this is quite a week, john. thanks for being here. good to see you, see you next week, bro. welcome to the beat. i m ari melber, and we begin with this breaking news. the mar-a-lago search warrant has been unsealed. we have it. you may have heard, and most importantly, as you see here, this is something we don t usually get. we ve never gotten it for a former president, and we had no idea when the week started that we d be going through it. a documented list of the things that donald trump allegedly took or stole, property of the u.s. government and intelligence material. we re going get into this right now. we start with what s in here. we don t start with the law, although it is the law that brought us this information. we start with the search warrants property and inventory list. lets take a look. you re going see at the top how this works. search and seizure warrant. you see that? page 1 of it. then on page 5, and if we can, we ll bring this to you in full. can we br
ga and good evening, i m erin burnett. trump investigated for violating the espionage act. yes, that is just one of the crimes former president trump is under investigation for by the department of justice tonight. obstruction of justice and criminal handling of government records are also on the list. now just to be clear, when you hear the word espionage, you might say, wait, espionage? here s what it specifically relates to. i ll quote for you. information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the united states or to the advantage of any foreign nation. and as the warrant, the unsealed warrant now states, the property to be seized includes, and just reading here and you can see on your screen as well, information including communications in any form regarding the retrieval, storage or transmission of national defense information or classified material. and that is why the fbi searched mar-a-lago on monday. and we now also know what the fbi took
first, though, the latest on the unsealing of that fbi warrant. bret will join us in a moment. broeske we go to correspondent david. hi, david. reporter: this is the search and seizure warrant to gain access by fbi official. it gives us an idea of what fbi agents were looking for and what they took from the president. down in florida. we also got an early look at the property list. a property we see which shows specifically what was taken from mar-a-lago back i want to read that to our viewers and let them know it includes 11 sets of classified materials that may have been improperly, outside of the secured government because depict some of that material labeled at as top-secret, following the unsealed request with president trump, former president trump s formal blessing, and registered has instilled the warrant and the property receipt of the items. we know the include four sets of top secret documents, three sets of secret documents, three sets of confidential documents
have to stop for a moment. i want to ask you again, david, just to go through this list. it s three pages here, these 33 items that evan was just discussing, the receipt for property. this is the list of things that the fbi took from trump s home. all in, 11 sets, david, of classified documents. four of them top secret. one with the very special designation of top secret and sensitive compartmented information. what stands out to you on this receipt list? well, the high volume of classified information, the level of sensitivity of that information. we re talking about multiple sets of top secret information, which by definition is defined as the disclosure of which could cause grave damage to the national security of the united states. and then compound that with the category of top secret documents that were sci. i mean those are documents that are sourced based on the most sensitive intelligence
national security if released. and coming up in a few minutes on law fair, we re posting an analysis of this receipt and what it tells us about the search. the fact is this is very serious material. these are very serious charge, and we re not done with it yet. very serious is why we rely on both of you. on a somewhat lighter note, it is friday. i think you just used your television appearance to tease an upcoming website publication. and a tip of the hat to you, because we re always talking about what s coming up. maybe you re hanging out with us tv people too much, david. what we do. what s the url? it s lawfair blog.com. and you ll get the breakdown of the information from the search warrant and the receipt list that you showed on the screen. and in fairness, gene robinson, washington post .com, which has had a lot of stories this week. i thank you both. joyce vance standing by. we have our shortest break, which is 60 seconds. we get into laws, as i mentioned. we haven t