reportedly involved federal agents spending most of the day at mar-a-lago was related to classified information that trump took with him when he departed the white house in january of 2021. an attorney for the former guy told nbc news that trump and his team had been, quote, cooperative with fbi and doj officials every step of the way, unquote, but then added that the bureau, quote, did conduct an unannounced raid and seized paper. the new york times reports that it wasn t the first time that agents visited trump s south florida estate. quote, the search came after an earlier visit this spring to mar-a-lago by federal agents including a justice department counterintelligence official to discuss materials that mr. trump had improperly taken with him when he left the white house. mr. trump was briefly present for that earlier visit as was at least one of his lawyers according to people familiar with the situation. both the fbi and the justice department have declined to comme
kats in general that no judge wants to give a warrant if there s some other way for it to be worked out through a cooperative negotiation with the parties. this seems like the judge here, especially in the case of the former president would have needed to be convinced that the time for talk was over, no? yes and no. first, the judge would not get involved in that decision, the one about whether this could get worked out or not. the judge s sole role is for him or her to decide whether there s probable cause of a crime and probable cause that the evidence would be at that location. there s no question that what you re saying is true with respect to the department of justice because normally the way that you get information is either through a voluntary request or through a subpoena, and when you proceed by search warrant, what you re really saying is i don t trust the person who i could subpoena to actually comply with that subpoena, and i think the missing piece for all of this is
merrick garland had to have asked the question why do we need to proceed by search warrant and not by subpoena, and there had to have been a pretty compelling answer that they thought that the former president would not comply with a subpoena, and i think that s the piece that we re missing is that evidence that let them to think that there would be essentially a form of obstruction of justice unless they went in by search warrant. andrew, this is a very serious time for our country. i just need to know whether that was a dog or a goat that just walked behind you on camera. yeah, so that s my english cocker spaniel who has a habit of coming on air just as the cameras roll. i would just say that he or she is always welcome here. i just want to make sure it wasn t a goat, that was going to be a different question. jonathan lemire, i want to throw up the time line i mentioned a second ago. here s kind of what we know about trump s handling of the
it. that s where the last point here that speculation is really picking up. there are already rumors trump wasn t going to wait until 2023, the traditional mark of a new presidential campaign. he wants to do it this year. he wants to jump out ahead of the midterms, which very few republicans think is a good idea. he s being urged to declare as soon as possible in the next coming days to get ahead of this story. we both pine for the day when it was a consensus view of people and goodwill in both parties that someone who was actually convicted of mishandling classified information, that person probably shouldn t never run for president again, definitely should never be president again. we wouldn t have a fight about that. thank you for starting us off. when we come back, a deep, albeit speculative dive into the mind of attorney general merrick garland, a man who has been so cautious and methodical in doing his job, you can t help but wonder what he was thinking when he approved the sea
he suggested he might be a martyr, a victim of the deep state. if there s one truism to the trump presidency is that every day was fueled by grievance and a sense of victim hood, and that s happening again. with the statement last night from what we re hearing, the echoes from his allies, republicans in washington and around the country yesterday and again today suggesting that he was being unfairly signaled out, that he was a victim of a conspiracy and that this was a politically motivated search. now, the white house has made clear, i broke the news last night that they got no heads-up whatsoever about this raid. the white house press secretary reiterated that as well saying the president himself found out about it from watching television. so they are saying they re keeping their distance from this, but certainly former president trump and his team are going to try to play the victim card as much as they can going forward to try and swirl up the hornets nesz. asha i want to ask