even questioning how this came to light. merrick garland was getting creamed in the pr war as trump repeatedly slammed the search as a break-in, but the attorney general felt he couldn t publicly respond. so justice department officials made hair case through leaks their case through leaks which violate the rights of a potential defendant who hasn t been charged with anything and may not be. they made garland s case from a behind a curtain of anonymity. a poll-up piece in the washington post cited people with direct information. as an ethical matter, the leaks are indefensible. i m howard kurtz, and this is mediabuzz. howard: ahead, we ll question senior white house adviser gene sperling on the fierce debate over the president forgiving college debt for millions. that new york times story triggered a media explosion, especially the part about donald trump repeatedly holding on to documents so sensitive they could only be seen in a secure government room and a deep s
and president trump said he wasn t given any head s up that the search was happening. how much advance notice did you have of the fbi plan to search mar-a-lago? i didn t have any advanced notice. none zero. not one single bit. sources have now confirmed to cnn that trump era records were not returned to the government even though a white house lawyer had determined that they should be, accordinged according to a may 21 email from the chief council to trump s attorneys. let s bring in a former federal prosecutor. thanks for joining us. thanks for having me. today the doj will submit their proposaled reed redactione judge. and of course this will all be unser seal, but you ve been through this redaction process before. what do you anticipate the redactions will look like, will we actually learn any new information? it is interesting, i have been through literally hundreds of these. and what the redactions will look like, you will see the affidavit and it will and i
let s go to phil mattingly who is in rockville, maryland where joe biden is participating in a reception for the democratic national convention. democrats are trying t ining to support going into the midterms. do you know what he s expected to address tonight? reporter: jake, in case you can t tell from the high school band behind us, it s campaign season for the president and his team. they ve been talking about getting on the road for several weeks. this will be the launch of the midterm campaign season, including a very clear speech, making clear that while he understands a win does not [ inaudible ] they have real things they can campaign on. they can campaign on legislative results, against republicans that they feel like are against most of the things perhaps democratic voters want to pay attention to. more than anything else, jake, over the course of the last several weeks, there have been clear signals that the supreme court s decision on roe v. wade is boos
game-changer announcement on student loan forgiveness a [inaudible] for millions of americans. plus, the big lie turned a big rift. how some are profiting off of disproven election fraud claims. goes beyond the former president. as the 11th hour gets underway on this wednesday night. good evening once again, i m alicia menendez, in four stephanie ruhle. as if the current day controversies of the former president were not enough, we begin with new insight tonight into how donald trump may have avoided accountability in the investigation that consumed must of his presidency. late today, after a lengthy court fight, the justice department released a document related to the russia investigation. the memo was top secret and now we know why. former presidents attorney bill barr wanted to keep it a secret. in march 2019, bill barr told us before the mueller report was released, that the report had all but exonerated the former president. and therefore, there was no reason to charg
barr s defense of that decision. the memo contends, mueller s report did not establish a case to charge trump with obstruction, who failed to establish any underlying crime related to russian election interference. but, as nbc has reported, mueller s report actually did identify ten episodes that could be considered potential obstruction of justice. as one former mueller prosecutor points out, that is just one a couple of high-level justice department officials were worried about. two senior staff say to bill barr that the reason he should make the decision is because, if the memo comes out, it might be read to imply that the president committed obstruction. this memo makes it clear that the reason that bill barr did not ask robert mueller to simply come to a conclusion is because, as it says here, that report can be read to find that, indeed, he did commit obstruction. as for the ongoing investigations into the former president, tonight the justice department is facing a