the national archives has been trying to get donald trump to return documents since the end of his presidency. i m john berman. brianna is off. cnn chief white house correspondent kaitlan collins is with us this morning. this timeline we just keep getting more data points. it s like every day you learn that the conversations on getting these documents back goes back further than we thought. it was a problem it seems from the beginning. an email from the national archives indicates that records were not returned by trump despite a determination by a top white house lawyer that they should be. a source says there were about a dozen emails and calls over the course of 2021, this is last year, including a may 2021 email from the archives to trump s lawyers that reads in part, quote, it is also our understanding that roughly two dozen boxes of original presidential records were kept in the residence of the white house over the course of president trump s last year in office an
down the rhetoric, despite a wave of violent threats against law enforcement. good morning and welcome to morning joe. it is monday, august 15th. a lot has happened since we got off the air friday, so since we finished coverage friday, we learned the search warrant for mar-a-lago revealed former president trump is being investigated for possible violations of the espionage act, tied to the mishandling of national defense information or classified material. now, according to the fbi, 11 sets of classified records were seized from trump s home, including some marked as top secret, meant only to be available in special government facilities. two other laws were also cited as a basis for the warrant pertaining to removing, destroying, or concealing records and obstruction of justice. according to the search warrant for mar-a-lago, agents were allowed to search trump s office, all storage rooms, and all other rooms available to trump, his staff, or anywhere documents could be
planting evidence at mar-a-lago. then, after it was revealed the documents were classified, trump s team said he had taken them home to work on them, falsely claiming that president obama had done the same. then, this third reason why it was okay from trump s team, quote, he had a standing order that documents were moved from the oval office, taken to the residence, were deemed to be declassified the moment he removed them. former national security adviser john bolton told nbc news this. i think that claim is almost certainly a lie. i was never aware of anything even remotely approximaing that policy and haven t heard anything of it since i left. so i think this is made up. and i think a key point here is when somebody is making up stories like that, i think it indicates a level of desperation. as we try to figure out why and how those classified documents ended up at mar-a-lago, nbc news has uncovered new details about the final days of the trump presidency and the last-
trump s inner circle seemed to understand was completely illegal. also tonight, it s right out in the open now. new evidence of the violence and menace at theeart of today s maga driven republican party. but first i want to show you a bizarre moment from the 2020 news worm hole you probably don t remember. here? here. the electors are here. they ve been checked in. they re also electors, not all all 16 electors are going to be vote in the electoral college but these are the rest of the electors. the official sealed document and certificate of the electors are here trying to do their constitutional duty. i understand. the constitutional duty requires them to be at the senate chamber today at 2:00 p.m. now, what you just watched was a group of people claiming to be official electors from the swingy swing state of michigan on december 14, 2020 demanding to be allowed in to participate in the electoral college process despite the fact that joe biden won mi
When these freed hostages land overnight in the d. C. Area, they will be immediately offered help from the Defense Department at adjusting to life on the outside. And so far we havent heard anybody say anything but positive things that americans are heading home but there are a lot of complaints about the deal to get them here. Ransom payment 6 billion. A billion bucks per prisoner. President biden says today five innocent americans imprisoned in iran are finally coming home after many months of difficult and principled american diplomacy. Americans since held 2015 says im dying to find out what gadgets now exist. When i was taken hostage the iphone 6 s had just come out. You cannot imagine what an 8 year itch feels like. The returning americans have already spoken to President Biden and Secretary Of State blinken. I can tell you that it was for them, for me an emotional conversation. To get the Five Americans home, President Biden worked to unfreeze 6 billion in iranian funds. That ar