justice department to do that. that s the context here in which tonight story breaks. just within the last hour, the new york times has broken a whole new level of the story. and again, it s not sort of a shocking revelation about the trump justice department, this is something as far as we can tell that s never been done before and u.s. government and has profound implications for the separation of powers between the branches of government that we ve got. this is the headline tonight in the new york times. hunting leaks, trump officials focused on democrats and congress. meaning, members of congress who are democrats. quote, as the justice department investigated who was behind the leaks of classified information early in the trump administration, it took a highly usual step prosecutors subpoenaed apple for data from the accounts of at least two democratic members of congress on the house intelligence committee, and staffers, and family members. one of those members was a
of this on to punish the people who did it or investigate to find out what they did and deter this from happening again. that is becoming a larger and larger question every day, in the merrick garland era of the justice department. the more we learn about what s happening. michael schmidt, i know this is a breaking story just posted, thank you for helping us understand it. thanks for having me. i want to bring into the conversation now, one of the subjects of this story. one of apparently to, we believe, democrats on the house intelligence committee who had his records seized. now chairman of the house intelligence committee, congressman adam schiff. chairman, thank you for joining us, i appreciate you making the. time of course. well, mike schmidt jets told us that your records, the records of your entire staff and the child of one of your
information that the u.s. government possesses. joining us now, new york times reporter michael schmidt, one of four reporters bylined on this breaking story. i should also note mr. schmidt is one of the times reporters who recently learned that his own records were also secretly seized by the trump administration in a separate leak investigation. michael schmidt, thank you for joining us. i know is short notice. thanks for having me. let me ask you you ve heard me some of your reporting by reading excerpts from it here. let me ask you to summit and your own terms and tell us what is, as far as we can tell, unprecedented and what is important about this. i think the most important thing, or the biggest one of the more fundamental problems with the entire episode is that this is what donald trump wanted. and this is why legal experts and people on both sides of the
the election. good night. as we sometimes have today because we need to start tonight with news that has just broken on the front page of the new york times. this is a big deal. i will tell you we are about to speak with one of the reporters whose byline on the story we are about to speak with one of the subjects of the story. in all the time i have been in this business i have never covered anything quite like this before. i ve never read about anything like this before, happening in american politics and government, as far as we know nothing like this as never happened before. the new york times says tonight that it has. the consequences remain to be
law in terms of mishandling ballots, mishandling elections equipment. that arizona event, that arizona potential crime scene? it has now hosted republican state legislators from pennsylvania, nevada, alaska, colorado, georgia, and virginia with more states to come. because republicans want to do this sort of thing, they want to try to effectively decertify the presidential election results in all of those states. or at least delegitimized those results with an eye towards pressing to decertify the results. they re trying to do it anywhere that they can get their hands on the ballots and voting machines. so attorney general garland announcing some sort of speech, and announcement tomorrow, we ll see if he says anything about enforcing federal laws that are supporters to block that sort of mischief that we are seeing down there in arizona. but the republican party wants to take that nationwide. tomorrow night show, we will have the gob smacking story of a nonpartisan experienced effectiv