armchair reflection when they are faced with rapidly involving encounters and dangerous situations. once the state investigation is finished, it will be turned over to the county prosecutor for decision on potential charges. thank you for watching. i m pamela brown in the situation room. erin burnett out front starts now. former president trump s defense team comparing classified material at mar-a-lago to overdue library books. that was their term. trump and the justice department square off over trump s request for that special master. plus, live pictures from philadelphia where president biden is about to deliver a rare primetime address about the attack on democracy. this as we learn trump is considering full pardons for the january 6 insurrectionists if he runs and wins the presidency in 2024. a troubling find. a dominion voting machine for
we just ended with karine. there s this early excerpt from the president s speech. in it he says, we have reassured ourselves american democracy is guaranteed. but it s not. we have to defend it, protect it, stand up for it, each and every one of us. the white house is saying this is not about trump. do you buy that? i think biden is speaking for tens of millions of americans that are afraid. it s very scary to see this insurrection being defended by big republican leaders, by big republican media officials the it s scary to see voting rights on the chopping block. this is an important conversation. i m proud he is going to help to lead it. he does have to be careful. if he paints with too broad a brush, it sounds like he is saying anybody who voted for trump is an enemy of america. there are republicans that are concerned that you do have people in their party who are trafficking in violence, trafficking in white nationalism. that has no place in either party. it s appropriate for t
going to say with some sense of urgency in his tone that democracy is not guaranteed. it s incumbent upon all americans to stand up, protect and fight for their democracy. he will argue that american democracy is under an urgent threat and assault from trumpism that has infected the republican party. look at this one excerpt. he said maga forces are determined to take this country backwards, backwards to an america where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no priet to contraception, no right to marry who you love. so you can hear by that sentence here, john, this clearly goes much beyond, farther beyond just voting rights and democracy overall. he s using this as a midterm election moment to pivot to try and really paint a stark contrast between the democratic party and in his view the republican party. jeff, talk more about the timing of this speech.
anything more to the point tonight. 67%, two in three, say american democracy is in danger of collapse. the percentage of democrats and republicans who believe it, identical. however, don t go looking for a bipartisan silver lining. the poll doesn t ask people to give a reason why they believe this. so it s possible, even likely given such other recent polling that a deep partisan divide exists over what people think is wrong. to use a political science term, ain t good. it does not bode well. but it certainly sets the stage for what the president will say tonight. and the backdrop, significant new developments in the court battle over documents seized from the former president s mansion and what he said today about pardoning january 6th defendants. let s go first to cnn s jeff zeleny who is at independence hall in philadelphia. jeff, what more are you learning about the speech tonight, which begins in just a few minutes? reporter: john, we are berning that president biden is
tonight, karine jean pierre here tonight. what more will we hear from the president tonight? tonight, you are going to hear from the president on some core themes that we have heard from him for the past three years. the need to protect our democracy. the need to protect our freedom. the need to protect our rights. you have been showing photos where he is going to make that speech in less than 40 minutes, which is independence hall, where a lot of those rights were debated and they were drafted. we talk about the core rights that we have, those freedoms. it s an important place, he believes, to have that conversation. the president is going to talk about how for the past two centuries, america has been the beacon for the world. he is going to lay out what we have seen most recently. what we have seen for the past several years about how all of the those rights i laid out are under attack.