thanks so much. nice to see you. thanks for joining us. i m christine romans. new day starts right now. it is something that has never happened before. at least not like this. the fbi searches the home of a former president. so, why? why would a federal judge agree there was probable cause a crime had been committed? what exactly were agents looking for? what is so urgent that merrick garland would sign off on this, assuming he did? i m john berman here with brianna keilar. these are some of the questions we will try to answer this morning. admittedly, some of these questions don t yet have answers. this is what we know so far, early monday morning, federal agents executing a warrant searched donald trump s mar-a-lago resort. we are told this is part of the investigation into the handling of classified documents, taking them from the white house to mar-a-lago. mishandling classified documents, hiding or destroying them, if that is what happened, could absolutely be ag
searched donald trump s mar-a-lago resort. we are told this is part of the investigation into the handling of classified documents, taking them from the white house to mar-a-lago. mishandling classified documents, hiding or destroying them, if that is what happened, could absolutely be against the law. searching the home of a former president for possible evidence of a crime would require approval at the top levels of the justice department. and a source tells cnn the fbi search included examining where these documents were kept. and that boxes of items were actually taken from the resort from trump s home. trump s son eric defined the search, he said it was conducted over documents sought over the national archives. purpose of the raid from what they said was because the national archives wanted to corroborate whether or not donald trump had any documents in his possession. and my father has worked so collaboratively with them for months. now, we should say, that s what we re he
presented to this federal judge. it could be that some documents were destroyed. it could be something completely different. it could be that maybe there s some overlap between the materials he kept of january 6th, that s even possible. although there s no indication of that. but there s something here that made this quite, more than just somebody mistakenly accidentally, or carelessly packing 15 boxes of materials and sending them to mar-a-lago. his excuse is hey, i m president of the united states, i didn t focus on this, i was busy. but what he was busy with is launching a coup. narrative coming from his camp, coming from his son eric is this is a continuation of the national archives issue. would there potentially be an interest in putting that narrative out there ge, george, really it would be something different? and would they necessarily know if it was something different? they may not necessarily
why now go in. why not just cut a subpoena or ask nicely for the people at mar-a-lago, trump s lawyers, to turn over the records. and then there s the other question what the full shape of the investigation looks like. when you step back, there are laws that protect federal records things like the presidential records act. but the presidential records act is not the sort of thing that has any teeth that can bring about a criminal investigation, and especially, a search, of mar-a-lago. the president s home, his beach club, in palm beach. so, we do often see lawsuits over the presidential records act. but when a criminal investigation comes in, it must be something more, like related to the destruction of records, or the possible fear of destruction of records. and then, of course, there s that question of the handling of classified documents. but i should add, related to trump here, he was the president. and as president, he did have the ability to declassify documents. so that further
know. because the search warrant could be for all documents that were unlawfully retained pursuant, or violation of the presidential records act. and that could be, basically, everything he took from mar-a-lago not from mar-a-lago, to mar-a-lago, to the white house. and that could include january 6th material, it may not. it just depends on what s there. obviously, they have some basis to conclude there s something interesting there. and they took out apparently boxes and boxes of materials suggesting that maybe he did not return all of the materials. or maybe there s something in there that indicates some nefarious intent he had some nefarious intent in bringing the documents to mar-a-lago. we just don t know at this point. if there were a classified document of some kind that the farmer president had improperly kept, manipulated, destroyed, whatever, how and why would it be in the national interest for the fbi to get its hands on that?