tonight on why he s been calling for all court papers to be made public but not doing so in the place that it matters most, the courtroom. clarissa ward is in afghanistan and her harrowing return to a place deeply affected by the war and what she found when she got there one year after american troops departed. we begin with the search at mar-a-lago and the fight against unce unsealing documents. jessica, walk us through what the judge ordered today. anderson, the judge telling doj to go back to the drawing board and find a way to release some of this information from the affidavit. the judge is telling prosecutors two things. propose redactions but also better explain why they need to keep large sections of this secret. so the judge has set a deadline. he wants their recommendations next thursday at noon. after that point the judge says he might have additional confidential discussions with doj before he makes that final decision about what to release. parts of it are li
do those specific words create specific legal jeopardy for donald trump? i m john berman with brianna keilar, and judge bruce reinhart released several procedural court documents used to justify the search of mar-a-lago, providing new details and maybe a sharper focus on the president himself as a potential subject of a criminal probe. this is the document that was released and there is specific information in here about willful retention. in other words, they say he knew he had documents and he knew what they were. so this is all part of the argument over whether to release the affidavit justifying the search of mar-a-lago, prosecutors made the case for secrecy because they say evidence might be destroyed, but the judge set in motion the possibility of releasing a redacted version of the affidavit and that process will kick into gear as soon as next week. and ludicrous, ridiculous, bs, those words and phrases coming from some former trump senior officials who are scoffing
search of mar-a-lago. prosecutors made the case for secrecy because evidence might be destroyed, they said, but the judge set in motion the possibility of releasing a redacted version of the affidavit as soon as next week. ludicrous, ridiculous, bs, those words coming from former trump senior officials who dispute the former president s claim that he had, quote, a standing order to declassify documents that he took from the white house. cnn reached out to 18 former top trump administration officials and all of them told us they never heard any such order issued during their time working for donald trump. we re going to have much more on that in just a moment. joining us now is former senior counsel to ken starr, former deputy assistant secretary for policy at the department of homeland security, paul rosen swig. i want to talk about the document released yesterday by judge reinhart which outlines some of the reasons why the fbi wanted to search donald trump s home and one o
as a potential subject of this criminal probe. this is one of the documents right here. and there is specific language in here about willful retention of documents. in other words, they say, he knew he had them and knew what they were. this is all part of the argument over whether it will release the affidavit justifying the search of mar-a-lago. prosecutors made the case for secrecy because they say evidence may be destroyed. but the judge did set in motion the possibility of releasing a redacted version of the affidavit, a process that could get into gear next week. and ludicrous, ridiculous, bs, those words coming from several former trump officials who are scoffing at the former president and his allies arguments that he had a standing order to declassify documents he took from the white house. cnn reached out to 18 officials and all of them told us they never heard any such thing. we ll have more on that in a moment. first, let s bring in katelyn polantz with more on
a newly unsealed document shows the agency is looking into several crimes which include the, quote, willful retention of national defense information. that revelation does a couple of things, one, it intensifies the focus on former president trump as the possible or a possible subject of the investigation. trump has claimed a standing order to declassify documents he took from the white house, but in a cnn exclusive, 18 former top trump administration officials tell us they never heard of any such order issued while trump was in office. it also may be key that that law, willful retention of national defense information, it may not matter if the information was classified. we will dig into that more deeply. as the spotlight brightens on trump the doj continues its fight for some secrecy. the department expressed serious concerns that releasing the affidavit behind the search warrant could impede its investigation, also might endanger witnesses. still the judge appears to be