terrible vulnerability to our closest allies with whom we share our closest secrets. and it follows up, frankly, on the way the former president behaved when he was in office, on several occasions, posting classified satellite photo of iran, revealing secrets without understanding who he was saying most likely, in the oval office to russian visitors at the highest level. he just in office already had alarmed the intelligence communities. he was very hostile from day one to the intelligence community. and criticized them, publicly said in helsinki, after seeing vladimir putin that, why would the russians lie about interfering in the 2016 election. why would he believe his own director of national intelligence dni coates when vladimir putin was saying that that hadn t happened. so why wouldn t he believe putin
counterintelligence question about him, frank. wouldn t it be interesting what a great point. wouldn t it be interesting that what started this all off and his troubles becomes the end of him because it s a counterintelligence problem and it s of his own doing. it s of his own doing. that would really be the height of irony here, and i really get concerned about the national security implications. i know i m beating this horse, but think about even phone calls. think about his lawyers who are not cleared to see this, who probably saw it. who probably didn t say oh, no, no, no. they probably peaked at it. think of who he showed just to say hey, look at this, a satellite photo or whatever he s got in there. look at this. it scarce the hell out of me. did he pick up the phone and have a conversation with lawyers and say what about the t.s. document that involves north korea. what about that one? someone intercepted that phone call. someone abroad, a foreign
satellite photo showing the aftermath of an explosion at alarm site neuron. he wrote that the u.s. was not involved saying, quote, i wish them best wishes and determining would happen. and classified information, he defended himself, claiming that he could do whatever he wanted with classified information. i just wish iran well, they had a big problem and we had a photo and i released it, which i have the absolute right to do. and we will see what happens. you have to figure that one out yourself. we will see what happens. we will see what happens. no, we know from reporting at the time that there was a pretty robust infrastructure around the then president working to prevent him from doing anything that would endanger our national security. my next guest, a retired cia operations officer was part of that effort. but now, donald trump is no longer in effort office. those protections are no longer
what a week. with us, we have pulitzer prize winning columnist and associate editor of the washington post, eugene robinson with us. and columnist and associate editor for the washington post, david ignatius, will join us in a moment. joe, just a reminder of why the justice department might be a little concerned about nuclear secrets knocking around mar-a-lago. there was the time that trump spilled highly classified information to russia s foreign minister. or when he tweeted a highly classified satellite photo of an iranian space facility. or when he sided with the kremlin over america s own intelligence agencies. my people came to me, dan coats came to me and some others, they said they think it s russia. i have president putin. he just said it s not russia. i will say this, i don t see any reason why it would be. yeah. so with that in mind, we begin
security agency transcript of a vladimir putin phone call. there may be information there that would denote the sensitivity of the documents in question. i m told by law enforcement sources there will be at least some of that. this will give us a sense of how serious this investigation is and how sensitive some of the documents are that they found at mar-a-lago. phil, your team at the post has been reporting on the possible classified documents, saying nuclear weapons materials were a focus of the search. not that they were found, but they were the focus of a search. we have seen the former president be casual with sensitive information before, both during his oval office meeting with lavrov, tweeting out a classified satellite photo from iran, which caused a huge fuss, and also this memorable moment right after the 2018 helsinki summit at his news conference with vladimir putin. let s watch. my people came to m and