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Court Unseals Detailed Inventory From Mar-a-Lago Search; NASA Tries Again Tomorrow to Launch Artemis 1 on Journey Around Moon. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired September 02, 2022 - 10:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:30:00]

KARA SCANNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, that is a good question. I think that this is from the search because the full issue at play here is the special master.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: For the most recently taken documents here. So, this is an enormous amount in that search. It goes through -- and folks, we have -- it's eight pages here but it lists 33 different items, which I think -- is it correct to take this as each of these as a separate box of stuff?

SCANNELL: I mean, so we'll see -- we see from some of them, number eight, says it's a box and container from the storage room. Number seven is listed as a document from the office, where that just happens to be one document.

SCIUTTO: Might have come out of drawer or something like that.

SCANNELL: Exactly. And then you see another item that also says 640 documents. So, it's not clear how they decided to describe it but it certainly tells us the volume of materials that he had, that he had taken from the White House.

SCIUTTO: After his lawyers signed a letter saying, Jennifer Rodgers, if you're still there, that we have returned everything, and yet, still, months later, they're scattered around unsecure facilities in unsecure cartons. How does that relate to the legal question here of not just retention, that's a fact, they were retained, we can see that, we saw the photos, but the handling of them during retention?

JENNIFER RODGERS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, Jim, that's why we see in the statutes that are the basis for this search warrant an obstruction charge, which is that it's not just the classified information happened to be found there but that, in fact, in these negotiations and in this letter, the Trump folks said that they had done a diligent search. They had looked everywhere, and there were no further classified information.

So, you can talk about the potential for a false statements charge but also this obstruction charge. They were trying to -- by lying to federal officials about whether they were classified materials there or documents with classified markings, to be more precise, they were obstructing their investigation. And so that's where you see the basis for that come in. And it spells potentially big legal trouble for the former president and for some of his team.

SCIUTTO: If you're just joining us now, the judge has just unsealed the inventory of documents taken from Trump's Mar-a-Lago home. It runs some eight pages, that inventory here, 33 items, 33 boxes, as well as containers and other documents taken from the office of the president and storages at Mar-a-Lago. None of them secure, mind you, in the view of the FBI or the DOJ.

Our Evan Perez joining us now as well. Evan, you've been perusing this document, I'm sure. What stands out to you?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jim, as Kara mentioned, we're talking now about thousands of pages of documents that potentially, if this judge in Florida decides that she wants to order a special master, there's a lot more things that this person is going to have to go through beyond obviously the FBI -- according to the document, according to the prosecutors, the FBI already has a separate team that has gone through and has singled out things that they believe -- I believe there's 520 pages of things that could have some attorney/client privilege material.

Potentially, though, this special master that this judge is thinking of appointing would have to go through everything to make sure that what the FBI says is true, right? So, you can see now why the Justice Department is concerned about the potential delay in this investigation, that this would have the effect of delaying the investigation. Because she's saying -- the judge is saying that while this is going on, she's going to prevent the FBI from having access to some of these documents.

It's a very, very big deal, considering that, you know, again, they're trying to get through some of this investigation over the next couple of months. The Justice Department typically goes quiet, Jim, because of the midterms.

SCIUTTO: Understood. And just to a point we were making with Kara Scannell just a moment ago, to be clear, this is an inventory of documents seized during that August 8th search of the president's home in Mar-a-Lago. It says on page 1, materials seized pursuant to the search warrant executed on August 8, 2022. Kara's sharp eyes picked that out.

I do want to draw attention, Kara, just to another detail here that stood out to us, and that is a number of the items in this item list are empty folders, empty folders with classified banners. And, by the way, that's not to imply most of them were empty because there are a whole host of listed and counted government documents with various classified listings here, but any idea of the significance of that or does it just show that there was just a muddle of stuff?

SCANNELL: At a minimum, I think it shows there was a muddle. I mean, there's empty folders labeled, return to staff secretary/military aide. Now, we don't know what was in those documents, if they were just empty folders from the get-go, or if these documents are no longer there, or perhaps scattered amongst some of these other records. [10:35:05]

SCIUTTO: That stands out to me, and, again, during the brief time I handled classified documents myself, there were documented you were not supposed to hold on to that were classified for deliberate security reasons because you don't want them floating around. Look at them, absorb them, and get them back to a safe location, or get them back to the person or the agency who gave them to you.

We're going to -- there's a lot to go through here. We'll continue to do. Please, everyone, stand by. Again, if you're just joining us, the judge has just unsealed just the inventory of documents taken in the FBI's August 8th search of the president's home in Mar-a-Lago. A lot of information in here confirming once again how much of that, those documents seized, were classified. We'll have more right after this break.

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[10:40:00]

SCIUTTO: Breaking news, a Florida judge has just unsealed a more detailed full inventory list of all of the documents, many of them classified, taken from Trump's Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, in that search on August 8th. We have it here and we have a team that's been looking through it, judging some of the significance here.

Kara, you and I, as we go over this long inventory, it goes over 33 items, over eight pages. One notable thing is just the treatment -- or I suppose you could say mistreatment -- in that these highly sensitive documents were thrown into boxes, containers, parts of the president's office with other things, magazines, books, clothing, gift items.

SCANNELL: Yes. I mean, you see that it's not just one of these boxes and containers described here, which is a list of 33 or so of them -- yes, 33 boxes and containers. I mean, you see in one of them, it's magazines, press articles, then 11 confidential documents, classified documents, 21 with secret classification markings. And then articles of clothing and gifts, a book, and then other non-classified government records.

So, you just kind of get a sense that this is very haphazard. It's not -- these classified top secret documents are not being maintained in the secure manner in which they're required to be done. And so this just shows the breadth of what they must have found when they went in there and looked at this.

We also see and there's -- what was also unsealed today was an investigative team status report. And in that, the prosecutors write that, you know, as they're going through this seized material, that one of the things that they're looking at is not only the documents themselves but the nature and manner in which they were stored.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

SCANNELL: And they said that will inform the government's investigation and inform, it also says, witness interviews and grand jury practice. So, certainly, it's still a very active investigation.

SCIUTTO: I mean, that highlights the point that it's not just the retention of these documents, which belong to the government, not to the person, but also how they were stored during that time period. And, by the way, if you get a security clearance, it is drilled into your head to treat documents with care because of the risk of them getting out.

Evan Perez, as we noted here, empty folders listed in this inventory as well.

PEREZ: Yes, Jim. And, look, I was looking at, for example, a box/container from storage room is labeled as -- on item 18, it notes two empty folders labeled, return to staff secretary/military aide. There's a lot of things that stick out. We can't draw any conclusions obviously. But it does, you know, fit into the pattern of what we know the former president, his practices were when he was president.

And this is the kind of thing that the grand jury, that any witnesses that are going to be brought before the grand jury investigating this case as part of this investigation, they're going to be asked about the president's habits.

One of the things we know is, you know, he had a habit of when he was getting briefed, he would ask for the documents and he would want to keep them, even though the protocol would be for him to return them to the aide who was handling it. And, of course, those things were logged in and logged out. There was a whole -- there's a whole procedure that is used to keep track of these documents.

And this is why there was so much concern inside the intelligence community about important documents that they obviously keep very, very tight hold of and track of, you know, would end up at the White House and them sort of disappear, you know, and so this kind of fits into that pattern. And I'm sure witnesses are going to be asked about that when they go before the grand jury.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Some more details we just had up on the screen. We had said early on more than 100 classified documents found in the search, and now we know how that broke down, 31 confidential at the lowest level of classification, 54 secret, 18 marked top secret, which we've described on the broadcast before, top secret. It earns that rating when the revelation of that intelligence could cause grave damage to U.S. national security.

Jennifer Rodgers, of course the significance beyond the classified nature of this is the possibility that a special master could be designated by the judge to look through what is an enormous volume, thousands of pages, it appears, of information. How much would that setback the ongoing DOJ investigation of the handling and retention of these documents to have a special master go through that? And how long could we expect a special master to take to do that kind of thing?

RODGERS: It's really hard to tell, Jim, because a special master can't even start that job until one is selected.

[10:45:03]

You know, usually, the judge will ask the parties for recommendations, then appoints someone. That person needs to be cleared to SCI clearance level, above top secret. So, that will take time. And then I think the review, obviously, takes time. We're probably talking about a matter of weeks, not months. We don't have hundreds and hundreds of boxes. We don't have electronic devices with lots of documents on them. But, still, it will set them back many, many weeks.

Now, they had an ongoing investigation, which, of course, they can pursue. What they would not be able to do, and this (INAUDIBLE) depends on the wording of the judge's order, but presumably they would have to put these documents aside and not use them for their investigation but they could continue the parts of the investigation that they were doing before the search happened.

SCIUTTO: Lord, we've done a count now. It take some time to do it when there's this many. It is, in fact, more than 11,000 non- classified government documents. That's the non-classified ones. As we just mentioned, there were more than 100 classified ones taken. And this is just during the August 8th search. So, after the January moment, when Trump and his team handed over some of the documents and then claimed they handed everything over, 11,000 government documents.

Jennifer, I just have to ask you from a legal perspective, if you're looking into this for the possibility of a criminal case, an indictment, does volume factor into that decision?

RODGERS: It does. It does because it tells you something about the egregiousness of the behavior and it tells you something about intent. I mean, we already knew here that there was a lengthy back and forth between Trump and his team and the government, both the National Archives and, of course, DOJ and FBI, so that there's no question that he knew he was possessing these materials, the nature of them, that they needed to be turned over and wasn't doing that. So, that tells you most of what you need to know about intent.

But it also matters, I think, that you're not talking about a handful of documents. You're talking about hundreds, thousands of documents. So, it will matter to DOJ ultimately when they consider charging this because, you know, it just goes to the egregiousness of the conduct and the intent.

SCIUTTO: Remarkable, more than 11,000 documents, more than 100 classified documents found just in that August 8th raid.

Kara Scannell, Jennifer Rodgers, Evan Perez, thanks so much for helping us understand all this. We are, of course, going to continue to follow this developing story.

Next, just ahead, NASA is pushing ahead with tomorrow's rescheduled launch of Artemis 1 even with some risks involved. We're going to live from the Kennedy Space Center.

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[10:50:00]

SCIUTTO: Right now, NASA is preparing for take two of its mega-moon rocket launch. The Artemis mission scheduled now to liftoff tomorrow.

NASA does acknowledge there will be an increase in risk, but officials say they are comfortable with that. Last hour, the NASA administrator, Bill Nelson, told me it's not the mechanics that pose a question tomorrow but really the weather.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL NELSON, NASA ADMINISTRATOR: The launch team is very confident. They have -- to use a southern term, they have looked at it from izzard to gizzard, and very confident. And the only thing that's going to get in the way, if it does, is summertime in Florida, the rainstorms, the lightning storms.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: CNN's Space and Defense Correspondent Kristin Fisher, she is down at Kennedy Space Center and joins me now.

So, Bill Nelson there saying, really, the only question is the weather tomorrow. How is it looking then for this?

KRISTIN FISHER, CNN SPACE AND DEFENSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, I sure appreciate Senator Bill Nelson's optimism and, gosh, I hope he's right. We got to take a tour yesterday of the weather squadron that makes these forecast and makes the go/no-go calls for weather on launch day. And what they said was that we now have a 60 percent favorable weather forecast for launch at the beginning of the launch window tomorrow, 80 percent favorable weather forecast at the end of the launch window. So, those are some incredibly good weather forecasting numbers for Florida in August on a launch day.

So, that really brings into the question the technical side, the mechanical side. Yes, weather issues can always come up. Weather constraints can come up. But the big question now, I think, is has NASA successfully troubleshooted all of the issues that they ran into on Monday? And, Jim, we got a chance to actually go right out to the launch pad yesterday and see this mega rocket for our self. And, boy, it's -- you know, you really just get a sense for how complicated it is, how tough a job NASA has when you're standing right next to this thing. It's much bigger standing by it than it is from where we are here, about four miles away.

So, the big question now, Jim, is did NASA make the changes that they needed to make? They say they fixed the hydrogen leak. They also say that they're now comfortable with essentially ignoring a faulty sensor. We now know that the engine was likely cooled. That engine that was causing some problems was likely cooled to the right temperatures. It was a bad sensor that was giving them the wrong data.

So, NASA's plan now, I asked them point blank yesterday at a press conference, I was like, so let me get this straight, the plan now is just ignore the sensor? [10:55:05]

And they were like, yes, that's it.

So, yes, weather a concern, as Senator Nelson said, Jim, but, for me, from my vantage point, I think the big question is, has NASA made the technical adjustments, the engineering changes needed to give it a go for launch for this second launch attempt.

SCIUTTO: Yes. In Nelson's word, they've gone through it izzard to gizzard, to give them that confidence.

Kristin Fisher, we hope to see it takeoff tomorrow. We know you'll be there. Thanks very much.

And thanks very much to all of you for joining us today. We really do hope you have a chance to celebrate the long holiday weekend. I'm Jim Sciutto.

Erica Hill starts right after a quick break.

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