the material was marked with the highest levels of classification that exists, material that is meant to be held only in secure government facilities not at a private club where basically anyone can pay for membership and wander around. arguably, the agent s most alarming finding that we were able to see in this redacted version was that the boxes contained classified information that came from human intelligence sources meaning if the documents were mishandled, leaked or transmitted they could compromise the identity of american intelligence assets and the affidavit also lays out why doj had good reason not to believe or trust trump and his lawyers knowing that back in february of this year, after the archives notified congress that there was classified material and what they got back from mar-a-lago, trump put out a statement that very fact. investigators write this, quote, there is probable cause to believe that additional documents that contain classified national defense
just the beginning of this entire saga that has been going on since two weeks before the former president left office according to an email that we reviewed earlier this week, as well, from gary stern who said that two dozen of these boxes that were in the former president s were told that they needed to go to nara. it is unclear how they ended up at mar-a-lago and whether everything has still been recovered, but we are now piecing together all of these different streams of information that have come out and all of it amounts to a very large volume of classified, top-secret information that has been taken in january, in june and most recently on august 8th when the fbi executed their search warrant. andrew weissmann, the affidavit gives us a window into
made her way into mar-a-lago, posed with pictures of donald trump and lindsey graham, seems to prove the kinds of national security concerns that are detailed in the affidavit itself are very real, are really a live wire. i mean, as you sort of put on your national security hat, and just look at the fact of this, that these very sensitive documents were taken, they were asked to be returned, they didn t return them, donald trump, according to the new york times, said, they re mine, i m not giving them back. he knew he shouldn t take them. his lawyers told him not to take them in the first place. what do you make of what is ongoing? we don t know what the fbi got back earlier this month. i think that s exactly the story, whether true or not, is exactly the type of concern that the fbi and the intelligence community has with having that volume of classified documents in an unsecured location. the documents that were provided to the archives, that means for at least 12 months, they we
that there was not a secure facility at mar-a-lago for classified documents, period. those documents cannot be there, and you see the department of justice making that very clear, including in some of the communications that are disclosed in the affidavit, that there was no place for these documents at mar-a-lago. my point is a secondary one, which is, the national security implications here are really paramount, and when you see some of the markings here, when you see references to human sources, to signal intelligence, when you see references to information from the foreign intelligence surveillance act court from that type of surveillance, it raises a concern that there are, in fact, sources and methods that could be seriously compromised here. we don t know that, but it s just what we can glean from here, that there really are reasons to be concerned and to justify the search that occurred. when you look at donald trump s record of disdain for the intelligence agencies, and then
andrew mccabe opened a counterintelligence investigation into him, i think, in 2017, looking at whether the firing of jim comey was both obstructing the investigation and something done to benefit a foreign adversary. i wonder if you can speak about the questions that were never answered about donald trump as he was president, because he went through and purged his fbi and justice department until he ended up with bill barr atop it. you know, i think that s a hard thing to answer, because i think the reality is, the biggest the best way to answer that question is figuring out why. why did he take the documents that he did? because it was very clear in the affidavit that he was asked multiple times for these documents, and he gave them back sort of in dribs and drabs, so i think we re looking at a mixture of documents that could possibly incriminate him in doing something nefarious with national security, but then i also think that we can be, just like what phil was saying,