a de facto maga militia, the armed groups that took his extremist rhetoric to the streets. nbc news cnn reporter, ben collins, had been following the online response and joins me now. ben, as always, great to talk to you. so, i was outside, obviously, the rain it on thursday, and it was a very poor showing, to say the least. it was just a small gaggle of folks there with a very large flags. even smaller than we saw in florida and smaller than in new york as, well. do you think they are being turned off, of course, by what we've been seeing with the january 6th rioters, the sentencing, and trials that have been playing out? >> yeah, i think they are afraid, frankly, of the feds. they want -- don't want to end up on a list. i do want to say that there is this paranoid extreme of trump supporter now that believes that they are being constantly tracked. the thing right now is that they believe everything is being digitized, so all of their purchases, every look up on the internet, every, you, no phone call they make, is being tracked back to make it so they
powerful evidence of the president's knowledge, corrupt intent, and meadows could certainly corroborate that, undoubtedly there are other examples that he could give of the president state of mind. he is a key witness, it is indication, lawrence, i think that we got to the presidents chief of staff and the vice president that finally this investigation is reaching the very top, and probably nearing its conclusion. >> mark meadows can also give testimony about how donald trump handled government documents, including classified documents. during the presidency, and after the presidency. the latest development and that is that we learned that some of those classified records were digitized, put on a thumb drive by one of the trump aides, and that them drive was then sent to the trump campaign. what does that do to what we know already about the
crowd was armed, knew they were dangerous, and send us cassity testified that he did not care because they weren't there to hurt him. this is, i think the most powerful evidence of the president's knowledge, corrupt intent, and meadows could certainly corroborate that, undoubtedly there are other examples that he could give of the president state of mind. he is a key witness, it is an indication, lawrence, i think that we got to the presidents chief of staff and the vice president that finally this investigation is reaching the very top, and probably nearing its conclusion. >> mark meadows can also give testimony about how donald trump handled government documents, including classified documents. during the presidency, and after the presidency. the latest development on that is that we learned that some of those classified records were digitized, put on a thumb drive by one of the trump aides, and that thumb drive was then sent
potential criminal charges or the actual criminal investigation into all this? >> that is a vital new detail, in my view, as a former prosecutor, because now i know that those documents were not just stuffed in boxes or sort of laying around mar-a-lago. now i know that something was done with those documents. and i would want to dig in and say, who gave this instruction? why were they scanned? and what was done with them? because we're going from a world where the documents are contained on paper, to where they've been digitized. and once something hits the digital realm, it is much easier to disseminate. but the question i'd i have is, why? >> and one of trump's attorneys, you also heard, confirmed they handed over an emptied classified folder found in trump's bedroom after receiving a subpoena, i want to get your reaction to how trump's attorneys explained why it was in trump's bedroom. >> hold on, let's play the sound. >> he has one of those landline telephones next to his bed and it has a blue light on it and it
did the search in december and found within this box of thousands that there were a couple of pages that had a little marking at the bottom, which we turned over, after that, we found out that she had scanned the box so that it would be digitized, she had no idea that there was any classification markings on anything. and as soon as we found out about that, we called up the doj to let them know. and immediately provided them access to it. >> now, you also turned over an empty folder marked "classified" to investigators. where was this folder and why was it turned over? the folder is kind of one of the more humorous aspects of this whole thing. this is not a classified folder. this is a folder that when my team went through and searched and they wrote up their report, which we turned over to doj, they saw, it's a -- it's a folder -- a manilla folder that says "classified evening summary" on it. and it was in the president's bedroom. he has one of those landline telephones next to his bed and
digitized. the top secret information tends to be the sort of things that if it is released could do grave damage to the national security. so, depending on what was involved here, and of course, the fbi now has the computer system drives. one of the things that they will look for in their forensic investigation is whether they will be shared further. whether it was any sort of hacking that compromise them. there is a lot of potential in here. >> trump news, this talk about the pence, news do you think he complies? >> interesting question. sometimes, as a prosecutor, essentially, what we call, a friendly subpoena. >> is it have a heart, and ex and oh's on it? >> essentially, you are saying, you are going to come in and testify. you're going to believe that mike pence might have want to subpoena before he testified, and could walk a narrow tightrope, there is some other indication is going to fight some portion of testimony.
you? what is your biggest fear? >> classified documents all have the ability to damage national securities, if they fall into the wrong hands. so, part of what we don't know yet in this new recording is what kind of documents were digitized. the top secret information tends to be the sort of things that if it is released could do grave damage to the national security. so, depending on what was involved here, and of course, the fbi now has the computer system drives. one of the things that they will look for in their forensic investigation is whether they will be shared further. whether it was any sort of hacking that compromise them. there is a lot of potential in here. >> trump news, this talk about the pence, news do you think he complies? >> interesting question. sometimes, as a prosecutor, you would send someone, what we call a friendly subpoena. >> is it have a heart, and ex and oh's on it? >> essentially, you are saying, you are going to come in and testify. you're going to believe that mike
voter will consider. the more they learn, the more they think everything is over classified. these people's homes are skifs. it's not their fault when they -- they are all over the age of 60. they don't want to look in digitized files. they want to bring home paper and read them next to their books on their side table. whether they leave these buildings, they have classified documents stuck to the bottom of their shoes. this becomes politically a wash for everybody because of how rampant it is and systemic it is. obviously, the system needs to be reformed. that's up to experts. when you look at merrick garland, i think the voters would say, we can't afford another special counsel investigation into everybody thinking of running for president and might have been involved there an administration and have classified documents somewhere. obviously, the nature of the content of them could be