joining me is andrew weissman and a senior member of muller's special investigative team. i have so many questions. this is my geeky question. is there any significance to the fact that she's going to issue a written ruling? >> i'm a total nerd. >> nerds rule. >> yeah. i wouldn't put a lot of weight on whether it's oral or written. she could have done an oral decision and say written to follow but i think it's good to take time to think about it and either side may want to appeal this. she'll want to put her best foot forward. i wouldn't put too much stock in the medium she chooses. >> to me, i wonder what it is she's considering. trump's own lawyers, alina haba on hannity last night, let me just play her. this is what ms. haba said last night on fox. >> i do have first-hand knowledge, as you know, i have been down there. i'm down there frequently. i have never seen that. i have never, ever seen that. that is not the way his office looks. anybody that knows president trump's office, he has guests frequently there. it is -- it's just a joke. >> isn't that an admission that

>> andrew weissman, i don't know that i would have put on the bingo card asking you if you agree withn yu. he said this. trump is not allowed to have the records and keep them. he can't get copies but he can't keep them away from the archives that. is settled. he told nbc news in an interview with the national conservatism conference, it's not whether trump violated the law. he did. it's not whether the government had legal grounds for the search warrant. it does. question really is whether he could be charged and the real issue people on both sides should recognize is it a good use of prosecutorial discretion to charge him. it should be something more important like this, like being involved with the january 6th conspiracy. oh, john, you give us a minute, right? we now have bill bar and chris christie, too. these are not republicans who saw trump for the threat that he was. these are far-right wing republicans. this is bill barr, chris christie, john yu saying he broke the law and he could be charged. >> yeah. i also, look, i agree with a lot of that statement. i don't agree with the

andrew weissman, i think i've heard you say and most other legal analysts say this ended up probably in the right place with a slow down from judge cannon there. what do you make of the ruling yesterday? >> if you step back and think about what happened here, donald trump by bringing this lawsuit is worse off than he was before he brought this lawsuit. two things happened, when he brought this lawsuit, it allowed the department of justice to lay out with the specifics of why donald trump was -- had stolen documents, why he lied about them. why they engaged in a search warrant because they weren't getting the documents through a voluntary process or a grand jury subpoena, which is not a request, it is a legal demand. that was misstep number one, and now in one day, you have the 11th circuit with the majority of the panel being appointed by donald trump ruling in every single way, as you said, a thorough opinion, and they go through chapter and verse against judge cannon in minding that donald trump, among other things, had no possessory interest this these documents. they are not his.

andrew weissman, this is my brain fried.ile for the time he was there, but the berman book is the belly of the crocodile. you see what's there and it's so much darker than what we surmised. >> i agree with you. you have to remember -- my first reaction to the berman revelations were, it's not surprising. remember, this is bill barr who replaced attorney general sessions because attorney general sessions, as loyal as he was, was not going to sacrifice the integrity of the justice department to donald trump, and that's why bill barr was put in. and you have him acting to dismiss the michael flynn case, to reduce the sentence of roger stone. so this is all -- everything that's being recounted is again -- i won't say shocking. it is completely in keeping with what we knew, and one thing that sort of to me was remarkable is ed o'callahan who takes quite a drubing in this book is a former sdny senior prosecutor. so for jeff berman to really be calling him out to me sort of means something that this is really trying to add to the h

. >> back with us, neal katyal, andrew weissman and bradley moss.rambled on they are but i cut off right around the point where the judge would if you satisfy in court started rambling off about the radical left. bradley moss, so they have a potential defendants testimony, not under oath, saying, everything the classified. >> yeah, what i would remind on trump's, he has the right right to remain silent. everything he says. and it will be used against him in a court of law. he's putting his lawyers into a corner here. they have no other option at this point but to try to concoct some kind of argument about the classification. clearly, he is expecting them to put up something from cash patel in the so-called others who are apparently in the room. but here's the problem he's going to face, whether it is before judge cannon or through the special master or the 11th circuit in the supreme court. the case law is clear that if he's going to try to argue if the, was to be an issue, about -- going to try to argue that in some fashion, he has to have specific

i was talking the andrew weissman as we exited the course house, about whether trump's teams would have access to the documents marked as classified that still exist at mar-a-lago and were seized by the department of justice by the fbi on august 8th. the question here is whether trump's attorneys would get their eyes on the documents. they argued they not only needed to see what they were working with, what potentially could be used against their clients, the former president trump being that individual, but then also the extent to which those individuals,those documents not only was it a necessity of knowing, but also one of the attorneys here making the case that he has top secret clearance from a previous case that he had worked on in virginia. that lawyer being trusty. at the same time, judge dearie seemed to push back, making the case it is his prerogative. in his own words, i will determine if you need to know and essentially you will be provided those documents, which would be an indicator that it's not a strong likelihood that trump's team will be able to access all of those doc

mueller witch hunt, the dirty dossier, fisa fraud, frequent msk dnc guest peter struck, lisa page, andrew weissman, the very same office where a top agent named tim tebo office w just qu, suddenly retired. tebow was reportedly escorted out of the bureau after allegations of liberal bias thd misconduct in the hunter biden investigation. his office is accused of sloen ' walking the probe into hunter's laptop from .s laptop and in the fall of 2020 in order to secure the election for joe bidemn, as donald trumpr stated, quote, people thate retire from the fb i, they'rerter not perp walked out of the headquarters building on a hot sony afternoon in august after being screamed att and ridiculed by his bosses like the laptop. this was the firing from . but now chris ray and merrick garland are asking us to simply trust this very same office in ane washington sewer and swamp with an investigation into biden's chief political rival. in fact, they want absolutely no scrutiny, no oversight t at a all whatsoever. first they raided matsr a lagoay and would not let trump's attorneys observe the search. then the

and andrew weissman is here, senior member of robert mueller's special counsel. andrew, tell me, i wish i could summarize but i'm not that good of an editor, your tweets of the day. so just please recap some of those for me. just do it for all of us in the flesh. >> sure. well, maybe one of them sort of follows up on what my colleague brandon has been talking about. and that is this issue of the executive branch versus the judicial branch. and the way in which this judge got around that issue was by saying "i don't actually believe these are necessarily classified," in other words, everything brandon is saying is totally right. and that's why i think you have the right and the left criticizing this decision because the right obviously believes in executive power and limited role of judiciary. her way around that is to say, you know what, who says these are classified? and that's where one of my tweets was basically her saying, okay, i know it walks like a talk, talks like a duck, quacks like a duck, i know the plaintiff says it's a duck, the defense isn't challeng

msnbc legal analyst, andrew weissman is back, former senior member of robert mueller's special counselerative for the cia. tell me what, as we are here at 5:00 on friday, what is your sense of what we understand about the nature of this investigation, that even former attorney general bill barr has to sort of concede and acknowledge is a pretty good case? >> two thoughts, and nice to be here with you this afternoon. so first thought, really revolves around those empty folders. ever since we learned that there was a search warrant and learned that there were classified documents, what was in the back of everyone's mind was the fear that these didn't all stay at mar-a-lago, and was there any dissemination. that is the reason why government documents are supposed to stay with the government, classified documents are supposed to stay in a skiff and top secret documents, more than that, are highly restricted in terms of who has access. and that is because of the concern that they get into the wrong hands. and when you see how many folders were empty, that is the thing that causes you to tak

katie benner, andrew weissman, thank you so much for spending time with us on these stories.we come back, a update on the trial of 50 keepers of the most serious charges yet. will be back after break. don't go anywhere. n't go anywh. the first time you made a sale online was also the first time you heard of a town named... dinosaur? we just got an order from a dinosaur, colorado. start an easy to build, powerful website for free with a partner that always puts you first. godaddy. tools and support for every small business first. do you take aspirin? plain aspirin could be hurting your stomach. vazalore 325 liquid-filled aspirin capsule is clinically shown in a 7 day study to cause fewer ulcers than immediate release aspirin. vazalore is designed to help protect... releasing aspirin after it leaves your stomach... where it is absorbed to help prevent another heart attack or stroke. heart protection with your stomach in mind. vazalore. the first liquid-filled aspirin capsules...amazing! did you know if you turn to cold with tide you can save up to $150 a year on your energy bil

. >> mary, andrew weissman was here friday trying to explain to non-lawyers and specifically non-nationalically what this filing i think pushes through and makes clear is these documents can't belong to donald trump because they are the government's documents and specifically they belong to the executive branch of government. so any claim of executive privilege is moot. is that a right read on that? >> i think that is what the government is arguing. and there's been no suggestion here that any of the classified documents are anything other than the original intelligence community materials generated by the intelligence community. and if that's the case, not only are they the government's documents but there's no possible way they could contain any attorney-client privilege or executive privilege information because this is original classified information generated by the intelligence community. and like i said, there's been no suggestion anywhere that there's anything else on there, handwritten notes for example, or notes between trump and his lawyers or anything like that on any of these

. >> nbc news legal analyst, andrew weissman, thank you so much as always for putting this all in perspectivet detailed accounts of the trump presidency. chief white house correspondent for the "new york times," peter baker and susan glasser join us now with "the divider," they break down the chaotic moments of the previous administration from the former president's meeting with vladimir putin, and how close he came to pulling the u.s. out of nato. peter and susan, good morning, congratulations on the book. there is so much in here. i have a stack of questions, i hope you can stay until noon. let me stay on the theme of the election, and susan, jared and ivanka effectively two days after the election day turning their backs and walking out. jared leans over to ivanka and says we're moving to florida. that's an important moment because they abandoned donald trump and all the election conspiracies and opened the door to all the nut jobs who came in after them. >> yeah, it's a pretty amazing moment, right. so for four years, the president's daughter and son-in-law basically used argument to all