Former President Trump's new federal indictment isn't just another legal battle. It's not just another political battle. It's unprecedented in every way. The current frontrunner for the GOP nomination is the first former president in U.S. history to face federal charges. This is the second indictment for the former president just months ago. He became the first ex-president to be charged with a criminal offense, getting charged in New York with 34 felony counts relating to the Stormy Daniels hush money payments. Well, joining us to somehow, someway put this into perspective is Tim Naftali, CNN presidential historian, former director of the Nixon Presidential Library. In a time there's some common wording when you read the reporting this morning, New York Times, Washington Post, The Times writing the Justice Department on Thursday took the legally and politically momentous step. The Post calling it a, quote, seismic event in the nation's political and legal history. Is presidential in the middle of legal and political history? Venn diagram? Well, why don't we step back and look at what's at issue and then maybe people do. Easier for people to understand why this is a seismic moment. I don't think many Americans would be that concerned if the president, in leaving the White House, took things that he shouldn't have taken because it's a hurly burly, big rush at the end, especially when you have a transition that that president didn't believe should happen. All right. 2021 was, as we know, a dramatic year, to put it mildly, But it's the issue of keeping the material. When the US government said, Hey, you've got stuff that you shouldn't. And then when that stuff includes Topsy, acrid materials and it appears that the president, former president shared them with people and then it appears directed others to move them so that Federal National Archives employees and federal lawyers couldn't get at them. Then it opens up the question of is someone above the law because they became president? That's the question I think people should keep in their minds. Do you want to live in a country or once someone is elected president, they can decide which laws to follow and which laws not to follow? I mean, I think that's the basic issue here. And it's beyond the time of the presidency, which I think is important to focus on. These charges are about what happened after he left office and the consistent claim from the former president, despite his shifting defense about how he says he declassified it with his mind or whatever, is that he believes that because he was president, he has this right, his right to have all of these things, Poppy. I think this is a symptom of a problem with the entire Trump presidency, where President Trump understood that he got powers when he was elected, but he didn't understand that he had obligations and that we live in a constant to tional democracy. Everybody, including the president, is bound by that constitution and there are limits to their power. And President Trump not only had a hard time with limits, he didn't respect them. And this is a case where he was told repeatedly that there were limits to his ability to keep materials and he said, I don't care. We're going to hear a lot, I think, from the Trump defense team, from Trump allies about the Presidential Records Act. The president has brought that up a lot. And just to be very, very clear, the the former director of the National Archives has said very clearly that that is just they are wrong as a matter of law to say that it extends beyond the minutes that he's not president saying when President Biden took office, all presidential records of the Trump administration came into the legal custody of the archives of the United States. There's no legal question about that. In fact, not none whatsoever I mean, I was a federal library director. My particular president was Richard Nixon, who actually gave birth to all of this because he wanted to destroy records that would have put him in legal peril. Let me let's make it absolutely clear to everybody. You, the American people, own all presidential records. The president of the United States. The minute he and someday she leaves office, they must turn over to you. All presidential records, except for a very narrow band of things. That are considered private, including a diary. There is nothing from the FBI materials that have been released, nothing that the president with the president kept in Mar-A-Lago that that is within the band of private. He kept our materials to Natalie. Appreciate it so much. Former President Trump is expected to be arraigned Tuesday in Miami federal court following his historic indictment for mishandling classified documents. Now, officials say law enforcement is scrambling to prepare security measures and the Justice Department is already moving additional resources to South Florida. It's notable that special counsel Jack Smith obtained the indictment in Miami and not in Washington, D.C., to help protect the case from potential backlash over the location of the trial. CNN's Kaitlin Poulets is live for us outside the courthouse in Miami. And Caitlin, I guess the first question is, what can we expect to actually see on Tuesday? Well, so we are going to be able to see what happens outside the courthouse. But as far as pictures, video of what happens inside the courthouse, that just is not something that federal court does. Federal court does not allow the sort of images of defendants inside courtrooms walking into courtrooms. Anything inside the courthouse that you even saw in the New York State arraignment of Donald Trump, where there were images of him walking down the hall into the courtroom, and then there were photographs of him inside the courtroom before the proceedings started. No video, no photos in federal court. So that is a big difference. But this is, you know, federal property all around us. This is a pretty secure complex. And so we do expect to see a lot of security here, a lot of presence from the federal government to make sure that the former president of the United States is protected as a criminal defendant and that these grounds stay secure. So this is quite a complex. And this is also Miami federal court. This is not a federal court that hasn't seen a high security defendants before. Man Manuel Noriega was on trial here for seven months, several years ago in the federal court in Miami. He was held here as well. Panama any dictator. So this is a very this is the sort of thing that this courthouse has already been through, really high security incidents. But we're going to have to see how this plays out. With Donald Trump himself, he is a defendant like no other. The good just so much going on, so many questions. Okay. Well, part of the reason I think we're both want to talk to you is because you've covered this so closely, so in depth, so in the weeds over the course of the better part of the last year, to some degree, there's one element that I think we've heard more from President Trump's team over the course of the last day or two that they seem to be focusing on. Trump attorney Jim Trusty accused the top DOJ national security lawyer of misconduct in the process of forming this indictment. Help us understand the context and potential validity of those claims. Right. Well, we're still trying to gather more information on this because it appears that there is some communication to a judge in D.C. that is under seal. So still secret. So we can't get a full understanding of that at this time. But what Jim Trustee did say on CNN last night is that they are very unhappy with a prosecutor on this special counsel's office team, that they believe that he may have been trying to pressure a lawyer to a number of witnesses in this investigation. And so that is something that we should be watching. But in this situation, and also with the indictment itself, there is a lot of material in the court system that is being looked at by judges, including the indictment that we just have not seen. Right. It is all confidential at this time. And so there is this effort now to understand, you know, what is actually on paper versus what people are saying publicly about what's happening behind the scenes in the federal court. And as this happens and as this indictment is brought, Jax Smith, the special counsel, is still in the midst of his other probe in terms of 2020 election interference, in terms of efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election that's still going on right now. Very much so. And that grand jury was meeting yesterday. We believe they heard from Newt Gingrich yesterday in that secret proceeding in Washington, D.C. and that there are others witnesses that I've been hearing about coming in the coming days who've been asked by investigators to speak in that investigation as well, so that January six investigation around what happened at the White House after the 20, 20 election leading up to the attack on the Capitol on January six. Very much a real investigation that continues on with a very active grand jury in the Washington, D.C. federal courthouse.
