.s. c. 402 which is essentially contempt of the grand jury subpoena and it also just makes it clear that the president had reams of classified information even after he told the department that he didn't. >> okay. then role play with me for a second. you're corchran or bobb, you're on conservative media how do

they respond to the quote? the fbi recovered twice as many documents with classification markings as the diligent surge the former president's counsel and other representatives have weeks to perform. you're bobb or corchran, how do you respond? they signed off and said, yep, nothing to see here. >> so let's role play. i am now defense counsel advising corchran and bobb you need to withdraw as counsel and you need to get the best defense counsel you can possibly get. and stop talking because they are clearly going to be interviewed and at the very least they're going to be witnesses on the issue that you're flagging, stephanie. you don't have to be a rocket

scientist to know where to go with this, which is they either themselves said that they did a thorough search when, in fact, they didn't, which is perjury and obstruction, or somebody told them that a thorough search had been done, i.e. donald trump. so i think it's one or the other. so, i don't see how they continue to be counsel when at the very least they will be witnesses. and i say at the very least because as you say, they could be in worse trouble here. >> do you believe that? do you believe not just trump's lawyers but kind of anybody who touched this could they themselves be in legal jeopardy? >> yeah, absolutely. so one of the things that if you

have a client like donald trump is you have to be willing to say no and you have to have a strong moral compass as to what you will and will not do. you're not a hired gun. you're a professional with a duty to the court and legal duties in terms of making representations to the government. now, presumably they will say that they did not personally do the search but somebody else did the search or told them that the search was done. and that will be a very small group of people. it's hard to imagine that would not be donald trump telling them either, yeah, i looked through everything and there's nothing there so just write that. or, they have to fall on their sword, which i don't think that's going to happen.

and that's why i think they need to get counsel. >> but andrew, how does one keep passing the buck? right? i can't get on an airplane -- i can't get on delta airlines if i can't answer the question, nobody went into my suit cases, i sign off on what's in these bags. i sign these taxes every year, doesn't matter who prepared them, i'm on the hook for them. aren't one of them on the hook, these senior people, at the end of the day, oh, it was a lowly box handler, come on. >> yeah. look, this is a problem in the criminal law all the time. it's as you know when a ceo certifies that to the best of their knowledge this is accurate. there is just to be fair, there is a certain amount that especially in a large organization you do have to be relying on other people.

and so you do insist it's accurate. you try to make this as thorough as possible but it can happen that you were misled or someone made a mistake along the way. that's a very different situation than here. the department of justice calling it out, just the way you are, and you hit exactly the right paragraph where they say, i don't understand how we could find in hours what you had weeks and weeks and weeks to look for, frankly months to look for. and you managed to certify this. somebody had to have done a search. i don't think the certifications identified who did the search. that is going to be the key thing from the obstruction crime angle, if you're researching and trying to find out who is responsible, you'll be very interested in who actually did

the search that purported to have been done and that bobb and corchran. >> you reminded our audience of your history. as difficult it is to go after a ceo, a major organization, it was andrew weissman himself who took down enron where the most senior executives were jailed for their dishonest business practices and a major accounting firm went away after that. it is so difficult and you are the person who did it. i want to remind our audience. i want to read something else to you from the document that stood out when they were talking about what they found. newspapers, magazines, printed news articles, photos, miscellaneous print outs, notes, presidential correspondence, personal and presidential records, all of that you can be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, he would take those with him. then it goes on to say and a lot of classified records, of most significant concern was the

highly classified records were unfoldered, intermixed with other records and otherwise unproperly identified. now, unfoldered, new word for me, but basically these highly classified documents in their folders had been taken out, thrown amongst other pieces of paper. is there any scenario on planet earth where documents like this would just be thrown asunder with other magazine clippings and stories about trump, highly classified documents what would any sort of honest rational be for why that would happen? >> none. just to be clear, there's no rational for anybody who is aware of the existence of the documents. and that's why the location of them and the amount -- the long period of time that is laid out by the department of justice in this filing that they and the

archives sought them. the idea that donald trump was unaware of these when the fbi could find them in a matter of hours and the location of all of them included his own office and desk drawers and they were next to personal items. i thought one of the ice little pieces of this is a footnote that says, by the way, we were entitled to take his passports and they're relevant because it's relevant to know that his passports were intermingled with all of these documents. meaning, the idea that he somehow did not know about this would be much less if -- be a much harder argument if you showed that there were personal items of the former president intermingled with these classified documents. i also have to say, there are -- recently in february of this year, a sorted of low-level department of defense employee

mishandled sort of very few documents in two separate occasions and she was prosecuted and went to jail. the idea that that is going to happen to her and there's not going to be an effort here i just find very, very hard to fathom because you're dealing with merrick garland who is a former judge who will be looking at precedent. and the idea to again to relate this to corporate executives that the low-level in coming intern goes to jail but the ceo who does something far worse doesn't, that's -- that i don't think is going to fly with merrick garland. and the picture that's painted in this filing is one of repeated flouting of the law. the national archives, the

department of justice, a grand jury subpoena, and it mainly makes clear why a search warrant was needed because all of this material would not have come to light. the department had been given a certification that was demonstrably false that everything had been produced and the photo that everyone can see right now which i thought was just brilliant for the department to include so people could see exactly what was found, completely shows that obstruction of justice, not just the taking of highly sensitive information, but also lying about it. >> let's bring chuck rosenberg back into this conversation. chuck, i'm thinking back to when trump was in office and people would be tearing their hair out saying, why is he allowed to do this? common people aren't. other people in the administration aren't.

members of congress can't but there was really sort of this shroud around a president and their powers and so many things they couldn't be prosecuted for. the fact that all of this is happening now that he is simply a private citizen, one that doesn't have security clearance anymore, could that mean things are different as far as what he could be prosecuted for? >> you know, things are different. we always talk about how nobody is above the law, but when somebody is president, they have authorities and powers that you and i simply don't have, stephanie. i can't pardon anyone. nor can you. there's a department of justice policy, policy only not statute but policy, that says you can't charge, indictment a sitting president. they could charge you or me. so there are factors and facts about being president that just don't pertain to anyone else. but he's not the president now. and i think andrew makes a very strong case for why he should be treated just like anyone else and why the obstruction of

justice piece of this that you and i have talked about really demonstrates intent. that's such an important thing because it's hard to prove intent. andrew knows this from his white collar work. it's hard to get the ceo. but when the ceo lies or shreds documents or misleads investigators, that suddenly becomes easier. there's still a whole bunch of work for investigators to do and a whole bunch of people the fbi will need to interview, including possibly, quite likely, mr. trump's lawyers in this very case. i agree with andrew that they have at least become witnesses. but all that said, stephanie, he's not a president. and those special rules don't apply. he is now a former president. and he has the same authority as you and i. he can't retain classified information. he doesn't even have a security clearance. the records are not his. they belong to the national archives and the american

people. and he doesn't get to lie to the fbi and there's no policy that precludes the department of justice from charging him if they can establish all the elements of the crime. >> andrew, this argument that trump could make about these documents being his or should be returned to him, now that you're seeing them in plain sight, how could -- how could his team possibly say, now time to send them back to us. they don't belong to him. they belong to us. >> yeah. so the department addresses that really strongly and in language i don't think you need to be a lawyer to understand. basically the department says the argument that these are papers that belong to him, these are not your documents. so no matter what these documents belong at the

archives, and they say, look, if the presidents and former presidents had an issue, the issue would be can the archives give the documents to the executive branch, lawyers at the department of justice and the fbi but it's not that any of these documents would go back to donald trump and the department says, that's another reason why you don't need special master to review them because they're not yours. normally you have a special master to try and sift through documents that are yours. these are documents that belong to the executive branch. >> i want to bring ryan riley back in. ryan, as i'm sitting here thinking they had over 100 documents seized, stuff was out of folders, "time" magazine cover, pictures, that's just at

mar-a-lago. trump has a whole lot of other properties, trump tower, bedminster, the place up in west chester. do we think those other residences of trumps are going to get searched any time soon. reason to believe he would only keep all this jazz down there? >> there's no indication of that so far, but i wanted to point out one part in the timeline i think is important. one thing we learned in addition to this filing is just how many classified documents were turned over voluntarily, quote unquote, in response to the subpoena that was issued in may and was acted upon in early june. remember, there's this initial box, initial 15 boxes turned over to the national archives. whole bunch of classified documents that weren't supposed to be there sitting aside the fact he wasn't supposed to have any of those documents to begin with. fast forward five months down the line to may, may of this year, when they issued that grand jury subpoena in response to that grand jury subpoena, the president's counsel hands over a bunch more documents. guess what, lo and behold

there's a lot of classified documents in there, too, he's not supposed to have. fast forward to several months later, two months later, then they do this actual search warrant and there are additional classified documents that he's not supposed to have. so i think we have learned more in this new filing about that visit in june and how many documents were found there. i'm looking at the document now, the preliminary document review revealed the following speaking act the june incident, 38 unique documents bearing classified markings including five marked confidential, 16 marked secret and 17 documents marked -- 17 documents marked as top secret. furthermore, the fbi agents observed markings reflecting sensitive compartments and dissemination controls. counsel for the former president offered no explanation as to why boxes of government records including 38 documents with classification markings remained at the premises nearly five months after the production of the 15 boxes and nearly 1.5

years after the end of the administration. so this is really a three-part story now at this point. it's after a year of the national archives trying to get these documents. they got those -- they got that initial set of 15 documents that included 14 documents that had classified information in them in january and then in june, more classified documents and then finally when they searched the place they found a boat load more classified documents that donald trump wasn't supposed to have. again, setting aside the fact that he wasn't supposed to have any of these government records under the presidential records act, stephanie. matt, we keep talking about, oh, classified documents. but we don't actually know what those documents are. talk to us about the national -- without knowing the specific content, help us understand the type of documents they would be, what kind of national risks does it pose for us, national security risks, i mean. >> well, it could be a number of things. look at what the department previously said.

they said the former president retained documents that were derived from signal intelligence, so the kind of work that we do to penetrate foreign government emails or communications and if that information is exposed, you would see a foreign government target maybe stop using a phone or stop using an email account they're using. the government said it contained documents derived from human intelligence, information derived from either american intelligence operatives or people in foreign governments or in foreign countries with whom they interact and of course, if their identities are exposed, you could see those people arrested or even worse. and i think one of the points i found particularly compelling the government made in its filing is if the judge were to proceed and appoint a special master to delay the review of documents in this case and delay the government from doing its job, it's not just -- it doesn't just van impact on the justice department's case. and could slow down doj's

ability to bring its case which ultimately is not insurmountable, there's a real harm, immediate harm, if those documents have to be taken away from the director of national intelligence who is doing a classification review right now and doing a risk assessment because if these documents -- i should say, we don't know yet who all has seen these documents. we know there's a risk that they've been exposed to either foreign sources or people who could make them available to foreign sources, but we don't know that. but what the intelligence community has to do with these documents is go through and find out what information was potentially exposed and then if there are steps they need to take to mitigate the harm, they need to be able to do that. if they don't have those documents, if they're yanked from them and given to a special master and have to delay that review, that potentially does impact national security in a serious way. >> chuck, what else are we missing here? >> yes. stephanie, let me just rewind this a bit. remember, this is a motion by mr. trump's lawyers to appoint a

special master to review the documents that the government seized pursuant to a lawful search warrant. when the government applied for this search warrant, they told the federal judge who authorized it precisely what they were going to do with the stuff they found, that they would use a filter team to review for privilege and the nonprivilege stuff would be thrown over the transom to the investigative team. the judge approved that process, stephanie. he signed off on it. that's precisely what the government did. so here is the really practical argument the government is making and that we ought to keep in mind, it took the trump team 14 days to file this motion half baked for a special master. during those 14 days, the government finished the review. they did exactly what they told the federal judge they were

going to do. they finished. the very practical thing that the government is now saying in response to this motion to appoint a special master is it's unnecessary. we told the judge what we were going to do. we did it and we're done. we met our obligations fully. we have a very small subset of privileged documents. and we set them aside. the investigation is important for the reasons that matt miller was just describing. and it needs to move forward. so let's go, you know. there's no need to appoint a special master at this point. we did everything we said we would. and we did it properly. >> but chuck, what if there's a way to ensure, let's say they appoint a special master but can ensure this thing is going to get done, wrapped up, sealed, finished in a month or less because the doj went through all of this in three weeks or less. is there an argument to be made that could make sense to silence the nay sayers and truly show

the public we have done every possible thing to cross our t's and dot our i's or shouldn't have to? >> yeah. well, so a lot of sensible arguments over the last five years haven't quieted the nay sayers, stephanie. i'm not sure we need to play to that audience. but i take your point. that by bringing in a special master there's a imprim tor of neutrality. don't forget the department of justice has an enormous to get it right. if they get it wrong, if there's actually a document that's covered by attorney/client privilege and there's no exception to it, and they pass it over the transom to the investigative team, they can do harm to the investigation. so whether it's the doj internal filter team looking at it or special master looking at it, everybody has an incentive to do this right. but your point is a good one. it's a really savvy point that there might be for some people

an imprimitor of neutrality if a third party does it. i get that. in fact the department of justice gets it because in this response they filed just before midnight yesterday, they said if you're going to appoint a special master, your honor, here is a couple of things we would like you to consider. set a deadline. make sure it's somebody who already has a clearance so we don't have to delay in getting that. we want to move this forward as quickly as we can. look, in the end, the documents the investigative team ought to have they will have. the question is whether they can just move forward as they have been doing in that two-week period where the trump team utterly failed to respond or whether they have to tap on the brakes for two or three or four more weeks. either way, stephanie, they're going to get the documents they need for this investigation. and i don't think folks ought to lose sight of that. >> jeff, we had very, very busy

four years during the trump administration. it was a very leaky white house. you said just a couple minutes ago earlier tonight you were talking to some people from trump's inner circle. i want to read a tweet from our colleague and legal analyst katie fang where she writes after reading the doj's response tonight, i'm even more intrigued about how the fbi found out there were more classified records at mar-a-lago, including outside of the storage room, all of which led to the search warrant being obtained. she ends with who ratted on trump to the feds? for you, as a reporter, who has covered trump for all these years, is that the next thread you're going to try to pursue after reading these 36 pages, is the next thing you're going to look to report on how on earth the department of justice, why would they know to go back and get this search warrant? why would they keep pushing? >> well, it is certainly intriguing. for sure a lot of reporters will

be chasing that, but i think some of it is not -- there are no secrets. i mean, in terms of why the fbi went that way. they were -- i was just reading the reuters story about this from my colleague sara lynch. and there's a quote in here where they say a trump lawyer, quote, explicitly prohibited fbi agents from looking in boxes in a storage room at trump's property during a june search. the department said in the court filing today. so that -- you don't need an informant to say you can't look here. this was done -- they were told specifically you can't look in these boxes. of course if you're the fbi, that's going to raise eyebrows and make you want to go back. so, it's almost remarkable in the transparency there or the lack of transparency but the fact that the trump team specifically denied that request. so, yes, i think to your

question is spot on. there will be a lot of interest in how the fbi found this out, but some of it is also laid out in this filing tonight already. >> yes, but andrew weissman, in the last few weeks in the reporting it was reported that trump over the last few months was more concerned about who is in his inner circle. he voiced concerns that maybe mar-a-lago was bugged. if it were bugged, and you didn't do anything, who cares. people are just going to hear you arguing with your spouse and gossiping. >> yeah. so, i don't think it's a bug but it's clear from this filing that they say that there was evidence that was developed that made them understand that after that june time frame, the second tranche that should have been turned over already that was -- that the department of justice and the fbi went to get in june that they developed evidence that that still was not everything in spite of the

certification. so, yes, there will be a lot of speculation in the media and certainly in trump world about that. but i go back to one thing, stephanie, you were asking chuck in the discussion why not appoint a special master. i think it's really important to separate out the executive privilege issue and the attorney/client privilege issue. in the filing the department says, yes, there's a small number of potential attorney/client privilege documents. and their claim they basically say, look, judge, if there's some issue there, you should deal with it. that's what judges are for. we don't need to have a special master. we're talking about a very finite number. and i think that would provide what you were asking about, stephanie, this idea there's a third party, a neutral unattached judge who can make the decision about are those protected by attorney/client

privilege or not. but it doesn't then interfere with the claim of executive privilege which gets to what chuck and matt were talking about which is there shouldn't be anything that slows down that review and the national security interest. i think that it will be really stressed to the judge not to delay things. and my final point, steph, is this in the big picture, this is a huge misstep on the part of donald trump. having filed this motion and, you know, whether because of a fox news interview, whatever led to the filing, the department of justice would never have had the information to lay all of this evidence out. the photo that we just saw would not be laid out. all of the things that we, of course, have more questions, but so much of what we have learned is because it's in response to

positions that donald trump team has taken. so this was to my mind a big misstep because it's highly unlikely they're going to lose in any significant way in court on this whole special master issue which is really a speed bump at most and instead we really learned a lot of facts that refute the donald trump spin. >> all right then. we're going to leave it there. andrew weissman, chuck rosenberg, my goodness, who else is with us, matt miller, jeff mason and ryan riley, it is almost 1:00 a.m. in the morning. thank you all for joining us, for sticking around for this hour, for sharing your expertise. we needed it now. thank you for staying up and watching our special coverage that's going to continue right after this break. e that's going to continue right after this break so you can find your color. colors. choices. happiness. away. ♪ ♪

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