familiar face calling the investigation a witch hunt and kept up the attacks on the fbi and serve of mar-a-lago. we re gting new details and a clearer picture of the timeline around what happened there. sources tell nbc news the fbi agents arrived at mar-a-lago on monday at 9:00 in the morning. the secret service was given a heads up 45 minutes to an hour before the search and agents left around 6:30 p.m. the former president s legal team said they were in discussion with the doj as early as june about records stored there. one trump attorney said the fbi removed a dozen boxes from a basement storage area and say a search warrant indicated the fbi was investigating possible violations of laws related to the handling of classified material. politically, we re seeing the republican party coalesce around the former president. a source close to trump called it a complete circling of the wagons. we ll start with the mounting legal troubles for the former president. ken is back and
search played out in a florida courtroom today, the same fbi search that approved the warrant to look for those classified and top secret documents opened to the door to the possibility that portions of the affidavit could be made public as soon as next week. first, he s giving prosecutors the opportunity to propose redactions and explain why each piece of information should be kept from the public. the justice department says all of it needs to remain sealed. they say releasing it could, quote, cause significant and irrepairable damage to the ongoing investigation, as well as the witnesses. the judge did unseal four new documents tied to the search warrant. and there is some new info in there. last week we learned of the possible crimes the prosecutors were looking into, violations of the espionage act, obstruction of justice, and criminal handling of government records. so, now we re learning a little more about what those means. prosecutors say the potential crimes are, nu
a judge in florida saying there are portions that could be unsealed and giving the doj a week to explain everything that they say needs to be kept secret. but will it be page after page of black redactions? how will we know? we don t know until we see it. that as a justice department lawyer says the affidavit contains, and i quote here, substantial grand jury information and warns releasing it could have a chilling effect on witnesses. but the judge did release several never-before-seen documents today including the motion where prosecutors argue that they needed to keep their search warrant secret because the integrity of the ongoing investigation might be compromised and evidence might be destroyed. there are some more really intriguing clues in one of those documents. more on that in just a moment. but you ve got to wonder just how much the former president actually wants the full affidavit to be released. because his lawyer sitting right there in court today didn t sa
details the potential offenses being investigated. you can see there, it says willful retention of national defense information, also concealment or removal of government records. also obstruction of a federal investigation. that willful retention that you see there, anderson, it s key because legal experts are telling our evan perez and caitlin polantz that it s that language that points directly to the former president as a possible subject of the criminal probe. something else that was released was the motion to seal, and it has federal prosecutors expressing their concern that, as you can see there, evidence might be destroyed. and, you know anderson, that could explain why fbi agents were really compelled to move in and spent hours taking, you know, 11 steps of classified documents in the end. could you just explain what the doj s main argument against releasing the affidavit is? yeah, they ve been arguing this in their papers, they also argued it forcefully in court
he stated he pled the fifth under the advice of counsel declining to answer the questions. this striking legal development, which we ll get into comes just two days after august 8, 2022 when the fbi searched a former president s home. both developments show the depths of donald trump s legal problems. neither means that he is in a legal sense guilty of anything to be precise. both mean that the concerns about donald trump s guilt about law breaking, about criminal evidence and criminal activity stretch from the highest levels of the doj to a separate new york probe to inside donald trump s mind. only he can make the decision that he made today. and let me tell it to you in plain english, it s a right he can exercise, but he made the decision, donald trump did that he faces a higher risk by testifying truthfully in the new york probe, which he chose not to do than by pleading the fifth, which he chose to do. it is a legal but a controversial move, which he has probably derided