political analyst and professor of african american studies at princeton university. great to have all three of you with us. brian, let me start with you, first of, all get reaction to breaking news on two fronts. you have mark meadows, mike pence effectively and now openly contradicting trump on a key part of his defense strategy. which was that he declassified everything there. and on the record publicly, i imagine also privately to the legal authorities to jack smith saying. we don t know of any standing order to declassify documents. and these are the two i would argue, two closest people in his decision-making process if you will. and certainly, if he gave that order you would think that the vice president and mark meadows would know about it. this highlights the importance of the fact. that the trial witnesses of donald trump when prosecutors can finally drag trump and his
stories that are breaking. tonight to big developments in the classified documents case against donald trump. remember that one, x chief of staff, mark meadows, told special counsel investigators that he does not recall donald trump ordering or even discussing the classifying materials before leaving the white house. that s according to new reporting from abc news. that same report says that meadows told investigators that he s unaware of any standing order from trump authorizing the automatic declassification of materials taken out of the oval office. meadows account directly contradicts trump s biggest offense in the mar-a-lago classified documents. you may recall trump of course insisting, his whole argument was that he declassified everything before leaving office. moments ago a trump campaign spokesperson said that this reporting was incomplete. it lacked proper context. but he didn t provide any evidence to support their claim and just
tropical storm in southern california and 84 years. we re gonna be following all that for you and bring you updates if we have them throughout the evening. but switching now to other big stories that are breaking. tonight to big developments in the classified documents case against donald trump. remember that one, x chief of staff, mark meadows, told special counsel investigators that he does not recall donald trump ordering or even discussing the classifying materials before leaving the white house. that s according to new reporting from abc news. that same report says that meadows told investigators that he s unaware of any standing order from trump authorizing the automatic declassification of materials taken out of the oval office. meadows account directly contradicts trump s biggest offense in the mar-a-lago classified documents. you may recall trump of course insisting, his whole argument was that he declassified
three of you with us. brian, let me start with you, first of, all get reaction to breaking news on two fronts. you have mark meadows, mike pence effectively and now openly contradicting trump on a key part of his defense strategy. which was that he declassified everything there. and on the record publicly, i imagine also privately to the legal authorities to jack smith saying. we don t know of any standing order to declassify documents. and these are the two i would argue, two closest people in his decision-making process if you will. and certainly, if he gave that order you would think that the vice president and mark meadows would know about it. this highlights the importance of the fact. that the trial witnesses of donald trump when prosecutors can finally drag trump and his defense lawyers into court before a jury. the trial
if that happens, we ll see whether or not he behaves. we have a new development in the other federal case, the one involving classified documents, ankush. abc news is reporting that mark meadows testified before the special counsel that he can t recall trump broadly declassifying documents before leaving the white house. former vice president mike pence was asked about this reporting. here is what he has to say? i can t really comment on your reporting. but in my case i was never made aware of any broad-based effort to declassify documents. ankush, what s the importance of this, if at all, to jack smith? it goes straight to the defense that trump tried to present as soon as his home was searched. it was a little over a year ago that mar-a-lago was searched. he declassified everything. and his defense changed.