training status of their personnel or command and control, there is a whole plethora of kinds of information pertaining to a nuclear offense or defense that could be revealed or information could be inferred by exposure of these documents. this is obviously very valuable top secret information. but what is the value of this top secret information to another country? because, you know, only a certain number of countries have nuclear capabilities. well, that s right. it is a fairly small club of nine or ten, depending on if you include north korea or not, i guess. and as i say, this goes to the very core of our nation s existence. and that is why nations pursue and acquire nuclear weapons. it s why we did. it s why russia has and china. it s why north korea has, because it gets to the very existence and how they deter foreign attacks. and so, this in turn is, as i say, the holiest of holy s of secrets. which nation strived very hard to protect and restrict access to, as we
an interesting character in all of this. i think based on his testimony before the january six committee, it is pretty clear that he thought that something changed what trump if last months of his presidency, where he became detached from reality, he stop listening to the people around him, so many cabinet officials like barr put up with a lot of behavior from trump that they personally did not like because they thought that trump was still listening to the cooler heads, the rational heads. and that change for barr toward the end. and so, i am not surprised to see that he thinks this is also a bit of a bridge too far. i m interested in how ever just the fact that barr was sort of known as attorney general as someone who had a very strong belief in, you know, the power of the executive branch, the power of the president himself. and now, he seems to be saying that, you know, trump really
to cycle analyze bill barr. i think abby hit the nail on the head there. this is a person, let s not forget despite what he s done over the last couple months, he spent two years lying to us, lying to congress, lying to the american public. trying to get trump out of trouble, destroying the facts, destroying the law, spreading conspiracy theories. he was one of the biggest proponents of the election fraud theory in the months leading up to the election. now, as abby said, he had a certain point. i guess everybody has got their breaking point where he said i m willing to go this far, i m willing to bend the truth this far, by a certain point, i think bill barr realize it was over. the election was over. donald trump was out, he was out. and i think bill barr made a move that at a minimum was designed to serve his own self interest, is rational self interest, saying i need to make a break, i won t use his language, but bs, bs. and we re seeing that even now on his comment on the special
probably could have been exposed, and do your assessment accordingly. oh, boy, director clapper, thank you so much. i appreciate it. i want to bring in cnn political correspondent abby philip. also senior legal correspondent elie honig, he s the author of hatchet man, how bill barr broke the prosecutors code and broke the justice department. and former special watergate prosecutor john sale. he s also a former personal attorney for rudy giuliani. good evening, everyone. aly, i m gonna start with you, because i want to get your reaction to to what we are learning for the washington post tonight. we re talking documents so top secret that many national security officials are kept in the dark about what these documents contained. does this bolster the fbi s case that they needed to take action to retrieve these documents? for sure, don. i think the criticism of the fbi we ve heard from donald trump and others is they acted too rationally, too precipitously. why did they not try other
and i think the judge did a reasonable job of balancing those two factors. listen, the couple times we heard from the former attorney general bill barr, he has been going against what, you know, the former president, abby, he was one the presidents biggest enabler s, but now is making a hard turn. this is what he said to the january 6th select committee, watch this. i made it clear i did not agree with the idea of saying the election was stolen and putting out this up, which i told the president was bowl . if he really believes the stuff, he has, you know, lost contact with, he s become detached from reality if he really believes the stuff. there was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were. he is partial to a certain word, abby, because he s calling trump s request for a special master a crock of dish. what message does the send? you know, bill barr is such