Page 3 - Stop Secret Sci News Today

After the unprecedented search of a former presidents private residence, what comes next? the unsealing of the mar-a-lago search warrant reveals fbi agents went to donald trumps florida home this week looking for possible violations of major crimes. the federal magistrate judge who signed off on the warrant authorized agents to search what the bureau called the 45 office. as well as all other rooms or areas at mar-a-lago available to trump and his staff for storing boxes and documents. they reco...

When thing that is important to note is that the republicans are saying, well, he declassified everything. but if the documents were used to violate the espionage act, or to obstruct justice in some other way, and then it doesnt matter that donald trump says he did classified them. so, we dont know -- frankly, we dont know a lot of things right now. and we are hoping to find out more. >> the top secret sci documents that were retrieved in the search, they are getting most of the attention today....

Sensitive enough to require declassification. so i think hes putting himself into a box thats going to make it real difficult for his defense lawyers to pull him out of it later. >> and listen, shawn, im glad you brought up that, because thats the big question, right? you as someone who worked at u.s. national intelligence, youre very well aware of the types of sensitive information that are inside these kind of top secret sci documents. i mean, without speculating about this particular case, in...

Trump, in florida. now, those unsealed documents, they show that investigators seized one set of documents marked "top secret/sci." what does the sci stand for? sensitive compartmented information. its one of the highest levels of government classification. and it also means a lot about who gets to see those documents. theyre supposed to only be viewed at a secure government location by certain people with that level of clearance. now, investigators also seized four sets of what are known as top...

Its the information itself. we have to have a track record or paper that says that was done. we dont have that yet. >> yeah. and its going to depend on the statute. like i said, the espionage statute, the one im talking about there, theres one, gross negligence intent level there where somebody whos just so reckless and negligent in their handling of the documents can be charged with the crime. one of the others is willful. and we could do a whole semester of law school on the difference between...

Kim, is this didnt happen in a vacuum. there have been multiple, multiple actions on the part of the department of justice, on the part of the fbi to communicate with donald trumps legal team to try to negotiate with his legal team for the return of these documents. we know a subpoena was issued to donald trump in an effort to get documents returned and we know that some document were returned to the united states government, but not all of the documents. so the fact that donald trump refused to...

From the courts website. evan perez, thanks as always. here now is the former director of communication for u.s. national intelligence and cnn national security analyst sean turner. also criminal defense and constitutional law attorney paige payt. welcome, gentlemen, good morning to you. sean, i want to get your reaction to the fact that these classified documents were sitting in trumps palm beach resort. yes, its members only, but its in his office, in storage. what can go wrong, right? >> i me...

In the search warrant required that the materials be classified, so as long as they are highly sensitive closely held, defense national defense documents, they are subject to the statute, so i dont actually even think that is going to matter, legally, whatsoever whether or not these are technically declassified . >> general early, some of these documents we now know were classified in an extremely high level called top-secret sei, can you explain what that means, and really what it would mean if...

Im talking about there, thats one, gross negligence intent level there where somebody whos just so reckless and negligent in their handling of the documents is going to be charged with a crime. one of the others is willful. and we could do a whole semester of law school on grossly negligent and willful. >> lets not on a friday night. >> lets not in the four minutes we have here, lets not. needless to say, it just depends on the statute youre charged with. and theres a few here. all have differen...

Documents that were labelled as top secret sci and that is always the concern for the government for these documents which should never leave the premises of the secure place of the united states government ending up at his home in palm beach. >> and as it pertains to the sci documents, top secret, could those things be declassified by a president and taken like he has? >> well that is what hes saying. he says that i de classified them. it is a little more complicated than that. we have to focus...