Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, one of the biggest political stories of the year,
of the decade of the entire time that I've been covering politics took place last night,
August 8th, the anniversary of the resignation of President Richard Nixon from his office. The FBI
executed a search warrant at Donald Trump's home, Mar a Lago, including a search of his
personal quarters as well as of a safe. It is an incredible situation, this all happening
in connection with Donald Trump taking those massive dumps of classified documents to his
own house. NBC reporting FBI search at Trump's Mar a Lago Home Tied to classified material.
In a lengthy statement Monday night, Trump said, They even broke into my safe. Former
President Trump said Monday the FBI raided his home at Mar a Lago and cracked his safe.
A source familiar with the matter said to NBC News it was all tied to the classified information
that Donald Trump took with him from the White House in January of 2021. This is an extraordinary
situation. The claims being made by those on the right are beyond parody, and we will get to that.
But first and foremost, Donald Trump's own reaction to this, putting out an unhinged
statement saying the following. These are dark times for our nation as my beautiful home.
Mar a Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided and occupied by a large group
of FBI agents. Nothing like this has ever happened to a president of the United States before.
After working and cooperating with the relevant government agencies, this unannounced raid on my
home was not necessary or appropriate. The fact that Trump is saying he was cooperating to me
suggests he wasn't because he basically lies about everything. It is a prosecutorial misconduct,
the weaponization of the justice system, and an attack by radical left Democrats who
desperately don't want me to run for president in 2024, especially based on recent polls. Now,
remember, the current director of the FBI is Christopher Wray, appointed by Donald Trump.
So to claim that this is the work of far left Democrats, it is being asserted without evidence.
And until evidence is presented, I believe we can dismiss it as there is no evidence. Trump
going on to say such an assault could only take place in broken third world countries.
Sadly, America has now become one of those capital C countries corrupt at a level not seen before.
Wow. They even broke into my safe. What is the difference between this and Watergate
where operatives broke into the DNC? Here in reverse. Democrats broke into the home
of the 45th president of the United States. Speaker 2: Big, massive dumps. Well.
Speaker 1: That's all going to remain to be seen. I do hope, given Trump's propensity to
flush evidence down the toilet, I hope the FBI has plumbers on staff and that they have appropriate
elements of plumbing with suction in order to figure out what on earth did Trump flush down
that toilet, what records that he destroyed? So Trump blaming this on the radical left.
The truth is, Trump selected the FBI director who would have had to sign off on this.
And just as a reminder, here is Donald Trump praising the great Christopher Wray from the FBI.
Speaker 3: President Trump is just tweeting about the FBI director. Here's what he says.
I will be nominating Christopher Wray, a man of impeccable credentials, to be the
next director of the FBI. Details to follow. Speaker 1: Right. That's the guy now that Trump
is saying is the radical left going after him now understand such a decision to raid the house of a
former president? It must have been approved by the attorney general, Merrick Garland. The top
echelon of the FBI must have known about it. That is one very bad news for Donald Trump. And second,
you don't do this on a whim. The FBI also would have required probable cause
to have a belief that there were specific places. Again, Trump's personal quarters Trump safe.
They would have to have probable cause to be able to say, Here's where we want to search.
It wouldn't be a shock if a very high level Trump associate flipped and was cooperating
with the FBI. We don't know that. But for them to have such probable cause about the specific
places in Trump's home to be searched. Could it have been Mark Meadows? We don't know. It's all
speculative. But the most important part of this is that when Trump says, they broke into my safe
and later you'll hear Eric Trump say there was nothing in it, which is interesting. They would
need some reason to include the safe as a search location. They would have some reason to think
that the safe might have a nexus to potentially criminal activity. Now, if the raid was only about
some low level staffer and not about Trump or someone near Trump. It's unlikely they would go
into his personal safe again. We're reading tea leaves and speculating based on what we do know.
They couldn't have done this if they didn't have a good case to do it. And that the belief,
at least the plausible belief that Mar a Lago contained evidence of criminal activity. Now,
attorney Marc Elias pointed out the media is missing the really big reason why the raid
is a potential blockbuster in American politics. And that relates to 18 US code subsection 2071,
the concealment, removal and mutilation generally. And it says that if indeed one
is found guilty of mishandling documents in this way concealing, removing, mutilating, obliterating
the penalty is forfeiture of public office and disqualification from holding any office under the
United States. That's potentially what is at play here, assuming that this involves the mishandling
or unauthorized removal of classified information. And if they find those elements at Mar a Lago,
the substance of the documents is less important. It's the fact that they were classified and that
they were improperly removed. Their presence alone would be indicative of this crime. Now, again,
we're going to get to clips in a moment of all the people saying everything done was improper.
Merrick Garland would not have authorized this and a federal judge would not have okayed it if
there was not significant evidence to warrant it. And recall, with Hillary Clinton's case,
the DOJ didn't prosecute because she may have been negligent with information.
Maybe she was even reckless, but it was not an intentional mishandling that rose to criminality.
And if this is what happened at Mar a Lago, we have to believe that, at least potentially
that is what the FBI believes Donald Trump did.