than one informant potentially within trump s inner circle, right? it sounds like there are a lot of informants, alex. and it is fascinating that the doj put this sentence front and center in this motion that accompanied the unsealing of the affidavit. the doj can t go out in public and hold press conferences and tell us what the information in the affidavit means, but they can speak through their pleadings. and i think this speaks very loudly. there had been a lot of speculation about who the informant was, or maybe there are a couple of informants. but the doj is saying that there are significant number of them, not one, not a couple, not a few. this sounds like there are a large number of people in mar-a-lago cooperating with the doj and perhaps people who all along without any form of proper security clearance would have had access to this information, as well. you have said before that the doj generally is prone to understatement.
in these matters of national security? as you can imagine we ve got a lot to sort through this hour with nbc s along with charlie savage, a pulitzer prize-winning washington correspondent for the new york times, and ben rhodes, former deputy national security adviser for president obama. now msnbc contributor. welcome all, ben, charlie, let s walk through this affidavit. ben, to you, in these 15 boxes trump returned, a full year after he left the white house, the fbi says that 184 classified documents, 25 of which were marked top secret, 92 secret, 67 confidential. there is mention of who meant, or hcs material derived from clandestine human sources, as well as restricted from agencies restricted from foreign nationals obtained from fisa or special intelligence. that ben, there is so much
dealing with the underlying question. why did you have this information, in violation of the law, and for what purpose did you have this information? and we know that the government knows what is in this documents. we also know, by the, way that they are not declassified or would it be redacted. yeah, so to that in charlie, let me ask you about this because to that and the letter from trump s lawyers, and it was through the doj dated may 25th. it is unredacted, i should say. and they argue that the president has absolute authority to declassify documents, and that presidential actions involving presidential documents or not sanction site subject to presidential sanction. the fact that this letter was included in the affidavit, and that the judge still signed off on the search warrant, does i mean that this issue of declassification and the claims by donald trump in his group, is it settled? there are two things to say no spot to that letter. one is that it is interesting and import
obstructions. so if there are people who were helping trump obscure has possession of these materials from the point in time the national archives comes knocking on house door, they can be caught up in a conspiracy. but we still don t know much around the details of how the materials left the white house and made its way to mar-a-lago. who is involved in that, whether they were there were additional spills of this immigration other people. and, so the search warrant is a little bit coy in this regard. the affidavit makes the point that the doj needs to continue its work because it may not have identified everyone involved. i think that is the best answer that we have just now. it is another one of the known unknown. okay. so in the government s 13-page memo explaining why the government meet the redactions, they say that parts must remain sealed to protect the safety and privacy of a significant number of civilian witnesses in addition to law enforcement. that tells you there is more
security concerns over the way these records were handled. not only was this a reckless act by a former president, it may in fact be a criminal act. if you read the affidavit, it comes very clear that every t was crossed and every i was dotted. when you have someone who for 18 months, refused to turn over documents that did not belong to himself, that s theft. it s grand theft. well, at least one former member of trump s circle is defending him on twitter, this is just about documents and characterize the search as outrageous. nancy pelosi shutting down the notion that it was political. if in fact the justice department has its case to make, how can they possibly say it is politically motivated? unless they are protecting their own political motivation