me. i appreciate it, man. you are my friend, and you got my back, and i appreciate it, and i m very happy that it s another weekend. have a great weekend! you too. thank you to all of you at home for joining us tonight. happy friday. and it sure has been a busy one. it has been a bad day, if your name is donald trump. today, the january 6th committee issued a subpoena for the former president, and it is blistering, saying he, quote, personally orchestrated a multi part effort to overthrow the 2020 election. we will be getting to that, shortly. but, first, do you remember this photo? what you are looking at is a highly sensitive satellite photo showing an explosion at an iranian space center. this photo from an intelligence briefing was tweeted out to the world in august 2019, by none other than president trump. the fact that he gets so rattled intelligence officials and its soon led to internet sleuths being able to identify the u.s. spy satellite that took the photo. the
part effort to overthrow the 2020 election. we will be getting to that, shortly. but, first, do you remember this photo? what you are looking at is a highly sensitive satellite photo showing an explosion at an iranian space center. this photo from an intelligence briefing was tweeted out to the world in august 2019, by none other than president trump. the fact that he gets so rattled intelligence officials and its soon led to internet sleuths being able to identify the u.s. spy satellite that took the photo. there is something about iran that has always fascinated the former president. then new york times reported earlier this year how trump, who withdrew the u.s. from the iran nuclear deal, how we took little interest in most stuff that he was briefed on. for one major exception, iran. quote, trump almost took always great interest in military intelligence briefings about iran, squeezing defense officials about contingency plans for a war with the country, and asking detaile
ukrainian civilians. and other words, this is not just information that the u.s. is interested in, a lot of people are interested in, which brings me back to a few essential questions, why would trump remove these from the white house, and keep them, and deny having them repeatedly? and second, does the sensitivity of these documents, combined with the president well-documented obstruction, does that all increase the chances that the doj will seek to prosecute the former president? joining us now is the reporter who broke the story, devlin barrett, who covers national security and law enforcement for the washington post. devlin, thank you for joining us tonight. can i first ask you about the timing on all of this? do we have a sense of where in the back and forth between trump and the doj these documents first came to light? was it the first tranche, the second tranche, for the third time the fbi went into mar-a-lago? so, there are still blanks in the specifics of that but what i can
could authorize anyone else in the government to review it. i am sort of focused on the timing here, because the doj had been, and nara, had been asking trump for the return of all these white house documents. and at points in the course of the last, year trump had gone through these documents, purportedly, himself, and given back at each stage what he said was everything. can we assume that donald trump knew he was in possession of these documents by the time they were returned to the doj? well, that s one of the key questions that investigators are working to put together all the pieces of. obviously, trump has issued a lot of denials, and a lot of different directions, frankly. and so, one of the things investigators are trying to put together is, what did he know, and what did he do, as the government demands for this became more and more urgent? did the fbi do have a sense of whether the
search on august 8th. and one of the ways in which that complicated this investigation was that the investigators who are working this case, initially were not authorized to read some of the very documents that they were investigating. and they had to get special clearances, because some of this stuff was so restricted, that only a cabinet level, or near cabinet level official could authorize anyone else in the government to review it. i am sort of focused on the timing here, because the doj had been, and norah, had been asking trump for the return of all these white house documents. and at points in the course of the last, year trump had gone through these documents, reportedly, and self, and given back at each stage what he said was everything. can we assume that donald trump knew he was in possession of these documents by the time they were returned to the doj? well, that s one of the key