even contain a provision saying there had been a crime committed by removal of classified documents. that crime, which is a separate one under a section 1924 of the criminal code wasn t even mentioned in the search warrant. and i think that is a very revealing deliberate decision by the government. they said, we don t even need to get into the classification, declassification question. i might add, since you have raised it, the idea that he just had this automatic declassification principle makes no sense at all. his own former national security adviser and chief of staff both said they haven t heard of such rule. it makes no sense at all. danya, what do you make of the volume here? one thing that is so strange, i keep having to remind myself that you are talking about different categories. the volume of stuff and they are talking about, right? i mean, the chain here is, we tried to shake this loose. we finally got some stuff from them, 15 boxes. we went through it, and there s
the very sensitive documents that where there, coupled with the information and now, that the fbi had, there must have been additional documents, it s almost impossible to see how you couldn t exercise a search warrant, and go ahead with this. it would be irresponsible on the basis of what information we already have, to just say, oh, let s take a chance and leave the documents there. danya, how about you? i completely agree. there was no way around it, once the fbi had this information, there were 184 highly classified top secret documents that were retrieved earlier this year. and they had information from a significant number of civilian witnesses. and according to public reporting, they had additional evidence as well, including surveillance evidence. they really had no choice but to go in there, and execute this search, to get those documents back.
but the party will continue down this road. you will see in the 22 election and probably into the 24 primary fight for the presidential nomination. it will get more trump-like. it will get more conspiracy fed. as you played in the intro, when you have a former speaker of the house, new congress, leading senator in which got. leaving conservative voices in media. stoking conspiracy theories. and you see the one person who stood up for truth lose by 40 points. look, we already know the parties. it is not going back to what he used to be. danya, to david s point about the fact that she lost by 40 points. i, mean she might, be cheney might be something of a democratic hero now. she is still though a staunch conservative. she voted with donald trump 93% of the time in her career. and yet, she still lost her primary by more than 40 points. what does this tell you about the trump cult of personality? that cheney refused to embrace him in the end, it is what brought her down. it wasn t her p
violence. because what trumpism injected on the party, a man, is that the deep state, the big government, the athletes, the liberals, they re coming for your way of life. they are coming for your freedom. that when donald trump, then you can bridge, and rich got say your way of life. your freedom is being taken from you. that is what insights the violence. because of something is being taken from you, you are justified in a violent response. so the today s republican party should be ashamed of themselves at large for the narrative they are injecting on the politics right now. danya let me switch gears and ask about the white house. it s basically going into a messaging blitz in the wake of biden s recent winning streak. he s had a pretty good run in the months and months of august, including the reduction in inflation acts signings. you know, is an effective strategy, you think? how should they be messaging to voters ahead of the midterms. coming off these recent political winds.
documents met, whether or not trump had magically invoked his power until he ceased being president, to declassify them wouldn t change whether or not that standard had met. that s that. and the other two sides of the search warrant also don t have actually anything to do with national security [inaudible] concealing documents to obstruct an investigation. doesn t say about anything about whether those documents had to be declassified or not. and the third one has to be to do with death [inaudible] destruction, unlawful taking of government records in general. again, does not have to be classified or unclassified. doesn t have to have anything to do with national security. and in fact, part of what they were looking for is any presidential record created from 2017 to 2021 that was, for some reason, been being hoarded at mar-a-lago rather than being deposited at the national archives as the law requires. danya, lots of outstanding questions, one of the things we do know is that the se