courthouse. and it is friday night, so you know what that means? our friday night cap is here. breaking down all of the biggest stories of the week. then, it has been nearly 15 years since the miracle on the hudson. i sat down with captain sully sullenberger as the 11th hour gets underway on this jam-packed friday night. good evening once again, i am stephanie ruhle, our nightcap is just ahead and we are going to talk about all of the big events from this week but first we will stick with today. because the former president is now in the deepest legal danger potentially of his life, and he may be planning to question whether those classified documents that he took to mar-a-lago actually damage national security. that is according to the new york times, which says that question could be a central to trump s defense. he s also waiting to hear whether his claim of presidential immunity from prosecution will actually fly with a panel of appeals court judges, and we could get that
is just ahead and we are going to talk about all of the big events from this week but first we will stick with today. because the former president is now in the deepest legal danger potentially of his life, and he may be planning to question whether those classified documents that he took to mar-a-lago actually damage national security. that is according to the new york times, which says that question could be a central to trump s defense. he s also waiting to hear whether his claim of presidential immunity from prosecution will actually fly with a panel of appeals court judges, and we could get that decision at any time. but politico today is pointing out, trump seems to be trying a new legal strategy to help supporters immunity claim. he is now saying that when he pressured mike pence, and other state officials to overturn the 2020 results, the election was quote, long over. of course i was entitled as president of the united states and commander in chief to the community
trump friendly judge and a potentially trump friendly jury. it is a very interesting legal strategy for them to employ at this point because what they are attempting to argue is no harm no foul as katie just talked about, they are going to set up a defense that says these documents were already highly classified in a way that they should not have been, and therefore, the fact that donald trump should not be something that results in them being a convicted criminal. the problem with that is what you look at when you see jack smith and the government filing today. what they filed what they wanted to get information around sulfone data from the codefendant in this case, because when they are trying to do is basically say, look, we are going to line up, or all of these documents will be moved, and hidden, and moved, and hidden lucky government was trying to recover them. and that directly undercuts the notion that you believe that having them wasn t a big deal, that you are trying to a
things, that the government treats things, too many things are classified and too many things or classified at a high-level. so expect them to kind of use that line of attack, doesn t mean that he didn t break the law? the letter of the law doesn t account for overclassification but it is a kind of thing that a jury could be swayed by. you know, if a jury finds that yes, donald trump took a classified document, but say it had already been widely reported in the news, it s not as compelling an argument that he destroy national security, so that is one thing. and then he s going to try to show that the classification itself was not direct, some of the documents were not directly related to, you know, sensitive defense information, which is the wording in this statute. charles, what do you think of all of this? because we should remember that this is taking place in florida, with aileen cannon, a very trump friendly judge and a potentially trump friendly jury. it is a very interesting