Let me start with you,
Manu laid out
some of the distinctions
between the Trump documents
or the Biden documents.
What do you think about this
call of a special prosecutor
in this case? It's the right call.
It's the only call that I think
Merrick Garland could have made.
The hallmark
of a special prosecutor
is conflict of interest.
If a reasonable member of the public
would look at a situation and say,
gee, there are
some crossed wires
there, or that might be a situation
where you might have
some crossed loyalties.
Well, let's start from the fact
that there already is
a special counsel investigating.
Donald Trump.
I think the potential
conflict of interest is obvious.
Hence,
there is going to be
a conflict of interest,
probably even more
so when you're talking about
Merrick Garland
and his DOJ investigating his own boss.
Joe Biden.
I see no daylight
between Donald Trump situation
and Joe Biden.
The situation
when it comes to conflict of interest.
If there's a conflict of interest
to Donald Trump, there
absolutely is a conflict of interest.
When it comes to Joe Biden
and there had to be a special counsel.
And so, listen,
we we've laid out
the differences
between the way
the Biden team has handled this
and the way the Trump team
has handled this.
But I'm guessing that those distinctions
are lost on Republicans today
and that they are delighting
in this now sort of
Democrats losing the high moral ground.
Well, yes, of course they are.
And it's
you know,
it's rich for folks
who did not criticize
the former president
for egregiously
mishandling classified information,
who are now
very, very upset
and want to look into President Biden
or then-Vice President
Joe Biden's mishandling.
But I think the bigger picture is this.
This is a terrible fact pattern
for the president.
I'm actually stunned for
like what is a highly professional
team around him,
just the errors
that they made along the way.
Like, first
and foremost,
the mishandling of the information
where it was improperly stored.
But then the fact that,
you know, days before the midterms,
they knew this information
didn't share with the public
and then as opposed to the days
before the midterms
would that have been realistic?
I don't I think that I mean, listen.
Transparency is always the best thing.
But even further,
I think the fact that in December
they knew about this
second tranche,
that's in his garage,
you know, in his personal home,
it's always
better to rip off the Band-Aid
and get ahead of it than have it
leak, leak, leak out.
Well, they had the opportunity
when they acknowledged
the first batch earlier this week.
They already knew about the second one.
They at that time could have said
everything they knew at the time.
Well, exactly.
And it just
it undermines prior statement.
It undermines,
you know,
the really strong condemnation, the form
the president
made about the former president,
knowing that he himself had done
very similarly, frankly.
The big difference, of course,
which you can't say enough, is Trump
also obstructed.
He also continues to obstruct.
So the fact patterns are different. Sure.
But the argument I mean,
what is being investigated
is the mishandling
of classified information in that regard.
They're very similar. Yes.
And that's the law lay back to you.
It's about the mishandling.
It's about the possession
of classified information.
When we hear from Everton Monitor
that there's going to be an investigation
looking into
whether there was a crime committed.
How could a crime
not have been committed?
The classified documents
were not where they were supposed to be.
So, first of all,
there is no one Neil Law
that covers mishandling of classified
or sensitive government documents.
There is a half dozen or more,
all of which sort of touch on different
angles of this.
In the Mar
a Lago
search warrant, for example,
DOJ cites two different document,
two different laws
relating to mishandling or taking
or destruction
of sensitive government documents.
So we'll start with that.
But how could there be a crime or could
there not be a crime?
The key things for any prosecutor
are always going to be knowledge
and intent.
You have to show that any person
you're going to charge with a crime,
first of all, knew about the documents.
If a person legitimately had no idea.
There's no crime.
You can't charge a crime.
You also have to show that the person
had some sort of criminal intent,
some sort of a tent
that was against the law.
The obvious example
in these hypothetical scenarios would be
if somebody was disseminating
this information, selling it,
giving it to others.
Now, that doesn't appear to be the case
either with Trump and Biden,
based on what we know now.
But that's the touchstone
that prosecutors
are going to be looking for
both Trump and Biden
knowledge and intent.
Evan,
we have plenty of recent examples
of how a special counsel investigation
can start on one element,
and then the scope
expands, broadens over time,
and we could be looking at
different things very soon.
Yeah, you know, that's
that's the problem
with special counsels
and why certainly I think
throughout the history in this building,
there's a resistance to doing it.
I think that the Merrick Garland
is very, very cognizant of that.
He he was reluctant to do the first one.
Jack Smith.
And and I'm sure probably felt
the same way.
But once he had done
the first one,
he absolutely knew
he had to do the second one,
which is rob her.
I will say, though, that
there is an effort here to make clear
in the appointment document,
which the attorney general announced
in which he specifically specified
what specific crime is being looked at.
There is, of course, language
that says
any additional matters or crimes
that may have may arise,
especially
if somebody was trying to obstruct
or anything like that.
One of the key parts of this case
is going to be,
you know,
the personal documents
that were found alongside
the the president,
the classified documents. Right.
One of the things that we heard in
the last few days from from officials
is that you know,
these documents were found
with purely personal things
having to do
with the vice president's family
and so on.
The question is the dates
of those documents. Right.
They're going to want to know.
The FBI is going to want to know
how far back are those documents
that might indicate
an intent
to try to conceal
the classified documents.
Those are the things that are going to be
key here.
The co-mingling of the personal
with the classified documents
is going to be a key
part of this investigation going forward.
And I think that's where we might see,
you know,
you know, the direction
of this investigation.
Of course, one of the complications here
that that we all have to talk about
is the fact
that we have a sitting president
who is being investigated.
And under regulations
from the Justice Department,
a sitting president
cannot be charged with a crime.
So that's another complication
that Rob her
is going to have to deal with
Yeah.
I mean, obviously,
this stuff that was found at Mar
a Lago was also intermingled
with personal stuff.
There was clothing items,
there were newspaper
articles, pictures, etc..
Republicans have been saying
since they took control of the House
that they're going to be calling for
lots more investigations.
They're getting their wish, though.
I would think that investigating a dozen,
as we now
know of the Biden documents,
would be a shorter investigation.
If that's all there proves to be,
then the almost 300 documents
by Donald Trump.
Either way,
they're getting their term off
to a rollicking start. Here
is their focus on the investigations
going forward.
The Republicans had planned to look on
a whole wide range of other issues.
They still do plan to look into this
whole wide range of other issues.
But really the
main focus, for instance, of the House
Oversight Committee
happened to look at the Bidens
family Senate finally finances,
look into Hunter Biden's overseas
business transactions,
try to connect that to Joe Biden.
That had been the big focus.
There will still be a focus going ahead.
But now with this news,
it's giving them a new area to push ahead
and which is why we expect
a lot of effort here going forward.
The question will be when,
whether or how the White House
a good response to all these requests
for records.
Does the White House
cooperate with James Comey's request
to provide this information by January?
24th,
including communications
between White House
aides, the records themselves,
a whole slew of documents,
or do they fight
the Republicans in the House?
And does that lead to a subpoena fight?
Does that lead into legal fight
things that we saw
during the Trump administration?
There is no real
clear answer to that at this point,
but that is undoubtedly
how they plan to pursue it.
But there are two guys, Democrats,
who have questions,
including Mark Warner,
who's the chairman of the Senate
Intelligence Committee.
He wants a briefing, a damage assessment
about what
these documents were, the impact
it had on national security.
And he's not the only one
and talked to a number of Democrats.
They want to know more information,
which is why the Democrats
have not been very vocal on this,
because there are just a lot of questions
that they don't have answers to yet
lie to you.
And the question of intent
which you just
talked about in your first answer.
M.J.
Lee at the White House
just got a statement
from the special
counsel to the president,
White House counsel
or special counsel,
the press, I should say,
He says that this is a statement.
We are confident that a thorough review
will show that these documents
were inadvertently misplaced.
How much does that matter there?
He's thinking the exact same thing.
I was just talking
about knowledge and intent.
And if it turns out that
this was inadvertent or Donald Trump's
situation was inadvertent,
there's not going to be a crime.
Now, as you
and Alyssa were just discussing,
the credibility
of this spokesperson for Joe
Biden is not 100%,
because we now know that three days ago
when they told
us, okay, documents were discovered
at this UPenn Biden office,
they also knew that there were documents
discovered at the president's home
in Wilmington, but didn't tell us that.
So that's a statement from Joe
Biden's people.
We can take it for what it's worth.
But but that lawyer is
keyed into the key issue here,
which is knowledge and intent.
And by the way, for what it's worth,
sorry to Trump.
I think that Donald Trump's
going to be following
how Joe Biden responds
to this very carefully
and probably using
some of the same arguments early on.
We already saw that
he tested the waters Trump did with
I don't park my own boxes.
It was staff I wasn't aware.
And I think that this is going to be
something where he's paying
close attention
and modeling his legal response
accordingly.
That's very interesting
because he's been casting about
for a response,
as you know,
because for a while it was well,
I declassified them
magically with a wave of my wand.
And then people are like,
you can't do that.
So now he's looking for maybe another one
because of the intent part of it.
And Ali would know this better than me.
It's going to be hard to prove,
like unless there's a witness there
or something in writing that suggests
a reason that you took something.
So, so long as he's able to say,
I haven't packed a box in ten years,
staff did that for me.
I don't know how they got there.
That's a pretty strong case
that he can make.
And it seems like that's
what Biden's leaning into as well.
There's an interesting difference here.
Joe Biden continues
up to
and including the statement
that just came out moments ago
to deny that he knew anything.
No knowledge.
Knowledge is easier than intent.
Donald Trump
has acknowledged publicly
that he knew there might.
He's offered up there my documents.
I mentally declassified them.
That's my stuff, etc.
But what Trump is banking on
is sort of the next step,
which is,
yes, I know
those documents were in my resort
in Mar a Lago,
but I had no criminal intent.
So Trump has sort of conceded step one,
Biden has not conceded
that they may be well, different fact.
That's really interesting.
Thank you all. Really appreciate it for.