0 brown of ohio, thank you so much. >> chris, thank you, always. >> that is all in on this wednesday night. alex wagner tonight starts right now, good evening, alex. >> what is happened in the railroad companies. we all experts of the efficiency mechanisms of employed in the last decade. the stock buyback. -- >> it's exactly what, one of the things that happen in covid. system running in the background you don't think about. how did the chemical get across the country? the whole system of that. purplepurple around the country and powerful systems that want the public to pay for the risk as much as possible operating thin background and then a disaster happens >> between a potential rail strike and this accident it's blown the whole thing open and we're acutely aware of all the risks involved thanks to you at home for joining us tonight do you remember this photo the iconic image of classified documents splayed out on the floor of donald trump's mar-a-lago home after the fbi searched it last august? the reason we've all seen this photo is because donald trump essentially forced the department of justice to show it in a court filing. that is how we got access to the photo last summer, a filing in open court there is literally no question as to its origin who made the photo public and why it was being made public, which is what made this exchange today between senator ted cruz and attorney general merrick garland, why it made it a little >> as you know the fbi raided donald trump's mar-a-lago home, and subsequent to that raid there have been multiple leaks about what was discovered there including a photograph of documents that were discovered there. did you know about the leaks? >> the photograph was a filing in court in response to a motion filed by mr. trump. it was not a leak. >> it was not a leak. full stop. that was one of many exchanges from merrick garland's testimony on capitol hill, and we'll have more on what happened in that strange and contentious hearing later on in this hour. one of the consistent themes we've been hearing from republicans to ted cruz is the idea the fbi is now hell bent on taking down donald trump, the fbi has somehowdo caved to democratic political pressure and is part of a partisan scheme to destroy trump's political process. so it was notable on the very same day as this hearing was happening on capitol hill that we goten this brand new piece o reporting from "the washington post"in detailing exactly what s happening inside the fbi and justice department ahead of last summer's search of stmar-a-lago. and that reporting makes it clear thator the fbi had, in fa, succumbed to some political pressure. but it wasn't pressure to investigate or damage donald trump. it was the opposite. fbi agents investigating the former president's retention of classified documents had been intimidated by trump's relentless attacks over the years and basically cowed into operating withwe extreme cautio. this is a quote from the piece. justice department prosecutors learned fbi agents were loathe to conduct ats surprise search. they heard from top fbi officials that some agents were simply afraid. they worried investigating trump could policemen blemish or even end their careers. one official dubbed it the cross fire hurricane. the fbi, the same fbi that certain republicans have been attacking was not chomping at the bitno to raid donald trump' beach house mansion. instead the agency was proceedingag exceedingly carefully, and they were worried about the political implications of provoking the former president. and all this resulted in very heated battles between the fbi and justice department prosecutors who were advocating a more aggressive strategy to try and retrieve those documents down at mar-a-lago. according to "the washington post" it was only after a series of intense negotiations with justice department prosecutors that the fbi eventually moved forward with its search 467 and all along the way in spite of all the evidencee to the contrary, the fbi continued to give trump and his legal team the benefit of the doubt. "the washington post" reports some fbi field agents wanted to shutter the investigation all together in early june after trump's legal team asserted a diligent search had been conducted. but according to "the washington post," the just department prosecutors continued to push for a search of mar-a-lago. those prosecutors were ultimately vipdicated when the eventual search in august when it uncovered classified documents some top secret fbi and doj investigators didn't have clearance to review them. so how does this new behind the scenes reporting change what we know about theng investigation d where it might be headed next? joining us now is reporter for "the washington post," one of the w bylines on this piece. thanks for making the time. it is a pit of exhaustive reporting, and i kind of came away with it confused and enlightened. what is your takeaway from having investigated all t of th in terms of the relationship with theth doj and the fbi on t topic of the trump mar-a-lago search? >> so i think there's a couple ways to think about it. one is that it's very common for prosecutors and agents to argue during the course of an investigation. now, what exactly to do, how aggressive to goow after witnesses, how aggressive to go after evidence. that happens in a lot of cases. there's tension points, flare up, they get resolved and move forward. i think what's so different about the trump investigation is really two things. obviously this is a very high profile case. you know there's going to belot of attention paid to this and a lot of second guessing both inside the government and outside the government. and two, i think as you've seen in the discussions as we report then, there's a lot of tension and worry about making it the wrong move, and for the fbi agentsfb that often meant worryg about what if we go too fast, too quickly and make the mistake. and for the justice department prosecutors the worry was often we can't sit on this, we can't just wait and hope that the former president will do the right thing. and thosegh two worries and tho two types of concerns really were at odds sometimes. >> devlin, i wonder what your final opinion on this is. on one hand it t seems like the fbi agents are reluctant to investigate, to raid or search the mar-a-lago property because they're concerned about the optics. they don't want to go in and raid a former president's home in jackets that say fbi. and then on the other hand it seems some legitimate belief that maybe trump and his legal team are cooperating and they have gotten everything they need. and mean how much of this reluctance to search mar-a-lago was due to political pressure, and how much p of it was legitimate belief that actually we have everything we need? >> so i think one thing to rememberg is the hangover cros fire lur cane and really the hangover investigations of 2016 into donald trump and into hillary clinton just permiate this whole discussion. and i think it's important to remember that as much as there were political debates and political ret tribution there were also genuine mistakes made in the course of those investigations that the fbi paid the fact. after and so i certainly don't discount the justice department concerns that too much of the fbi's caution was based on the idea of political blow back. but i also think you have to keep in mind that there were inspector general reports that weree starkly sharply criticalf how c the fbi did past investigations of this type of profile. and so what you see in these back and forth, what our reporting shows is that there's a degree of really different approach, so much so that back in may even before the subpoena is sent for these documents some of the justice department officials want to do a search then, and the fbi thinks that's a bad idea, and then they get cooperation from the trump side, and the debate is how much is this full cooperation, or is this partiall cooperation? and there again you see a difference of opinion. >> and eventually they get the securityve camera footage of people moving boxes in and around mar-a-lago and think maybe we don't have everything. there's some reporting you did lastti year and i'll pull up th headline. investigators see ego, not money, as trump's motive on classified papers. is it still your understanding prosecutors believe trump's motivating -- the reason he took these documents down to mar-a-lago was ego? and if so how do you think that informs the way they feel about the search slash raid at this point? >> first of all, i think we need to best clear, when you say it s ego as the most likely motive here, that doesn't get trump off the hook. obviously if you were doing something for purely financial purposes, i think most people agree that's worse, but the bottom line how these documents are handled is they're not to leave secure facilities and the government safe guards around them. so our understanding is that reporting is still right where it is, which is that these t documents, these classified documents seem to be jammed in with a bunch of stuff and people don't seem to have been careful or thoughtful at all as to taking this volume of classified material out of government security, out of government custody. but big part of this case is what happens in the summer after the government formally demands the subpoena. and as you pointed out there's security camera footage reported that shows people moving boxes after -- boxes of documents after the subpoena has been received, and that's a big, red warning sign to prosecutors and agents. and both sides for all the disagreements about this that may havesa existed at the time, both sides agree that security camera footage changed their view on this. >> it's too bad the time line because of all the internal arguments and of course a special master pushed back the charging decisions on the parts of the prosecutors and now we have a special counsel going to make that call. thank you for joining us tonight. greatjo reporting. a riveting account of what's been happening in an important investigation. thanks for your time. joining us now is a former national security official at doj and a former prosecutor on special counsel robert mueller's team. brandon,'s thank you for being here. what a time to talk to you about what is going on specifically this reporting. i wonder after you read it what stuck out to you? did the relationship between the prosecutors and the fbi agents sound like the experience you have had or was it different? >> well, what stuck out the most is that they were individuals, senior officials who were part of this deliberation that chose to leak this information right at the time that the department of justice and fbi are likely making a charging decision. a debate, deliberation, disagreement as mentioned is s common, does occur. but when you have a leak like this, it undermines the integrity of the u investigatio. importantly how do those individuals, those same individuals go into s the room d have an honest and candid discussion about charges knowing that there were people who if they don't -- if the decision goes against them, if there's a disagreements that they may ai their dpreefbances publicly? and i think it's sort of a troubling thing to's learn, and think the does have an impact on the investigation. >> what how do you read? when i finished story i thought thest fbi or doj, everyone's operating out of an abundance of caution here. there was a whole series of negotiations. theyres waited until they had effectively an airtight case to pursue this searchir of mar-a-lago. if anything it refutes the idea that the fbi, the doj is somehow weaponized against trump. so wouldn't that lay the foundation for a charging decision that could potentially indictia the president or do yo think it's something else? >> this isn't -- the reporting shows a thoughtful deliberation that you just went through. i don't think this is about whether sort of the facts are ultimately drawing a particular conclusion. it's p the fact that deliberati discussions like this, they're protected. they're privilege. they're not disclosed, and it's for a reason. because you want someone to be honest and say,eo look, my agen are concerned about conducting this raid because of retribution. you want people to be comfortable sayingnt that. it's true, like let's be honest about the fact that there are or may be negative consequences. it has happened in investigations. you want people to feel comfortable at least expressing those fears and concerns. and when people feel comfortable in those environments, disclosing that outside of that protective space, then it impairs the ability of i peopleo be honest, to throw those considerations in. and it's the reason why i think now ultimately everything we've seen from the department is ultimately they will end with the right conclusion and the right considerations, but it does affect the process. and it's the process i'm concerned about. >> there is an ongoing doj investigation courtesy of special counsel jack smith. howl do you think what's happening behind closed doors at doj right now? >> i think there has to be frustration. i think there has to be those wondering -- the frustration this is coming out and think of the timing. a charging e decision in the next couple of months. we know that just based on the time line and with respect to the election. so this is all happening at a very sensitive juncture. it's also happening the morning before attorney general garland testified in front of congress where, you know, these very concerned -- this debate was brought out. so it seems very intentional now that someone is trying to air this information. >> and we know that senator i believe josh hawley was questioning on the hoyle about this story say you siped off on this raid, you overrode the desireod by fbi agents. but to put the metainize narrative aside right now on what the implications of this story on present investigations iy wonder if you could break dn a little bit of the dynamic we see playing out in this piece, which is the doj worked so intently to propose it is an s apolitical organization and that the fbi works without politics, you know, on the landscape. but what becomes abundantly clear in this account and to be honest in other ones in trying to be apolitical the justice department sometimes makes very political decisions. is that a fairpo assessment? >> you know, i'll give you a defensive response, which i don't think that's a fair assessment. and i certainly -- that's not the take away i have with this story. i think the story is that you have both the department of justice and fbi o proceeding carefully and cautiously as they should in conducting a search -- not a raid, a search of a former president's residence. it should be careful and cautious. and to that end it's important to note that the right decision was reached here. like, this search happened. and we talked about sort of the politics in this. the all the reporting from special counsel jack smith is that the investigation proceeding full t speed ahead aggressively bringing people in of the grand jury, bringing attorneys of the former president inrm front of the gra jury. and so it strikes me ultimately this is an investigation that should proceed carefully and cautiously, a and i don't think we've seen anything at least in this investigation that screams politics or sort ofn politics inappropriately or unfairly affecting the investigation. >> yeah, and what i meant by that is the degree to which they had to entertain the reservations of field agents who werere scared of trump even thoh they had the evidence that, you know, a raid -- a search very much made sense. >> that's a great point, and i think it's great goingt, throug the time line at least according to the reporting which is there's an indication the department of justice in may wanting to proceed with a search warrant and instead the decision was made according to this reporting that let's do a spoona instead. and it turns out that going for the subpoena was the right decision. not only did they obtain evidence, but it turns out that this is where sort of the evidence of obstruction comes to light. in fact, it justifies -- further justifies this decision to conduct ath search. and so, in fact, just one other piece which is one of the debates i find interesting in thes reporting is that the fbi even at that late stage in july said that there should be a consensual search. and i want to highlight from some of the filings that occurred last summer and fall that there was an opportunity for a consensual search. on june 3rd the department of justice was at mar-a-lago with three fbi agents, and they were explicitly prohibited -- explicitly prohibited from searching the storage room where the documents were. so there had been an opportunity for consensual search, and that time had passed. >>me they were given many bitest the apple as it were and basically made the case for their own obstruction over team trump. thank you so much forct coming the show and making the time. really appreciate the perspective. >> thank you. we have a lot more to get to this evening including a major win for people who need lifesaving medicationho at a pre they canat actually afford. plus senate republicans try topl tussle with attorney gener merrick garland today, and boy, oh, boy. we'll have more on that just ahead. boy, oh, boy. we'll have more on that just ahead.