rightfully, you know, has them. so number one, he s admitting that yes, i do have these materials, but specifics about what might be in the boxes, you know, we still don t know. but according to the search warrant, things marked top secret and classified are among those seized. so how will investigators try to determine what these materials are and what may have handled them, sorted them, packed them? and all the people involved in declassifying documents. fredericka, there are a couple of different elements to your question. first is the question is did the president declassify these before he left office at noon on january 20th, 2021. and we simply don t know. i mean, he can could simply declare something to be declassified, but there s nothing in the markings, as far as we can tell from the inventory the fbi left us, to indicate that they were declassified. you ve seen what these documents look like when they are
espionage act which prohibits the retention of classified information that may aid a foreign government. the investigation has been ongoing tore for some time and that the former president cooperated. and aside from that, the former president and his legal team say that these documents were declassified. he declassified documents. he was coordinating with nara and at the end of the day, don t forget, we know for a fact is about documents, documents he s allowed him to. will you explain put an extra lock on, leave for two months, get a warrant, sit for the weekend, have cocktails, show up with guns ablazing. and mr. trump had this to say, number one, it was all
when it s turned against reporters, of course. it hasn t been used all that often. but there are sections of it that just refer to the removal of data or handling classified data in a sloppy way. that would certainly seem to define what s happened over the last 18 months. and on the issue of declassification, while the president might declare something declassified, the president isn t going to be the one who is actually going to do the redacting, the marking of those documents, right? that s absolutely right. and usually he would hand it to someone. president trump was known to do this fairly rapidly. remember that saturday afternoon, when he saw the photograph of a destroyed missile on an iranian launch pad, it wasn t a u.s. operation, he declassified it, and immediately shot a photograph of it and put it on his twitter county. so michael, another possible federal crime here is possible
president s defense, right? they are saying that with various things. they re saying, first of all, that these things were declassified. some of his allies are now saying that by virtue of him asking for documents to be sent to his residence, it was declassified. that doesn t matter, under the statutes cited in this search warrant. what prosecutors seem to be saying is that this is information, we can prosecute you for violating the law even if the documents are no longer classified. and of course we know if it is national defense information, it would be classified. it doesn t normally work that way, that the president says it s declassified and it happens. there say whole process that usually goes into that, fredericka. all right, evan perez, i ll check back with you. thanks so much. meantime there has been a chilling uptick in threats following the mar-a-lago search. the fbi now says they are
secrets or nuclear weapons, but what we have not gotten, george, is an explanation as to why donald trump has these documents. we ve heard excuses as to well, they were declassified, and no, they were planted, no, he told them they could have the documents already. we ve heard those excuses. we haven t heard an explanation as to why he has them. why does he have them? there s no valid reason. i mean, the reason is because he s just he s a man who thinks everything belongs to him. he thought the generals across the river in that funny shaped building belong to him. he thinks the country belonged to him. he s a narcissist, he thinks everything is his, and rightfully his, and these are his documents. one of the things that may get him in trouble here, it s been reported basically he was advised by his own people to give it all back, and he said, no, this stuff s mine. it wasn t, it belongs to you,