you too. thanks to you at home for being here. we have breaking news tonight, in the investigation into trump s handling of top secret classified government records that wound up at the florida beach club. and the special stay of the special master ruling, judge cannon ruled that she will appoint a special master, an independent third party to review the 11,000 seized records that the fbi retrieved from trump s lome 40 days ago, and in response, the justice department be grudgingly said okay, go ahead and appoint the special master but please exclude the roughly 100 classified documents seized from mar-a-lago because we need to continue the criminal investigation of the classified documents due to special national security interests. also aal second intelligence assessment into the potential risks and harms that may have been caused byat having those t secret classified documents hanging out at trump s club, the justice department argued that thatst assessment could not c
approximately 100 documents isolated by the government are classified government records and plaintiff could not have an interest in any of them. the second is that plaintiff has no plausible claim of privilege as to any of these documents. so basically, the judge is saying b i am not ready to acce that those 100 documents are classified. who are you to say that, d.o.j.? the justice department told the that they will appeal thisat ruling to the 11t circuit court of appeals so keep an eye out for that. this ruling is a doozy, and we have a lot to unpack here. joining us now is barbara mcquade former u.s. attorney for the eastern districtmc of michigan. thanks so much for being here to help decipher what s going on. let me just first ask you, what is your reaction to this ruling that seems to be a gift to donald trump, at least from the initial assessment of what s happening here? yes, it s really astonishing, the justice department threw her a lifeline and judge cannon threw it right
there is not a lot of precedence for what the judge is doing. if i had these boxes here in my basement in los angeles, i would be in prison right now. in couldn t walk out with 100 documents. you know,00 we just have to be bearing in mind what we are watching there are two systems of justice in this country according to thisre judge.hi one for every american and one forev donald trump. and the idea that we even entertain a conversation for one of these lawyers to be sitting there reviewing nuclear weapon information about another country just to satisfy donald trump s desire to sow sox seeds of doubt about what the isernment is doing here that an absurd role for a judge to play. a thus far the judicial syst has acted as a check on trump s ambitions and we have a judge exclusively calling a, explicitly calling a page from the trump play book, and questioning trust of the determination of thequ departme justice. the institutional accuracy has now infected the judicial branch and we are
why trump had those documents and to understand what the d.o.j. said in the filing, why there are 50 document folders that are marked classified that ares empty in mar-a-lago, too d they need to try to understand whether there are n more documes out there. so this is throwing a wrench into the gears in a way that is totally disrespectful of any equity that the national security intelligence community might have about why these documents were at mar-a-lago in the first place. ma well, and let s keep in mi that the people, the fbi agents who were tasked with reviewing these documents, some of them didme not have the security clearance necessary to review the classified documents and because of this order from judge cannon, you could feasibly have a former cross-fit lawyer or rudy giuliani looking over some ofok what bash mcquade called t crown jewels of our national security infrastructure. i mean that prospect should terrify everyone regardless of party affiliation. it should. i will
and ben rhodes, former national deputy security adviser for the obama administration and msnbcra analyst. thanksnd for being here on shor noticeng in the middle of a breaking news hurricane here. first, i want to get your thoughts on the disdain with which this judge is treating the national security community, the justice department, questioning whether or not thesede records e even classified again, as a reminder, washington post reporting on september 6th that there are documents describing a foreign government s military defensesnt including nuclear capabilities, in theng tranche documents that ended up in the broom closet down at mar-a-lago. what did you make d of that language? and what did you make of her posture as it relates to national security? i mean i think it is totally reckless, a little bit insane, alex, and we see these filings, they have the s look of legal documents that beestows a legitimacy on them. but this makes no sense and this is a m judge that has no back