Former President Trump's
new federal indictment
isn't just another legal battle.
It's not just another political battle.
It's unprecedented in every way.
The current frontrunner
for the GOP
nomination is the first former president
in U.S. history to face federal charges.
This is the second indictment
for the former president just months ago.
He became the first ex-president
to be charged with a criminal offense,
getting charged in New York with 34
felony counts
relating to the Stormy
Daniels hush money payments.
Well, joining us to somehow,
someway put this into
perspective is Tim Naftali,
CNN presidential
historian, former director
of the Nixon Presidential Library.
In a time there's
some common wording
when you read the reporting
this morning, New York
Times, Washington Post,
The Times
writing the Justice
Department on Thursday
took the legally
and politically momentous step.
The Post
calling it
a, quote, seismic event
in the nation's political
and legal history.
Is presidential in the middle of legal
and political history?
Venn diagram?
Well,
why don't we step back
and look at what's at issue
and then maybe people do.
Easier for people to understand why
this is a seismic moment.
I don't think many Americans
would be that concerned
if the president,
in leaving the White House,
took things that he shouldn't have taken
because it's a hurly burly,
big rush at the end,
especially when you have a transition
that that president didn't
believe should happen.
All right.
2021 was,
as we know,
a dramatic year, to put it mildly,
But it's the issue of keeping
the material.
When the US government
said, Hey,
you've got stuff that you shouldn't.
And then when that stuff includes
Topsy, acrid materials
and it appears that the president,
former president shared them with people
and then it appears directed others
to move them so that Federal
National Archives
employees and federal lawyers
couldn't get at them.
Then it opens up the question of
is someone above the law
because they became president?
That's the question
I think people should
keep in their minds.
Do you want to live in a country
or once someone is elected president,
they can decide which laws to follow
and which laws not to follow?
I mean,
I think that's the basic issue here.
And it's beyond
the time of the presidency,
which I think is important to focus on.
These charges are about
what happened
after he left office
and the consistent claim
from the former president,
despite his shifting defense
about how he says he declassified it
with his mind or whatever,
is that he believes
that because he was president,
he has this right,
his right
to have all of these things, Poppy.
I think this is a symptom
of a problem with the entire Trump
presidency, where President Trump
understood that he got powers
when he was elected,
but he didn't understand
that he had obligations
and that we live in a constant
to tional democracy.
Everybody,
including the president, is bound
by that constitution
and there are limits to their power.
And President Trump
not only had a hard time with limits,
he didn't respect them.
And this is a case
where he was told repeatedly
that there were limits to his ability
to keep materials and he said,
I don't care.
We're going to hear a lot,
I think, from the Trump
defense team, from Trump
allies
about the Presidential Records Act.
The president has brought that up a lot.
And just to be very, very clear,
the the former director
of the National Archives has said
very clearly that that is just
they are wrong as a matter of law
to say that it extends
beyond the minutes
that he's not president
saying when President Biden took office,
all presidential records of the Trump
administration came
into the legal custody
of the archives of the United States.
There's no legal question about that.
In fact,
not none whatsoever
I mean, I was a federal library director.
My particular president
was Richard Nixon,
who actually gave birth to all of this
because he wanted to destroy records that
would have put him in legal peril.
Let me
let's make it absolutely clear
to everybody.
You, the American people, own
all presidential records.
The president of the United States.
The minute
he and someday she leaves office,
they must turn over to you.
All presidential records,
except for a very narrow band of things.
That are considered private,
including a diary.
There is nothing from the FBI materials
that have been released,
nothing that the president
with the president kept in Mar-A-Lago
that that is within the band of private.
He kept our materials to Natalie.
Appreciate it so much.
Former President
Trump is expected to be arraigned Tuesday
in Miami
federal court
following his historic indictment
for mishandling classified documents.
Now, officials
say law enforcement is scrambling
to prepare security measures
and the Justice
Department is already moving
additional resources to South Florida.
It's notable
that special counsel Jack
Smith obtained
the indictment in Miami
and not in Washington, D.C.,
to help
protect the case
from potential backlash
over the location of the trial.
CNN's
Kaitlin Poulets is live for us outside
the courthouse in Miami.
And Caitlin,
I guess the first question is,
what can we expect to actually see
on Tuesday?
Well, so
we are going to be
able to see what happens
outside the courthouse.
But as far as pictures, video
of what happens
inside the courthouse,
that just is not something
that federal court does.
Federal court does not allow
the sort of images of defendants
inside courtrooms
walking into courtrooms.
Anything inside the courthouse
that you even saw in the New York
State arraignment of Donald Trump,
where there were images of him
walking down the hall into the courtroom,
and then there were photographs of him
inside the courtroom
before the proceedings started.
No video, no photos in federal court.
So that is a big difference.
But this is, you know, federal property
all around us.
This is a pretty secure complex.
And so we do expect to see
a lot of security here,
a lot of presence
from the federal government
to make sure
that the former
president of the United States
is protected as a criminal defendant
and that these grounds stay secure.
So this is quite a complex.
And this is also Miami federal court.
This is not a federal court
that hasn't seen
a high security defendants before.
Man Manuel Noriega was on trial
here for seven months,
several years ago
in the federal court in Miami.
He was held here as well.
Panama any dictator.
So this is a very
this is the sort of thing
that this courthouse
has already been through,
really high security incidents.
But we're going to have to see
how this plays out.
With Donald Trump himself,
he is a defendant like no other. The good
just so much going on, so many questions.
Okay.
Well, part of the reason
I think we're both want to talk to you
is because you've covered this
so closely,
so in depth,
so in the weeds
over the course of the better
part of the last year, to some degree,
there's one element
that I think
we've heard more
from President
Trump's team
over the course of the last day or two
that they seem to be focusing on.
Trump attorney
Jim Trusty
accused the top DOJ
national security lawyer of misconduct
in the process
of forming this indictment.
Help us understand the context
and potential validity of those claims.
Right.
Well, we're still trying
to gather more information on this
because it appears
that there is some communication
to a judge in D.C.
that is under seal. So still secret.
So we can't get a full understanding
of that at this time.
But what Jim
Trustee did say on
CNN last night
is that they are very unhappy
with a prosecutor
on this special counsel's office team,
that they believe
that he may have been trying
to pressure
a lawyer
to a number of witnesses
in this investigation.
And so that is something
that we should be watching.
But in this situation,
and also with the indictment itself,
there is a lot of material
in the court system
that is being looked at by judges,
including the indictment
that we just have not seen. Right.
It is all confidential at this time.
And so there is this effort
now to understand, you know,
what is actually on paper versus
what people are saying publicly
about what's happening behind the scenes
in the federal court.
And as this happens
and as this indictment is brought,
Jax Smith,
the special counsel,
is still in the midst of his other probe
in terms of 2020
election interference,
in terms of efforts
to overturn
the results of the 2020 election
that's still going on right now.
Very much so.
And that grand
jury was meeting yesterday.
We believe they heard from Newt Gingrich
yesterday
in that secret
proceeding in Washington, D.C.
and that there are others
witnesses that I've been hearing
about coming in the coming days
who've been asked by investigators
to speak in that investigation as well,
so that January six investigation around
what happened at the White House
after the 20, 20 election
leading up to the attack on the Capitol
on January six.
Very much a real investigation
that continues on
with a very active grand jury
in the Washington, D.C.
federal courthouse.