as it were from this assembly on ukraine. yeah, so as you point out, jim, the russian foreign minister and the secretary of state tony blinken have been in the same place at the same time in multiple instances in recent months. in one of those instances, a secretary of state went after russia and said very bluntly, ukraine is not your country, and we expect that there is going to be more tense confrontation today. and the reason that today is different is because we do expect that both the secretary of state and the russian foreign minnist her lavrov are going to deliver remarks as part of this meeting on ukraine. and when it comes to blinken himself, we re told that he is very similar to president biden yesterday going to directly confront what we have seen as these recent developments over the last few days with president putin talking about the nuclear possibilities of this war. also, with those referendum that are planned in the ukrainian occupied territories in russia
here he was. it doesn t have to be a process as i under it. you know, there are different people say different things but as i understand it, there doesn t have to be. if you re the president of the united states, you could declassify just by saying it is de classified, even by thinking about it. did the justices, the judges as jim said, two of the three on this panel appointed by trump, did they say anything about his argument for blanket declassification. they did. they actually addressed and they pointed out there has been nothing in the record here saying that these were in fact de classified by trump. this is something that came up with the special master. they he they said even the discussion of that is a total red herring. they said these are not personal or privileged documents, their executive branch documents and they wrote in the legal arguments, the plaintiff suggests that he may have declassified these documents when he was president but the record contains no eviden
in that letter, trump never says these documents were declassified. if i m defending donald trump in this, that s the first thing you would say, but this letter goes through great gymnastics and says presidents have authority to declassify, but never once says he actually did it. that makes sense because, as frank and others have been talking about, the material we re talking about here is things like human sources, spies, signals intelligence, our most sophisticated electronic abilities. if trump declassified it for him, you can t just declassify for one person. you re declassifying it for everyone. that means you and i would have a right to see who s out in the field and, you know, what the nsa is capable of doing with cell phones abroad and stuff. it s preposterous, and i suppose that s what s in the blackedout areas we don t have yet. when you re reading an affidavit, you re looking for
information that could be on the other side so that is why they attach a letter from one of the president s counsel and why they make a reference as noted to this interview where kash patel says these records could be de classified. and that the president had the power to declassify them. and so it was improper and misleading to suggest that he was actually storing classified information at mar-a-lago because he claimed that these were declassified. what is notable is after that statement in paragraph 53 the affidavit has an enormous number of blacked out paragraphs that go on from 53 all the way to 62. where clearly the government is disputing that interpretation. they are still alerting the court to it.
0 from the company that powers more businesses than anyone else. call and start saving today. comcast business. powering possibilities. and good day. this is andrea mitchell reports in washington. the affidavit the justice department used to win approval for the fbi s search of mar-a-lago is being released at any moment by order of the justice department approving it by the federal judge magistrate on the case. much of it is likely to be redacted to conceal critical information about sources and methods the government used to persuade the judge there was probable cause for him to of potential crimes to justify the search of the former president s home. the judge ordered the unusual release of the affidavit in part to de bunk the explosion of conspiracy theories about the search. the escalating threats against the fbi and other law enforcement officials. all of this sharpening the country s political divide as president biden escalates his attacks on what he is now criticizing as, q