Speaker 1: Stunning development and the ongoing legal battles involving former President Trump.
Speaker 1: For the first time in history, a search warrant executed
Speaker 1: at the home of a former president, and let's find
Speaker 1: out more this morning, joined by Joe Matthew, the host
Speaker 1: of Bloomberg's Sound On. Joe, thanks for me with us.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of ways that the law enforcement
Speaker 1: can get stuff that they want, either through a subpoena
Speaker 1: or a search warrant. In the distinction is important here, well,
Speaker 1: it is, and this is you know, we want to
Speaker 1: be careful here in the way we're framing this. People
Speaker 1: are using the word raid because that's what Donald Trump
Speaker 1: called it in his statement to the media last night.
Speaker 1: This was a search warrant facilitated by the Secret Service,
Speaker 1: So I just want to be clear. They weren't knocking
Speaker 1: down doors, there were no battering rams. People were not
Speaker 1: taken into custody. And this brings us back to January
Speaker 1: when the National Archives first went in to retrieve fifteen
Speaker 1: boxes at that point of documents and items from mar
Speaker 1: A Lago that should have been turned over when Trump
Speaker 1: left the White House. At that time, they said they
Speaker 1: were continuing to search for additional records, and they have
Speaker 1: been asking the Trump former White House, the former administration
Speaker 1: to hand these over ever since. So what we saw yesterday,
Speaker 1: just to be clear, was was a very deliberate search
Speaker 1: facilitated by the Secret Service, approved by a judge. And
Speaker 1: you cannot get a search warrant like this unless you
Speaker 1: not only make the case of probable cause, but you
Speaker 1: also have to be specific about what you are looking for. Now,
Speaker 1: granted they took a lot of boxes out of there,
Speaker 1: they got into the safe, they could be looking for
Speaker 1: as little as one document, as far as we know,
Speaker 1: if it is top secret, that's all it would take
Speaker 1: to trigger that search yesterday. Is it implicit that not
Speaker 1: going the root of a subpoena, Uh, they thought that
Speaker 1: they wouldn't get it. Otherwise that's possible. We don't know this.
Speaker 1: We have to remember, of course, that there have been
Speaker 1: a lot of reports about Donald Trump disposing of documents,
Speaker 1: tearing them up, flushing them down the toilet, and in fact,
Speaker 1: some of the documents that were provided to the National
Speaker 1: Archives at the beginning of the or as I mentioned
Speaker 1: in January uh, in fact had been taped back together.
Speaker 1: They were torn up, thrown away and they had to
Speaker 1: be reconstructed at the White House. All of that violates
Speaker 1: the Presidential Records Act. Do we know what the documents
Speaker 1: they were looking for possibly relate to? We We really don't.
Speaker 1: And this is where it gets interesting here, Like, look,
Speaker 1: just about every administration people should also understand this have
Speaker 1: had some violation of the Presidential Records Act. The Washington
Speaker 1: Post reminds us this morning, Bill and Hillary Clinton had
Speaker 1: to return twenty eight thousand dollars in furnishings that they
Speaker 1: said we're gifts were actually property of the White House.
Speaker 1: We've just never seen anything on this scale. So it
Speaker 1: does imply that this is important. This is a top
Speaker 1: secret memo, It could be a series of documents, and
Speaker 1: it also John could be tied potentially to the Department
Speaker 1: of Justices January six investigation. That remains completely unclear to us.
Speaker 1: And we have to be honest about how little we know. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what is the former president and what are his
Speaker 1: supporters saying at this point? Well, it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: a doom scroll. This morning on Twitter, Kevin McCarthy was
Speaker 1: quick to tweet, this is the Minority leader that he
Speaker 1: promises an investigation into this. He will be specifically investigating
Speaker 1: Merrick Garland. He tweeted to him, he said, put the
Speaker 1: date on your calendar, assuming that he becomes speaker after
Speaker 1: the mid terms. New oversight to the FBI Marjorie Taylor
Speaker 1: Green among others. Uh, in Trump's uh ecosphere, if you will,
Speaker 1: are calling for defunding the FBI, not unlike defund the police.
Speaker 1: Now this is the new defund the FBI. Uh. Matt Gates,
Speaker 1: another Trump supporter congressman, refers to January six as the
Speaker 1: FED surrection. So this really reinforces this allergy that Trump
Speaker 1: supporters have to federal law enforcement. Well, can the former
Speaker 1: president metaphorically sent fire to the Justice Department with his
Speaker 1: supporters to evade responsibility? Could I ask the question again,
Speaker 1: could he do what? Could he metaphorically set fire to
Speaker 1: the Justice Department at this point? Well, if he got reelected,
Speaker 1: I suppose, but I'm not sure if you mean Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what's way he would have over the
Speaker 1: Justice Department right now. If Republicans take the majority in
Speaker 1: the House, you're gonna see a lot of hearings. But
Speaker 1: that does not necessarily do anything to change the case
Speaker 1: for Donald Trump. And what does it do to change
Speaker 1: the case, possibly for the general election. That's a great question,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty difficult to roll out more than two
Speaker 1: years at the moment. Here. I would remind you, though,
Speaker 1: that Christopher Ray, the FBI director, was selected by President
Speaker 1: Trump after he fired director Come and uh, although you
Speaker 1: would not necessarily expect, you know, such a bold move
Speaker 1: a hundred days before the midterm elections for violating the
Speaker 1: Presidential Records Act, never mind elections. All right, Joe, thanks
Speaker 1: very much. Well, before you go, what do we look
Speaker 1: for next? Well, gosh, that's a great question. Look, Donald
Speaker 1: Trump would also, it strikes me have a copy of
Speaker 1: that warrant. I think that we will. We will have
Speaker 1: to learn at some point what it is they were
Speaker 1: looking for. But knowing that they have laptops, hard drives,
Speaker 1: documents and so forth, there's gonna be weeks, if not months,
Speaker 1: of download and ingesting data, could be some time before
Speaker 1: we understand, unless, of course, the FBI is a little leaky,
Speaker 1: and that we might know as soon as today. Joe,
Speaker 1: always a pleasure, appreciate it. Joe Matthew hosts a Boomberg
Speaker 1: sound on on