0 tomorrow. oh thanks you at home for drove-ing us for this next hour. rachel's on hiatus, but as she told you before she left she will be here in a few weeks for the state of the union address. and that is scheduled for march 1st. it will be joe biden's very first state of the union address as president. not to be confused with the address last year which was made to a joint session of congress. and that's because when a new president gives a speech to a joint session of congress, shortly after taking off, it's technically not a state of the it's technically not a state of the union address. so next month will be his first state of the union address. as president. obviously, it's not going to be the first one he's attended. in addition to being in congress for decades, as vice president, he sat behind president obama for seven state of the union addresses so he is very familiar with the view from up on the dais. and the most memorable thing about the president obama memorable state of the union 2014 address when one of his pointing and grinning at an audience member went viral. it had nothing to do with what was said by the president. harry truman's state of the union address was the first one to be broadcast on live tv. ronald reagan 1986 address was the first-ever to be postponed because the challenger space shuttle disaster happened the day it was originally scheduled. after barack obama's 2010 state of the union, almost all anyone could talk about was the moment when a sitting supreme court justice appeared to visibly disagree with the president while he was speaking. bill clinton's state of the union addresses are largely remembered for being very, very long. not only does he hold the record for the longest state of the union address ever, but of the seven longest state of the unions in history, bill clinton delivered four of them, the other three by the way were donald trump. but trump's final state of the union address in 2020 will too be remembered for something having to do with nothing he said, actually in fact, nothing to do with him at all. it will be remembered for this, house speaker nancy pelosi at the end of trump's address, sitting right behind him and ripping up her copy of the speech in two. immediately afterwards, reporters caught up with her as she left the house chamber. >> madam speaker, what did you do to trump's speech tonight. >> i tore it up. >> why did you rip the speech up, madam speaker? >> because it was the courteous thing to do considering the alternative. >> now, you may remember the republican party then immediately fell into this hysterical pearl clutching over standards of decency and decorum, which was pretty rich, given the standards of decency and decorum generally observed by the sitting republican president. but when donald trump himself was asked about it, a couple of days later, he took it even further. >> well, i thought it was a terrible thing when she ripped up the speech, first of all, it's an official document, you're not allowed, it's illegal what she did, she broke the law. >> it's illegal, she broke the law, that happened two years ago today, and friends, those comments have not aged well. now, first of all, in case this needs clarifying, nancy pelosi did not break the law. she ripped up a photocopy of the president's speech that he gave her, destroying a photocopy of any presidential speech handed out to anyone were illegal, the prisons would be overflowing with washington lawmakers and staffers but there is someone with a well known history of officially destroying historical record, "politico" was first report that president trump had a habit of ripping up documents and the papers were scotch taped back together, even some that were torn into confetti sized pieces because there is a law, the presidential records act, requiring that, as you know, presidential records be properly preserved and stored by the national archives. sure enough, when the january 6th investigation started receiving trump white house records, that trump had fought for months to block them from getting, some of them had indeed been ripped up and taped back together. and this week, the "washington post" reported that quote trump's shredding of paper was far more widespread an indiscriminate than previously known. throughout his presidency, staffers made a habit of coming in behind trump to retrieve the piles of torn paper left in his wake. and then quote jigsawing the documents back together with tape. and it went beyond just tearing things up. one senior trump white house official said he and other white house staffers frequently put documents into burn bags to be destroyed, rather than preserving them and would decide themselves what should be saved and what should be burned. the january 6th committee asked for certain documents related to trump's efforts to pressure vice president mike pence, for example, some of them no longer existed in the person's files, because they had already been shredded, end quote. a former senior trump official said of trump, quote, he didn't want a record of anything. now, i guess one simple straightforward way to describe that might be this. >> it's an official document, you're not allowed. it's illegal what she did. she broke the law. >> apparently not content to violate the presidential records by ripping them up into pieces and putting them in burn bags and shredding them or burning them donald trump apparently took a whole bunch of presidential records with him when he left the white house. and just stuck them in his golf club in florida. the "washington post" reports today that the national archives had to go retrieve 15 boxes of records from mar-a-lago that should have been turned over when trump left the white house and the national archives says that trump staff are quote continuing to search for additional records that may have been thrown into trump's u-haul when he left the white house for mar-a-lago. and don't forget to check the clubhouse for any more letters from world leaders. make sure a bomb of presidential memorabilia, or memoranda didn't get stuck behind the wet bool at the pool. the post and now "the new york times," both report that the contents of the 15 boxes include correspondence between donald trump and kim jong-un as well as a letter president obama left for trump when obama left the office and also in the boxes is amazingly this, the national weather service map that he altered with a sharpie, during a hurricane briefing in 2019, and now you will recall that he used a sharpie to change the projected path of a hurricane in order to match what he had incorrectly said about the hurricane's path in a tweet. dear leaders tweet obviously couldn't be wrong so an entire weather system had to be altered by sharpie to match it. that sharpie-gate map definitely belongs in the national archives. we need a record of it. mostly because the people of the future will not believe that something so ridiculous ever happened. as for how those 15 boxes end up at mar-a-lago instead of at the national archives, the times reports that it happened during a hasty exit from the white house, when instead of packing up like a president planning to leave office accordance with the law should have been, quote, mr. trump had spent the bulk of the presidential transition trying to find ways to stay in power. at the time, mr. trump's aides were either preoccupied with helping him overturn the election, trying to stop him, or avoiding him. speaking of trying to overturn the election, there is no word on the question on everyone's minds, is there anyone in the 15 boxes that might be of interest to the january 6th investigation? let's find out. joining us is the reporter who had the original scoop today, that the national archives had recovered multiple boxes of trump presidential records from the former president's mar-a-lago estate, jackie, good evening to you. thank you for being here. this is definitely one of those stories that you can't make up and i'm sure you weren't ever expecting that you would have to report on, but in fact, we have had hints of this from the past. we've known for a while that donald trump had some sort of habit of destroying documents he wanted to be destroyed. >> yes, so much of what has shown over the last five years, he did all of this pretty publicly and flagrantly, as was reported in 2018, for "politico," a brilliant story, the president had a habit of ripping up documents that he carried from his past life as businessman into the white house, despite it being unlawful and despite being warned by his former chief of staff and white house counsel repeatedly. the entire apparatus around record archiving and the whole process of the white house records management, and the transfer to the national archives had a completely changed approach because of the former president's habits, he was shredding everything in sight, and it was almost involuntary and pretty habitual. but this actually continued through 2021. right until he left office, which we found out in our reporting about the january 6th investigation, that we were not, we really had no idea that it was going to lead to where we are today which is the national archives telling us that actually, it resulted in 15 boxes being retrieved from mar-a-lago, after they were found to be properly transferred from the trump white house to the national archives, this is in violation of the presidential records act and perhaps even more importantly the archives said in their statement to us that trump's lawyers are still actual lit searching for additional documents and might be handing more documentation over. >> so we know shredding, we have now heard of burn bags, i don't know if that means that the burn bags stuff actually got burned, i spoke to omorosa yesterday who alleges that he was eating something, ripping something up and eating something which is odd considering he is a germa phobe and not putting things in his mouth. what do we know about what is not there? are there documents that might be entirely missing that we will never find out about? >> we know the career staff of records management at the white house devised management around the president's throwing out things, and the presumption is the operating basis under the presidential records act that every document president creates is a presidential record. it has been up to the people of the career staff around him to decide whether or not certain classified documents should be incinerated. so thrown into a burn bag and then taken to the pentagon, where ultimately, those documents would get burned up. it's unclear if any documents were maybe lost in that period, when people hadn't quite realized that this president was not abiding by normal processes, but i think the recent development does cause some more questions about what don't we know, what does the president still have, at mar-a-lago, and what are they going to, what's actually in those 15 boxes, and we're not actually surveying for the national archives, to realize that they were missing a lot of documents, that they recovered last month, from mar-a-lago, but we do know that some of these documents that have come out, that we have been able to reveal, the love letters with kim jong-un and a letter from president obama that he left for president trump, as he took office, in 2016, that these were documents that were very publicly and widely extensively reported on and known. so if the archives had decided that they were maybe potentially looking for a document, and because it was probably reported on, they wouldn't have been able to found it until this past month. >> well, jackie, in part because of your fabulous reporting we have too much news in the show and we are overflowing with stuff so we can't discuss it now but definitely the next time we're on, we need to talk about the cup cake on the table, that is quite remark able. we have been seeing a lot of people's homes in the past couple of years but that is definitely for us. why. >> jackie, thank you, for the "washington post," congratulations on a very important story today. we're joined by michael schmidt, "washington post" for "the new york times" and in addition to new details tonight on the 15 boxes of records, rescued from mar-a-lago, michael also has new reporting on the january 6th committee. he writes that their goal is not just to hold hearings and write a report, they are hoping that their work will lead to criminal prosecution. the investigation is quote borrowing techniques from federal prosecution, employing aggressive tactics, typically used against mobsters and terrorists as it seeks to break through stonewalling from former president trump and his allies, and develop evidence that could prompt a criminal case. the committee which has no authority to pursue criminal charges is using what powers it has in expansive ways in hopes of pressuring the attorney general merrick garland to use the justice department to investigate and prosecute. michael, good to see you. thanks for joining us. and your reporting tonight gets to a question that i think is on every views' mind. what can this committee do given the running out the clock ant stonewalling it continues to get from some people around the trump orbit and what your reporting describes is very much what i'm used to as a business journalist, when you see the government go after a company, where they start and they just move their way up, and they figure out ways to get to essential characters even if the central characters won't participate. >> i think that's right. the committee has done, is taking an aggressive stance, for several reasons. one of them is that a lot of the attempts to hold kt accountable, the mueller investigation, the two impeachments, the other two investigations going on, those all, while they did political damage to trump, and he ultimately lost the election, donald trump still looms, and has not changed his behavior, and continues to push, push his brand of trump imp down into the country, in ways that really concerns democrats and anti-trump republicans. so they're taking the most aggressive stance that we have seen in any recent congressional investigation, and going out and getting phone records, sweeping up personal data of a lot of different people. and they're using link analysis, a tool that the fbi used in the years after the september 11th attacks to identify terrorist networks, to see who is talking to who. they have looked at the org chart of the white house. and of who was around the president. and they said, okay, if mark meadows isn't going to talk to us, and if this, this other senior official isn't going to talk to us, who were the aides that were right underneath them. and who were the aides underneath them? and what did they know? because they noticed when they went down the ladder, in the same way that you go down the ladder, if you were looking at a mob organization, those people can be more vulnerable, they may be less loyal to the person at the top, certainly the younger you are, the less money you have to hire a high end white collar criminal defense lawyer, to defend you, if you're trying to stop the committee from getting your phone records, or stop the committee from questioning you. so the committee is doing this to your point, for, to, one, to get to the bottom of what happened on january 6th, and everything in the lead-up to it, but also because they're trying to come up with as much damming evidence as possible. to pressure merrick garland. they see this as the best opportunity to try and get the justice department to do something. garland has given no indication, there's been no public indication, that is investigating trump, or the investigation of january 6th is headed in that direction, and with the january 6th committee, if it could have its way, it would develop as much damning information as possible, and be able to tie it in, you know, in good faith, into the good faith argument, to the criminal code and say to the justice department, okay, we went out and did this investigation, here is what we found, these are the criminal laws that we think have been violated, and you should do something. and they would probably make something like that public, and that would, at the very least, i think, force the justice department to at least publicly address the question of what they're doing in regard to donald trump. now, merrick garland has shown immense independence in his short period of time as attorney general, and he may just sort of try and ignore it. but there is the democratic party being pushed, you know, the democratic leaders on the hill, are being pushed by their base, which wants trump held accountable, and at the center of this is liz cheney, who wants to use the most aggressive techniques possible. she's considered on the committee to be the most aggressive member. she said we're going to get criticized, no matter what we do, they're going to come after us no matter what we do, and they're not going to cooperate no matter what we do. so we have to use every tool possible. and that is why the january 6th investigation looks different than many, many, many other investigations that we've seen come out of congress. >> so there is great reporting that you've got today but there is also one big asterisk, in which you say the committee's aggressive approach carries with it another obvious risk, that it could fail to turn up compelling new information about mr. trump's efforts to hold on to power after his defeat, or to make a persuasive case for a justice department prosecution. after all, mr. trump survived years of scrutiny by the special counsel in the russia investigation, and robert s. muller iii and to impeachment. despite of swirl of new investigations since he left office, the former president remains the dominant force in republican politics. i mean in fairness, we are learning new things that we didn't know during the impeachment. what's the point here, that we're not learning new things that fundamentally change anyone's thinking about what happened? we just have more details about what we already know? >> well, in many ways, i think january 6th maybe one of the most important historical events certainly to happen in my lifetime. you know, that i've witnessed. in other ways, you know, and because of that, we need to learn as much as we can about it, how did it happen, who was behind it, who were the intellectual people coming up with the underpin cans of it, the plans of it. and who was executing things, how did this all happen. how did thousands of people end up on the steps of the capitol in a violent, in a violent attack that led to deaths, and to the interruption of one of the most sacred parts of our democracy. on the other hand, what else do you need to know about january 6th to change your mind about what happened? donald trump said everything out loud. he still defends what he did. he is as open about it as possible. so there are two sort of like competing issues here. and look, we are going to get to the bottom, as much of it as possible, and it is a highly important event, and i think the committee runs into difficulty when the report comes out, because they have made a lot of news, they put subpoenas out, they're the ones that put the subpoenas out, every week, and generating the stories, about the people that they want to question, and get documents for. and all of that has a beat to it, a momentum to it, that shows that this investigation is moving forward. now, when that report comes out, and when they're done, where will that momentum have left the committee? will the committee have a new narrative, an entirely new appendage of the efforts to overturn the election, that change the way that we look at january 6th? or will it just be an evidence-based version of media and book accounts of it? we don't know. but the expectations are high, because the committee has put so much time and effort into this, and has generated so much news. so it will be interesting to see where they end up, what do they know that we don't know, and you know, in any investigation, i guess that's the real question. >> you have set us up very well, because we will be talking to a member of the january 6th committee right after this. thank you for your great reporting, michael. great to see you again. michael schmidt washington correspondent for "the new york times." we got a lot to get to tonight, including breaking news out of the supreme court that's going to have an impact on this year's all-important midterm election. that ahead and adam schiff from the january 6th investigation joins us next. stay with us. the january 6th investigation the january 6th investigation joins us next. stay with us and you've got better things 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