hey, welcome back to cnn tonight. don lemon is off tonight. i m still laura coates. who could know that the greatest legal crisis donald trump may ultimately face started at his administration was on the way out the door? not january 6th insurrection, mind you. all the work of the select committee and the doj is not done there yet. but from the move that will never be forgotten, all the boxes sent to mar-a-lago and all those classified documents mixed into boxes like the ones movers hauled off these trucks and into his resort compound. nearly 1,000 miles from where they were supposed to be as the 45th president returned willingly or not to civilian life. scenes like this get a small mention in the 38-page affidavit written by an anonymous fbi agent to make the case to search trump s florida home. now, the age and identity is anonymous and being kept confidential for their safety, of course, as the bureau, as you know, faces growing threats. but what can we now read among th
brief, revealing new details. this filing was 19 page es. it did acknowledge that classified material was found at mar-a-lago earlier this month. but essentially, it says it wasn t a big deal. says quote, the proported initiation for the probe was the alleged discovery of sensitive information contained within the 15 boxes of presidential records. but this discovery, end quote, was to be fully anticipated given the very nature of presidential records. simply put, the notion that presidential records would contain sensitive information should never have been cause for alarm. this is part of a bid by the trump team to have a special master appointed. a judge holds a hearing on that tomorrow. and this comes on the heels of the very serious claims laid out in the justice department s 36-page filing, including another quote here, evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the storage room at the trump home and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct
shouldn t have triggered an fbi search. let s go the evan perez this morning. good morning, erica. the trump team largely ignores a lot of the allegations that the justice department made in its bombshell filing a couple nights ago. they are saying it should not have been a surprise that there were classified documents found at mar-a-lago. they were considered personal and presidential records. i will read you part of what they say in the court fueliling. that the records contain sensitive information should never have been cause for alarm. they re saying that the justice department cannot be trusted to just look through the documents and sort out what may be presidential privilege, executive privilege, or at attorney/client privilege. they want to appoint a special master to look at the documents and set aside the things that may be considered privileged. so, we expect that this judge is going to take a look at this filing and really maybe ask some questions about what the
the investigation. walk us through some of the key revelations in here. well, the reason why the fbi went to mar-a-lago just over two weeks ago to do this unusual this highly unprecedented search was because after reviewing the 15 boxes that were retrieved earlier this year from mar-a-lago an sent back to the national archives, they found 184 unique documents bearing classification markings. that s a lot of documents that were being stored in an unsecured environment in the basement at the former president s beach house in palm beach. that s the bottom line of why the fbi was so concerned, why the national archives were so concerned and why this became a criminal investigation in february of this year. obviously this is now an investigation that is ongoing and that s the reason why there is so much information that is still redacted. about half of the pages in this 38-page affidavit document are still redacted because the fbi says it has concern about the safety of witnes
this is something out of a gangster movie. the star witness in a dramatic trial who has damning information about the boss, contacted by someone who may be trying to intimidate them, to keep them telling what they know. sources are telling us that is exactly what happened to cassidy hutchinson. three sources telling cnn that hutchinson was one of the witnesses trump world tried to influence, which tells you a whole lot about what they thought about her testimony. right? the committee so concerned about her security that they kept her identity a secret leading up to the hearing. in the wake of her block buster testimony, we may be about to learn a whole lot more with the subpoena for pat cipollone who knows what was going on behind those closed doors at the white house before, during and after the january 6. we are also learning more about the lengths trump world may be willing to go to. liz cheney saying two unnamed witnesses told the committee they heard from people in the f