range of colleagues have been working on this story all day and have learned the justice department has subpoenaed more than 30 people, people in the former president s orbit. people like bill steppian, donald trump s former campaign manager, dan scavino the former trump chief of staff. these are wide ranging subpoenas seeking things that have to do with the save america pact, donald trump s fundraising and political vehicle, information related to the fake elector spot, any information handed over to the january 6 committee, a number of them seeking documents some also seeking testimony. we also learned in the new york times tonight that investigators appear to have gone another step further with some witnesses including boris epstein and mike roman the new york times reporting both men had phones seized. cnn has not independently confirmed this. it is a sign the justice department s investigation is intensifying particularly as they are about to head into the quiet peri
janet cannon is going to say but if she doesn t do something to satisfy the justice department and they appeal all of this, how long will it play out? it s hard to say. i mean, it could be resolved on stay applications which could be done very quickly or it might require full appeals. i would hope that they would be able to stay the portion of the order that they are seeking to stay, which is the restriction on their ability to use the classified documents for the purposes of the investigation. because there is really no basis to separate what the judge is allowing, which is the use of the information for counterintelligence purposes and for classified investigation information for the criminal purposes. we could learn if the judge grants the stay in the next few days. great to have you both on tonight. thank you very much. thanks, john. we ll get the very latest on ukraine s stunning rout of russian forces and whether it
range of colleagues have been working on this story all day and have learned the justice department has subpoenaed more than 30 people, people in the former president s orbit. people like bill steppian, donald trump s former campaign manager, dan scavino the former trump chief of staff. these are wide ranging subpoenas seeking things that have to do with the save america pact, donald trump s fundraising and political vehicle, information related to the fake elector spot, any information handed over to the january 6 committee, a number of them seeking documents some also seeking testimony. we also learned in the new york times tonight that investigators appear to have gone another step further with some witnesses including boris epstein and mike roman the new york times reporting both men had phones seized. cnn has not independently confirmed this. it is a sign the justice department s investigation is intensifying particularly as they are about to head into the quiet period ahead o
the people who were actually on the ground at the capitol. hundreds and hundreds of people who were there. it is also a massive job to follow up and go higher and that is what they re doing now, reaching that stage of the investigation exactly as judge garland said he would. clearly, very busy. george, i also want to ask you a little bit more about this back and forth between the justice department and former president trump s lawyer having to do the search of mar-a-lago. there are some legal arguments being made by trump s lawyers and one of them is that the justice department hasn t proven that the documents seized are in fact classified. what do you make of that argument? again, it is a function of the concept that the president of the united states cannot somehow act like the magnificent and hold documents and declare them de classified. the statutes that were invoked to support the search warrant don t require classification and
the subpoena where they produced documents and failed to produce them all back in the summer requires the production of all documents with class iification markings whether in fact they remained classified. it is completely irrelevant and is based upon a presumption. what about the fact that in that argument trump s lawyers never actually assert trump declassified the documents. what do you make of that? i think actually both sets of papers are trying to reach some kind of compromise by papers i mean both the justice department and the trump administration. you saw the news that the justice department has agreed to one of the special masters and is only seeking an exception from the special master order for about the 100 or so classified documents that were covered. they are agreeing to stop the use of all the other nonclassified documents in their