make clear what laws the fbi thinks he may have violated and he could produce that receipt for what they took from his home. so why hasn t he? that remains a major question. and in the meantime, inside the justice department, there is some frustration that so far the department said nothing about the search, while trump and his allies portrayed it as a siege, even suggesting without any proof that fbi agents may have planted evidence. joining us now is former trump white house acting chief of staff mick mulvaney. mick, it is great to have you on this momentous morning. i want to first start with your reaction to this search, because you did mention that there are two ways to see this unprecedented move. tell us about those. sure. i can think either it is a legitimate investigation into classified documents, or it is a political hit job. i think it is important that people understand why they re seeing the reaction they re seeing from the right. keep in mind, if you re repub
Maybe they don t know what a chief of staff s job is. do they see this as, okay, this was what the president was focused on, this is what the chief of staff does. so wasn t he doing that in his capacity? is that relevant? i think it is relevant in the way that shan described. it s relevant to a jury, who might be thinking, hey, this guy was just following orders. he didn t know. but that s not what the standard is he s facing right now. he s trying to convince a judge that he was within the legal scope of his authority as chief of staff. even though it s a low bar, and most high ranking federal officials are successfully invoke things like removal and dismissal on immunity grounds, i m not so sure he s going to be successful. one of the other things that meadows said was one of my jobs was trying to be gate keeper. that was a lot more challenging with president trump. you play offense and defense. i found myself playing defense a whole lot. that probably is one of the
Establish, however, was that those documents were in imminent risk of being destroyed or removed from the location. unless they had evidence that trump was directing people to destroy documents, and if he was doing that now, why wasn t he doing that six months ago. yes, you are correct, you said on your lead-in that trump has the ability to release the warrant. he could do that. he has the ability to release the receipt of the things that were taken, he could do that. the fbi also could release the affidavit they gave to the court in order to obtain the search warrant. and my point and a lot of other republicans point is that when the fbi has the track record it has, recent past, about dealing with republicans, the burden is on them to show that they are absolutely on the up and up and releasing that affidavit is something they can and should do. how close do you think that person in trump s orbit would have to be to know the details about where the documents were? really close. t