For us. What do we know about the documents in this second batch . Reporter we dont know much other than bidens attorneys uncovered a second batch. The first batch was found in early november in an office that his attorneys were clearing out. That included ten classified documents, including information about iran, the uk and ukraine and even included topsecret information. Were told it was that discovery that spurred the searches in additional locations looking for other documents. We dont know where the second batch was found, what it includes. One of the biggest questions, is this it . The white house has been very careful not to say that the first batch or second batch is all they know is out there. Thats a really big question to have hanging over the white house. How is the gop responding to this on capitol hill . Im sure theyre pouncing. Reporter of course theyre pouncing. House oversight wants briefings. You showed the clip of Kevin Mccarthy asking why it wasnt disclosed. The speaker knows its the justice departments standard operating procedure. They dont comment on current investigations. He explained what happened at maralago was a raid. Thats not accurate. It was a duly activated search warrant. The big question is for Attorney GeneralMerrick Garland, whether he wants to appoint a special counsel. Now that we have documents found in a second location, don, that suggests he may be left with no choice. Politically, look, if voters feel like theyre not getting all the information and they keep uncovering new classified documents in other settings, it can become a big political liability. Paula reid, thank you. Lets bring in Albert Gonzalez who served as Attorney General under president bush. You were once in Merrick Garlands shoes. Would you appoint a special counsel here . You know, i i think the bar for appointing a special counsel has gotten much higher in terms of what would be necessary. In the bush administration, yes, a special counsel would have been appointed. We appointed a special counsel, John Ashcroft did and he stepped away because of the fact that he used karl rove as an adviser many years before then when he was running for governor. In todays world that standard has changed. Merrick garland will have to make an independent decision based upon what he thinks is in the interest of justice, what his investigators are telling him. If youre asking me based on what i know, based upon public reporting, i think if i was making the decision during the bush administration, yes, i would have appointed a special counsel. In particular because if were finding documents in different jurisdictions, we need someone who has authority over all the jurisdictions. Who would that be then . Who has jurisdiction . He would find someone like a former prosecutor to appoint as special counsel. Look, were talking about the Attorney General let me jump in please. Youre saying it seems like youre saying you dont think the bar is very high for special counsel, but you said different jurisdictions and that person would be a special counsel. What is it . Do you think a special counsel should be or no . Based on what i know, based upon my experience in the bush administration, yes, particularly if it appears were talking about evidence that may be in different jurisdictions. I would appoint a special counsel that would have jurisdiction over the various u. S. Attorney districts. Yes, i would appoint a special counsel based on what i know. Again, its based upon public reporting. Its not my place to second guess or put pressure on Merrick Garland. Just based upon the interest of justice, i think a special counsel is likely to be appointed. We were talking about that we heard from trumps attorneys is that this shows how easy it is to take Classified Information when you leave office. President biden said he takes Classified Information seriously. Is it easier than people think to take it with them . You have to remember were talking about a lot of information and documents that happen at the end of an administration. Generally you have aides that have responsibility to gather up that information and move it to, say, a president ial library or a place where president ial private personal documents are going to be stored for the outgoing administration. It could be that President Biden has no idea what else might be out there because he didnt actually move the documents. Is it easy . I wouldnt say its easy, but certainly possible that, when you leave office, you take some documents with you that are classified. Its important that you remember, once the administration is over, any president ial record is no longer yours. It belongs to the archives and you have a responsibility to get it to the archives. If youre talking about hundreds of pages of documents, you typically have people doing that and you may not know if all the documents have been turned over. You do your best to make sure that happens. You hope your staff does its job in collecting the information and turning it over. In terms of firsthand knowledge, its difficult for a Vice President or a president or even a Cabinet Secretary to know for sure. Thats why the white house has been so reluctant to say, this is all there is because theyre im sure doing a search right now to confirm. You just said you should do everything you can to get them to the proper place. There is look, there are distinctions between what happened with the Trump Documents and with the biden documents. Quite honestly for people at home, its hard for them to see those distinctions. It all looks like the same thing. Youve got these documents and they shouldnt be where they are. The distinction is biden is saying we want to comply. Trump is saying i dont want to comply. Thats how we got to this point. Can you discuss that . Do you understand what im saying . I think its important for people to understand in any criminal prosecution the facts matter. The differences in facts are going to make a big difference. Also, to the extent you have different prosecutor you have a Special Prosecutor looking at the maralago documents. Youre likely to have a Special Prosecutor here. Theyre going to be different. Theyll view evidence differently. The judgment will be different. So the no republican would want to be prosecuted for committing a crime for certain acts based upon the actions of a prosecutor with respect to a different set of facts. Facts are critically important. The slight deviation in facts may make a difference in the mind of a prosecutor in exercising his or her discretion as to whether or not to move forward. The fact that former President Trump may be charged shouldnt make a difference with respect to whether or not President Biden should be charged. Vice a versa. Facts matter. The american people, i think, need to understand that. I know its difficult to perhaps accept or comprehend in this politicallycharged environment. Thats the way it works in our justice system. Does it matter that biden biden was Vice President six years ago. He had the documents for possibly six years. Trump was president two years ago or so and they had been working for a year or so to get these documents back. He didnt have the documents as long. Biden had them for six years. Does that make a difference . Im sure at some point he was told all the documents had been turned over. So there was no additional work to confirm that. Im sure he relied upon trusted aides who were charged with making sure all the president ial records were turned over as they should have been turned over. You know, its not surprising they at some point it stopped. That effort to confirm that stopped. It took a long period of time to discover there were additional documents that should have been turned over. You were once accused of improperly handling information, saying you took Home Information that was not supposed to be taken out of where it was stored within the federal government. How does that shape your perspective on this . Youve been through a similar situation. These were personal notes. They were not stamped classified. These were personal notes of a meeting we had with congressional leaders over a highly classified program. Yes, there was an investigation because of the fact that they were stored in my private office in the department, but it wasnt the right kind of safe. The lesson i get from that is people take this seriously, and they should take it seriously. Prosecutors take it seriously. A matter that isnt that big a deal were talking about in my case they were documents that werent stamped. They were a Written Summary where we talked about a classified program. There was no description of the classified program, but simply a recording of what the congressional leaders said in response to what we were telling them. This is Serious Business and sometimes, you know, youre not as careful as you should be with information that is classified, whether you know it or not. I think thats good because this information could be damaging the National Security of our country. It could be proved dangerous to people we have around the world that are helping us collect information. Thats the lesson i get from my experience. We also, again, its important to understand facts matter tremendously in the discretion and judgment of prosecutors, as to whether or not what happens in President Trumps case and that may be different than what happens in President Bidens case. Having said that, does this hinder, compromise, change the equation for Merrick Garland when it comes to the possible prosecution of donald trump . Does it put him in a tougher position to prosecute donald trump . Well, again, as a human being it might. As a prosecutor and the Attorney General, theyre different cases. You have to look at the facts of each particular case. Exercise your independent judgment as to what is the right thing to do in the interest of justice. Thank you. That was wide ranging. You were the perfect guest to have for this. Thank you, mr. Attorney general. Be well. Thats a good distinction at the end. Its something that will affect his thinking. Yeah. Now that House SpeakerKevin Mccarthy is the House Speaker, its time for him to make good on promises made to gop hard liners. He was elected speaker in the 15th ballot. In the days leading up to that he made numerous concessions to republican lawmakers. That includes on Key Committees, pivotal roles, some that were now assigned. Here is cnns Senior Data Report who is looking at that. Harry, we heard he didnt promise anyone specific seats, but we saw that come to light yesterday. This mornings number is six. Republicans who once voted against Kevin Mccarthy were assigned Key Committees. The power of the purse. We can see these lineups. Andrew clyde was given appropriations. Ralph norman, Financial Services. The power of the purse. The idea were these guys rewarded . When these six changed their tunes and voted for Kevin Mccarthy on the 12th or 13th ballot. Compare that to those who held out and didnt vote for mccarthy, they voted present, none of those folks were given Key Committee assignments. There might have been some wheeling and dealing. Now, how conservative are these folks . We can get a good idea by looking at what percentage of the time they voted against biden. Look at these numbers. All between 93, 93, 94, 95, 97. Clearly these are very conservative hard liners. Of course there is also something that Kevin Mccarthy wants to do with concern to democrats and their committee assignments. Democratic House Members who Kevin Mccarthy wants to kick off committees. Adam schiff, intelligence. Eric swalwell, intelligence. One last nugget with concern to adam schiff, he may not be in the house for very much longer. He has his eye on running for the California Senate race in 2024. He should be considered high up with his chance to win because he has 20. 6 million in the bank. Thats going to be a fascinating race. Harry, thank you for the numbers. Want to bring in Adam Kinzinger who is a cnn political commentator. Good morning, sir. We have a lot to talk about. Well get to santos and all that. You heard our conversation with the former Attorney General there. Do you think the public at home do you think they see the distinction between the Trump Documents and dobiden documents, and what do you make of the discussion where he says as a human being, the Attorney General may think differently about whether he would prosecute, but as the Attorney General he has to do his job . What he says is accurate. First off, the good thing is law does nuance. The law does differences. The law can look at what was intention and that matters. Politics doesnt do that. Politics Everything Blends together. What we learned in the last few years, if you throw enough doubt on the wall, thats enough to win your case. I think from a human perspective, yes, i think for Attorney General garland hes going to continue to prosecute, even if the joe biden case if necessarily correctly. Politically, especially the second batch, this is very damaging for the current president and throws a lot of cloudiness into the narrative here thats going on. The white house will still be facing questions on that today. When it comes to whats happening on capitol hill and some of these republicans who were initially not voting for Kevin Mccarthy and then voted for Kevin Mccarthy and then they got seats on big committees, what is your reaction to where it seems like people are getting seats on these committees for these votes for speaker . I would like to pull the curtain back a little bit here. Every time we get to something that is going to be tough to pass but has to pass, or a speaker election, what ends up happening is the group called the freedom caucus, i call them the freedom club, they like to hold out and they know that leadership needs their votes and theyll extract anything. I knew that Kevin Mccarthy would be speaker because he would give up anything to become speaker. They were very smart in terms of the politics of this to hold out and extract things that the freedom club never would have got otherwise. They never would have got a committee assignments. The socalled moderates, the regular republican, the tuesday group republicans, they have as much or more power than the freedom club. The difference is i was part of this group. We dont like to blow the place up. We genuinely want to work as a team and get along. Were always out matched because when it comes to things like taking hostages, the one thats most powerful is the one thats willing to shoot the hostage and thats the freedom kids. They were able to extract a ton out of Kevin Mccarthy. Unless and until the socalled moderates come forward and do things like vote against the rules, theyll continue to get run over. Im not sure if you heard of this guy George Santos. If you look at his resume we sure thats his name . Exactly. Youre not being facetious. You called for him to resign. He came after you on twitter basically saying if we have the tweet, he said go on cnn and whine about it, cry about it. Go cry on cnn. What do you think of this . Look, heres the other thing about throwing a bunch of confusion on the wall. I think i heard Kevin Mccarthy say a lot of politicians somebody said they exaggerate their resume. Holy cow. Lets be clear. This is not exaggerating a resume. Its a total fabrication. Its one thing if you see this a lot min military folks. They say they have had this job and they didnt. Its another thing to question where your money came from and then to say you were jewish, no, i was jewish. Then to say your mother died in 9 11. Everything about this guy is a lie. If i say the sky is green, they can come after me and have me pulled off the air for being false. This guy lied about everything. I dont see how Kevin Mccarthy i get it. His majority is tight. People say the republicans in washington dont get to decide. The democrats dont get to decide. The new york republicans dont get to decide. Thats what hes saying and thats what Kevin Mccarthy is saying. People didnt decide. They thought he was somebody totally different. It was a lie and fraudulent election. I think he does end up resigning. I think the pressure will be too great. Well see if he does. Thank you. Go check out his resume. It was the Volleyball Team i dont think thats on the resume. He said he was on a championship Volleyball Team at brute college, but he didnt go to brute college. When you won that gold