really leave anything left of substance for the public to look at. also bear in mind, there is an appeal to the judge. this is a magistrate judge s decision and there is an appeal to the judge, so i wouldn t hold my breath about hope about seeing this anytime soon. carrie, the procedural documents that were released today, which listed the potential offenses being investigated by the department of justice, as jessica was mentioning, willful retention of national defense information, concealment, or removal of government records, obstruction of federal investigation, does any of that sharpen the focus on the former presidents possible subject of a criminal probe? well, that willful retention case, that s part of what s known as the espionage statute. it s a collection of statutes where really serious breaches of unauthorized disclosure or retention of classified information are usually prosecuted. and so, because he was the person who had originally authority to retain these documen
releasing this affidavit. and i don t think that donald trump even wants it released because in court yesterday his lawyers did not join in the media s request to release it. so he says one thing on truth social but another thing in the courtroom. and we ve learned in court yesterday that this was a lengthy and detailed affidavit. we learned that the application for the warrant cites willful retention of defense information. does that sharpen the criminal focus do you think on the former president? because this is at his home where this occurred. re exactly. yes, it does. and i think the biggest takeaway were those two words willful retention. because it shows you where the department of justice is focusing. the espionage statute is very broad. when you see willful retention, that is subsection d of section 793, which makes the crime for someone who has lawful possession of important national
up and down. you c can t use the espionage statute was used against ellsbergspio, everybody else. now, the same people who oppose the espionage statute are jumping up and down saying, wow, we have the espionage statute. we can now get trump. we might not have been able to get him previously, but we re going to use this statute which we hate and oppose for years tow try toe get trump.in and we re going tost try to disqualify him because we re going to amendry the constitutin and say the criteria for president running for office goes beyond the four criteria in the constitution. and congress can pass a statute saying that if you re convicted under a crime, youu can t. now, if that were true, thent a democratic controlled congress could disqualify a republican like trump from running for reelection. so obviously that would be unconstitutional. leso we only have one . let me focus in on one thing that you re saying because the espionage act 18 usc 793 that came up a lot with hillary clinto
sensitive compartmentalized information. this is information that, if released publicly, top secret information would cause exceptionally grave harm to the united states. that s at least one class of the documents that we re talking about here. and there are others that are slightly lower classification level than that. all three crimes sort of float around this idea of the mishandling, sharing, copying, perhaps distributing, perhaps making available to other people. we don t know because we haven t seen the affidavits yet. just looking at what the crimes might be, that s why they re sniffing around a little bit. where does the tent come in on this? i have no idea. i declassified some aspects of it. it s not just a form you have to declassify. it s the information itself. we have to have a track record or paper that says that was done. we don t have that yet. yeah. and it s going to depend on the statute. the espionage statute, the one
it s the information itself. we have to have a track record or paper that says that was done. we don t have that yet. yeah. and it s going to depend on the statute. like i said, the espionage statute, the one i m talking about there, there s one, gross negligence intent level there where somebody who s just so reckless and negligent in their handling of the documents can be charged with the crime. one of the others is willful. and we could do a whole semester of law school on the difference between grossly negligent and willful. let s not on a friday night. let s not in the four minutes we have here, let s not. needless to say, it just depends on the statute you re charged with. and there s a few here. and the ones you have all have sometimes different levels of intent. so it just depends. let me bring in douglas before you nod off during our law school lecture here. and it is a friday night after quite the week. but look, according to the search warrant receipt, the federal ag