Brooks and Capehart on the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, the investigations surrounding Trump

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• Judy Woodruff:

  The press, politicians and the public are struggling to untangle a knot of questions, new and old, following the unprecedented FBI search of a former president home earlier this week, which leads us to the analysis of Brooks and Capehart.

  That's New York Times columnist David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart, associate editor for The Washington Post.

  Hello to both of you. It's Friday night. Good to have you with us again.

  And there's one story that's dominating the news today.

  Jonathan, I'm going to start with you.

  I hardly know where to begin. But what do you make of this? I mean, the FBI carted off 11 boxes, we're learning, of various degrees of confidential material this week.

• Jonathan Capehart:

  My head is still spinning.

  And not just any material. Some of the material, we now know from the released warrant, have to — have either classified markings, top-secret markings, or sensitive, compartmented information, which is probably the highest level of security intelligence documents there are. You can only read those in secure locations, and they're not meant to be taken out of those secured locations.

  Judy I'm trying to look at this, not from a partisan lens, not from my particular perspective, as someone center and left, but as just an American, taking out the name of the person involved.

  We have just seen a former president of the United States be subpoenaed in June for documents, ignored the subpoena. The FBI gets a search warrant based on three aspects of the Espionage Act. They wait three days to execute it. They execute that search warrant against a former president of the United States.

  And now we're learning that some of the most sensitive information a government official can have access to, he had with him more than a year after being out of office at his private residence.

• Judy Woodruff:

  What should we make of this?

• Jonathan Capehart:

  Under normal circumstances…

• Judy Woodruff:

  Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were stopping.

  Go ahead, Jonathan.

• Jonathan Capehart:

  No, I was just going to say, under normal circumstances, everything's should be on fire, because we should not be in the situation. No president has done this. No president should do this. But Donald Trump did it.

• David Brooks:

  Yes, when I first heard about it, I have to confess my stomach sank.

  And my reaction was, does the FBI understand the political firestorm they're about to set off? As the days have gone by, the gravity of what the FBI did and the justification for what they did have grown.

  And so, first, we learned this was not a rash thing, that it has been months in the making. They did issue a subpoena. They walked through this step by step. And then, even in the last few hours, we have learned that, as Jonathan said, if these documents are top-secret documents, the people who know more about this than I, they say that's a really big deal.

  And the — one of the acts the president is being investigated for is the Espionage Act. This is a serious act, which could be a decade in prison for a normal human being. And there are other acts, the potential falsification and mutilation of documents. That's also years in prison.

  And so these are — these are not small crimes. These are major, major criminal, if they get to it, accusations. And if you have that kind of crime, and you're a law enforcement officer, you have got to do something.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Jonathan, how much of this depends on what actually was in those documents, how secret, how confidential, how explosive that material was?

• Jonathan Capehart:

  Well, I think that sort of gradation depends on what potential charges could come down the road.

  But we're still talking about documents that should never have left the White House, should be in the possession of the National Archives, because they are the official custodian of presidential records.

  There are laws to ensure that those records go to the National Archives. No president, no former president, should have the documents that Donald Trump had before the FBI took them out, so — out of Mar-a-Lago. So that's what we should be focused on, that, to my mind, yes, it matters what's in the documents.

  What's even more important is that he took them, against the — against statutes, once he left the White House. I cannot express how serious the situation is that the country finds itself in right now.

• Judy Woodruff:

  David, you started a minute ago by saying, initially, you had the sinking feeling that this could lead to sympathy, greater support for former President Trump.

  How much is that still something that's a concern?

• David Brooks:

  Yes.

  No, I do think this is — both things are true. The FBI was probably right to do what they did. This will help Donald Trump. And it helps Donald Trump in a number of ways.

  First, as a number of his potential primary opponents' consultants have been saying off the record on — in the media, their campaigns are now — have the air taken out this — out of their sails. A couple — a month ago, a couple of months ago, half of all Republicans were saying they want to move on.

  Now, in the last week, at least, and maybe short term, in the last week, the whole party is rallying around Donald Trump; 80 percent of Republicans say they're more motivated to vote in 2022 because of what they call this raid.

  The vast majority are saying this is not an impartial investigation, s is a political hack job, something like 75 percent. Half of all Americans believe that. And so you get this situation where Trump — people are rallying around Trump. His opponents now have a little to run on, because everyone's defending the guy who has been attacked.

  And then here's where I get to the nightmare scenario. What happens if, in a couple of years, a year or two from now, Donald Trump is cruising to the Republican nomination because he's winning primary after primary, and he gets convicted of something?

  What happens if, a year-and-a-half from now, the American public decides he's going to be elected president…

• Judy Woodruff:

  Yes.

• David Brooks:

  … and the American legal system decides, oh, no, he's going to prison? What happens then to our country?

  Because I assume he has to be arrested. And I assume half the country is just going to erupt in rage and, frankly, political violence.

  So this — the presupposition for all this, we live in a society where there's incredibly low social trust. So people don't trust the institutions. And, B, in a normal party, your candidacy is hurt if you're investigated by the FBI. That is not the current Republican Party right now, at least right now.

  And so the — this is — you can see down the road to a potential where our legal system and our political system crash, and society is really disrupted.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And, Jonathan, it's not even having a charge leveled against the former president.

  I mean, just this week, this man went after the FBI in Cincinnati. He was later killed. He was somebody involved in January 6. He's a very, very strong Trump believer.

  I mean, so, how much do you think the former president is helped by this politically, as David is saying, and how worried are you about it leading to something else?

• Jonathan Capehart:

  Oh, Donald Trump is absolutely helped by this. The people who believe in Donald Trump and love Donald Trump will believe everything that he says and believe that anything that is done — quote, unquote — "against him" is persecuting him and therefore persecuting them.

  I do not think that fear of potential violence or fear of whatever political benefit could come to Donald Trump should factor into the wheels of justice turning. He cannot be allowed to be above the law.

  And if the Justice Department or the wheels of justice were to cower in the face of the potential of benefiting him, then our democracy is lost. He must be held accountable, just like anyone else potentially accused or investigated, tried for or found guilty of the things that we're talking about right now.

  Just because he was a sitting president, a former president of the United States does not mean he's above the law. And if — let's say that crash happens that David is talking about, and he's elected, but he's convicted.

  Well, he won't be president of the United States. I just — Judy, David, I am so — I am so concerned about where we are right now, because we are in uncharted territory. We don't know what the charges are going to be, what the real impact is going to be.

  I do agree with David, however, that anything that happens negative, from Trump and Trump supporters' perspective, is going to lead to things that I don't think we're prepared for. But we must get prepared for it, because our democracy is on the line.

• Judy Woodruff:

  David, should any of this worry about what this could lead to affect the judicial process in any way?

• David Brooks:

  Yes, I absolutely think it should.

  We're all responsible for the consequences of our actions. And prosecutors and investigators use discretion every single day. And so they — if they're indicting a candidate for a major party, A, my own personal opinion is the bar should be pretty high, that they really — A, it's a very serious crime, and, B, it's a very crystal clear case that the whole country can see.

  That doesn't mean you don't — as the experts of even the last few hours have talked about what Donald Trump may have done with these documents probably clears the bar. January 6, I became more to think it clears the bar.

  But you just can't ignore the society around you. You can't ignore a society that is in perilously close danger of rupturing. And does that determine what you do? Do you let somebody get away with a major crime? Obviously not.

  But you can — and none of us can be blind to the consequences of our actions. And I think prosecutors are comfortable with that.

• Judy Woodruff:

  What about that, Jonathan?

• Jonathan Capehart:

  Well, I don't disagree. I don't disagree with David.

  I do think that the facts as we know them now, in terms of that FBI surge, that that high bar was there, and that the Justice Department cleared those bars, and then some, because they understand the consequences of what they're going to do and the public, the public reaction, knowing that the subpoena was issued in June and ignored, that they got the search warrant three days before it was — it was executed.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Right.

• Jonathan Capehart:

  That, to me, says that the Justice Department and those people are exercising extreme caution and care.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Just a little bit of time left, but I do want to ask you both about more election results this week.

  David, it's the election deniers who are doing well in so many of these primary contests. And, in race after race, they seem to be the folks Donald Trump has endorsed.

• David Brooks:

  Yes, I'd say, in some weeks, we have had a mixed bag, that some non-Trump people did well.

  But pretty much, in the recent ones, Arizona, Wisconsin, elsewhere, Trump people more or less swept the field. The election, I can't remember if it was the day before or after the house raid. I can't remember if it was affected by it. But they had a very good — and then progressives did pretty well.

  And so I'd say the overall story from all these primaries so far is increased polarization.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Jonathan, less than a minute.

  What does this set up November to look like?

• Jonathan Capehart:

  A wild November, Judy.

  But the thing that I'm looking at is, we now have five Republican gubernatorial candidates across the country who are election deniers, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Any one of them, if they actually become governor of their particular state, the 2024 presidential election is in deep trouble.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Well, on this light note that we're ending on, on this Friday night…

• David Brooks:

  Another sober week in politics.

  (LAUGHTER)

• Judy Woodruff:

  Another — Jonathan Capehart, David Brooks, thank you. Thank you both.

• David Brooks:

  Thank you.

• Jonathan Capehart:

  Thanks, Judy.