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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. This is the day the Justice Department is supposed to release a redacted version of the affidavit it filed requesting a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump's Florida estate of course. Portions will be redacted or blacked out so the public doesn't see information that could jeopardize the ongoing investigation into the handling of the classified documents Trump took to Mar-a-Lago and apparently refused to return to the National Archives.

Redactions will also be for the sake of protecting those national security secrets themselves. What can we learn from a redacted affidavit? We'll try to answer that question and catch you up on other Trump January 6th-related case developments. This is not January 6th related, as far as we know, but there are some developments in that too, with Rosalind Helderman, Washington Post reporter, focusing on political enterprise stories and investigations. Rosalind, thanks for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Rosalind Helderman: Thank you so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: A judge yesterday ordered the affidavit to be released by noon today. I was hoping to have it to look at by now. Are they going to wait until 11:59?

Rosalind Helderman: We don't know. We do know that lawyers often, like journalists, work best on deadline. It may be that we don't see it until right before noon. We also know the document was already prepared. They filed it to the judge. The judge took a look at it under seal and told them that this was the version they should make public. They don't actually have anything to do. They just have to make it public. it could really be anytime.

Brian Lehrer: They don't have anything to hide since it is going public. I was thinking there might be some leaks of the content by now, but apparently not. Get people ready for the kind of thing we'll be able to see. What would the Justice Department have had to show the court in order to get that unprecedented search warrant for an ex-president's home?

Rosalind Helderman: Sure. Just as a reminder, the way this works is it's going to be essentially an affidavit from an FBI agent laying out why the Justice Department and the FBI believed that there was probable cause, that evidence would be recovered at Mar-a-Lago, that a crime had been committed. They have told us the three statutes, the potential violations of which they were investigating.

We know that they have to do with the willful holding of documents that have information related to national security, essentially mishandling of classified information, although it's a different statute that they cited. We know that they were investigating the possibility that government documents had been destroyed. We know that they were investigating the notion of possible obstruction of a criminal investigation.

I would expect that the affidavit, I don't know how much of it will be made public and how much of it, as you mentioned earlier, will be redacted, but that it contains a pretty lengthy narrative of the FBI's interactions with Donald Trump and his representatives over time, the previous steps they had taken to recover this material, the subpoena we know that was issued to Donald Trump's representatives in May which saw all documents with classified markings, the return of documents with classified markings in June, and why it was that the FBI came to believe that despite having issued a subpoena, despite having received documents in response to that subpoena, why it is that they still believed that there were documents with classification markings to be found at Mar-a-Lago, and why it was that they believe that they needed to get a search warrant to go looking for them.

Brian Lehrer: As far as how much they'll redact, which you touched on, I've seen speculation about how much we'll be able to see that ranges from a strong narrative about how Trump resisted doing the normal thing and returning classified materials to the National Archives and maybe even lied to law enforcement about having returned them all to they'll show us almost nothing because they can't reveal the classified information. That is the reason for the search. Do you have information or any informed speculation of your own about how much we'll get to see?

Rosalind Helderman: I don't have information. I have speculation. My speculation would be probably somewhere in between those two. They already went through a process of trying to tell the judge that they would have to redact the document so severely that it would not be meaningful to the public and therefore they should keep the entire thing under seal. The judge said, "No, this is a public document, and I would like to give this a try and see if we can come up with some portions of it that can be made public without endangering witnesses, without endangering the integrity of the investigation."

Now, the Trump side has been very busy making certain pieces of information about their interactions with the FBI public. Their goal has appeared to be to try to convince, particularly supporters of the former President, that he had been cooperative and that there was no need for this really intrusive government action because they had been cooperating with the investigation and all the FBI had to do with asking for these documents and they could get them back without executing a formal court-ordered search.

I would imagine there are a number of compelling reasons for the FBI to try, if they can do so, without endangering their witnesses and without endangering the investigation, to try to offer a counter-narrative. Why it is that they did not believe that Donald Trump was being cooperative with their investigation? Why it is that they did not believe that, as Merrick Garland said at his brief press conference on this issue, why they did not believe that less intrusive measures was going to be sufficient to recover the documents that they believed were at Mar-a-Lago?

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, your questions are welcome here about the Mar-a-Lago search affidavit we're waiting for or the search or the documents case, in general, or anything related. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. I wonder if any lawyers are listening right now who want to weigh in on what to look for in an affidavit so everybody is as prepared as we can be for this by noon today, or what risks or benefits there are to releasing one at all. I know some lawyers, certainly, some TV lawyers who aren't necessarily Trump TV lawyers who aren't at all, don't like this precedent, even with the compelling interest in this case of transparency for the public.

Lawyers, you want to weigh in? Prosecutors, judges, retired judges, or anyone else. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. With Rosalind Helderman, Washington Post reporter, focusing on political enterprise stories and investigations. You can also tweet your question or comment @BrianLehrer. Rosalind, Trump has been playing this PR conspiracy theory game where he claims the investigation is political and demands the rationale for it be made public. That only works if the Justice Department and the court refused to make it public.

He can work that line about a cover-up, but the judge keeps ordering things released. First, the warrant with the full approval of Attorney General Merrick Garland, who called Trump's bluff. Now the affidavit justifying the warrant, which could reveal a lot of bad stuff about Donald Trump. How much do you think he's quaking in his boots this morning?

Rosalind Helderman: I never tried to get into the head of Donald Trump, so I can't quite say that. I do think that this is an interesting game they've been playing. I mean, one thing I would note is that Trump has said publicly many times that he would like the affidavit released, but he did not instruct his lawyers to actually go into court and participate in the court process that has resulted in today's unsealing or at least partial unsealing of the affidavit, which he certainly could have done.

That court action was initiated by a consortium of media organizations, including The Washington Post, which saw its unsealing on behalf of the public. There's also a conservative watchdog, Judicial Watch, which filed a motion asking for it to be unsealed. The judge actually, in one of his orders, indicating that he wanted to partially unseal it, pointedly noted that he had not received anything from the lawyers for the former president expressing any opinion one way or the other on this.

Whether that is in fact because his lawyers understand that this document is likely to include damaging details to him or for some other reason, we don't know. We do know that they have filed a separate action in front of a different Florida judge, and we can talk about that at a further lane. It seeks a number of things, but it does not formally in any formal way seek the unsealing of this document.

Brian Lehrer: That's interesting. It's the opposite of Trump's public statements in the last few days which are demanding the full unredacted document. It looks to me like Trump may use the redactions to continue the strategy of saying they're not revealing the whole story and they're blocking out the parts that exonerate me. Do you think, in addition to the contradiction that we just laid out there between what he's saying publicly and what he had his lawyers actually asked the court to do, do you think, depending on what people can see in the unredacted portions, that that will become a ridiculous and self-defeating strategy for Trump demanding the unredacted version?

Rosalind Helderman: Well, I definitely think you're right that he will attempt to counter what may well be a damaging story for him today by saying that the whole document should be out and that it's been unfairly redacted. Of course, we also know some of his lawyers have been on TV and have been quite open about their actual rationale for why they want to see this document.

They have very openly said they want to see it in full because they want to be able to identify the government's witnesses, who are the people in Trump's orbit who have been interviewed by the FBI and whose interviews helped explain to the FBI that classified documents remained at Mar-a-Lago and remained there for months and months and even after there had been a subpoena for their return.

It's not hard for, it seems to me, the Justice Department to justify the notion that they would like to keep some portions of this under seal to protect their witnesses and their future cooperation with the investigation given that Donald Trump's own lawyers have said that's the reason they want to see this thing so they can identify their molds.

Brian Lehrer: Why would Trump want to identify who from Trump world has been cooperating with the government? Is it again for political public relations purposes, so they've got new enemies to aim their fire at and try to change the narrative from whatever content is actually in the affidavit?

Rosalind Helderman: I mean, we can only point to how they have treated people in the past who have given interviews to the government when required to do so by law. People like Michael Cohen, the former lawyer for Donald Trump who was interviewed extensively by the government, many of his own advisors and aids while he was in the White House, people who participated in his first impeachment, people who have been interviewed in the January 6th investigation, including Cassie Hutchison who testified publicly, when these people have been identified publicly, he and people in his orbit tend to work to discredit them, find damaging information about them.

They tend to be subjected to intimidating and sometimes quite vile treatment by supporters of the former president online and sometimes not only online.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a question about the scope of the search warrant from Archie in Manhattan. Archie, you're on WNYC. Thanks for calling in.

Archie: Hey, thank you. My question is why have they not searched or had warrants for his offices here in New York or his golf club in New Jersey? Or is this the beginning of that?

Rosalind Helderman: I think that's a great question. One, I've actually had some conversation with my colleagues about a reporting target for us that I don't think we have quite answered in our reporting yet. My best guess would be that we do know, and we have reported that they have conducted a lot of interviews with people who work for Donald Trump that they began those interviews in the spring, and that the interviews they did in the spring were the reason why he received a subpoena in May, and that they have continued those interviews through the summer including in the weeks leading up to the issuance of the search warrant.

My best guess would be that they are being told by people with knowledge of how he is handling the documents and what those documents are that Mar-a-Lago is the place where they are being kept. I don't know that for certain. To the listeners, good question. I also don't know whether we may see more searches moving forward.

Brian Lehrer: You co-wrote an article this week called FBI's Mar-a-Lago Search Followed Months of Resistance and Delay by Trump. It begins with an email on April 12th from the National Archives. Will you remind us about that email as context for what we're anticipating today?

Rosalind Helderman: Sure. Actually, if you don't mind, I'm going to take it back even a little further. We also reported this week that the first email from the archives to Donald Trump's representatives regarding missing documents from his time in office came in May of 2021. He has left office, he's been gone for a few months, and the archives realizes-- The archives is commanded by the Presidential Records Act to be the keeper of all documents that were produced while a president was in office.

Those documents are not private property. They belong to the American people. By law, they're supposed to go to the archives when a president leaves office. At the archives, they realize that there are certain documents that are very well known that they have not been sent. Things like the letters that Donald Trump received from the leader of North Korea, things like the letter that former president Barack Obama left for Donald Trump when he was taking office in 2017.

The archives reaches out to Donald Trump's people and says, "Look, we're missing things. We know we're missing things. We know that there were a series of boxes, two dozen or so, that should have been returned to the archives by the analysis of Donald Trump's lawyers. We don't have that. We would like that."

That starts our understanding of a month's long process in which Donald Trump does not want to return these things and has to be persuaded by his staff, but eventually does agree in January of 2021 to return 15 boxes of documents to the archives, including some of those specific high profile documents that the archives knew they were missing and had asked for. This truck goes to the archives in January and they open the boxes and they start going through them.

As they do that, our understanding is, very quickly, they start seeing in these boxes of documents records that are clearly labeled as Top Secret or Secret Classified, and some of which are labeled Top Secret and even Special Access Programs. This is the most sensitive secret document the US government holds. In February, the archives makes a referral to the FBI.

The April email that you were describing to bring us to that point in time is an email that comes from the archives to Donald Trump's representatives on April 12th in which they say, "There has been a formal request by the FBI to come to the archives and take a look at this stuff that you have sent us and see how sensitive it is and whether in fact there might have been criminal violations in taking those things down to Mar-a-Lago.

We're going to let that happen. We're going to let the FBI come and look at this material under by law. You, as the former president, also have a right to see this material, even though it's the material that you send us, so you should know what's in it, but you can come and see what we're going to be showing the FBI. You have to do it in a secure facility because the documents are very sensitive and you have to send someone with a security clearance." The big important takeaway of that email is the FBI is taking this seriously and they're going to be coming to the archives to take a look at this material.

Brian Lehrer: What you're describing there is that Trump's lawyers insisted that he's been cooperating with the Justice Department and the search was unnecessary, but you have all this evidence, they have all this evidence, including, as you report, a letter to Trump from the government that was released this week outlined Weeks of Resistance. That's a central question that we're looking for the answer to today. The claim of cooperating with the Justice Department versus whatever evidence the Justice Department has that they actually weren't.

Rosalind Helderman: Yes, absolutely. What happens after that April email is we know that by May the Trump people were still resisting. They're trying to say the material is covered by executive privilege and the FBI shouldn't be allowed to come and take a look at this. The archive's response that they don't think those arguments are convincing, but they note that they had actually delayed the FBI, going to look at the documents to consider the issue more closely.

What becomes apparent is this lengthy, lengthy period really starting in May of 2021 in which Donald Trump first is fighting with the archives over this issue, not being cooperative, not returning things when asked to and told he needs to by law, but resisting that. Then when the issue gets handed over to the FBI, fighting with the FBI and the Justice Department over the same issue. Then in May this really key thing happens, which is that the Justice Department actually sends him a subpoena, a grand jury subpoena.

We know actually from Trump's own lawyers that that subpoena sought anything he still had with a classification market. Documents in the government that are classified generally have a notation at the top of the document that indicate that they have been classified and at what level. It's a clearly marked document. It is just a condition of the piece of paper. It either has that marking or it doesn't. They sort every piece of paper he still had in his possession with that marking.

In June, Trump invites the FBI to come to Mar-a-Lago and pick up the return for that subpoena. This is a meeting that happens on June 3rd. A top Justice Department official comes to Mar-a-Lago to pick up those documents. Trump and his lawyers have made a big deal over how cooperative they were that day. When the Justice Department officials and the FBI agents came by to pick up these documents, Donald Trump greeted them in the dining room and said hello, and said, "Anything you need, we'll give you."

They actually asked to look at a storage room where the documents have been kept. They were taken down to the basement of Mar-a-Lago and took a look at the space. Big show of cooperation, but then we know that by August there are still classified-marked documents at Mar-a-Lago. I think one of the things we could learn from the affidavit today that would be most interesting is how did the Justice Department come to the conclusion that there were still documents at that late date, after all this fighting, that there were still things that he hadn't turned over.

Brian Lehrer: If they can prove that Trump's claim of having handed over everything he's got turns out to be false, is that in and of itself a serious crime, obstruction of justice, or something?

Rosalind Helderman: That is a serious crime. Yes. You're required to comply with a grand jury subpoena in full. If they can show that he did not comply with the subpoena, that he did not do so, he or other people working on his behalf did not do so knowingly, that they purposely held things back, that is a serious crime. The level of sensitivity of the document, had it been declassified by him before leaving office, in some respects that would not even matter for looking at whether or not he obstructed this investigation. If he simply purposely and willfully held things back instead of turning them over in response to a valid subpoena.

Brian Lehrer: Trump's defenses are so far contradictory in that he says he turned over everything the National Archives wanted, but he also claims he doesn't have to, that they're his. Those things can't both be true, right?

Rosalind Helderman: Yes. We've heard a lot of rolling and revolving excuses from his side. There has been some suggestions by his lawyers that perhaps the FBI planted evidence, so that seems to suggest that they want to say that they didn't have documents at all, that anything damaging that was found was planted. Obviously, there's no evidence for that.

As you say, they have said both that they turned everything over and that they were willing to turn everything over, and also that there was no reason that they had to turn anything over. They have now fully settled on their explanation for these events, but I'm sure we'll hear more as this moves forward.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Listeners, we're awaiting the release any minute of the redacted affidavit that led to the Mar-a-Lago search warrant with Rosalind Helderman covering it for The Washington Post. When we come back from a short break, we're going to take a caller from New Jersey who wants to ask you about The Washington Post and other news organizations' role in getting the affidavit released.

It was, as you said, a few minutes ago, a media request, a number of major news organizations asking for the affidavit to be released, including-- in addition to, I should say, some conservative organizations. Interesting legal coalition there. We have a caller from New Jersey who wants to ask you about that and much more. Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. As we wait the release of the affidavit that led to the Mar-a-Lago search warrant, could come any minute, there's a noon deadline, we have Rosalind Helderman, Washington Post reporter, focusing on political enterprise stories and investigations, including this one. Elizabeth in Montclair, you're on WNYC. Hi, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth: Hi, there, Brian. Hi, Rosalind. Brian, you set up my question well. I'm just going to vent because I'm so angry at the media. I do not understand why they would push for something they would never push for any other citizen because no other citizen would ever get to see their affidavit before they're indicted. Why would they do this? I am so apoplectic about it, really, because this country's on tenterhooks, and the media knows this better than anything. All this is doing is fomenting the right and giving Trump everything he wants right now. Why would they do this?

Brian Lehrer: Rosalind, I don't know if you want to put yourself in the position of a lawyer for The Washington Post.

Rosalind Helderman: I am not a lawyer for The Washington Post and I was not involved with the conversation about whether or not to pursue this. I guess I would beg to differ a little bit that this is not something we would do in other instances. I'm familiar with many cases of public interest where we have gone to court and asked documents, including affidavits, for search warrants to be unsealed because the public has an interest in knowing how the government is functioning.

In this instance, I would just note that Donald Trump and his lawyers are putting out a lot of information that they claim to be true about how this investigation has unfolded. It would be my expectation that we are going to learn things, the public is going to learn things, via this process. This is going to reveal a very different story about what led to the search. The media organization sought this.

Ultimately it was a judge who determined that the public right to know could be balanced with the need to protect the investigation and has ordered the release of the partial affidavit. I would not expect that we are going to learn anything for instance about the witnesses. I think that they will have done a careful job to redact information about that. My hope is that this will strike a good balance.

We will learn some important details about the investigation that will potentially fact-check some of the things that Donald Trump has been saying, while still protecting witnesses and grand jury information and the integrity of the ongoing investigation.

Brian Lehrer: Elizabeth, I would love you to call us back next week after the affidavit is released and it's been reported on and you've seen whatever news coverage you see on and read the document itself to the extent that it's unredacted. Call back and tell us if after that you feel the same way, or if you think maybe it was in the public interest to do that. I'd be really curious to have you call back next week if you'd like to. Thank you for calling today.

Here is Steve on Staten Island, a former assistant DA in Brooklyn, he says, on affidavits and search warrants. Hi, Steve. You're on WNYC.

Steve: Thank you, Brian, for taking my call. I had two points that I made to your screener. The first is, is that I just want to educate everyone as to what exactly is an affidavit for a warrant. I started at the Brooklyn DA's office in 1989, but in 2004, Judge Rosenblatt of the Court of Appeals published a complete search warrant annotated manual, and it's to be found in our court's website. You go to www.courts.state.ny.us, you go to judicial resources, and in the judicial resources section, there's a search warrant manual. That's where you'll find it. It's about 160 pages. It starts out that Judge Rosenblatt was funny, "Where's the warrant?" It goes on to explain the nuts and bolts of how you apply for and obtain a warrant and what the contents of an affidavit will be. [unintelligible 00:29:22] [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: With that knowledge, and of course that doesn't tell us what specifically, in this affidavit, that justifies this unprecedented search of a former ex-president's home, but from your knowledge and that context and your experience as an assistant DA, what are you looking for in the affidavit today?

Steve: Well, given the fact that the judge has ordered redactions, I'm going to do nothing because the warrant's going to have to describe a particularity; what you're searching for and why you believe it's there. That addresses the other caller's question earlier that why didn't they search his New York City office? Well, they don't have the reasonable cause to believe that anything there in New York City.

They have reasonable cause to believe stuff is in Mar-a-Lago. That's based on the interviews plus the surrender of earlier documents and the fact that maybe there was some transport records that show boxes of presidential records being delivered to Mar-a-Lago following his term. Just to follow up, again, Trump has caused and made this all up upon himself.

A good defense attorney once told me that a search warrant is a force with subpoena. He was subpoenaed, which is the production of documents voluntarily pursuant to a court order, a court authorization. He was subpoenaed for these documents. He refused to comply with the subpoena, so that forced the Department of Justice's hand into applying for a court-ordered seizure. That's my comment then. Oh, the last thing is regarding his contesting for privilege purposes what's been seized to be reviewed by a special master.

My comment on that is that that's absurd. You would do that in instances where you go to an attorney's office and you seize from an attorney confidential file records for some reason. Now those records may be client confidentiality between the client and the attorney, but in this instance, all of these documents, the US government-owned documents, he was in possession of stolen property if you think of it in that way.

These documents belonged to the archives, belonged to the United States. There's no presidential privilege within these documents. Then the other thing is to review these documents--

Brian Lehrer: Steve, hang on one second, because I was going to bring this up with Rosalind because she's reported on it, but I'll ask you, since you have an opinion about this special master thing. Trump is asking the court for a so-called special master to conduct an independent review of the seized material. I guess the government is resisting, but I, as a layperson was thinking, why would the government resist?

I usually think of special masters as pretty good at being independent and credible and thorough in the cases that we've talked about on the show over the years, having to do with various different issues. I am seeing this pushback as if there's another Trump trick here. What's the downside of a special master. Maybe it just gives the whole thing more credibility.

Steve: I don't know. I believe it's just a delay tactic. There's no reason to delay the review of any of these documents. I don't know what Trump is [unintelligible 00:32:53] by delaying this process. Again, these documents are owned by the United States. There's no inherent privilege that could to add them beside any reason that they're reviewed by an independent party for, again, the analogy I made is a client [inaudible 00:33:14]

Brian Lehrer: They were seized in a contentious criminal investigation, but Steve, I hear you. Thank you for that input. Rosalind, anything on the special master, because that may hold up more public revelation. As Steve says, it may be a delaying tactic before the public can know maximally what this is about.

Rosalind Helderman: Yes. We've spoken to a number of experts like your caller who thought that a special master didn't make a lot of sense in this instance for a number of different reasons including that there is no case law to support appointing one to review executive privilege as opposed to attorney-client privilege, including the fact that we know the documents to be highly sensitive and highly secret.

The special master you would have to find would have to be a person with a very, very high-security clearance and including the fact that they've had the documents already for weeks now. The notion of putting a person to review them first it may just be too late. Now, I think I heard you say that the government has opposed it. I have to say technically we have not yet heard from the government about that request.

The Trump people put in a filing and the judge has responded to essentially say that they did various things wrong in their filing and that they didn't answer certain questions, including why she was the right judge to hear this. She ordered them to put in a new filing, explaining those things no later than today. We should see that sometime today. At some point, we will hear something from the government and I think it's reasonable to assume they are likely to impose the request, but we actually haven't heard that yet.

Brian Lehrer: I stand corrected on whether they've officially resisted this call. One more call for us. Bill in Rego Park, you're on WNYC with Rosalind Helderman from the Washington Post. Hi, Bill.

Bill: Hi, Brian, and good morning, Ms. Helderman. I'd like to thank you and your colleagues for your immensely informative report earlier this week on Trump's stonewalling and gas lighting. My question to you, it seems to me that at least as important as team Trump's response to the affidavit's release is the response of the Republican leadership. I'm wondering if you have any prognostications for that, particularly whether they'll stop or if there's any possibility of their stopping or tempering their absurd defense of his actions. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Bill.

Rosalind Helderman: I do not count myself as an exceptional prognosticator, a teller of the future. I hesitate to venture a guess. I would just note that there was a great deal of rallying around Donald Trump in the days immediately after the search including all the way to Mitch McConnell who has not always supported Donald Trump in recent months, though he did not vote to convict him in his impeachment, was highly critical of his actions around January 6th.

Even Mitch McConnell offered some mild criticism of the FBI which was a sign of where he felt the politics, the Republican party were on that. It will be interesting to see if we actually do see some pretty damaging information about Trump emerge from this affidavit, whether some members of the Republican party tamped down their criticism of federal law enforcement. I think the caller raises that as an interesting question and I'm interested to see what will happen myself.

Brian Lehrer: Well, it's about the base, isn't it? Maybe one of the truest things that Donald Trump ever said despite the 11,000 or whatever it is lies that The Washington Post documented when he was in office. One of the truest things that he ever said is that he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight and his supporters would still support him. We saw that after January 6th, when Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham and Kevin McCarthy all basically said, "That's it, Trump. We're breaking up with you now. Look what you've done." Then when the Republican base around the country supported him anyway, they started walking it back.

Rosalind Helderman: Yes, I think you're right. Polling has shown that there is a stubborn 30% to 35% of the country that does seem to remain behind him despite all of these various things. Is this the one that's going to dent that number? The experience of the last six, seven years suggests probably not, but of course only time will tell.

Brian Lehrer: As a last thought, I feel like we've been here before. Everyone was waiting for the Mueller report on the Russia investigation while Trump called it a witch hunt, but when the report came out, it was a little more nuanced than many people expected. There was lots of contact with Russia and lots of evidence of obstruction of justice, but it wasn't quite that Trump offered Russia official favors out loud in exchange for them spreading disinformation in the 2016 election and he wiggled out without charges.

Then there was a phone call with Zelenskyy and the messages to him apparently tying helped Ukraine against Russia to Zelenskyy announcing an investigation of Joe Biden. Again, Trump called it a witch hunt. It didn't have enough consequences on Ukraine to convince Republican America that he abused his power, or if so, that it was an impeachable offense. Again, he called it a witch hunt and he wiggled out. The same thing, at least, so far with January 6th.

Now suddenly the latest way Trump may have broken the law is his handling of these documents, which the public, in general, was not focusing on at all. Now this morning, we're all here waiting for this affidavit. He, of course, is again, calling it a witch hunt. The question is, will this piece of paper this time have the smoking gun and will this egregious man who never gets held accountable and who so many consider or want to be fascist and actual one be stopped this time? We will soon see, but doesn't it seem to you like we've been in exactly this place several times before?

Rosalind Helderman: I think that is a good recitation of the history of the last eight years, six years, I should say, that we've all spent together. This seems like a very real investigation. We have never before seen a court-ordered search of a property related to Donald Trump that does require the finding by a judge that probable cause exists, that evidence will be found of crime. That doesn't necessarily mean a crime by Donald Trump, just that evidence exists at Mar-a-Lago, that probable cause that a crime was committed by someone, probable cause is not the same thing as being able to file charges and convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.

That's a higher standard. We have been in similar places. We have never been in precisely this place. Whether this follows the path that you have described that we have become so familiar with or this one goes in a new direction, I guess we shall see.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for making that distinction. That was really interesting. Well, listeners, I guess we could say, in one way, we gambled and lost in this segment. We were hoping that with the noon deadline, that they would've released the redacted affidavit by now. We could have talked about it with Rosalind Helderman from The Washington Post.

In another way, we won because Rosalind gave us so much deep background on this whole thing that now we're all more prepared to see the affidavit and understand it when it comes out. Rosalind Hederman, Washington Post reporter, focusing on political enterprise stories and investigations, thank you for all your reporting on this, and thank you for coming on today.

Rosalind Helderman: Thank you so much for having me.

 

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