tonight did white house chief of staff mark meadows ever indicate that he was interested in receiving a presidential pardon related to january 6? he did seek that pardon, yes, ma am. whatever trump did in his effort to overturn the election and take classified documents home with him, there s a good chance mark meadows was privy to it. now he could be playing a pivotal role in the special counsel investigation. major developments in the shooting death of a.j. owens. the suspect who police say fired through the front door, killing the florida mother of four, has been arrested. for first time, we are seeing the heartbreaking aftermath as video shows a.j. seeking help for his dying mom. we begin with big developments in the special counsel investigation into donald trump s mishandling of classified documents. new reporting tonight indicates that federal prosecutors formally told trump s lawyers last week that trump is a target of the criminal investigation, accordi
investigation, calling it a witch hunt and representing that trump did not retain classified records, which, of course, turned out to be untrue. a source tells nbche was asked about one of those statements. the doj may be looking to bring some charges to florida. who from the doj questioned him? the guardian is reporting the counterintelligence chief led the questioning. he appeared for grand jury proceedings covering the espionage side of the investigation, as opposed to the obstruction side. the previously unreported involvement of bratt could focus on potential espionage act violations, particularly whether trump showed off national security documents to people at his mar-a-lago resort. a recent focus of the
court hearings, the judges, etcetera. it s very, very lockdown, and it s very difficult to risky. would you say it is for americans, journalists or otherwise to even be working in russia? right now? i mean, if you were a western media boss, what would you do about or tell your staff trying to report in russia right now. i think they d have to be extraordinarily careful because one of the problems is that not only let s say with the espionage side that can happen at any time, people could be set up. things can be put in your luggage, etcetera. but even right now in the circumstances of the war in ukraine, there are new laws and they re being changed constantly that make it as we remember back in march of last year, they had the don t use the word war. law and there are others that make it almost impossible to let s say report
but you see what a concerted effort the chinese are making at this time, both on the traditional espionage side, which are those cases and on the nontraditional espionage side. martha: are we at war? is that what you look at in your line of work? most americans are not walking around thinking about this. but it is ugly and scary. and it looks like it is an enormous problem. this is a significant problem. and it is true on the economic espionage side, what they are after is intellectual property of american companies. that could sound abstract. but that means jobs of americans. because the strategy is to rob, replicate, and replace the u.s. products. you rob the u.s. technology and you replicate the product in china, and then he replace that the u.s. company on the global market if all goes well. martha: for those of us i remember the cold war and the spy s stories of the cold war,
ministry of state security. government agencies. i wouldn t impact the chinese population. that s bound to have a rally around the flag effect and maybe incite the chinese population against the u.s. in your new book, you argue that while the u.s. is focused on building up military-strength rivals such as russia and china are more focused on other kinds of attacks. cyberattacks, propaganda, disinformation. is the united states in any way prepared to deal with those threats from the chinese and the russians and iranians and north koreans as well? i don t think so. i think particularly when you look at the u.s. department of defense, a lot of the focus on the war games are a big conventional fight with the chinese over taiwan. and i think what these actions really show is where the chinese are coming after us is not an invasion of taiwan. where they re coming after the u.s. is on an economic side, the broader espionage side.