Heilemann: Trump Is Panicked And Can See He's Headed For An Indictment

And as Trump amplified that dangerous conspiracy theory, the Justice Department prepared its latest response in its investigation into the former president, several major headlines are emerging from the Justice Department's midnight presentation in response to Donald Trump's request for a Independent review of all known materials as a Special Master after the Mar-A-Lago search on August 8, the Justice Department argues that designating a Special Master subpoena is unnecessary and would significantly harm important government interests, including the interests of Homeland Security, the Justice Department notes that government review teams have already finished their work and having a third party review the documents would only impede its ongoing criminal investigation.

The 36-page filing also reveals that the Justice Department sought a search warrant for Mar-A-Lago after obtaining significant evidence that highly classified documents were likely moved and hidden and that Trump representatives had falsely claimed that all of the Sensitive material had already been returned to the Justice Department. States cite that the government also developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the storage room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government's investigation, continuing with the State Quote Three Classified documents were also seized that were not located in boxes but on desks in Quote 45's office.

The Justice Department also included an image of the documents seized during the FBI's search of the former president's property in Florida. , several of which are clearly marked. Top The secrecy throughout the filing says more than 100 unique classified documents were seized and some of the documents were so sensitive that FBI agents and Justice Department lawyers needed additional security clearances to even review them. The Justice Department filing reveals that the FBI recovered twice as many classified documents as were turned over by Trump's team, calling into question its claim that there was a diligent search after the grand jury subpoena in May.

Bring on the former US Senator now at NBC News and MSNBC Political Analyst Claire McCaskill MSNBC and NBC News National Affairs Analyst and Executive Count Editor John Heilman Congressional Reporter for the Guardian Hugo Lowell and Princeton University Professor Eddie glad Jr and Joe I guess what I mean is that there are so many things here this morning that were obviously revealed at midnight last night, the documents found in it appear in office 45. desk I don't know if that's Donald Trump's office, the office 45 is what it's called, but these documents are clearly very sensitive and the overnight revelations are quite surprising.

I don't know, maybe 45 offices, the tiki hut bar at Mar-A-Lago, who knows, wow, you know what we have to keep going back to what you mentioned this morning Donald Trump has no explanation for this, Rudy doesn't deny it Giuliani has no explanation for the target's most secret documents that the government holds were stolen from the White House and taken to Mar-A-Lago, uh Newt Gingrich, who is attacking law enforcement officials calling them wolves who want to devour the Americans. He has no defense. There is no explanation. There is no defense, at least politically. and legally Jonathan or John Heilman legally it seems to me that every day because of Donald Trump they think they are going to do something with this special Master uh uh plea to have a special master and then they forced the doj's hand he says oh okay well Here you want some evidence of why we can't do that and I just remember what Julia Yaffi says on her blog that tomorrow will be worse when it comes to Donald Trump's legal problems.

It seems like he really doesn't have many moves left. tomorrow it will be worse maybe that's why he and Lindsey Graham are talking about Republican riots in the streets Republican violence industry and again his words are not mine his words are not mine this is not this is not uh antifa this is Lindsey Graham saying if Donald Trump is arrested responsible for breaking the law, the Republicans, his supporters will riot in the street, so that's what we're left with because they sure don't seem to have any explanation for why he took these top secret documents. Yes, I think of several things about this.

The first is, you know Joe, to your point, I mean, the first weekend after the Mar-A-Lago search and seizure operation, it was reported in the New York Times that Trump had reached out to Merrick Garland and and and he said something like you know he wanted to try to calm things down, could he try to calm things down in the country because the country was really on fire and there were people who read that as a veiled threat and I looked. and I thought it might be that it might be right that it might be a construction threat.

Now it seems obvious that it was the precursor to A Veiled Threat and it was a precursor that laid the groundwork for what we're now seeing what are these explicit threats that are almost incomprehensible what someone like Lindsey Graham would say when he said, but I think the main point is that now they have no legal movement left. I'm not a lawyer, but there's no lawyer that I talked to that thinks the situation isn't going to get worse for them and I think what that leads to Joe is this question of really in the end is still the question.

What is Merrick Garland going to do? Will he impeach Donald Trump or not? Now you know, again in that initial phase there was a discussion between the prosecutors, they would say you know well, maybe if you recovered the classified documents, uh. It will have served its purpose, they will no longer be at risk, uh, maybe it won't follow through with what we've seen now, you know, crossing the Rubicon and sending those FBI agents there to do that search and seizure. Go back and now we know how many documents there were, how long they were there, how much Trump resisted, how high the level of classification was and now the Justice Department has gotten to the point where they are putting them on the floor. on the ground here and they're releasing these photographs, I don't think they're not just, you know, kind of a swipe at all of Trump's legal teams, uh, legal misinterpretations and maneuvers, but they are, implicitly or explicitly , in some ways I just don't understand a world where now Mara Garland can't ultimately impeach Trump and I think that's where we're

headed

, you know, and then Trump's people will know it Donald Trump knows it, that's what it is causing panic, uh, the behavior of a guy who seems to be in a bad uh, he's had a bad uh male bath in his like he lost his mind yesterday, you know, he's panicking and he can see as clearly as everyone Else, you're

headed

for an accusation, um, and I think that's becoming more and more inexorable and inevitable, uh, and that's part of what's driving this degree of panic on your part, whatever platform you use .

It's not just a platform that Anon is that everything that is truly social is that social signal is what they call it. I don't know what that is, any more than I know what bad mescaline in the bath is, but I'll leave it. Right there, Saturday afternoon, Joe, um, I'm having a barbecue, if you want to come, I can familiarize you with the substance in question, no, no, no, I'm very good with sweet tea. I'm telling you, I've reduced the amount of sugar poured into the pitcher of sweet tea by half, there's too much caffeine for you, and then I'm trying to reduce it by a quarter, that's how dangerous I live. with foreign substances, um, like this, Willie, um, earlier we had Admiral Stravitas rightly say, um, if Donald Trump gets away with stealing documents from government facilities that are only supposed to be retained and viewed in government facilities, what does the president do? everyone else who handles these documents every day and admiral savitas talked about it, you know you get these briefing books with the top secret documents and I would keep them close if he broke any so well, that's what I've been saying about the Congress if I broke something else if you know I want to take a closer look at this at home they would knock on the door of my apartment in Washington DC and handcuff me like I was a document so you have that precedent and then you have the president about obstruction of justice, so how does Merit Garland work?

How does the Department of Justice work? What do the government lawyers say? You know what we're going to let this slide because the Department of Justice asked the former president to return top secret documents to return classified documents. Return some secret documents and he only returned half of them to us and they have them, they have them hiding the documents, they have them, hiding the documents, they have them moving the documents to other rooms to obstruct justice, so I've always been against of the prosecution of past administrations because I think it would establish a dangerous president, but I'm afraid we're at a point where we're doing nothing now to establish a bigger four president who is much more dangerous. and far-reaching in the future and with each new presentation the Department of Justice reveals more and more of what they have and it seems more and more likely that they are prepared to perhaps indict the former president based on what we have seen.

Even publicly we don't even know the extent of what they have privately as they build their case and Claire McCaskill, the reason you haven't heard a good explanation of what the former president and his team did is because there is no good explanation: They were caught red-handed with boxes and boxes full of classified documents, some of them top secret, as we saw in that photograph last night, hidden in a country club in Florida, to Joe's right. Admiral Savritis came in and sat with Jonathan. and I said, "I'm here to talk about Gorbachev, but do you know what would happen as supreme commander of NATO if I had just one document?" they would handcuff it doesn't matter if you intended to so there's no good explanation here and as we learn more from this filing last night, 36 pages, the justice department certainly has a lot on this former president thank you