Transcripts For CSPAN Former Security Officials Discuss The FBIs Mar-A-Lago Raid 20220901

Discussion with former Obama Administration Security Officials on the fbis raid at maralago and the implications of the search. The House Oversight committee, she along with congressman adam schiff, ask for a Damage Assessment about the impacts from the Intelligence Community. So we welcome our congresswoman. We are thrilled to have cspan covering the event today. In addition to our comments, we welcome supporters of one of the great Historic Sites of our democracy, federal hall on wall street in new york city, where president washington was inaugurated in our bill of rights passed by our first congress. It will be the site of our american Spirit Awards on november 17. Save the date, we will have an Extraordinary Group of awardees this year. We offer informative discussions with the highest thought leaders and experts. That includes two important speakers. We are very honored to welcome back secretary jeh johnson, who served as secretary of Homeland Security in the Obama Administration and previously as general counsel of the department of defense. Secretary johnson is called upon called upon to testify in Security Matters and shares in a global law firm. He is a recipient of an award and an honorary member of the board. Thank you so much for joining us, mr. Secretary. And for initiating todays event. This was your idea and we commend you for that. Thank you so much. And we are also very honored to welcome back michael morel, who served as the former acting director of the Central Intelligence industry under president obama. He has worked at the cia for 33 years and has received multiple awards including the cias highest ranking award, the distinguished intelligence medal. He continues his efforts to keep our nation secure and studies National Security at the Kennedy School of government, west point center on combat and terrorism and the madison policy forum. He is currently senior counselor and global chairman of the geopolitical global strategy. We are so happy to have you two, michael, thank you for joining us. Lets get right to it. The search and seizure of mayor lago has raised questions about what is at stake as many Trump Supporters have poured doubt on why the search and seizure operation was even necessary. So youve got to help us better understand the questions surrounding the documents. I am going to ask you first. How serious is it that there were many sensitive documents found in an unsecured location at the president s club . What do you take of the estate here . Sen. Johnson i think the answer, the short answer is it is both very serious and unprecedented. A couple of overarching thoughts. One, a very basic rule of being a criminal defense lawyer is that you avoid getting dragged into the ongoing criminal conspiracy of your client. Which may have happened here. Second, so often, if the crime does not kill you, the cover up will. I want to make several quasilegal points that i think deserve some attention, because i see there is a lot of misunderstanding swirling around in the public and public commentary. First, every documents that comes out of or into the oval office, except for maybe a very brief personal document like a long true bill a laundry bill, every bill that a president touches is federal property by virtue of the act enacted in the 1970s. No president gets to say these are mine and i am keeping them. I am taking them home with me when i am no longer president. Just number one, that is why the National Archives has a very legitimate claim to all of these records. They came from the white house. Number two, the system of classification, secret, topsecret, as michael knows all too well, it not created by law, but created by executive order, first in the postworld war ii era under the president commander and chief authority. The president issued an executive order and i hereby create this system of classification and over time, the whole bureaucracy has been created for the classification and declassification of documents. And because it is by executive authority, in theory, in definition, by definition, a president , all by himself, could declassify a document. Though it is rarely if ever done because it would be largely foolish without consulting the relevant federal agencies. Having said all of that, there are separate laws that protect sensitive National Security documents and prohibit concealing them, taking them, hiding them, destroying them. Which creates legal jeopardy for this former president. The other thing i will say is that as michael knows all too well, a document itself is not classified. The information in the document is what makes it classified. , so for example, if somebody writes that according to a highly sensitive source named michael morel, jeh johnson was not born in that United States, he was born in the soviet union in 1997 and classified it. That is classified information. You put that in a document, the document becomes classified. But it is the information that is classified, so if you declassify something, part and parcel of that is informing all of the rest of the u. S. Government that you have done so. Otherwise, what is the point . Which is why this alleged Standing Order that anything the president walked out of the oval office within two to his residence was somehow automatically declassified, it is laughable to say that. Anyone who understands this process, declassification involves communicating to others that what you have in your desk, in your file, in your imo, in your head, is no longer classified. And you treat it accordingly. What a president does have the authority to do, probably, is say to others, look, i know i am supposed to keep this classified information in a windowless room. No phones, no telephones. But i in the president and i am going to take it home with me and i will bring it right back on monday. The president in theory could probably do that. No one would question it. And if a president walking out of the white house said i have the authority to do this, to take this to my florida home. His white house counsel, his attorney general and others, would say ok. You might be right, but the moment you are no longer president and you are a private citizen, if you still have this stuff, youre putting yourself in legal jeopardy. So, those are my initial thoughts. And what is clear to me from the department of justice filings here is they are concerned not just with the laws that protect Sensitive Information, but they are obviously also concerned about a very real obstruction of justice here. They had representation from the president s office, that he turned over all of the classified documents. They found out that he had not, they issued a subpoena, they got more, they got a certification in writing from somebody that they had it all. It turns out that was not true and there was this large remainder of highly sensitive documents in the president s desk and elsewhere. And so, as i see it, he and his people are in legal jeopardy right now. Well, that is clearly the case. And i am curious with so many different types of classified documents, michael, can you just go through for our audience what the president s compartmented information or topsecret or miscellaneous secret documents some that were found there, what each of them might mean to our National Security . Mr. Morell sure. Patricia, it is great to be with you. And jay, thank you for putting this together. I think it is an important discussion. There are three defend levels of classification in our government. Confidential, secret, and topsecret. And what differentiates those is the degree of damage to National Security that would occur if those documents, that information were compromised. Topsecret, for example, the definition is exceptionally grave damage. To National Security if the information is compromised. So three levels of classification and then, on top of that, there are what are called compartments in the Intelligence Community. What are called special Access Programs in other parts of the government, namely dod. That is largely usually topsecret information but it is extra sensitive. And the difference between something being just topsecret and something being in one of these compartments or special Access Programs is that basic topsecret information, if you had topsecret clearance, you can see it. But once in these compartments are special Access Programs, only named recipients can see it. So it is a much smaller grouping of the information because it is considered to be that much more sensitive. So, in this case, we have documents that are confidential. We have documents that are secret and we have documents that are topsecret. We also have documents that fall into this category, which is sensitive compartmented information. And we have documents that purportedly i have seen pictures of them, the fbi documents, that there are reportedly also documents that were in special Access Programs. So this is the most highly classified information in the United States government. I will tell you that theres two markings on these documents that jump out at me. One is hcs, which is the human control system. And that is i would say 95 percent of the information is information from cia spies. If so, information that if compromised, could get an individual killed. And the other marking of significance to me is si, which is special intelligence. Which largely refers to information produced by the National Security agency based on their technical selection capabilitys. And if that information were classified, it would put at great risk the method by which they collect that data. And if your adversaries get a hold of that information and understand the method, then they of course can prevent the collection in the future. So, the potential damage here is significant. Given the sensitivities of these documents. Now, let me Say Something about you know, how at risk where these things. And i want to start by saying something that really jumped out at me when i read the affidavit. Which was that these extremisms extremely sensitive documents were mixed with a bunch of other documents, unclassified documents, and 14 of the 15 boxes in the january giveback contained classified information. It is all mixed up. So what that says to me is that the handling of classified information within the Trump White House was exceptionally poor. So the two white houses that i know about, because i worked most closely with them, where the Bush White House and the Obama White House. And in both of those lighthouses, classified information and both of those white houses, classified information was handled with great care and rigor. So both the executive security of the National Security council in both the ministries and in the staff secretary to the president in both of those administrations kept very close track of classified information, who it had been handed to, where was it, when was it returned, and what is still outstanding. It appears to me that i did not happen in this administration. Which i think is an important point. The other important point i make his people say to me, you know, it was in a room at maralago. The room was locked, how at risk could it be . A point i make is the point i made on sunday on face the nation, which is washington is a city of spies, right . The United States spies on our adversaries and our adversaries spy on us. And it is really interesting to go back and look at the history of espionage in the United States by americans. And a large number of americans have been charged and convicted of espionage and sentenced to long terms. And if you look at the total number of those people, almost exclusively russia and china as spies. If you look at the total number of those people and you look at how long they were spying before they got caught, before they were even under suspicion, and may be moved out of access to classified information, and you look at the total numbers and you look at the numbers of years that they were spying and where they got caught, on average, at any given time, there are four americans spying on behalf of a foreign adversary. Those are the ones we eventually learn about. How many do we never learn about . There are spies there are spies. Other adversaries have spied in washington. What is the number one target of any foreign adversary . The white house. So, those documents, poorly, poorly handled inside the white house, would be at risk, because one of those spies could get access to it. The other thing i would say is if you watched the trumpet ministry should in its early months, early years, that first year, you would figure out in a nano second that maralago was a place to collect intelligence. Patricia didnt a woman get arrested there . Four spying . I mean, you would think that they wouldve had their ears up about it. Mr. Morell if i were a foreign Intelligence Service, i would target maralago. So who knows what foreign spies might have had access to this information . What all of this means, right . What all of this means and then i will stop, what all this means is the Intelligence Community is going to do a Damage Assessment. In terms of the intelligence unities operations, they have to assume that this information was compromised. So, if there was information from a sensitive cia source, you have to assume that that information was compromised and therefore, protect that person. And that might be pulling them out of that particular country. And losing that access, even though it might not have been compromised. You have to assume it was compromised. So, we are going to lose assets here, regardless of if we ever find out that it was actually compromised. Sen. Johnson if i could add to that, michael said something i was going to say. Knowing how our adversaries behave, if our adversaries had even a strong suspicion that such sensitive documents were sitting at maralago, there is no doubt in my mind, that it would become a target. Patricia does Homeland Security protect that place in any way from spying . Sen. Johnson yes, it is called the secret service. Frankly, the secret service patricia isnt that more about protecting his life rather than protecting the secrets . Sen. Johnson it is about protecting his life, his residence, protecting the perimeter of the residence. But quite frankly, the secret service has never had to deal with a situation in which a private residence of a former president contains such highly Sensitive Information on the premises like that. Not in the skiff. And so, i am not sure that they would be trained to do that. Nor am i aware of whether or not the secret service was even aware of such sensitive documents that were at maralago. Patricia what do we need . More regulations about how we catalog and look after documents that are given to the president . Sen. Johnson there are such regulations, the problem is as long as there are regulations, the president can shortcut them or abuse them, which is what happened here. Mr. Morell and also, the process, as i talked about earlier, inside the white house, which actually is professional there are professionals on the National Security staff who have been there for years and this is what they do. They keep track of these documents. And they move around. In those processes are only as good as the people who follow them. Sen. Johnson one of the failures here was there was no one in the white house, apparently, who said to this president you cannot take those documents out of this building. And if you do, youre putting yourself in all cons of legal jeopardy. And apparently that did not happen and that should have fallen to a number of people, who themselves were walking out the door and did not care or did not know. Patricia well, i am curious about the declassification assertions by President Trump, that he could just declassify at will. This is a big source of confusion for people, that he says i can just declassify it. Could you just clarify that exactly what that process might be . I know you said that it would go not just to a document, but to the information that they are talking about, which might go to addict different document or in some aside. In someones head. Is there different protocol about how that is done . And why wouldnt the National Archives know that . Youre just saying trumps people did not keep track. Sen. Johnson if i could start, and im sure michael has a very substantive answer to this, first of all, it is much easier to classify a document or a piece of information than it is to declassify. When i was in the defense department, for example, i created a document and down at the bottom it would say classified by jc johnson, declassified on september 1, 2057. To declassify something, you have to go through a whole process of federal agencies and officials, which takes a very long time. In theory, a president , being the commanderinchief, could shortcut all of that and decide for himself, i am going to declassify this particular document, because i think it is in the best interest of the United States interNational Security, or foreign policy. The president rarely if ever does that. And the point i made earlier is that part and parcel of the classifying something is telling others throughout the federal government that you have declassified it. If you are generally interesting in d a piece of information, if you are generally interested in d classifying a piece of information, you tell others. Which is why this assertion is so absurd. Patricia what do you think, michael . What do you think, michael . Mr. Morell i had significant visibility into the clinton administration. So you are talking about a 12 year 12 . Were talking about 24 years here, right . Talking about a long time. I knew in that time period, numerous cases where a president would say to the director of the cia or the director of the dni, could we declassify this . You know, for the following reasons . And that person would take that request back and it would be worked. People would look at the potential downsides of classifying d classifying that information, so there would be a dialogue, right between the president and his or her main advisors. I know of only one case, i know of only one case where a president declassified something without discussion with the Intelligence Community. And i was mentioning this before we came on, president bush declassified several excerpts from the 2002 iraq weapons of mass destruction estimate for scooter libb you to use during his grand jury hearing when he was called before the grand jury. And the president did that and he did not consult with the Intelligence Community. Now, knowing steve hadley, who was the deputy National Security advisor at the time and knowing how good of a lawyer he is, i am assured that he made the president signed a piece of paper that said i hereby declassified these excerpts from this document for this purpose. And i am sure that that document sits somewhere. But that is the only case i know where a president has actually declassified a document. And even the times when a president has requested can we declassify this . It is some of the elves at the end of the day that does the declassification. And the head of the cia, the president himself does not do the declassification. Patricia so, that makes more sense than what they are claiming. I mean, the idea that you have human sources, your assets, the names or the context of the information is given could reveal who the source is would be declassified willynilly just because the president wants to keep it in his home or something. It seems very irresponsible. Mr. Morell i think this is important. I just want to make it a station here between the president taking classified documents from the oval office to the residence, right . Moving along with that, president obama did it all the time, president bush did it all the time. There is an office that the president had in the residence and president obama, for example, would go home, have dinner with his family, go back to the office in the residence, and work for a number of hours into the night. And he had with him a number of classified documents when he did so. I, as acting director of cia, i had a skiff in my home. I could bring classified documents home and work on them, so there is a difference between, you know, taking these documents home when you are working for the government and with the approval of the right authorities and that information is protected in those circumstances. Big difference between that and taking them when you are no longer president , to your residence. Huge difference there. Sen. Johnson and justify that act, taking a document to the residence section of the white house, does not mean your d classifying it. You are borrowing it for the day. And you are the president , bringing it back in the most secure building in washington dc. And so, that is not a declassification. That is why this assertion that there is a Standing Order for the whole thing to be discussed five is declassified is so absurd. Tricia do you think the president did this deliberately, to file charges against him . Is there intent . Sen. Johnson yes, intent is an essential evident element of proving any crime. And so, doj would have to prove either directly or circumstantially, that the president , the former president knew what he was doing was wrong or he knew for example that he was getting his lawyers or his staff people to sign a certification that was false. That he made an active, intentional effort to conceal things from the National Archives and from the department of justice. Patricia is it possible that copies were made and that the fbi retrieved are maybe documents that are also held somewhere else . Sen. Johnson yes. Im hoping the department of justice is taking steps to assure that that did not happen, because if you take a highly classified document and copied it on a regular old copy machine , if you have the liberty to do so. Patricia michael has said that he thinks the president would have documents in bedminster or other homes or childrens homes, that this may not be the only place with these documents. Mr. Morell anything is possible, right . Particularly with the individual we are talking about, but had the fbi had information about that suggested that there might be documents in those places, they would have received a warrant to go to those places as well. Sen. Johnson it seems apparent that the fbi has, just from this brief they filed a few days ago, they have sources of information that are being fed to them one way or another. Hey, you did not get everything in january. We did not get everything in june. There is still stuff left at maralago and it may be the case that those same sources are telling the fbi about other places he may have them or they have not told them such a thing. Patricia let me ask you since you have handled many of these documents, what kind of consequences will you face if you had sensitive documents like these in your possession and had not returned them . Or you said you had returned every thing you had and still have them in your possession . Any thoughts about that . Sen. Johnson neither one of us would be sitting here talking to you. We are talking to you from a room with the bars around it. So it is a felony. Mr. Morell absolutely. Patricia so is there anything like this i think of sandy berger taking sensitive documents years ago and i think he might have been disbarred. And had some term where he was not in jail, but i think he had Community Service or something. This is quite a few documents, but it looks like his lawyer certified that these were all returned. Do you see Merrick Garland going down this path to really dig into attempts to show that the president is behind this specifically . Sen. Johnson he would have to in order to prove in obstruction of justice case against donald trump. He would have to prove that the president knew that the certification was being offered along these lines and they have to prove that President Trump knew that the certification was false and that he allowed his representative to give it anyway. Simply by giving a false statement to the federal government like that, its a violation. Without attempting to prove obstruction of justice, 18 usc 1001 prohibits false statements to the federal government. One thing that is interesting to note about history and i was reading up on this, he did not really we do not have the concept of president ial records that belonged to the u. S. Government until the fdr era. For a lot of president s going back to the first one, george washington, after president s died, their families civilly took all of the records and destroyed them. There was no concept of official records in the custody of the president s family or the president s home and of course, there was no system of classification until the postworld war ii era. And so, this concept of president ial records that do not belong to the person of the president did not really begin to exist until the roosevelt era. And fdr created this president ial library for this concept. While he was still alive. Patricia it was strengthened after Richard Nixon in the National Archives. Sen. Johnson right, there was a controversy about whether or not they should be allowed to keep documents. Patricia the other issue that could happen from what i understand is sometimes, the government may be loath to prosecute, because the sources and methods that might be revealed in a Court Process would be to sensitive to risk revealing. Do you think that would happen in this case . Sen. Johnson yes, but in most instances, involving prosecution of someone for a breach of National Security or taking classified information, the department of justice figures out a way to work through that without compromising sources and methods. Mr. Morell so, for example, you bring a witness in from the Intelligence Community, who will have seen the documents and will be able to testify to their significance. The fact that they were classified and why they were classified. Their sensitivity and that carries the day. Without having to actually show the documents. Patricia and would either of you have any theory as to why the former president might want to keep these documents . Are they just mementos of his time served . Any thoughts about that . Sen. Johnson yes, i do have a theory and this is just a suspicion. It is hard for me to believe that donald trump would really care that much about classified documents in general. That come to the situation room. My theory and my suspicion is that he kept records that in some way exonerate him. Either it related to molar and russia or ukraine mueller or russia and ukraine could or he kept records that make him look good, that indicate him. That is my suspicion. Patricia that might be true. North koreas leader, think, michael . Mr. Morell jay just offered the best excellent nation we will ever get. I did not buy the conspiracy theories about selling the information. I dont believe that. But what jay said right now resonates with me. Sen. Johnson right. I tend not to believe that he kept at these things with the purpose and plan of somehow selling it, but it does seem to me that he puts himself in a position by keeping these records of somehow being extorted by a foreigner, who would in some way coax the information out of him. Mr. Morell sure. Patricia it is stunning to imagine. So when you saw the pictures of the documents on the floor, michael, when you mr. Morell when i saw the picture was it told me something about where the documents came from. Just a day before, a reporter had called me to ask me about whether the briefer i was president bushs briefer for a year, so i saw him every morning. They called me to say did you ever leave anything behind . You know, is that a routine thing that a briefer will leave materials behind . And what struck me about the picture was it said to me immediately that those materials were not from the president s briefing. Because when a briefer walks in the room with classified materials to show the president every morning, or any other senior National Security official in town every morning, they do not have those covers on them. Because you are not going to make a senior official, you know, turn that cover. So those covers will not be there. So to me, that says that this material came from the National Security most lightly came from the National Security Council Staff. Where they do put those covers on anything classified. So anything coming out of the sit room that goes up to the oval will have those covers on and anything coming from the National Security Council Staff up the chain of command to the president will have those covers on them. Sen. Johnson michael and i use to work daily patricia what is the importance of them . Sen. Johnson is like a red light. A warning. Do not look at this document. A warning. This should not be on someones living room floor. Mr. Morell what is the significance of what i just said . The significance is that, you know, we really do not know what these documents are. And so, there is a wide possible range of what these documents might be. You know, one of them one possibility is that they are actually an Intelligence Report from the cia or nsa, reporting, you know, on what a spy told us or what a technical access produced. That is extreme is sensitive. The compromise of that is extreme damaging, so that is one end of the spectrum. Right . And those reports come into the situation room. They are very interesting. A cover will be slapped on it, but that is consistent with this classification level and will be taken to the National Security adviser, the deputy National Security advisor, and other people in the white house, including the president , who they believe need to see it. So that is one end of the spectrum. The other end of the spectrum is if the staff produces a memo recommending a certain policy course and that memo contains classified information, then that memo would be classified to the highest level of the information in the document. So, at the other end of the spectrum, this could be, you know, and nsc memo on policy toward country x, y, or c, which might have tidbits of classified information, but the totality of it is not very sensitive. So that is why it is important to me that this did not come out of the pdb. And it came out of the nfc process. Now, this does not absolve the president in any way here, i am not trying to do that. I am just explaining that the range of possibilities coming from the nfc is greater than the range of possible is coming from the brief. Patricia and now, we have got at any moment or hour, we may have a determination about from a judge about whether there should be a special master appointed. Any thoughts about that . I will start with you, jay. Sen. Johnson the horses are out of the barn already. You seek a special master to take control of the document that has been seized and allow the special master to decide what the government should keep and what the government has to give back. But a socalled clean team at the department of justice has already done that. So it was done three weeks ago apparently. So it is difficult to understand what the utility of a special master would be at this point. Patricia well, it seems like they have already said only a few documents were even requiring special master at this point. Mr. Morell the only thing i would add is and i would start by saying i am not a lawyer, but i have always wanted to be one. So i actually read the u. S. Attorneys filing regarding the special master. And i was i was highly persuaded by the u. S. Attorneys for why a special master was not necessary, was not needed, would actually potentially damage u. S. Interests. It was quite compelling. Patricia well, weve got a number of questions from our audience. And this has been really enlightening. And also very alarming. But i would first like to go to kay, who wants to ask the question. I have a few questions, but it just seems and listening to this, the part that i find alarming is believing that National Security is extremely important, president s should be informed about what his or her responsible he is in that regard. It also sounds like ignorance could be his defense. I did not know this was, you know, that i was doing anything wrong. I thought as president , i could just declare these documents, you know, declassified. Could it possibly be done . Ignorance cannot be a defense. Am i right on that or wrong . Sen. Johnson you are correct. In a criminal prosecution, generally, there has to be criminal intent. Ignorance could be a defense, but there is also a concept called consciousness of guilt. If in your behavior, you do things to suggest or it would seem as though you know that youre doing something wrong, that tends to demonstrate that you had criminal intent, you know what youre doing, and you are not ignorant. So there is a lot of evidence here that the former president took steps to conceal what he was doing, can see what he was taking. And conceal these records from the fbi. So, any prosecution would offer that up as consciousness of guilt. He understood what he was doing and intended to do so. Mr. Morell what was particularly damaging in that regard to me, right, was when the fbi agents were allowed into the room to see the room and see the boxes that remained. But when they asked to open them, they were told they could not. Thats telling to me. Patricia mary, can we go to you next . Do you have a question . Mary i was wondering if in addition to the exoneration and, you know, the motive that he might have had for the documents he took, whether it could also be that he saw a Business Opportunity, given his proclivity to look for money wherever he can find it. And could they be possibly used for that purpose for some other country or Something Like that . Sen. Johnson i suppose it is possible, because we do not know what is in the documents. I tend to believe what i said earlier, because one thing we have learned about donald trump is that he is so determined to prove that it is all he witchhunt, i was innocent all along. And if he finds something that in some way in his view exonerates him or disproves the theories about him, he would go to extraordinary lengths to hold onto that evidence. Mr. Morell one of the things that struck me is that at least some of the documents have the president s on them. Handwritten notes. What struck me about that business is not a man who was known to be a great consumer of intelligence. So there was Something Special about these documents to him. Now it could be jays point that these documents show what i have been saying all along and if he writes a note to that effect, to what issue, to what degree etc. Etc. The other possibility i am not discounting at all is that these documents, in his mind, show that there was a particular Business Opportunity somewhere, not with regard to song the documents, but there is information in the documents that is related to a Business Opportunity somewhere. He wrote a note to himself to that effect. So i do not discount that is a possibility. Sen. Johnson it is entirely possible that a lot of these documents are things that he requested be created for his own selfish purposes and those documents, given the subject matter, contain classified information. That is just speculation on my part, but it is kind of educated speculation. Patricia we have chairwoman maloney with us. We are so happy to have you with us. Thank you for joining us and thank you for all of your tremendous effort these last decades for new york. We know how much youve done for us and i understand you have a question. So go ahead. Thank you to you and jay and michael for a really Excellent Forum on a very important issue. My question is how do you prevent this from happening again . You mentioned there were regulations, regulations can be changed. Do we need to write it into law that so that you do not remove these documents . And how did these documents get moved to his home . Government officials probably move them there in crates. How did that happen . Because they are obviously classified documents or rather president ial documents, that we know belong to the American People and are supposed to be preserved. As a legislator, i am very interested in how you prevent this from happening again, but it is quite quite overt to take 15 crates and ship them to your home. You would think someone would say hey, mr. President , this belongs to the American People. These are not mementos to take your home and put wherever. So those are my two questions. Sen. Johnson let me take a stab at the first one, congresswoman. So much of our system and in fact, so much of our law and constitution assumes that you have a person at the top who is a responsible, levelheaded, mature lawabiding person with a moral compass. And i think and i notice even at the cabinet level, i thing we have to be careful not to create so many restrictions in the off chance that we elect another donald trump that hamstrings the president s ability to do his job effectively. You cannot necessarily write a rule or a law or a way that so constricts a president , so that the honest mature president cannot do his job effectively. And so, i think the answer to your question is we should not elect people who have no moral compass, no sense of the rule of law and do not think about anything other than themselves. Patricia he is not a chum fan. Michael, do you have anything to add to that . Mr. Morell no, i do not. Patricia ok. Carolyn, youre muted. There you go. Do you have any information these were not just a president using his prerogative to take the documents home out of the state, these were 15 crates if not more that were hauled off to his home. So number one, how did that happen . And again, we did elect someone. Our family fathers did not predict that we would have that our Founding Fathers would not put it that we would have all courses of the president could use for himself or a lot of the ways that he has had conflict of interest. You have to protect against it in the future. And michael, do you have any ideas about how you can prevent this from happening again . Mr. Morell if i were going to testify in front of you, i would say i have no idea on how they got from the white house to maralago, but since we are not, since im not testifying in front of you, i can tell you that i have hearsay. I have people that told me that, you know, the last couple days were incredibly chaotic inside the white house. Nobody knew except the what was happening, nobody knew what to do. So many people had left. That the normal process by which things get moved out broke down is my understanding. I was told by a former senior official in the Obama White House that when the president moved out, that the materials the president was taking with him to his residence were actually looked at to ensure there was no classified information in them. That clearly did not happen in this case. So, to answer your question about how you prevent this, you are back to jays point i think, because you can have all the regulations and processes in the world and if the person at the top does not respect them, theres not much you can do after that. Maam, you can write laws that turn those regulations and process into statutes, but if the person at the top does not follow those, you are in the same situation. Maybe what you need is enforcement or punishment for when you violate the law. Mr. Morell bingo. Patricia well, i think hopefully the doj is working on that now and misses chairwoman, you might want to do something before the end of this term. But stay with us, please. I want to just go we have time for a few more questions that i would like to go to, would you like to ask your question . Then we will go to jerry. Weve got a lot of questions here. Thank you. It was a most interesting discussion. I mean, one aspect of whether trump declassified them or not that strikes me is it would be the height of irresponsibility, it seems to me, it to declassified these documents which reveal a very dutch American Assets in american techniques for getting information about foreign countries. So patricia do you have a question . Yeah, the question is doesnt that bear on the issue of whether he declassified them or not . Because to declassify these documents, it would be the height of your responsibility. Sen. Johnson right. And so, it goes back to what i was saying. I believe that what is fundamental to an act of declassification is that you tell somebody else that you have declassified that piece of information. It is a little like claiming that in the state of new jersey, the speed limit on the turnpike is whatever the governor happens to be driving at that particular moment. If he does not tell anybody what he is driving. And so what good is it if you do not communicate that decision in some way . So this claim, which does not exist anywhere in writing, that he declassified these things, in my view, is not really an act of declassification. It is a misnomer. It is an act of in fact f arce. Mr. Morell if youve ever seen a declassified document, classification, there is a line through it. And there is a stamp that says declassified on such and such a date by some declassification authority. So everybody knows, right, that the document has been declassified. Patricia yeah, it seems like you have to have some kind of process for that in ever but he has to agree to it. I agree with you, you have got to have leadership that follows through. So let me ask you, do you think does it undermine first of all, does it undermine morale at the intelligence agencies . Do you think this undermines our confidence in our institutions . Mr. Morell maybe i could come back to the chairwomans question before i answer that. You know, one thought on what Congress Might be able to do, and i do not know if this would stand up to Supreme Court scrutiny, but the process by which a president can declassify or the process by which a president declassified us something that she wants to declassify has never been outlined. It is unclear and it would be helpful if Congress Passed a statute, passed a law, that defined exactly the steps required for a president to declassified. Now, that might be challenged, but i think it would be helpful. And patricia, i am sorry that i was thinking about that, i was taking about the chairwomans question, when you are asking. Patricia im just curious how much this kind of thing has undermined morale at the intelligence agencies . I mean, you have spent your whole career with these assets and these protocols for keeping people safe and people risk their lives to provide services for our intelligence agency. Are you seeing any, any lower morale in our intelligence agencies as a result of this kind of event, where these things are mishandled so casually . Mr. Morell i did not have any insight into how the Intelligence Officers who are currently serving are reacting to this. But i would tell you that the reaction i would expect of those cia officers would be frustration and anger. When the cia recruits a Foreign National to work for the United States, to spy for the United States, to put their life at risk for the United States, the promise we make them is that we will keep them secure. That we will do everything we can to protect them and their security and their family security. To see somebody mishandle classified documents that could possibly put a cia source at risk cuts to the heart of the commitment we make to these people who fight who spy for us and keep us safe. On the other side, we have threats against Merrick Garland, against fbi agents, against people at the National Archives. The former member of the administration. How does this affect you and the people you know who served . Obviously, i am concerned about the attacks on the fbi and the global attacks on the fbi. Words have consequences. Those consequences are that for the deranged among us, violence becomes inevitable. Those who have a public voice, who have a microphone, who attacked the fbi and attacked the National Archives and attack the irs, have to know and expect their words have consequences and those consequences could be violent. The effect on the fbi personal safety, but also affects their ability to enforce the law. When we are picking a jury in an over an organized crime case, if there are jurors who have suspicions about the credibility of an fbi agent who takes the stand because of these endless attacks cover that has consequences for Public Safety and our ability to enforce the law and put bad people away. At a time when there is so much lingering doubt about our institutions, it is so important we try to do the right thing. I appreciate both of you so much and your service to our country. We have hit the limit, but i am wondering if you could give questions, you have time to answer them. I am not going to hold you to it if you have to run. I have time. Go ahead. Lindsay, milton, john, please and they will answer them. Thank you. You kind of touched on this, but i was curious, as members of congress you were talking about condemning the fbi. What do you see in a broader context that this raid on maralago is going to have toward broad societal trust and institutions at large . Among a certain segment of our population, the effect is a negative one. That is because you have donald trump and others who support him who are undermining our own government by attacking the government, somehow out to get him. Maralago is not new in that respect. There have been so many institutions of our government that have been discredited and degraded because of the way the former perp the former president conducted himself in office. The department of Homeland Security, the department of defense, the national guard, the fbi, the Intelligence Community, even the Weather Bureau at one point. And it is going to take years for us to recover. There was a time in the eisenhower years where over 70 of americans trusted their government to do the right thing. That is simply not true anymore. It is down somewhere in the 30s or the 40s. In the last the last six years i am sure have caused those numbers to tailspin. It is going to be a long time before we can recover. I think that is one of the Top Priorities of those who hold office right now. Or, it should be. There has been some reporting that suggests that over time, the former president was collecting documents. Moving them into the residence. It has not been clear whether those are some component or part of what was taken to maralago. If it turns out that what we are looking at is a systematic sectioning off, or copying of, or having a set of documents that over the course of his administration he has been trying to keep for personal purposes, is that going to change the way this is approached . Does it make it more likely that there will be an indictment . I wont answer the legal question, i believe that for j. I will say the president s office in the residence, which i have been too many times when i briefed president bush every morning, is a pretty small place. To have all of those boxes, all of that material that was in those boxes in that room as simply the result of being taken there over time, thats a little difficult for me to believe. There are no other closets. Its a lot of material. You had a question . As we sit here, i do not know that we know the full extent and scope of what he took. How do we know that he didnt give to some others of his who remain loyal to him some of these classified records for their own purposes . To write a book or something. Ok. At this moment, what do you think the intelligence agencies of our close allies are doing . If i am running an Intelligence Service as a close ally, i have just had reinforced again what was reinforced a number of times during the trump administration, that i need to be very careful what i share with the United States of america. And our security, our security relies on information that our allies share with us. Intelligence is a team sport. We commend you for your service and we thank you for tonight. It has been extraordinary. I appreciate you doing this on such short notice and for our folks joining us as well, thank you. I hope we can have you back again. I do not think this story is going away anytime soon and it is such an important story. Thank you for joining us. We have got a lot of wonderful things coming up. I want you to put november 17 on your calendar. We are going to have a fantastic group of people. We have got Marie Brenner talking about how doctors and nurses fought covid. Were going to have an in person reception with alan pastor cough. Will be talking about our Disturbing Trends of hate and extremism. We are going to be talking about inflation with former vice chairs of the fed alan blinder. A lot more coming up. Thank you so much jay and michael. I hope we see you again. Thank you. Good night everybody. Goodbye. Announcer we take you live to president bidens hometown of scranton, pennsylvania to hear from Kevin Mccarthy as he shares his thoughts on the administration and the direction of the democratic party. You are watching live coverage. Air travel has never been more unpredictable. Families go to the groceryto