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good day. i'm chris jansing live at msnbc headquarters in new york city. new political and potentially legal headaches for president biden after a second batch of classified documents is found at his delaware home. will attorney general merrick garland weigh in when he makes a statement a few minutes from now? plus george santos facing new calls to resign including from even more of his republicans in his home state. but he's making it clear he's staying in congress. can he and gop leadership ride this out? and finally, investigators have now identified the systems glitch that delayed 12,000 flights on wednesday. but how did they make sure it doesn't happen again? we start with new revelations about a second batch of classified documents found by aids of president biden. fueling calling for a congressional investigation or

even the appointment of a special council. right now, we are waiting for attorney general merrick garland to give a statement. he's expected in minutes. we doe noent whether it's related to these newly discovered documents, but it comes hours after the president himself provided details about what was found. >> people know i take classified documents and classified material seriously. i also said we're cooperating fully and pleatly with the justice department's review. my lawyers reviewed other places where documents from my time as vice president were stored and finished the review last night. they discovered a small number of documents of classified markings in a storage area in file cabinets in my home in my personal lie wrar. >> it's important to point out that this comes just days after we learned that that first batch of classified documents had been found in one of biden's former

offices in early november. i want to bring in my all-star panel. carol lee, jen sake, served as press secretary, jonathan lemire, host of "way too early," matthew dowd, a senior political analyst, barr barbara mcquaid, and lisa reuben, also msnbc legal analyst it's fantastic to have you here. barbara, we learned a little about these documents from the president and his attorney. he says it was a small number of pages. they were in a storage area of his garage in delaware. but we don't know what's this these documents. we don't know the level of classification. what do you hope we might learn,

if indeed this is even the topic of discussion for merrick garland. >> i imagine one thing that could happen today is that he may announce he's apointing a special counsel. typically the process is for the attorney general himself to review a matter to determine whether a special counsel is merited. so i suppose this second round of documents at president biden's residence might call into question whether that's a line there. not every of possession of classified documents is a crime. it's a violation of rules, sometimes that results in people losing their clearances, getting fired, getting disciplined, but it only rises to level of crime in the presence of an aggravating factor like obstruction of justice or disloyalty to the united states. so it's that willfulness and obstruction of justice that has

caused the special counsel with regard to donald trump. don't know we have reached that level in this case where a special counsel is necessary. >> do you see this as a case that should be looked at by a special counsel or are there pressures that might be brought to bear to lead him to do this? >> i i agree with barbara. first, you have to reach the threshold of of believing that a criminal investigation is warranted. the threshold for opening a full criminal investigation while fairly low is higher than how preliminary investigation. that's the investigation that the attorney general out of the northern district of illinois is the chicago area has been doing. but we know that that has been finished and, therefore, we were expecting merrick garland to make a decision in one direction or another. if he's determined there's enough to warrant a criminal investigation, i agree that a special counsel is the right direction to go in. the special counsel regulations called for the appointment of a special counsel where there's

either a conflict of interest or where extraordinary circumstances recommend that person be appointed in the public interest. and i'll also point you to the fact when jack smith was appointed on november 18th, that's a full two weeks plus after the first tranche of bidenment documents was discovered. i believe reporting has confirmed that merrick garland was aware of this situation when he appointed jack smith and that might have been a factor in his considerations. >> so you and mike memoli have new reporting in the last hour that multiple aids who worked for biden during his time in the obama administration have been interviewed by federal law enforcement officials. that's according to two people familiar with the matter. who are they and what more can you tell us? >> what we know is that these are aids who worked for then vice president biden in the time in office and would have been among those who helped clear out his vice presidential office in january of 201. we know one of the individuals

who was interviewed is a woman named kathy chung, who served as then vice president biden's executive assistant and it's been explained she would have had a key role in helping pack up some of the boxes or that process of getting the vice president moved out of that office. now what we also know is that according to one of the sources that those who have been asked to be interviewed did so quickly and completed those interviews. we don't know if all interviews are completed or if this is on going, but we know that what they are saying is the people boxing up biden's office did not intentionally, had no idea there was anything there that shouldn't leave the white house. they are saying this was something that was accidental and they go on to say there was no decision made to take certain documents that should have been presidential records or classified. so the argument here is that

these are aids who had may have helped pack up the vice president, but they weren't specifically taking documents that they knew were classiied and putting them with the president's political and personal papers, as we have learned has happened. >> so jen, understood. let's accept at least for the purpose of this question that i'm asking you that this was not done intentionally. who boxes up this stuff? i know it sounds like a silly question, but do people that have go through things have to have a security clearance? and just basically because you have been in this situation, how does a piece of classified information, how does classified document get tracked within the white house or anywhere else it might go? >> i don't think it's a silly question at all. i think it's an important one. as people are trying to understand what happened here, classified documents are marked as classified. sometimes they have different colors and color sheets on them. that's what marks them. what is also true is that during

the transition, which is a very hectic period in any white house, and i have been through them many times over with trump coming in, with biden coming in, it's that you are at the end in these final weeks trying to pack up occupy of the materials from eight years in this case of being in office. that's typically done at a staff level. i'm not aware of a mandate that anyone with a special certification watches this. yes, individuals who handle classified material would have security clearance, but it still doesn't mean as they are packing up boxes they had any mall intent. so this is a a hectic time. people are packing up offices largely done at a staff level. you could see a scenario where this was just very sloppy staff work. i think that's one of the questions we'll hopefully learn more about. >> which brings me back to the second part of this question, which is this stuff tracked.

let's say i have a folderer that has classified documents. is it tracked, number one. and if that's true, would it be noted as missing, or could it be a situation where a few pages from that folder are gone and put somewhere else and that got mixed up in the packing? what are the detail ofts possibiliies for how this kind of happened? >> sure. documents are not tracked with a tracking system. i know you're not exactly asking that if they are labeled where they can't leave the building. there are certain honor system components when off security clearance that you don't want to put at risk. so even for people in the white house now or any white house, you are required to lock up your classified documents in a specific safe in your office. if you can have access to classified documents. if you leave them on your desk overnight, you can get an infraction for that. that can put at risk your security clearance. as the vice president of the

united states, you obviously have access to a broad range of security documents. so it is possible that some of them were not filed, that pages came out. it doesn't mean it was done with mall intent. >> talk about how the discovery of the second batch of documents could complicate the poll tibs of this for biden, especially when he's been so adamant about being transparent and drawing clear contrasts with donald trump. >> there's no question that they do. these are separate legal matters. it's worth taking a second just to note there are obvious similarities between the biden and trump cases. they are very different. these documents were discovered by aids and notified the department of justice. it stands differently than what donald trump did for those in

mar-a-lago. we think it's only a dozen or two found in biden's possession. those documents were only retrieved when police and fbi had to go to his palm beach estate. there's some real differences there is. you're hearing the democrats say over and over that's the case. but republicans are playing a cant game and there's no questions here they have been handed a lifeline on this trump matter. they are going to use this as a new tool to bash the biden administration to suggest the fix is in. especially if they don't do not appoint a special counsel. who wonder about the timing here that the first batch were found in early november, but per the

statement the white house put out earlier today, the review of other properties including the home wasn't completed until last night why didn't you try to check to make sure there were no documents anywhere else. and again, these are two different scenarios, but it is going to lead to the waters getting muddies. >> at least politically it's pretty dicey for the white house. his attorneys find the documents. didn't disclose it. and then this doesn't happen until way after. why would you wait that long to search the homes in delaware? and why not get out in front of it. what's your take on this? >> two things. something that saud having been through a couple of these situations in this is if the

attorney general gets up today and he's going to talk about this, my hope is he explains the differences between what's going on in the trump case or what happened in the trump case and in this case. i hope if he does do this, i hope he explains the grand canyon of differences between these two. knowing the hectic nature of packing up, i would say millions of papers that are shuffled around, my guess is almost every single president, vice president, probably chief of staff over the last four years somehow papers got shuffled up and things happen in the same thing that happened to your accidental shuffling. i'm not surprised that they waited to look. my guess they assumed this was accidental. they assume when they discovered the documents in that that was

the only thing they have to worry about. that was all that was done. and then as this moves along they forgot a about it. they were like we better be crystal clear and transparent as much as we know we don't think there is. that's when they did the the search. so i don't think it's a problem in a legal way they waited to do this search. the whole problem is a political problem because it's been fudged. so if the attorney general talks about this, he makes clear the differences between the two cases. >> we're waiting for the attorney general when he's expected to come out. how does the white house now get ahead of this. >> all of my former colleagues i

have spoken to over the last couple days, what they keep coming back to is they are going to do everything with the department of justice. their baic strategy is short-term pain, long-term gain. as in let's do everything by the book, as matthew said. let's be thorough about the review. let's make sure there's a review done by the department of justice. then let's get beyond this. to them, the apples and oranges comparison or apples and orangatang is to their advantage. if they continue to be by the book, they will be able to move beyond this. so that's their strategy. there are a the lot of details if they could go out there and say the president knew nothing about this the at any point in time, that would be helpful to the public dialogue. they are going to wait for the review. >> here's the attorney general. let's listen. >> i announcement the appoint of robert her as a special counsel

pursuant to regultions governing such matters in keeping i have notified the designated members of each house of congress of the apointment. i'm joined by the u.s. attorney for the northern district of illinois who conducted the initial investigation into the matter that i will describe today. on november 4th, the national archives office of inspector general contracted a prosecutor at the department of justice. it informed him that the white house had notified the archives that documents baring classification marks were identified at the office of the penn biden center for diplomacy and global engagement located in washington, d.c. that office was not authorized of storage of classified documents. the prosecutor was advised that those documents had been secured in an archives facility. on november 9th, the fbi commenced an assessment

consistent with standard protocols to understand whether classified information had been mishandled in violation of federal law on november 14thth, pursuant to section 600.2b, i assigned the u.s. attorney to conduct an initial investigation to inform my decision whether to appoint a special counsel. mr. laush has served as u.s. attorney in chicago since 2017. before that, he spent more than a decade as an assistant u.s. attorney in that same office. i selected him to conduct the initial investigation because i was confident husband experience would ensure that it would be done professionally and expeditiously. on december 20th, president biden's personal counsel informed mr. loush that additional documents were identified in the garage of the president's private residence in wilmington, delaware. president biden's counsel informed him that those

documents were among other records from the period of the president's service a as vice president. the fbi went to the location and secured those documents. on january 5th, 2023, mr. loush briefed me on the results of his initial investigation and advised me that further investigation by a special counsel was warranted. based on his initial investigation, i concluded that under the special counsel regulations, it was in the public interest to appoint a special counsel. in the days since, while he conned the investigation, the department identified mr. hur for appointment as special counsel. this morning president biden's personal counsel called mr. loush and stated that an additional document baring classification markings was identified at the president's personal residence in delaware. when i first contacted him about this matter, he said he could

lead the initial investigation but would be unable to accept any long-term assignment because he would be leaving the department in early 2023 for the private sector. the u.s. attorney have conducted this initial investigation with professionalism and speed. i am grateful to them. earlier today, i assigned an order appointed robert hur as special counsel. the document authorizes him to investigate whether person or entity violated the law in connection with this matter. the special counsel will not be subject to the day-to-day supervision of any official department, but he must comply with the regulations, procedures, and policies of the department. mr. hur has a long and distinguished career as a prosecutor. in 2003 he swroined the department's criminal division where he worked on counterterrorism and appellate

matters. from 2007 until 2014, mr. hur served as an assistant district attorney where he prosecuted matters ranging from violent crime. in 2017 he rejoined the department as the principle associate deputy attorney general. in 2018 he was nominated and confirmed to serve as the u.s. attorney for the district of maryland. as u.s. attorney, he supervised some of the more important national security, public corruption, and other high-profile matters. i will ensure that mr. hur receives all the resources he needs to conduct his work. as i have said before, i strongly believe that the normal processes of this department can handle all investigations will integrity. but under the regulations, the extraordinary circumstances here require the appointment of a special counsel for this matter. this apontment underscores for the public, the department's

commitment to independence and accountability and particularly sensitive matters. and to making decisions indisputably guided only by the facts and the law. i am confident that mr. hur will carry out his responsibility in an even handed and urgent manner and in accordance with the highest traditions of this department. thank you all. >> so no questions from the attorney general, but the big i a announcement that there will be a special prosecutor in the case of documents found in separate locations, offices of president biden. his name is robert hur. he used to be u.s. attorney for the district of maryland. he went to stanford law and led the law review. my panel is with me.

lisa, what do you know about robert hur? >> as you just mentioned, chris, rob hur was the u.s. district for the district of of maryland during the trump administration, but previous to that, he was what's called the pay dak, which is the chief deputy to the attorney general. he served in that capacity between 2017 and 2018. he's a person who probably that having been said, he likely supervised another important prosecutor here. that's tom windom, who until jack smith, was leading the efforts on the january 6th investigation. in particular, the portions of it that deal with the trump white house and others around trump's orbit. i trust that he's a person of great integrity. he's currently a partner at a leading law firm. he has a great reputation. i knew him by reputation when i heard his name. i knew this was who we were

talking about. more facts will come out about why robert hur was the choice here, but as barr and i expected, the announcement of a special counsel doesn't come as a huge surprise to those who have been watching this closely over the last few days. >> thot a huge surprise, but what's his first order of business? how does this investigation unfold? >> well, he's going to take the handoff now from john loush in chicago. they are saying it seems that loush would have been the pick except he's leaving the justice department some time this year so it was handed off to robert hur. i imagine he will get a briefing from the team to find out what they have learned so far. then the question really becomes his commitment here. not a all the handling of classified documents is a crime, but opposed to the comments that this is being examined wholesomely. we have a special counsel, who

was a trump appointee. he was the trump u.s. attorney during the trump administration. so i think that helps rebut any negotiations that there maybe somebody with biassed political agenda. he likely will be conducting interviews of anyone who might have had access to the documents or any damage assessment that needs to be done. see if it there's a chain of custody, whether there was any spill or exposure outside of people within the united states government. >> so jonathan, the appointment of robert hur is the headline. it's going to be the part of this that people talk about most. help us to sort of deconstruct the rest of what the attorney general had to say, and does the timeline that he laid out jive with what we have heard in terms of reporting of how this all came to be? >> the timeline largely does, but there is one piece that

might be problematic for the white house. that's what the attorney general said december 20th, when the documents were found in the garage of president biden's wilmington home. meaning the white house is known for a few weeks know this had happened. and this week after the reporting about the first batch of documents, those found in the penn center, both the president and white house press secretary were pointedly asked, are there others. they didn't answer that question. they skirted around it. the answer is, yes, there were. that not the best of optics in regards to transparency. but it is what we know. this was documents now found in two locations. it's worth underscoring these documents are far fewer than discovered at donald trump's home. and this administration cooperating fully handing over documents and appoint a special

counsel. there may not be in crime here. this is certainly may have been a mistake. but this is another -- it's baggage now for this white house. it's something they have to deal with. as much as this white house was not thrilled at the idea of republicans controlling the house, and launching investigations there, here is yet another one they are going to have to deal with. even if it epds up leading to nothing, it will simply inevitably be a distraction as well as now this point of comparison for what's happening with donald trump. >> i feel like i have asked this question so many times, but it applies here again. there's the legal part of this and then there's the political part of this. as you listen to what the attorney general had to say and what jonathan had to say about that december 20th date, what's the big political concern and how do they handle it? >> one thing jonathan said there i certainly agree with. it would have been much easier for the spokes people at the white house, whether it's others

who have been out there in front of this, if they would have just dumped everything together. i suspect they were told they could not do that because they have been coordinating with the release of the information with the department of justice. there's a reason because the communication strategy would have obviously been to dump it all at once. politically for them, there's not a presidential election for almost two years. so to predict the politics of this, there's no way to do it. who knows what will be the actual issues in november of 2024. what they are betting on is that -- this is thot a bad news for them. because that means there will be apples and apples here. two special counsels reviewing two very different scenarios. one where the president said he didn't have knowledge. we need more details of that. one where former president trump took documents, held them, refused to give them back and defied a subpoena. very different. so having the department of justice look at both is actually

good for the white house in the long-term. but they are just going to have to suffer through the next few months or however long it takes for this investigation to be seen through by the special counsel, who was just appointed. >> kind of a similar question, matthew. there's the facts and then there's the spin of this there's no doubt that i'm expecting that the republicans will make something of this. but will it stick? >> it will stick in the short-term. i think the problem is once you get past the headlines, and i agree with jen on all this, in the end having two special counsels operating and presenting what their findings were will be a good thing. but two headlines that say classified documents, special counsels appointed isn't a good thing for the white house. it's not a good thing for democrats in this. i agree in 18 months we'll be

talking about 100 other things. donald trump will be a candidate for president at that point. and still joe biden has to take a decision in the course of this. but in the short-term and in the moment, what happens is republicans are going to say what they are going to say. democrats are going to say what they are going to say. but my problem in this is the group of independents who look at the headlines and they are basically saying they are all bad. in this moment right now is the problem for the white house. >> i think exactly to what matthew is saying, a lot of people will seeheadline that says the special counsel has been appointed. and that naturally leads some people to say, oh, this is more serious than we thought it was because they apointed a special counsel.

does it signal an escalation of the legal peril and the depth of the investigation? >> i think legally it does not. i agree the that politically the fact that a special counsel is appointed will be the headline. for those people who are low voters, they will assume the worst. i think this is an effort by merrick garland to ebb ensure a fair process. no one is above the law, even the president. especially when we have a former president under investigation for similar types of conduct. the conduct is very different, as we have already discussed earlier based on what we know. it's important that somebody investigate this and we do it by the book and do it properly. garland's goal has been to restore public confidence in the justice department as an objective agent in all of this

outside of partisan politics. this was probably a necessary step for the purpose of fulfilling public confidence as opposed to any legal action that will take place, based on what we know, it sounds like it was a mistake. certainly, there could be political consequences for that for joe biden. but there's nothing to indicate what he did was willful, disloyalty to the united states and obstruction of justice was involved in the contrary. it appears that voluntarily called his own foul in the national archives and returned the dlts as quickly as possible. so all of those is the right things. it's important to have some objective fact finding to make that determination rather than assuming that to be true. >> so julia, let me go to you. we have two separate investigations on two things that people who might not be following it closely seem similar. compare these two special

counsels, how different are robert hur and jack smith? >> it's funny. since we moved past robert mueller who are probably came into the job with the most clout, with the most well known after being fbi director, it seems that for much of the public, we're trying to collect our baseball cards as these names are announced. but these two, jack myth, special counsel looking into donald trump's handling of not only classified documents but also his involvement in the january 6th capitol insurrection compared to robert hur, they seem to have more in common than different. both are harvard educated and both served as u.s. attorneys under the trump administration. jack smith would have been an acting u.s. attorney in the middle district of tennessee just for about a six-month period in 2017. and as you know, robert hur served in maryland for a longer period of time during the trump administration. i think that they are specifically chosen so that

republicans can't say, well, how can we trust two men that were appointed by the biden administration. and that really weighs a lot into merrick garland's character and the legacy he thes to leave as an attorney general. he thes to separate himself from his predecessors. bill barr was seen as someone who stepped on the toes of robert mueller for the special counsel, who he did not appoint. and at the same time, merrick garland, who had his sights set on joining the supreme court, he wants to show that he's bringing in two men who are very separate from his own justice department. even though they do clearly have the expertise to do this job. >> so ryan nobles on capitol hill, it's worth reminding people how very different these two cases are. i think we can show folks the initial comparison about the small number of documents found at the biden home.

25 marked top secret. they were immediately turned over by the biden team to the national archives. having said that, now that we have heard from merrick garland, we heard about the appointment. what are you hearing on the hill? >> reporter: republicans see an opening here to draw somewhat of a comparison to the situation with the former president trump even though the comparison is not the same. we saw a number of different talking points from republicans today as it relates to this. those that are the most art dant supporters of the former president suggesting there should be a raid on the white house and various other locations where documents could have ended up. those are people like lauren boebert and matt gaetz, who are as close to donald trump as possible. then others are raising the very

true point that there's a difference between the ability to declassify information as vice president than there is as the. meaning the president has the ability to declassify things where a vice president would thot. these documents came during the vice presidential time. i do think the most important discussion that's coming out of capitol hill is that there are these congressional committees both on the house and senate side who do have authority to investigate this information and to investigate this particular situation. almost all of them are gearing up to do that. the oversight committee that is now chaired by james comer of kentucky, have already sent letters to the white house counsel informing them of their plans to investigate. comer said he's in discussions with the archives about a briefing. we saw the senate intelligence committees putting out statements saying they are interested in briefings and are

planning on investigating this. on the house side, it tends to be more partisan. the intel committee has always acted very bipartisan in both marco rubio, the vice chair, have really talked in unison about how they want information not only from the biden case, but the mar-a-lago document case as well. i do think this could serve as a check on what investigation the department of justice undertakes because you will have particularly in the house republican side individuals that would be looking at this at a very serious way without necessarily looking to defend the president who are going to have as much if not more access to this material and they will, in some respect, be able to issue a report as to what their findings are, hold hearings, ask questions that the department of justice has. they do not have prosecutorial

power, which the department of justice has, but they will be able to look at this information from an independent view than what we see of the special counsel investigation. >> and ken dilanian is with us. he just made his way from inside that briefing. the attorney general didn't take any questions. what do we still need to find out about what's happening here? >> chris, i thought they might lay out some of the reasons, the particulars of what they uncovered in review that led them to decide they had to appoint a special counsel. they didn't do that other than revealing that one additional piece of document had found in wilmington. the fundamental questions remain unanswered, which is what have they learned a about how the documents came to be in the wrong place, who packed them. the one thing we know from this decision is they haven't been able to exonerate the people involved and say this was an innocent mistake. there's no criminal issue here. if they had been able to do

that, they would not be appointing this special counsel. this is a pretty significant development showing that there's more to this story. there's more to be unearthed. merrick garland made it clear that the facts in this case and the law left him really no choice but to apoint a special counsel. >> so barbara, as an investigation is going on, how do you get to that question of intent? >> you have to prove it by the totality of the circumstances. because we cannot read another person's mind, we have to look at the indicators of what may have been in their mind. things like what the person said and did and other factors. so there would be a necessity to interview everyone involved, including joe biden himself. do you remember having this? why are they here? he may not remember, but it's important to ask those questions.

he didn't get them himself. so figuring out where they came from, how they were removed from their proper place and why they weren't returned is problematic, because we want the to make sure there's a good chain of custody for these documents. by asking questions, looking at documentation, if they have notes about these things or any other written records that would suggest why these documents were there, were they used for any improper purpose. from those things you can try to glean whether there was a willfulen sbnt. there's also a crime from intelligence in mishandling classified documents. that means more than carelessness, but as we learned in the investigation of hillary clinton's e-mails, the justice department has never charged a case criminally in the absence of one of those aggravating factors like willfulness. that means deliberately doing this on purpose knowing you have

them, lying about it, disloyalty to the united states, or exposing them to the public. i think in the absence of one of those things, it seems the charges run likely. those are the things the special counsel will be seeking to ascertain. >> from your knowledge, you were a part of a couple transitions. matthew touched on this as well. it can be somewhat frantic and stuff happens. but we're seeing this now serving the public eye for at least ought years because you did have it with hillary clinton, the question of classiied information. with donald trump and now with joe biden. does the system need to be fixed, updated, changed? can it be? or is this just a matter of there's always going to be room for human error, if that's what

happened here? >> yeah shurks. there are a lot of questions, as we have all said, we don't know yet. but maybe. and probably it should be. and if republicans were operating on the level, as my mother would say, and they maybe in the senate, we'll see, that should be part of the discussion. because it's not, to hi knowledge, there's not a process where somebody has some sort of certification and they g through every box that leaves a white house. that's not typically what happens. because historically, public servants high up and down the food chain want to do everything they can to follow the letter of the law. that means turning in classified documents, keeping them in the place where they should be stored, moving them from building to building, in the case thas should be moved in. but clearly, there are mistakes that are made and probably mistakes that have been made over the course of deades that we don't know about. so it maybe that this warrants a discussion about how this process should work during a discussion and how documents should be cleared out at the end

of a presidency. >> so there have been interviews of former aids and obviously they are trying to talk to everybody who had some role in the handling of these documents along the way, all that gets handed over now. right? >> that's right. it is a complete handover to robert hur. whether attorneys who have been involved in the district of illinois will continue on with the full investigation is unknown, but those interviews will now be conducted under robert hur's supervision. i would also like to point out this was clearly anticipated not only by hur, but his law firm. his biography has disappeared from the website. if you want to know more, you'll have to rely on the press. >> they called it an accomplished trial lawyer having

tried 14 cases as a federal prosecutor, a member of a team that won a clean sweep for vascular solutions, a medical device company and goes on and on. it's a very long and detailed biography. but to the point that we were marking earlier, i really wonder how much people will do in a deep dive on this. is there -- you kind of talked about it, but is there a sense of things are broken? that all the news that comes out something is wrong, something you thought that was in place that worked doesn't work anymore. does it add to the feeling that a lot of voters have, frankly, that they don't know which end is up and who to trust anymore. >> yeah, i think that's a big part of the rob in the united states. part of what the trump years did, this is one of my biggest fault finding of the trump years, they went so far over the edge of any traditions, rules

and all of that that the publics was just looked at the whole thing and said, wow a what a complete mess. we thought it was a mess, but one of the things -- politics and the media coverage, today's hour has been great, but doesn't allow for nuance and doesn't allow for shades it's either black or white. that's all it is in the course of this. politics doesn't allow that. and the polarized environment we're in certainly doesn't allow for that. but i think one thing that is joe biden has been a firm believer in the institutions of government. he's been a firm believer that we have to rebuild trust and we have to do that. donald trump never believed that, he never said it, he never even wanted to do it and he did everything possible to undermine it. but i think one of the things in his time it's the only way out of this mess and it's going to be a short-term mess is an operating and continuing integrity. you could make all the rules

that you the want on document following, document creation, but human beings with frailty and will make mistakes in the course of this not intentionally, but it's for the large part of the general public they are at the point in time where they don't trust hardly anyone. they don't trust federal government. many of them now don't trust the supreme court. many of them don't trust any institution that's out there. and this all we know today was accidental, all we know today in this it may have been a mistake and just a mishandling of this. for the general public, it's just going to be the another one like why do i trust any of these folks. >> buying into matthew's thesis, let me ask you a few things. if the democratic party is going to not take big hut.

we saw hillary clinton took a big hit. it didn't help donald trump. it falls on joe biden. the american public elected joe biden because he said he was the antidote to the chaos of donald trump. you can trust me. this is a guy that was on the intelligence committee. i don't know if the top of my head for how many years, but for a long time. >> chairman of foreign relations. >> so is it incumbent upon the president, in a different way than it stops there, but to assure the american people that they have been honest, transparent, does he have to come out and say something and not just one thing, but be very direct and help people understand what happened here. >> i think that's what he's attempting to do with some limitations, which means it's hard for them to satisfy exactly what you said. which is they are not going to

say anything whether it's the president or other people speaking on beafter of the white house that gets ahead of now this review that's being led by this special counsel. it meeps there's a limit to the clarify he can provide until that is done. we should give the public credit here. i don't think that everybody in the public who is watching is assuming erveg is exactly the same. i agree the headlines will be confusing, but what they are trying to do from the white house is explain and show by action, and this is where they will be judged, they are participating in the process. they are being forward about what they know now. yes, there are questions about why they didn't put it out in december. i agree with those. they will be judged by that as well, which is still a stark difference from donald trump, who is withholding documents. we don't know what he's done with them and not been participating or transparent this any way, shape, orform. it will be a challenge for them.

i think joe biden will need to be out there reassuring the public that he will continue to conduct himself with integrity and the treatment of classified documents. >> so jonathan lemire, let me put this graphic up again. you have talked about this on "way too early" and "morning joe." but how does the biden administration now, knowing everything we know, knowing what the headlines are going, take this factual information and communicate it in a way that gets across what they want people to know about what actually happened? >> that effort will start soon. we have a briefing a little later this afternoon. we'll see what she is has to say about it. they might not say much. to jen's point earlier, they are

going to be careful here about what the department of justice is doing. they want to make sure they are not seen as influenced by that investigation whatsoever, but there are points to be made from the white house or a biden allies are going to hammer home. basically the chart that we just showed there, these are two very deficient cases. there's some similarities, but there's differences of intent. there's differences of obstruction and differences about lies and volume. tease are two cases that are not apples t apples. but to the point made earlier, there's a bit of a fog machine now. it will be our job as the media to keep clarifying and say these things are not the same. and i already setting aside the chaos of the speakership vote, they do have control of the house, they're emboldened there, they have the power of the subpoena, we know they're going to be running a whole bunch of investigations and now they have

this to add to their list. so i think long term, with the special counsel, it is probably a good thing, because they will probably try to phle gate the appearance of bias but it is certainly a short term situation. >> and time to go back to barbara and lee because we've talked about the politics of the appointment of the special counsel and ultimately the appointment of a special counsel is about the legal aspect of this, and so from a legal standpoint, what are the differences in the way, in the things that these two special counsels are looking at? how are they different legally, these two cases? >> bell, they both begin with the idea that classified information is supposed to be handled in appropriate ways. there are rules about those things and failure to do so can violate a number of different statutes. so i imagine in those ways, they are very similar. and there will be examination as to whether any of those laws were violated and what kind of

advanced training the person had, in this case, the current president and vice president had appropriate train for these things. additional crimes might be presented in the case of donald trump just because of the search warrant that we saw before that had additional probable cause for obstruction of justice. and that makes it a more complicated crime and a more serious crime potentially. the obstruction of justice allegation was based on the failure of trump and his team to turn over documents when they received the grand jury subpoena, forcing the government to get a search warrant to go retrieve what turned out to be more than 20 boxes remaining after they had already assured the government that all of the documents had been turned over. so it is a very different scenario from what we have in this case. i imagine that once robert heard is able to interview a number of people, joe biden and any aides who had access to the documents, he can reach a conclusion as to whether or not this was an innocent but careless

mishandling of documents, or something more nefarious, a crime which might require additional investigation. so i see robert hur's review as potentially small, unless it is involved in something else, where as i see jack smith's investigation as something larger. i would also say this, chris. i think that the appointment of robert hur suggests to me that jack smith is serious and unlikely to result in a declaration against donald trump, i think you need to appoint robert hur to show that you are treating these two men equally and it makes me feel that it is more likely that charges will come against donald trump than if no special counsel is appointed here. >> to add anything you would like about this, lisa, but looking at the documents and the way they were obtained and donald trump's case is indeed more complicated but started earlier, but is it possible, for

example, that the biden case could be concluded before the trump case? >> it's possible, but when you ask those of us who have been watching our records investigation for a while, given how much work was done before the appointment of the special counsel, i think many people believe that jack smith will reach a decision on whether to indict donald trump by the summer. it's not clear to me that this investigation will be concluded by then. one of the things that has to be established is how did these documents get to where they were found, how many people had access to them, and in that intervening time, and when they were discovered, exactly what happened and when. and you know, i agree with barbara that the scope here is small, relatively speaking, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it can be resolved in a matter of weeks or even months. one other thing that i really wanted to draw you and the viewers's attention to is bob hur and his background.

he is not a stranger to special counsel investigations and we appointed out he was district attorney for maryland during the trump indication and also rosen steen and was the person who supervised the russia investigation because that attorney general jeff sessions had to recuse himself, bob hur served in that capacity as rosen steen's deputy for nearly a year before he became a u.s. attorney for the district of maryland so he likely has a lot of insight into the special counsel investigation and the supervision by the department of justice that hopefully will be helpful to him as he gets himself off the ground and, to your point, maybe will help him go more expeditiously. >> an extraordinary hour, because i had such great people on to guide us through it. i want to thank julia ainsley, ken dilanian, jonathan lemire, lisa rubis, jen psaki, ryan nobles, barbara mcquade, i hope i didn't forget anyone and thank

your sincerely for helping us navigate the appointment of a special counsel. make sure you join us at 1:00 for "chris jansing reports" every day on msnbc, every weekday on msnbc. "katy tur reports" is up next. r.

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good to be with you. i'm katy tur. here we go again. attorney general merrick garland appointed another special counsel today, this time to investigate president biden's handling of, pred biden's handling of classified documents. robert k.hur will oversee the probe before going into the public sector, he was a u.s. attorney for the district of maryland, from 2018 to 2021, a trump appointee, unanimously confirmed by the u.s. senate. this now means there are two special counsels working for the d.o.j. right now, one investigating the current president, and the other investigating the former. there is a lot to unpack. including why attorney general garland made this ci