josh campbell, thank you for all of that context, that sets us up for this conversation with elliot williams, serves as deputy assistant attorney, and margaret talev, managing editor of axios. elliot, let me start with you, the picture is remarkable, the details of the alleged evidence to conceal and remove and obstruct, we wouldn't have this if not for this filing for a special master and these additional, like, rolling reveals because of the dragging out from the trump team. is this evidence of a team that doesn't know the truth is incompetent or just thinks this is worth it. >> well, what i think it is is evidence of a justice department that's not fighting its battles and press releases, and fighting its battles, frankly in court filings. if you notice, the justice department said nothing publicly about this. merely it's like a platitude, when the attorney general says we speak through court filings. to josh's point about those coverings on those sheets, those are alarming, he gave a beautiful explanation as to what those acronyms mean. the far more alarming fact buried in the document i

elliot williams joins me now. good to see you, my friend.ubt when it comes to the redactions that they do submit? >> he really is. and it seemed like he really should. what the judge is saying is that, look, there might be some way that the document can be redacted in a way that's in the public interest. that's the standard. will the public be served in the document put out but in a manner that doesn't reveal secret information for law enforcement or the people being investigated, and so on. that is a narrow, narrow needle to thread and we'll just have to see where they land with the justice department and whether they and the judge can agree on it, so we'll see. >> so that's the doj side. let's turn to trump. he and his allies are pushing for the affidavit to be unsealed, but the judge today points out they have yet to file a motion in court to that effect. so help us make sense of this. it appears that we're seeing a public side to this story and one quite different in court. >> i think that's exactly it. it's sort of a public side -- it's

he was seduced, but now he's paying the price for that. >> ken freetd man, phil mudd, elliot williams, thank you very much. >> thank you. >>> congresswoman liz cheney lost her gop primary but vows she's not going anywhere. details on her next mission to block donald trump's return to office. >>> former alaska governor sarah palin is one step closer to making a political comeback we'll talk the state of the gop we'll talk the state of the gop next. ♪nenever touch ground, never enough♪ ♪got me feeling goodd♪ ♪vibes♪ ♪ ♪got me feeling good♪ ♪vibes♪ ♪ ♪everything's everything's alright alright♪ get a free storage upgrade and case when you pre-order. subway's drafting 12 new subs, for the all-new subway series menu. let's hear about this #7 pick, from a former #7 pick. juy rotisserie-style chicken. you shld've been #1. this isn't about the sanich, is it chuck? it's n. the new subway series. what's your pick? ♪ ♪ the thing that's different about a vrbo vacation home. you always have the whole place to yourself. no stranger at the dinner table making things awkward. or in another room taking

>> elliot williams is back with us here at the table.g to be -- it seems like -- actually, i have to say i'm a little surprised by how vehemently republicans have pushed back on this. this is going to be both a political battlefield and a legal battlefield. so the question is, is it legal for biden to do this? you are the man to answer that. >> sheer a good way to put it. remember when bill clinton said it depentds on the meaning of what the word is. this they come down to the definition of any. there's a law from 2003 that says the secretary of education can take a waiver, modify any provision of student loan repayment regulation. now, that's pretty broad. he has very broad authority under the law, but it's open to being challengedment that's number one. number two is who actually files the lawsuit. you have to have been harmed legally in order to file a lawsuit. the question is, is that loan processors like sally mae? is it states? each of these parties has a complicated path to being able tolawsuit. i assure you there are very smart,

joining me now, elliot williams.th this guy if he wasn't going to cooperate in any criminal trial? >> believe it or not, anderson, going to trial is really a matter of resources and costs and benefits the prosecutors have to think through. does it make more sense to go to trial and run the risk of losing and spend the resources or guarantee that you get a conviction and someone going to jail? it sounds sort of odd to the layperson. >> it sounds like prosecutors kind of blinked. they decided, well, we'd rather get the conviction than -- >> than nothing, or maybe lose because so much of what would have been on trial here is subjective. now, some of it, you know, there would be financial statements and records and so on. but this question, this is what kara was talking about a little earlier. when we're talking about compensation or tuition being paid, there's a question, well, maybe this might have been actually part of his compensation package. a jury could have been tricked by that or at least been confused enough by

elliot williams, kasie hunt, gloria borger. thank you very much. >>> i'll ask a key member of the house january 6th select committee congressman adam schiff. he is standing by live. we will discuss when we come back. so automatic emergency braking and lane departure wararning work properly. don't wait--schedule now. >> singers: ♪ safelitite repai, safelite replace. ♪ thinkorswim® by td ameritrade is more than a trading platform. it's an entire trading experience. that pushes you to be even better. and st might change how you trade—forever. because once you experience thinkowim® by td ameritrade ♪ there's no going back. age is just a number. and mine's unlisted. try boost® high protein with 20 grams of protein for muscle health. versus 16 grams in ensure high protein. boost® high protein also has key nutrients for immune support. boost® high protein. moderate to severe eczema still disrupts my skin. despite treatment it disrupts my skin with itch. it disrupts my skin with rash. but now, i can disrupt eczema with rinvoq. rinvoq i

and it's very likely that the justice department will stay silent. >> gloria borger, john king, elliot williams, thank you. >>> next, a former federal judge who signed off on numerous search warrants during her time on bench joins us. >>> and later, senate majority leader chuck schumer on the string of legislative victories for the current president now somewhat overshadowed by all the news on the former president. discover intuitive technology at the lexus g golden opportunity sales event. among my patients, i often see them have teeth sensitivity as well as gum issues. does it worry me? absolutely. sensodyne sensitivity & gum gives us thdual action effect that really takes care of both our teeth sensitivity as well as our gum issues. the's no question it's something that i would recommend. "peace of mind." such a big, beautiful idea. and for us at booking.com this means - free cancellation on most bookings. it's a bit functional. but we'll gladly be functional. so you can be free. booking.com booking.yeah ♪ got my hair got my head ♪ introducing new one a day multi+. a complete multivitamin pl

carrie cordero, elliot williams, all of you. much more on this ahead including liz cheney's response to this. >>> so more than 170,000 residents of jackson, mississippi, facing another day without clean water. that means no drinking, no brushing your teeth. the failure of the city's main water treatment plant has left people unable to flush toilets. scores of people lined up to receive bottled water until the supply ran out. the national guard has been called in to help. one mississippi state senator tells cnn there is no quick fix. >> we are hopeful that we can avoid catastrophe this week and by the end of the week we are told that if the major pump is replaced we can solve the pressure issue and get past the immediate crisis, then the focus will be on whether we can get water that is safe to drink. we don't know the answer to that yet. the health department and the city and the mississippi emergency management agency are there right now. that will be the next thing to make sure that we fix, but the immediate problem is pressur

carrie cordero and elliot williams. carrie, i have to say this -- they put stuff in this document that is new and evan just reported there are documents founding, a lot of classified documents that contain information about human sources. hcs, fisa and other documents in mar-a-lago. in the same paragraph that evan was just referring to, they talk about how some of the documents contain handwritten notes from the president, the former president, then president trump, former president trump himself. >> paragraph 47 con tantains th information why the fbi had an obligation to go in and make sure that there was no more classified information and remove any additional information that was at mar-a-lago. this included the 15 boxes they reviewed that had been there included 25 documents marked as top secret, 92 documents marked as secret. just to give our viewers a sense when, i used to work at the justice department in the national security division and handled documents that are at the secret level or top secret level, we wo

i want to bring in attorney elliot williams. ments, you're listening to coach even reading, the pages, looking at the photographs, what's say you, sir? >> oh, my god, there's so much to say, don. but just to pull out one passage on page ten of the document, it says the -- were quote, concealed and removed from the storage room, and efforts were likely taken to -- governance investigation. that is sort of like the line on the internet, tell me you were accused of obstruction of justice without tell me you are accused of obstruction of justice. that is laying out the standard for usc 50 19. >> what's the line, what's the line, what's the line on page ten? >> concealed and removed from the storage room, and efforts were likely taken to obstruct the governments investigation. >> got it. >> so, they're not talking here just about the sort of possession or even mishandling or destruction of document. it's trying to thwart the efforts of the justice department, or any other authorities, to carry out an investigation. and that is a serio

elliot williams.omething competent and horrible,s now. it was the important ones. she talked about the senior executive service. it would boggle their minds. that's just the way it works unless congress or the department of homeland security and other law enforcement agency put laws like that in place. >> what the rep. it's the defendant on homeland security, department of defense, dhs. these are sensitive agencies proerks texting law enforcement. shouldn't these have been in place the day a. the text messages are quite fleeting unless someone chooses the back them up. it could put in place retention policies. this is evidence both in cases they're bringing but also the january 6th investigation that might be lost forever. >> if they get it start. coming up next, 45 plus 1 plus 50. except kyrsten sinema wants change to the new climatate and security. age is just a number. and mine's unlisted. try boost® high protein with 20 grams of protein for muscle health. versus 16 grams in ensure high protein. bo

legal analyst and former federal prosecutor elliot williams, visiting professor of american law university, the author of how to think like a lawyer. and joining us, palm beach county state attorney dave ehrenberg. nice to see you here, we've got a law firm spread happening right now. who are we billing for this hour? we don't know, but look, it's just a week ago today that we learned from the court that trump was keeping top-secret, highly classified documents at mar-a-lago. we found out the doj interviewed two top white house lawyers about it and next week we may learn what's in the affidavit that made it so urgent for them to actually sees this material. we think about this investigation, that one, a lot has happened in a very short amount of time. what you make of it? >> a lot has happened in a short amount of time, the most significant development right now is what happens with this affidavit. i'll be the first to tell you, i was surprised that the judge yesterday showed as much willingness as he did, in being willing to possibly make portions of the affidavit supporting the search wa

. >>> let's bring in aerrol louis columnist for new york magazine and elliot williams, former federal prosecutor. elliot, put this into p perspective for us where this investigation is right now. >> it is an investigation into trump himself isn't going anywhere or probably isn't going very far because the person that probably would have been the one to testify against him isn't going to testify against him. now, look, pretend this isn't allen weisselberg. most criminal defendants plead guilty, something like 94% of people who are charged with crimes plead guilty. it is not that uncommon for someone particularly in a relatively small in the grand scheme of financial crimes case to plead guilty to something like this. what people care about is he testifying against donald trump and he's not. >> not exactly. not against donald trump as part of the d.a. criminal investigation into donald trump the person. but he is going to testify in the trial against the trump organization, which does include that word trump, which -- it does have an impact on the family. >> certainly it does. and we sa

reaction now to this new decision by the jones jury from former congresswoman abbey finkenhour, elliot williams and alex stewart. there's a lot to unpack about that idea, and one of the things to keep in mind, alex jones he's still on-air. it's not as if he's been silent. part of the trial has been about comments he continues to make. so i just wonder your impression about the idea the claims he's being silenced by all this. he's still talking. >> he is. and let's just say to that mother and the other mothers and fathers of these children you are doing courage and justice for your children by speaking out and going against people that are making up this nonsense. look, in america we have freedom of speech. we can all say what we want. we also have free markets. you can sell goods and services. this is the bad side of that. this is someone using his freedom of speech to peddle conspiracy theories and he's selling it on the marketplace. and unfortunately, when he's selling these conspiracy theories there are people out there, many people willing to buy this. and he will continue to do so until he

elliot williams and the former director of communications for national intelligence, john turner.n attorney signs a letter carrying extra weight they understand what they're doing. 11 sets of classified documents taken away. how do they explain that? >> so far, we haven't heard the explanation necessarily. we know, john, that that declaration was found, at least in the eyes of prosecutors, the eyes of the fbi to be false. and, you know, you can begin to see, you know, where the former president and his team are going to go. right? which one of the things they're saying is, well, everything was declassified. there's various exotic versions of that, one of them being by virtue of sending documents to from the white house to the residence just by doing that the president was declassifying things. again, nobody knows exact where that order may have come from. what we know, though, the fact that they did this declaration now potentially puts other people at risk. legal exposure, for whoever signed that document. because if the fbi and the prosecutors believe that that person knowingly

let's bring in cnn analyst elliot williams, and julian cayenne. thank you for both being with us. elliot, i want to begin with you. when we look at the filing, it was extra pages that were requested. they had a maximum of 20, they went for 40, double what was normally allowed. so when you look at the detail, we've seen this summary of the filing, some of the details there, what is your immediate take away from the importance of this filing, and the likelihood of success? >> yeah, well, it's not uncommon for parties to get a page limit raised on a filing in court. partly because, in a situation like this, these are issues that have never come up before an american law. just think about how unique it is, or the fact that it is unique, that you have a former president accused of having mishandled documents, perhaps having broken the law. and this presents a number of very complex legal questions, number one, sort of what to do with documents once they are taken back from the president, or who is entitled to them, and so on. so it's quite complex. so, number one, that's on the page lim

. >> let's get more insight from our expert, elliot williams, ryan lizza, security analyst bob baer, and david erenberg. high to all of you. elliot, i'm going to kick it off with you because this federal judge is not ruling out appointing a special master. is it necessary, as evan pointed out, doj has already gone through the documents with a filter team? >> it's a couple things why it may not be that useful at this point to have a special master. number one, doj has had this evidence since august 8th and has probably gone through it, copied it, and put it in boxes at this point, so there's not a ton of use to it, number one. and number two, as we have seen, even if there are attorney/client privilege documents in there, the main point former president trump is making is because of executive privilege documents you need a special master. that doesn't make a ton of sense for a number of reasons starting with the fact he's seeking to exert executive privilege against his own executive branch. the justice department investigating crimes is carrying out executive branch function. so ther

. >>> let's get important respective from elliot williams.et's walk through the several new develops that are going to be confusing to people at home. let's start, former federal prosecutor, you worked at the justice department, the justice department chooses its work carefully. when you looked at this court filing where they defend trying to keep the affidavit itself secret, they did tell us some things. what's important? >> they're investigating some very, very serious things. number two, they care about the safety of people. if they start revealing who agents are, who judges are that are signing off on things, people's safety could be compromised and they know that. number three, the integrity of evidence. they are fearing that if they make any of these methods or evidence available to the public, witnesses may start trying to conceal evidence or flee. so both in terms of the seriousness of his crimes and what they're afraid of, there is a lot without saying a lot. >> and a lot of trump allies are saying, no, that doesn't work. show your c

let's begin there with cnn legal analyst elliot williams, former federal prosecutor and former deputytant attorney general. good morning. for folks, this is a completely separate probe in georgia, but this grand jury has heard from a lot of key folks. and lindsey graham is saying, no, i don't have to answer questions before this grand jury because the calls that i made to brad raffensperger about any ballots and being tossed out, et cetera, was part of my job as a lawmaker. if you look at the speech and debate clause of the constitution article i section 6 says for any speech or debate in either house, they, meaning the lawmaker, shall not be questioned in any other place. but that's in civil suits. would that hold up here, do you think, in this grand jury probe? >> yeah, it's sort of like everybody's kind of right on this, and it's a complicated legal issue. look, the debate clause really does protect much of what members of congress do. it was started or put in place to prevent members of congress from being sued for things like defamation, for things they say on the floor of the ho

. >>> now let's bring in our legal analyst, carrie cordero and elliot williams as well as abby phillip. thank you all for joining me this evening. i want to go to you first, elliot. you just heard jessica schneider talking about how the judge, bruce reinhart, is essentially in agreement with the doj. he says that the redactions that they have proposed are narrowly tailored. so what does that tell us about what we're actually going to see in this redacted affidavit tomorrow? >> so we could have seen redactions that were basically like a page of black boxes or pages and pages of black boxes. >> i've got some examples here. we could see something like this tomorrow. >> well, you could have. but it seems that the judge was satisfied that was not the case. now look, we know that sources, methods, names of individuals, addresses perhaps of some places, names of agents would have been redacted. but it seems that the judge was satisfied there is at least some information that is in the public interest to see and that's the legal standard there. is it in the public interest to release the docum

let's talk about this big picture with elliot williams, former deputy assistant attorney general who joins us now and joe walsh, former republican congressman from illinois. thank you for being here. joe, i want to begin with you, because you say yourself, these are your words, you were at one point previously in your career part of the quote, unquote right wing media machine. so i want your read on the impact now that we have seen these threats against folks online, threats saying that garland should be assassinated, someone posted that. my god. to what you're hearing not just from random folks online, but from republican lawmakers right now against the department of justice. paul gosar saying destroy the fbi. >> yeah, poppy. here's the impact. because i come from that world, i hear from republican voters every day and, poppy, just yesterday i heard from hundreds of republican voters that the fbi planted evidence down at mar-a-lago. hundreds of republican voters told me that yesterday, without any shred of evidence. i'll hear the same thing today from more republican voters. and i'm

also joining me now is cnn legal analyst elliot williams, a former deputy assistant attorney general under president obama. great to have both of you here. i've got the fbi component. i've got what's happening in the grumblings of the doj. let me begin with you, andrew, because i have to be honest with you. when "the wall street journal" reported this, the idea of having an informant there wasn't the shock of the century to most people reading, going, there must have been some reason to go back at that particular point in time. who it might be, if there actually is a person there, do you have questions about that particular notion? do you have the same sort of instinctive vibe that says somebody must have picked up a phone or done something to say, you didn't look over here? >> absolutely, laura. so for many reasons, right? first and foremost, the sequence of events here just didn't make sense, that they were all meeting -- both sides were meeting at mar-a-lago as recently as june and discussing the documents, reviewing things that were in the basement, and then a month or a month an

. >> good idea, jeff zeleny, elliot williams, laura coates, thank you. >>> breaking news up next, mikhail gorbachev, the last president of the soviet union has died at age 91. we're going to get reaction live from moscow. car stat. little things like getting a real offer in two minutes really make roger happy. so doeoes carvana's customer advocate caitlin picking up his s car at promptly 10am. hi, are you roger? berglund. with the honda accord? yes i am. it's right over there. will i be getting? and he loves that caitlin pays him on the spot. yep, rog. it's the little things that drive you happy. we'll drive you happy at carvana. ♪ ♪ the thing that's different about a vrbo vacation home. you always have the whole place to yourself. no stranger at the dinner tablmaking things awkward. or in another room taki up space. it's just you and your people. because why would you ever share your vacation home with someone you wouldn't share your vacation with. ♪ ♪ that was quick. and rewarding. i earn 3% cash back at drugstores with chase freedom unlimited. that means i earn on my bug spray and my s

attorney george conway, former chief of staff to the homeland security adviser miles taylor, and elliot williams. glad to have all of you here and your thoughts on this issue. first of all, george, why give the letter out there? it actually outlines a lot of what you've done wrong. why would you front that? by you, i mean them. >> it's incomprehensible to me. basically that and the motion he filed yesterday are essentially admissions of guilt. >> yeah. >> and it's inexplicable to me other than you have a deranged client and bad advisers, both legal and political. that's the only explanation i have for it. but he is basically -- what he should be doing with this documents case is what he did in the new york attorney general case, which is pleading the fifth amendment and keeping his mouth shut. >> or maybe asking for that special master a lot sooner, right? i mean the idea of saying to themselves, hey, i spent two weeks and more than a day, right, and actually could you not look at what i gave you two weeks ago, and by gave, i mean actually you took from my own home. >> to clarify and add a littl

. >>> joining me, elliot williams, and and drew mccabe. another stunning series of events and a whole new story to wake up to this morning in terms of what this was about. i mean, elliot, the fact that "the washington post" is reporting that these documents were potentially tied to nuclear weapons, how does that completely change the calculus when the doj, when garland makes a decision, which he said he approved, to go in, and to go in in this fashion? >> yeah, you know, to be clear, poppy, we don't know what's in the documents. >> right. >> big picture. most importantly, however, what we do know is that if a document is marked top secret, and, look, it has been a few years since i handled top secret information, but the definition is that it is disclosure to the public or outside of government could cause grave harm to american national security. that's the legal definition of it. so regardless of what is in the documents, someone high up in government has deemed these -- might have deemed these materials to cause harm to the united states

. >>> and joining us now is elliot williams, cnn legal analyst and former federal prosecutor and abby phillip, cnn's senior political correspondent and anchor of "inside politics." thank you for being here. elliot, what are we -- you heard katelyn break that down, there is this line of what to show and what to not reveal and so i'm wondering what is happening behind closed doors at the justice department this morning. >> right, well, whether it is this morning or over the last couple of weeks, what the justice department has been doing is determining how they could propose to the judge how they redacted the document in a manner that would be useful for the public interest. now, of course, let's be clear, the justice department does not want to release this at all, but a judge told them to, they're going to comply with that order. seeing what they could take out. my guess is that a lot of that document to a point of being just 20 pages of black boxes is going to end up being redacted. they're going to put those together, turn them over to the judge today, and at some point the judge wi

of where we go from here, i want to long-time conservative attorney george conway along with elliot williams. they both join me, former federal prosecutor and former deputy assistant attorney general. george, when you look at the charges being investigated here tonight and the list of what was taken as far as you can go through it, and there's a lot of classified information on there, do you think trump's in real trouble here? >> yeah, i think he's in very substantial legal jeopardy. if anybody else had done this, as i said last night on your show, if a national security advisor had done this, if an assistant to the president had done, this if i had done this or you had done this, we'd probably be already charged. having top secret and top secret sci information in our home? you're not allowed to bring that out. you're not allowed to bring that home. people have been charged for a lot less. there was a woman last year in a very highly publicized case, she was a civilian in the defense department and she was detailed to the u.s. embassy in manila. and she took home to her bedroom a couple of

. >>> with us now former deputy assistant general elliot williams and former deputy director of the fbimaggie haberman in the "new york times" and her reporting about philbin and cipollone being questioned by the department of justice. it says, quote, mr. philbin tried to help the national archives retrieve the material, two m people familiar with the discussion said, but the former president repeatedly resisted and treaties from his advisers, quote, it's not theirs, it's mine, several advisers say mr. trump told them. >> a couple things, one, john, there is this question of whether cipollone and philbin are in trouble based on their role on this. no, these were the people standing between the president and some of his worst impulses and this whole idea of they're not mine -- it's mine, it's not -- that's fundamentally incorrect. they are the american people's documents. even if they had been declassified they're government documents that should have been stored properly in a different way other than at the president's private residence. >> what does it tell you, though, in the issue of

more on the political and legal aspects of this case, i want to bring in abby finken finkenauer, elliot williams and alice stewart. and we just got new audio from scarlett lewis, the mother of jesse lewis, about what she was thinking as she was testifying. listen. >> you know, when i got up on the witness stand and looked at alex, i thought about justice. you know, i had been so nervous. i think that was obvious. before i faced alex. but once i looked into his eyes, i realized, that's what jesse did to the shooter who came into his first grade classroom after just having murdered his principal and guidance counselor and he stood up to him, adam lanza, and saved nine of his classmates' lives and i hope i did that incredible courage justice when i was able to confront alex jones, who was also a bully, and i hope that that inspires other people to do the same in their own lives. we all have the capacity for the courage that jesse showed. and sometimes it does take courage to show love, but we do all that capacity. >> wow, that's just amazing to think about the idea of standing up to a bully and thi

we talked to elliot williams last night and he said it would basically be a giant black box because of all the redactions. >> no, i think that's right. one other thing related to what we've been talking about, by the way, whereas the judge asked the government to check with trump about the release of the warrant, he's not asked trump's lawyers about the release of the search warrant affidavit. and my understanding is that trump's lawyers were present today but didn't say anything. >> right. >> clearly if trump weighed in, that would at least eliminate one concern, which is the concern that someone who has not yet been indicted, if he's ever indicted, this will be massive pretrial publicity. if he has waived those arguments by agreeing to this release. but they said nothing. >> carrie, why do you think that is, carrie? >> i think two potential reasons which are very different of why the trump lawyers might not have said anything. one, they can let the media organizations do the work on this. the arguments in the public interest are stronger from my perspective as coming from the media o

with me now is elliot williams cnn legal analyst and former federal prosecutor. this is a grand jury subpoena for the documents that the committee has used quite a lot in their hearings. >> right. and most importantly there's so many investigations going on right now, john, it's important -- federal investigations here -- it's important to keep these straight. what you have is the mar-a-lago search documents, that's something separate. these are documents that were requested by the national archives from the committee, right. now, this is a sign of how aggressively the january 6th committee, remember them, has been working all along. some might say, some have criticized the justice department for not being as aggressive. now, look, they are different bodies, they serve different purposes, but needless to say what it indicates is that the january 6th committee really has a lot of information in their possession that prosecutors want. >> and the federal investigators they may have been slower, but they wanted them, they have them and now we will see how they use th

i'm joined now by former fbi deputy director andrew mccabe and elliot williams. to have you here. if pat cipollone and patrick philbin were tasked with being in charge of the presidential records and the classified documents, aren't they in trouble today? >> you know, they may not be in trouble today because they may have been doing their jobs and attempting to advise their colleagues to not break the law, right? and so they can provide a tremendous amount of very valuable information as to how documents were stored there, who did what, who saw what. i don't think they're in trouble just yet. >> in terms of who saw what, maggie haberman reports that investigators obtained surveillance footage of the hallway outside of the storage room at mar-a-lago and saw something that alarmed them. and that's what sped up the process for getting a search warrant. what could they have seen on that tape, andrew? >> this gets to the core of what a counterintelligence investigation actually is. the purpose of a cia investigation is to mitigate a potential threat to national securi

so joining us now is cnn legal analyst and former deputy assistant attorney general elliot williams to join in this conversation. elliott, this all came from a letter that we saw for the first time from the national archives yesterday to trump's legal team and it really revealed the series of data points that we hadn't seen in their ongoing conversation, like months' long conversation about this. what jumped out to you? >> a couple things. first, thanks to my friend nia for the smoothest segue ever into talking about donald trump, number one. income two, what you pointed out, john, is the extent to which the national archives and the fbi gave the trump team ample opportunities to comply through going back and forth via letters suggesting that the national archives wanted to bring the fbi in to start looking at the documents, just waiting several weeks for the president's team to respond. so it debunks this idea that the search of mar-a-lago came out of nowhere. it had been percolating for months and months and months. number two, you have the second now indication that there were very,

as a result, attorney general elliot richardson has resigned his post as attorney general. and when deputy attorney general williams ruggles house -- william ruggles house -- william ruckelshouse refused the orders of the president, he was discharged. the acting attorney general will now be solicitor robert bork, who informed cox he had been discharged. all this happened after a day in which special prosecutor cox had said that he could not carry out the provisions of a new position the president took on the watergate tapes, which prosecutor cox was trying to get for the watergate grand jury at which the senate watergate committee was 22 get for its hearing spirit repeating -- deputy attorney general william ruckelshouse has been at this -- has been discharged by the president tend attorney general elliot richardson has been that has resigned as a result of the discharge of special prosecutor archibald cox. this has been a bulletin from cbs news. >> all the announcements were breathless, like that, everybody was in shock, surprised, gasping, and it was a stunning event. the next day's headlines, you can believe nix

a state attorney for palm beach county and ellie williams is a former federal prosecutor and cnn analyst. elliot, the former president invoking his fifth amendment rights here. it has gone on for hour six. we heard. is there what you expected that he would do, knowing his history of the depositions? >> yeah, i think so. so it's a few things, victor. what the fifth amendment is. it says in the constitution no person can be compelled to testify against themselves. you can't bring someone in to have them testify and use the testimony in a criminal proceeding. you have the right to remain silence, if do you have watched a cop show, that's the fifth amendment. that's what the president asserted here. you know, actually, he's got a basis for asserting the fifth amendment here, because we know about an ongoing criminal investigation in new york city based on the same facts that the attorney general is investigating today. the question of whether he unlawfully inflated the values of some of his properties. so, you know, yes, we could have expected it. it might be the one time donald trump actually has a