president, who was criminally charged by a manhattan grand jury in march on 30 counts of business fraud. he s pleaded not guilty. now he is facing 37 federal charges relating to classified documents from his time in office that were uncovered by federal agents. a special counsel has been investigating this case since november of last year. what makes this situation even more extraordinary, is mr. trump is currently the frontrunner in the republican party for the 2024 election. this means he could be taking on president joe biden while a special counsel appointed by the attorney general is working to convict him. trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. over the next hour cnn s pamela brown lays out everything we know about this case and takes us through the twists and turns that brought us to this moment. we ll also explore what this means for the former president as he faces his first court appearance this week and what implications this may have for the presidential race
alleges tried to hire an assassin to kill former u.s. national security adviser john bo bolton. the deal with the growing threat that iran poses and not try to appease them. live from london, this is cnn newsroom with max foster. it is thursday, august 11, 9:00 a.m. here in london, 4:00 a.m. in palm beach, florida where we re learning about what prompted the fbi to search donald trump s mar-a-lago residence. the wall street journal reporting investigators were given an insider typical lettering them to more classified documents inside former president trump s florida home. evan perez reports now from washington. reporter: someone came forward in recent weeks to tell the fbi that there were likely more classified documents being stored at former president trump s palm beach club according to the wall street journal. the journal says that is what prompted the search this week at mar-a-lago. cnn has not confirmed the journal s report, but we ve previously reporte
he embraced the called and said it was perfect. that is where we landed of unprecedented revelations since the fbi agents executed a lawful search warrant at mar-a-lago and came away with 11 celsets of documents the former president was not allowed to have. rudy giuliani has made the perfect phone call excuse. now they want to make him responsible for having taken classified documents and preserved them. really if you look at the espionage act, it s not really about taking the documents, it s about destroying them or hiding them or giving them to the enemy. right. it s not about taking them and putting them in a places that roughly as safe as they were in in the first place. taking classified documented, some marked classified sci is as unsafe as keeping them in the national a rrchives and west wi. the espionage act actually does refer specifically to willfully retaining documents and failing to deliver them on demand to the federal employee or officer entitled to rec
attorney rudy giuliani has made the perfect phone call excuse. now they want to make him responsible for having taken classified documents and preserved them. really if you look at the espionage act, it s not really about taking the documents, it s about destroying them or hiding them or giving them to the enemy. right. it s not about taking them and putting them in a places that roughly as safe as they were in in the first place. taking classified documented, some marked classified sci is as unsafe as keeping them in the national archives and west wing. the espionage act actually does refer specifically to willfully retaining documents and failing to deliver them on demand to the federal employee or officer entitled to receive them. as we said, this perfect phone call excuse has come after an evolution of excuses made by the former president s supporters for having the files stashed at a country club. here s his youngest song the evening after the search. my father
news himself just hours ago. multiple sources tell cnn the search is related to the handling of classified documents and where documents were kept. cnn s randi kaye and sara murray are covering the very latest. this is such a huge night to think about what s going on right now. extraordinary developments continue to come out, sara. what are you learning about this fbi search at mar-a-lago? absolutely. these are very wild circumstances because we re talking about a former president and he broke the news. he released a long statement saying the fbi had even searched a safe that he had. we ve been told by multiple sources this is related to the presidential records act. this has to do with materials he took when he left the white house potentially classified documents that he took and we know from earlier reporting the national archives said they had recovered 15 boxes of materials that the former president took with him, but what this was focused on is where he was keeping cl