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For political officials and one of the punishments if convicted is that you can't run for office again. and then as michael says, the other punishment is for the classified information. and that is a serious thing. you know, sandy berger who was president clinton's national security adviser, he broke the law and faced the consequences for it. he tried to take a classified document out of the archives. trump evidently did it with a bunch. and michael is right to say the president has declassification authority, but it looks like that these documents were taken away from the white house when tru...

The -- you know, there's questions about who else might have handled them, whether he went through the proper procedures to declassify them, whether any procedures were followed at all. i think in terms of the president's criminal liability -- and you know this well, as a former prosecutor -- because of his classification authority, the case for prosecuting him possibly as the january 6 committee looks at criminal referrals. doj and inspectors general are looking at this. the case on the classified documents has some complexities because of the declassification authority. it is also a crime to...

Herself. >> let's go back to something from a moment ago and that is that the republican and senate are still interested in this. we have the michael horowitz inspector general's report, we have this continuing here. what's the appetite for it broadly. there are partisans pushing for this. is it something that enjoys the support of many senators? >> i think what senators all defer to is the fact that any president has vast declassification authority. you'll remember last year when the president issued a declassification order that gave the attorney general this unprecedented authority to revie...

Justice department going after the cia or the cia might perceive it this way? >> i think the cia would feel under the gun. to your point, when the president gave william barr the declassification authority in this matter, he really holds all the cards, right? so nobody from the cia is going push back too hard when he makes a request because he could declassify things that they want kept secret. that is one of the very most important powers that the cia has is to keep things secret. so the fact that bill barr can say, you know what, i'm going to usurp that power is going to force their hand and...

This probe. is it your sense that there's a clash here that this is the justice department sort of going after the c.i.a. or that the c.i.a. might perceive that this way? >> well, i mean, i think that the c.i.a. would feel under the gun because, to your point, when the president gave william barr the declassification authority in this matter, he really holds all the cards, right. so nobody from the c.i.a. is going to push back too hard when he makes his request because he could declassify things that they want kept secret. that is one of the very most important powers the c.i.a. has, is to kee...