amna: Former president Donald
Trump is at the center of
several ongoing investigations
from missing classified
government documents to
influencing 2020 election
results.
William takes a look at these
probes that loom over a
contentious midterm season.
>> There are multiple and
overlapping investigations into
the former president, his
actions, and those of his
allies.
We want to turn to someone who
has been tracking all of them
closely.
Andrea Bernstein has been
covering democracy for
pro-public and a regular
contributor to NPR.
She is the author of American
oligarchs, the Kushner's,
trumps, and the marriage of
money and power.
>> Good to speak with you.
>> Let's talk about the
mar-a-lago documents
investigation.
This is a probe into whether or
not the president improperly
took classified documents from
the white house down to his home
in Florida.
We know the FBI executed the
search warrant.
What is the latest on that
particular investigation?
>> Both sides have commented.
A special master is a phenomenon
that has really emerged.
It in both of those cases, they
argued they were attorneys for
president trump so some of the
documents could have
attorney-client privilege.
The complicated thing is that
this is the ex-president in
possession of classified
documents.
And the government is arguing,
the department of justice is
arguing that he has no right to
those documents.
They are clearly government
property by their nature because
they are marked classified.
There is no question of
privilege and with respect to
classified documents, the
justice department is arguing
that they should have unfettered
access both to investigate and
for national security reasons.
Former president trump's
attorneys say that we need to
pause and there might be
something that they shouldn't be
looking at.
The justice department response
has been ok, we won't look at
what might be personal to the
former president but the
classified documents are ours
and we have a right to them.
We are waiting for the Florida
judge to decide whether the
justice department can go ahead
and have access to these
classified documents.
That is the status right now as
we are waiting for a judicial
ruling.
>> Has been ongoing speculation
as to why the former president
would have taken some of these
documents down to mar-a-lago and
we still don't know the answer
to that.
But you published a piece today
that hinted as to why he might
have.
>> We don't know the reason.
I have covered his businesses
for a long time and so many
people have spoken to me about
how, as a businessman, Donald
Trump was a manager and
collected it to real power.
I spoke with Christie Todd
Whitman who said there was an
occasion when trump did not want
her to approve a tunnel to a
rival casino because trump at
the time thought it would help
his rival.
So he pressured Whitman and
called her up and said you would
not want anybody to find out
anything about your son.
This was non-public information,
her high school aged son had
gotten drunk at a trump property
and had to go to the hospital.
She doesn't know how trump found
out about it but she said he
used that information and tried
to pressure her decision to go
his way.
This is something I have heard
over and over from associates,
employees, journalists, and
others scrutinizing trump that
he has obtained private
information and tried to use it
for his benefit.
We don't know why he has those
documents but we know he had a
habit of collecting dirt on
opponents.
>> Let's turn to another big
investigation underway.
The Fulton county district
attorney is looking into whether
the trump campaign and different
allies improperly perhaps
pressured elections officials,
how they counted the votes and
how they reported those votes
back to Washington, D.C.
What is the latest on that
particular probe?
>> There is a very active
investigation.
A number of allies have said
peanut to testify.
This is the investigation
involving the phone call the
former president made to the
Georgia secretary of state
saying please find me 11,780
votes which is one more vote
than he would have needed to win
the state of Georgia.
This was something everybody
heard.
That investigation has publicly
been much more active in some
ways than the department of
justice investigation since
January 6.
As I have come to learn,
covering these criminal cases,
you don't actually know the
course and trajectory of an
investigation until if and when
there is some kind of
indictment.
>> The January 6 investigation
is also going on where a
bipartisan congressional
committee is looking into the
role that the former president
might have played inciting the
events of January 6 and also
this larger attempt to thwart
the counting and certification
of the election.
A lot of activity in that
recently.
What has been happening?
>> They announced they will have
more public hearings.
They left us back in July with a
lot of questions about the
former president, his allies,
the structure of the scheme.
A lot of witnesses were coming
forward.
We know the hearings as planned
were upended when they got
additional information.
We don't know exactly what they
are going to present.
They have kept everything very
close to the vest in that
committee.
When we have seen the hearings,
we have learned a lot and expect
to do so at the future hearing
as well.
>> So many complicated cases
going on.
Thank you for helping us wade