president in the past, folks who may be running against him in 20 24, i think tulsi supported the president on this. there is a lot of mainstream republicans and senate left democrats going, wait a second, this may be an overreach, this could be real troublesome. trump s lawyer, she said that this has to do with classified documents. we should be clear about this. that this isn t just a presidential records act thing. you ve seen this journal report that says someone in trump s orbit. this is someone with knowledge inside who told the feds that there was additional material at mar-a-lago, directed them where it should be, clearly was concerned enough to tell them this, information they should have besides the 15 boxes of material they got in the winter. does that change your mind? is that now sufficient when you have someone actually aligned with him drawing the attention of the feds to these documents? no, it certainly is worthwhile and worth noting, no question. it would be val
make clear what laws the fbi thinks he may have violated and he could produce that receipt for what they took from his home. so why hasn t he? that remains a major question. and in the meantime, inside the justice department, there is some frustration that so far the department said nothing about the search, while trump and his allies portrayed it as a siege, even suggesting without any proof that fbi agents may have planted evidence. joining us now is former trump white house acting chief of staff mick mulvaney. mick, it is great to have you on this momentous morning. i want to first start with your reaction to this search, because you did mention that there are two ways to see this unprecedented move. tell us about those. sure. i can think either it is a legitimate investigation into classified documents, or it is a political hit job. i think it is important that people understand why they re seeing the reaction they re seeing from the right. keep in mind, if you re republican in t
you know they misled the public in the media about the hunter biden laptop in the 2020 campaign. you know chuck grassley had whistle-blowers call him about misdoings in the fbi that jim jordan got whistle-blower reports just last week about padding data on domestic terrorism. there is a lack of trust on the right, right now, with the fbi. and i think the way they went about this, the fact that they went about this, and especially if the fbi did this only looking for documents, it is really going to create even deeper divisions in the country. so which are you inclined to believe, the hit job, is that what you re saying? my point is this, i think if you re a conservative republican who follows politics, the fbi and the doj especially have lost the benefit of the doubt. because of the way they have behaved in the past, it is the burden is on them to actually show information as to why this is valid and why it is more than just about a confidential record search. i think you had a l
members or diplomats in iraq, of which they have done an awful lot over the years, but trying to kill americans on american soil. and, look, again, it is the nature of the regime. one of the first things that the islamic revolution did in 1979 when it seized power in iran and overthrew the shah was taken hostage diplomats at the american embassy there. that s the way they started off. and it has gone downhill from there. i m curious, it is an interesting moment we re in, where there are a lot of people questioning institutions, particularly honestly republicans questioning a lot of the institutions here. but how do you feel about the fbi and the people who put these charges together, this charging document and also the secret service who have been protecting you for the last year from this threat? right, well, i said yesterday, i expressed my thanks to the department of justice prosecutors, and the lawyers who
but the president is eating a little bit of crow on that this morning. no question. mick, it is always insightful to have you on. mick mulvaney, thank you for being with us. thanks, brianna. couple of things there, first of all, just the almost throwaway statement, i was chief of staff for 16 months and i never knew that donald trump had a safe in his office. interesting. interesting data point there. the safe not common knowledge. so who knew he had a safe? who may have told the fbi he had a safe there? that s an open question this morning. the other thing is, and you saw mulvaney struggling with it there a little bit, which is, you know, these republicans who are calling on merrick garland to come forward with information almost none of them, so few of them are then also saying, wait, donald trump should come forward with information also. trump s got the easiest path to releasing the information. now, mulvaney said he should. but it was only after your questioning about it.