still more classified documents at the private club, closed quote. that signals there was potentially additional material there of interest to the u.s. government, even after trump turned over those 15 boxes to the national archives earlier this year. and last night, the director of the fbi chris rwray refused o answer questions about this search. he expressed real concern surrounding violent threats against fbi agents. take a listen. any threats made against law enforcement including the men and women of the fbi as with any law enforcement agency are deplorable and dangerous. and this morning, cnn has learned that some within the justice department believed that the department should have provided a public statement on the search. so let s start right there with our cnn senior justice correspondent evan perez. evan, we have been talking a lot this week about the real escalation from a meeting that investigators had back in june, with trump lawyers at mar-a-lago, leadin
still more classified documents at the private club, closed quote. that signals there was potentially additional material there of interest to the u.s. government, even after trump turned over those 15 boxes to the national archives earlier this year. and last night, the director of the fbi chris rwray refused o answer questions about this search. he expressed real concern surrounding violent threats against fbi agents. take a listen. any threats made against law enforcement including the men and women of the fbi as with any law enforcement agency are deplorable and dangerous. and this morning, cnn has learned that some within the justice department believed that the department should have provided a public statement on the search. so let s start right there with our cnn senior justice correspondent evan perez. evan, we have been talking a lot this week about the real escalation from a meeting that
only what is your reaction but what does this do for the fbi? it s interesting his response there is consistent with so much of the reporting talking to people inside and outside of government. people were not surprised at the major finding from the ig report that it was not some den of obama loyalists who were weaponized to go after donald trump which is what the president has been saying for so long. they weren t surprised about that. so many people including comey my former boss were surprised as the number of errors 17 errors ranging from sloppiness to outright malicious behavior at least by one employee. which is not consistent with the fbi that i knew and certainly this has been the topic of conversation for a lot of people inside the fbi. how could this have happened? comey mentioned, you know, if he was the director he would try to get to the bottom of it. chris rwray is doing that as well. trying to hold accountable anybody who may have strayed from the values.
washington, raj, he admitted that the whole idea of a secret society in that text that was discovered between these two fbi officials may simply have been a joke. listen to this. reporter: senator, the text message seems to be a comment about secret society was in jest. do you agree that it appears to be it was in jest? it s a real possibility. thank you all. it s a real possibility, he says. what s your reaction? mm-hmm. well, i haven t seen anything that senator johnson has access to, but we would say that there are serious questions about political bias at high levels at the fbi. they ve existed for some time under the leadership of the previous director, james comey. this is why the president nominated chris rwray to be the new director to clean house. you saw the political manipulation of hillary clinton s e-mail investigation,
then there were reports from the washington post that andrew mccabe, the fbi s deputy director, would join the other high-profile officials to exit the administration in the year to come. and then the president did what his advisers wanted to avoid, by not holding a tradition year-end news conference, now stirring things up a bit more. the president tweeted last night about mccabe, questioning campaign donations to a political campaign of his wife s and speculating that mccabe had little time left in his tenure. so far, no top law enforcement officer has publicly stood up for mccabe, neither attorney general jeff sessions nor mccabe s boss, fbi director chris rwray, who said this earlier this month when the president said the fbi was in tatters. take a listen. there is no finer institution than the fbi and no finer people than the men and women who work there and are its very beating heart. almost 37,000 men and women with