national security establishment. to be intellectually consistent, honest, you would make sure people understood the larger threat and lens through which all of this has transpired. that seems to be their point. so first of all, as you kindly recapped at the top, my story explains how even many trump officials say that they feel that the process that trump set in motion with the taliban laid the groundwork for this. and, you know, and i think you know, i think their view is it was a terrible deal, that it was basically providing political cover for the u.s. to withdraw without any, you know, real assurances from the taliban that we could count on or that meant much. they agreed to enter talks with the afghan government. we saw what became of that. the talks were kind of a joke. and they have promised not to harbor terrorists on their soil who threaten the u.s. or other
another interesting element of what is going on here, it is sort of a subtle nuance, is the fact that once you indict a case as a prosecutor, you can t continue to use grand jury subpoenas to investigate that defendant on those charges. so the fact that there s a continuance of the use of the grand jury suggests that new defendants or new charges are being pursued, and whereas other folks in the trump organization were brought in front of the grand jury to testify, which in new york state unlike in the federal system involves giving them a grant of immunity so that they can t be prosecuted, usually you won t do that with someone who you think you have got a strong case against. in this situation calamari has not been brought in front of the grand jury, and it looks like he is really trying to offer prosecutors something that will convince them to give him a little bit of a break here. you know, nick, all of these windows into trump s business, trump org, it is stunning to me
calamari is an intriguing figure in the trump organization. he is the chief operating officers but he doesn t have the credentials you would usually expect someone in that position to have. he came to trump s attention because he was being a particularly effective bouncer at a tennis match. he went to work for trump in a capacity as a security guard, and he gained trump s confidence when he was working as trump s personal security guard. so one has a little bit of a sense here he may not have had involvement in the complex financial dealings, but there s the intriguing possibility that he has some insight into trump s mindset and how trump was talking about events as they occurred before they were under legal scrutiny. nick confessore, having covered now multiple investigations into the ex-president, there s a sense when things are opaque that they ve quieted down. i think with the journal report,
capitulation agreement of 2020. the taliban didn t defeat us. we defeated ourselves. the new york times notes neither trump nor pompeo has responded to such criticism with contrition, surprise, surprise. president biden s defense of the withdrawal from afghanistan and the reckoning over how we got here through multiple administrations is where we start at this hour. michael crowley, new york times diplomatic correspondent, joins us, also with us, susannah george, washington post afghanistan and pakistan bureau chief. let me start, susannah, with your latest reporting on what the president addressed today. i understand from courtney kube s reporting there was a pause in those flights, she explained some of the logistical challenges. but take us inside your understanding of what s happening on the ground in kabul. well, the day that we were able to escape kabul, we were lucky, because we were able to