it would not shock me if there are quotes from this tape in the indictment but if there are not you do not have to put all of your evidence in the indictment, that would make indictments in some instances i m possibly long. whether it s stated in the indictment or not, it appears to me that this will be a central piece of the case. another beautiful thing for prosecutors, donald trump s voice on tape. how do you get it s not notes it s not an eyewitness. let the jury hear it in his own words. how do you defend against that? how do you defend against look at this, if, in fact he was holding national security documents what do you say? it s a great question. the only thing i can think of now look, donald trump has a very good defense team and they will come up with context and defenses. the only thing i can think of now is essentially he was full of bluster, he was exaggerating. by the way, people do make that defense at trial. defense lawyers sometimes stand up and say, lo
weaponization and politicization of the justice department or if it s something different. or if it s something different. what do you think of what pence is saying there? i do think he s correct that given the political sensitivities of this case transparency is going to be of the utmost importance for the court of public opinion because the people need to know what is in this indictment in order to make a judgment and that s why i think that the republicans like kevin mccarthy or some of the other 2024 rivals for trump that have rushed to his defense are doing it a little prematurely because we don t know what s in the indictment right now and it could be really bad for donald trump or it could be a nothing burger, but if i had to guess my money is on that this is a rock solid case, i don t think that the special counsel would have taken it to the point of an indictment if it weren t. look, speaking about potential premature reaction to this indictment, just this morning paula
that he knowingly, willing lee, intentionally kept it and appears according to this full transcript to be trying to show it to other people. we know from our reporting no one else in that room had a secret clearance. secret, secret, look at this, he says. it s right there in the transcript. and those words could have profound implications. paula reid, we will come back to you in a while. thank you so much for laying the groundwork what really moves the ball forward in all of this reporting today. now, former president trump is expected to turn himself in and appear in a miami federal court at 3:00 p.m. on tuesday according to his attorney. so far the indictment has not been released with all those charges that we are hearing about. cnn s senior justice reporter evan perez is live for us now on this part of the case. the indictment remains sealed. is there any chance we are going to see it before the tuesday court appearance? reporter: there is that chance. there is a chance that
knows. they basically break out from an espionage act charge, which is ludicrous under the facts of this case, and i can certainly explain it, and several obstruction-based-type charges and then false statement charges, which are actually, again, kind of a crazy stretch just from the facts as we know it. so there s a lot to pick at eventually from the defense side, but that appears to be the charges and it appears to be something that will get off the ground on tuesday. reporter: and what you hear there is the beginnings of how they re going to defend this. the 793 charge, the espionage act, that has to do with the willful retention of national defense information. that is the sort of central place where this investigation began, that s where we saw that s the statute, the law, that the justice department told the former president he was being investigated for when they conducted that search, extraordinary search last august in mar-a-lago, guys. all right. evan perez, thank you
argument in this case, he is talking about something else, but he s saying, look at this information. so, dan, he s talking to people and we just heard from paula reid that they do not have the status that would be required to reveal this information. so does that speak some to the espionage charge or what could be an espionage charge? of course. of course it does. it speaks to, again, for every one of these seven crimes they have to prove the government has to prove knowledge, intent and it sort of goes beyond that. are you taking the law into your own hands? i know what the law is, i m going to disregard it only am is highly secret confidential defense department document that apparently is talking about iran, and i m going to talk to who? some reporters, some people who don t have national clearance, security clearance. and he acknowledges that. he acknowledges that. why? because he says i m off the