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Transcript: The Rachel Maddow Show, 8/22/22

Guests: Anthony Fauci, Adam Schiff

Summary

Interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "The New York Times" is reporting that the FBI has now obtained more than 300 different classified documents from Trump`s home that reportedly include documents from the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI. Interview with Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).

Transcript

CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: That is ALL IN on this Monday night.

THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW starts right now.

Good evening, Rachel.

RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Chris. Thank you, my friend. Much appreciated.

And thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. Really happy to have you here.

Through an odd series of events surrounding the profoundly, profoundly criminal presidency of Richard Nixon and the really, really, really criminal vice presidency of Nixon`s vice president, Spiro Agnew, through an odd confluence of events surrounding those two national leaders, in the early 1970s, the U.S. Justice Department kind of bumbled its way into stating for itself, putting into writing, a new rule.

This is a rule that wasn`t in the Constitution in any way. It`s an issue that had never really been seriously considered and decided one way or the other before the Justice Department was confronted with it urgently during the Nixon administration.

But thanks to this, again, sort of odd series of things happening all at once in the early `70s, the vice president, Spiro Agnew, maybe going to prison, the president, Richard Nixon, making being removed from office against his will by impeachment. Thanks to those things coming together all at once in a big felonious mess because the American people, in our infinite wisdom, thought it would be a good idea to elect guys that crimey to the White House, twice, thanks to that mess around Nixon and Agnew, the Justice Department in the early `70s, they bungled their way into putting that it was the policy of the Justice Department not to bring criminal charges against a sitting president of the United States.

And that`s like an important landmark moment for the Nixon years, right? It`s never a good sign when your presidency is so crimey, it forces everybody to slow down and clarify the rules on whether or not you can still be president from inside a prison cell.

But even though they -- that landmark was sort of reached during the Nixon years, even though they clarified that rule on paper because of the mess around Nixon and Agnew, that rule, the sort of nuts and bolts of it never really got tested at that time, never really got tested by the events that surrounded the actual downfall of Nixon and Agnew. I mean, Nixon himself resigned as president before he was forced out. Not only was Nixon never criminally charged when he was president, he then got a pardon and as soon as he resigned, so he was never criminally charged as an ex-president either. So Nixon avoided testing that principle.

Same thing with Agnew. They took great pains to not test it with Nixon`s criminal vice president, Spiro Agnew, who was running an extortion and bribery ring out of his office in the White House and got caught by federal prosecutors for doing so. With Spiro Agnew, federal prosecutors actually did bring federal charges against him, but they negotiated this very sensitive deal whereby Agnew resigned the vice presidency immediately, I mean right before, seconds before he walked into the courtroom to formally face those federal charges.

And the importance of that is that it means technically, they never tried to charge Nixon as a sitting president, nor did they ever try to charge Agnew as a sitting vice president. They avoided testing that prospect with both Nixon and Agnew, each of them basically by the skin of their teeth.

So the rules about not charging a sitting a president, those rules were created, they took shape, they were formalized and put down in print during that crisis of criminality in the White House in the early `70s, but that rule wasn`t really tested at that time. That rule wasn`t really tested until almost 50 years down the road, until our time in the history books. Hooray for us.

It was three years ago, 2019, when special counsel Robert Mueller completed the report of his investigation into Russia interfering in our presidential election in 2016 to help the Trump campaign. That was what volume one of Mueller`s report was about. And then volume two of Mueller`s report was about obstruction of that investigation, and it laid out in detail steps that Trump took as president to try to block that lawful investigation into what Russia did in 2016 and how they did it.

When Mueller turned in that two-volume report to the Justice Department in 2019, he said basically, you know, there`s this longstanding written Justice Department policy that says, we are not supposed to bring charges against a sitting president, so we`re not going to bring charges against the sitting president, but we have nevertheless done this investigation.

[21:05:02]

We`ve collected all the facts. We`ve preserved the evidentiary record, so if charges are warranted here because of Trump`s behavior, those criminal charges can be brought against him once he is no longer president, once he is no longer protected by that Justice Department rule that says you can`t be criminally charged while you`re serving as president of the United States.

So that`s what Mueller said when he turned in his report. That`s what Mueller`s report said.

Mueller turned his report into this guy, to Trump Attorney General William Barr. That`s who received the report from Mueller. And right after he got the report, you might remember William Barr released a statement about it. And in that statement, he said, I`ve reviewed this report from Robert Mueller, and I, as attorney general, I have carefully reviewed all the evidence that Mueller and his team have presented here, all of the evidence they have presented as to whether or not Trump committed crimes.

Barr said specifically that he was disregarding the Justice Department policy that said a sitting president can`t be charged with crimes. He said, I`m not paying attention to that. He said regardless of that policy, just ignore that policy. Regardless of that rule, I, William Barr, have reviewed all of the evidence, and I have determined that no way should Trump face any charges, not just because he`s president, not just because of this rule that says no charges can be brought against a president.

But regardless of that, Trump shouldn`t face any charges because my, William Barr, review of the evidence in this report indicates that Trump committed no crimes.

Barr tells the Congress, he tells the public, I can tell. I checked it out.ch I looked at all the evidence. I say, as attorney general, and the Justice Department backs me up on this, this is the professional view of the U.S. Justice Department. Trump did no crimes.

And that`s how the whole Mueller report thing ended, right? I mean it`s over. The Justice Department looked all of the evidence that Mueller turned up, and the Justice Department says in its professional estimation, Trump should not be charged. And Barr made it explicit. Even if there wasn`t this rule that says you can`t charge a sitting president, regardless of that, just based on the evidence, Trump still wouldn`t face charges for anything here.

That`s how Bill Barr broke the neck of the Mueller investigation in 2019. That`s why even after Trump le office and he was just an ex-president and therefore he`s no longer protected by that Justice Department policy that says you can`t charge a sitting president, that`s why there was no clamor to charge him then with any of the gazillion instances of alleged obstruction of justice that were described in great detail in Mueller`s report. It`s because Barr said -- he signed his name to it.

He said, we looked at everything here. Regardless of that rule that says you can`t charge him, Trump definitely committed no crimes. He should not be charged.

Barr`s letter said, quote, the evidence developed during the special counsel`s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction of justice offense. Our determination was made without regard to and is not based on the constitutional considerations that surround the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president. That`s what Barr did. That`s what Barr said.

Turns out that was a lie. At least a federal appeals court in Washington has just ruled that that was a lie. According to a unanimous ruling from the D.C. circuit court of appeals, a three-judge panel, when Robert Mueller turned in his report to the Justice Department, Attorney General Bill Barr and the Justice Department never actually considered at all whether or not Trump committed crimes or whether Trump should be charged. They literally never even looked at that possibility despite what they said they were doing publicly.

Barr lied according to the appeals court and told Congress and the public that the Justice Department did consider that, and after that careful consideration, they definitely concluded Trump committed no crimes and shouldn`t be charged. But the appeals court says that Barr lied about it. This is from a, again, unanimous three-judge ruling from the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C.

Quote: The department`s submissions indicated that the memorandum conveyed advice about whether to charge president Trump with a crime. But the court`s in-camera review of that memorandum revealed that the department, in fact, never considered bringing a charge.

DOJ never, in fact, considered bringing any charges against Trump. They a never even looked at it, find out now, three years after the Mueller report came out, five years after most of the potentially criminal activity described in exquisite detail in that report, they said at the time they considered charges against him, and no charges were warranted. But they never actually considered charges against him at all. They never once looked at it.

[21:10:01]

So, you know, that happened. Okay. Apparently we just move on. Apparently we just move on because, you know, crimes in high places don`t matter much, right? And, you know, if you`re fully cognizant of the fact that you`ve gotten away with a bunch of crimes without facing any charges or any consequences for those crimes, probably that has a very cautionary effect on you, so you never try any other potential crimes again, right? I`m sure that`s how it works.

You think, whoo, close call. I better shape up. I`m sure that`s how it works.

There`s a lot of news tonight. I keep waiting for the lazy, hazy dog days of summer to roll around where the news gets all slow. That is not what`s going on right now.

That federal appeals court ruling, that federal prosecutors never actually looked at potential charges against Trump -- that was like a little speed bump in the news, just like a little rattle when we rolled over that. Oh, hey, what was that?

Tonight, we got a new filing from that same former president filed with a federal court in Florida. The former president is asking for a special master to be approved by the court to review the items that the FBI recently seized from President Trump`s home in Florida. Trump is also demanding that the FBI give back to him the materials they seized from his home, which is really something.

I mean, you`ll recall that among the statutes under which the former president is now being investigated are portions of the Espionage Act, dealing with unauthorized retention of national security information that could harm the United States or help a foreign adversary, which means, you know, dude, whatever happens, you`re probably not going to get this stuff back, not when that`s what you`re being investigated for.

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee is going to be our guest tonight in just a few minutes. There`s been new reporting today that he and other very senior members of Congress have asked to actually see the materials, including the classified materials that Trump had taken and was hiding in his home before the FBI had to go in and take them back. We`re going to ask him about that.

We`re also going to h ask him about this brand-new reporting that has just dropped from "The New York Times." The headline, Trump had more than 300 classified documents Mar-a-Lago. This is "The Times" for the first time quantifying the reportedly classified material that Trump has apparently been keeping in his home in an unauthorized way.

Here`s the lead. Quote, the initial batch the documents retrieved by the National Archives from former President Trump in January included more than 150 documents marked as classified. A number that ignited intense concern at the Justice Department and helped trigger the criminal investigation that led FBI agents to swoop into Mar-a-Lago this month, seeking to recover more.

In total, the government has recovered more than 300 documents with classified markings on them from Mr. Trump since he left office. That first batch of documents returned in January. Again, that was more than 150 documents marked classified. Then another set of documents provided by Trump`s aides in June. And then also the material seized by the FBI in the search this month.

"The Times" also reports that following the search of Mar-a-Lago on August 8th, investigators have since, quote, sought additional surveillance footage from the club. We knew that investigators had asked for surveillance tape before the search warrant was executed at Mar-a-Lago. We now know according to "The Times`" reporting, at least, that investigators have since sought additional surveillance tape of the time leading up to the August 8th search warrant execution.

Quote: The tape revealed people moving boxes in and out, and in some cases, appearing to change the containers some documents were held in. The footage also showed other parts of the property and seeking a second round of security footage, the Justice Department wants to review tapes for the weeks leading up to the August 8th search.

But, again, that`s "The Times" reporting just within the past few minutes, for the first time quantifying, at least according to "The Times" reporting, the number of classified documents we`re talking about here. More than 300 documents being held by the former president at Mar-a-Lago despite the fact they were marked as classified. More than 150 of those documents, classified marked documents, being taken from Mr. Trump in January.

More provided in June. And then yet more seized by the FBI in their search a couple of weeks ago. So we will o ask the house intelligence committee chairman about all of that.

We`ll also try to get his take on these bizarre and murky claims out of Moscow about a car bombing. A far-right -- and there`s no better word for him. Abe far-right fascist philosopher, this man, Alexander Dugin, who has been a major influence on Vladimir Putin, he`s one of o Russia`s top intellectual cheerleaders for Russia, starting its recent wars in Ukraine and in Georgia.

[21:15:05]

A cheerleader for Russia seizing territory from other countries. This man is credited with giving Putin his arguments and his pseudo intellectual justification for invading neighboring countries and trying to reconstitute some kind of transnational Russian empire.

Alexander Dugin, his daughter was apparently murdered in a car bomb assassination in a rich neighborhood outside Moscow this weekend.

Now, nobody quite know what`s to believe about these reports other than the fact that just like clockwork, just as you`d expect, Russia blamed Ukraine for her death and is citing that killing as all the justification they need for some kind of new escalation, some kind of new ruthlessness they`re going to bring to bear on their war in Ukraine. Again, I think caution is the word here. It`s not at all clear what has happened. There`s no reason to trust the Russian government on this any more than you would trust them on anything else.

But as Putin`s war in Ukraine turns six months old this week, it does seem like this dark, murky, weird incident, this reported assassination, might be priming us for some worrying behavior from Putin and Russian forces in the days ahead, potentially in Ukraine, potentially elsewhere on Russia`s borders. We will talk with the intelligence committee chairman about that strange news as well in just a few minutes.

But our first guest tonight, I`m very pleased to say, is somebody who has no parallel at all, just a singular figure in American public service in a good way, somebody who spent 38 years in one of the most important and most difficult jobs in American public life, somebody who has borne criticism, a lot of it, because his field, his work is high-stakes. It is often controversial, challenging, personal.

But for all that he`s been through in his decades in public life, he`s never had to have a security detail protect him all the time because of the death threats he now gets from those on the unhinged side of the screen door on the American far right. It`s a remarkable turn of events over his long career because it`s not like he doesn`t know how to deal with legitimate criticism.

Dr. Anthony Fauci was first appointed to lead the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases in 1984, which is just as the AIDS crisis was taking hold. This was a fatal disease, at the time, an always fatal disease. There were no effective known treatments.

But there were lots of potential treatments in development, being studied in a drug development process that took forever while people kept dying by the dozens and about the hundreds and about a thousands and about tens of thousands. That confluence of things in the `80s and into the `90s, no good treatments, drugs being studied slowly, everybody dying in the meantime while the drugs were studied -- that confluence of things was absolutely intolerable for a HIV-positive people and for the communities that were just being shredded by that virus, right?

I mean, it was just -- you just put yourself in their shoes. It was a life or death moral calamity to know that you would definitely die while maybe the drug that might keep you alive was being tested on other people in a study that wouldn`t wrap and produce its findings for years, by which point you`d be long dead. It was just an intolerable, impossible thing, which lead to relentless criticism of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was the head of the part of the U.S. government that`s responsible for fighting infectious diseases.

Dr. Fauci was all but burned in effigy. He was the target of big, urgent, spectacular protests. And while he was being targeted with that criticism, he had the presence of mind and the strength of character to listen and realize that his critic were actually right, that not only do clinical trials and drug approval need to be sped up, but people whose lives were at stake needed to be able to get access to drugs that were still being studied while the studies were still going on. They did not have time to wait and they should t not be forced wait.

It was very, very fierce criticism of Dr. Anthony Fauci, which he heard, he understood, and he ultimately accepted. And that ultimately made him change the way the U.S. government worked and the way that drug development worked and that forcibly U-turned the future of the AIDS epidemic in this country.

How many other people could do that? Dr. Anthony Fauci has now spent 38 years as the head of NIAID, the visible and active leader the nation`s response to infectious diseases of all kinds, from HIV/AIDS to the ones we don`t necessarily remember off the top of our heads -- Ebola or Zika, SARS, MERS, bird flu, now monkeypox, even folio and, of course, COVID this past 2-1/2 years.

[21:20:07]

Today, Dr. Fauci announced that he is retiring at the end of this year. He will turn 82 before he goes in December. Dr. Fauci first joined the NIH in 1968 when he was 27 years old and LBJ was president. It was Ronald Reagan who put him in charge of running infectious disease response for the government in 1984. He has held that position ever since, advising seven presidents.

Being praised publicly as a hero by the first President Bush, being given the presidential Medal of Freedom the second President Bush, with whom Dr. Fauci worked to create the PEPFAR program. The PEPFAR program is the hugely successful U.S. program to make expensive AIDS drugs available in countries that can`t afford them. The PEPFAR program alone is credited with saving the lives of more than 20 million people who would have otherwise died.

That nonpartisan record, those bipartisan bona fides, of course, these days don`t mean much on the right. Republicans running for office today say they want to lock up Dr. Fauci or prosecute him for something. He says that`s not why he`s now stepping down. But honestly when you`re 81 years old and you`re still at your job, anybody who gets all wound up trying to divine why you might be leaving your job isn`t paying very close attention.

But is worth appreciating as he announces that he`s finally stepping down, that Dr. Anthony Fauci is a singular figure in American history and in American public service. There has never been anyone el like him, and there never will be again. And he joins us for an exclusive live interview here, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[21:26:22]

MADDOW: Today, the doctor, the accomplished researcher who has helped lead our country through public health crises of all stripes, including the coronavirus pandemic, today, he announced his retirement. After 38 years as the nation`s top infectious diseases doctor, Dr. Anthony Fauci said today he`s stepping down by the end of this year, ending his decades-long career in public life. He says he`s looking forward to his next chapter this coming December, but we don`t yet know what that will be.

Joining us now for the interview is Dr. Anthony Fauci. He`s director of the Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He`s also chief medical adviser to President Biden, which is a job that was created for him at the outset of this presidency.

Dr. Fauci, it`s an honor to have you here tonight. Thank you.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Thank you for having me, Rachel. Good to be with you.

MADDOW: Why now? Why after all of these years, all of these presidents, all of these epidemics that you have served through, why is now the time to go?

FAUCI: Well, you know, Rachel, it`s never really a good time to leave, but you have to leave sometime. I have been wanting to pursue another chapter in my career, as you mentioned a bit ago, because I`ve been wanting to do things outside of the government, particularly to do things, be they lecture or write or get involved in situations where I can serve as hope and inspiration to encourage young people to go into public service, particularly in the arena of science, medicine, and public health.

I was thinking of doing that right after the Trump administration ended, but when President Biden was elected, he very quickly asked me, and I accepted with -- you know, with a great deal of honor to do that, to be his chief medical adviser. I thought that was going to last one year because like so many other people, I thought that the COVID outbreak would be over at the end of the first year of the Biden administration. But obviously it`s not.

So having said that, since things look like they`re starting to stabilize a bit, and I believe in the next few months we will do better than we`re doing now, I felt again, I might as well do it now because I want to make sure that when I do leave, I still have the energy and the passion and the health to do the kind of things that I want to do.

So all things considered, Rachel, I thought it was the right time.

MADDOW: There are very few people who serve in government who -- when you hear they`re going to write a book, you think, oh, good, I`ll probably learn something from that. No offense to all the public officials who I`ve had on here to talk about their various books over the years. But I feel like you`re an exception to my cynicism on that, in part because it`s rare for one person to head up an important part of the government`s capabilities over such a long period of time, over so many different challenges, through so many different presidencies.

And so I want to read whatever you have to write about, and I want to hear whatever you have to say about that. But I just wonder if you can kind of just tell us in broad strokes if you feel like in your part of the government, in public health and dealing with infectious diseases, we`ve gotten better over time, we`ve been learning the lessons learned and evolving and getting better at this? Or is this one of those situations in which our capacity has actually been eroding and in some ways we used to better resource these fights, we used to be better at handling the basics in how to deal with these challenges?

FAUCI: I think it`s a mixed bag, Rachel. I think in some respects, we have learned lessons from outbreaks in the past like HIV and Ebola and Zika, and pandemic influenza and the challenges of the possibility of bird flus turning into a pandemic.

[21:30:09]

But in some respects, the situation has eroded, and I think it has in the sense of neglecting of the capabilities of the local public health officials because if you want to respond to an emerging infection, you do need leadership from above. You need central support from the government. At the local level, you also have to have the kind of resources that will allow you to respond.

You know, when we learned -- and I hope we are still learning a very important lesson from COVID -- is that you never, ever underestimate an emerging infection in which you don`t know where it`s going because we`ve been fooled before. We didn`t fully appreciate the magnitude of HIV back in the early `80s when I first got involved, when the first cases were recognized, and there were so many things we learned on the run with COVID. I mean, the things that we thought we knew in the beginning turned out as the months went by to not be the case, which really forced us to adapt and to change some of our policies and recommendations.

That was interpreted by many as flip-flopping or not really knowing what`s going on when it really was the evolution of the science. So one of the lessons that I hope we learn is that we`ve got to be prepared, we`ve got to be able to respond, but we`ve also got to be flexible. You know, some of our military colleagues have told us it`s kind of like when you`re at a war, you can plan what you`re going to do, but when the bullets go off and the cannons started firing, then it becomes the fog of war, and you`ve got to be flexible enough to respond.

I hope that that lesson has been learned, and as we look forward to the inevitability of future outbreaks, we will not forget that lesson.

MADDOW: Are we facing an increased pace of threat from emerging infectious diseases? I mean, obviously the world-changing nature of the COVID pandemic is enough on its own. But, you know, now also monkeypox and the re- emergence of polio, and, you know, in recent years it`s Ebola and SARS, and Zika and all these others. Is there an increased pace of threat from new and resurgent viruses, or are we just sort of more aware of it with these recent ones?

FAUCI: No, it`s not just more aware of it, Rachel. It is, and there are probably a number of complex reasons why that`s the case. If you look at the outbreaks that you just enumerated a moment ago, it really follows a pattern that we`ve known for some time, that about 70 percent to 75 percent of all the new emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, namely they jump from an animal species to a human.

We saw that with HIV. We saw that with Ebola. We see that with monkeypox. And we`re seeing with this historic pandemic of COVID-19, which almost certainly evolved the way SAR-CoV-1 did from an animal reservoir such as a bat in the environment that jumped species.

So if we really want to pay attention to how we can mitigate this, we have to pay much more attention to the animal/human interface and so what we are doing intentionally or inadvertently of perturbing that animal/human interface by encroaching upon rainforests, by getting involved in interfacing with animals such as in the wet markets, which occur in China, when you bring in animals where you don`t have any idea what disease they`re harboring and you put them in close touch with humans.

I think that`s one of the things we really better pay more attention to looking forward is attention to that animal/human interface.

MADDOW: There have been a lot of theories and conspiracy theories and accusations and more or less wild claims about the origins of COVID in particular. It seems like that`s when people on the political right really started getting their claws into you and targeting you personally during this pandemic. I mean, as I said, sort of a visible and singular leader on infectious disease issues over all these years, you`ve faced sharp criticism before.

It does feel a little different. There is a weird, obsessive, violent, ongoing demonization of you by the right that is hinged on COVID.

[21:35:01]

I just have to ask from your perspective if that kind of attention, that criticism feels qualitatively different to you than previous criticism, if it is coming from a different place, if it is indeed more dangerous than the kind of criticism you`ve had in the past?

FAUCI: Right. Rachel, it`s -- it`s phenomenally, 100 percent different. It`s apples and elephants difference. It really, really is.

Back in the day of HIV -- and you showed some of those clips, which were quite accurate. What we were doing in the federal government, what we were being too rigid and restrictive in a disease that needed a great deal of flexibility and input from the community, the AIDS activists that you saw on the clips that you showed. When you examined what they were saying and what they were asking for, they were entirely correct.

So they opened our eyes, my eyes particularly, which made me actually turn into one of them and an aids activist because we learned from them and we learned that we were being too rigid from a clinical trial standpoint and from a regulatory standpoint. And the FDA modernized their approach based on that too.

What we`re dealing with now is just a distortion of reality, Rachel. I mean, conspiracy theories which don`t make any sense at all, pushing back on sound public health measures, you know, making it look like trying to save lives is encroaching on people`s freedom. That`s a big difference from the AIDS activists, who really had a good foundation for their objections.

MADDOW: Do you have any insight into what we ought to do as a country to deal with that? I mean, I feel like it`s -- it`s part of what`s going on on the right, where, you know, you want to sort of separate the politics from reality, that you want the measure of truth to be what the ruler says is true, and so anybody citing science or facts or objective reality or nuance is, by definition, the enemy. I mean, I feel like it is tied to politics in some ways.

But even, you know, making observations like that doesn`t necessarily give you a way to fix it, doesn`t give you a way to fight it. Having been the target of this kind of really specific, really different attack, do you have insight into what we ought to do to protect public officials like yourself and to try to be more rational about this stuff as a country?

FAUCI: You know, Rachel, I wish I did have a positive, constructive answer for you, but I don`t. I think you and I are talking about public health issues right now. But what has spilled over and really in many respects impeded a proper response to a public health challenge is something that we see that goes well beyond public health. It`s a complete distortion of reality.

I mean, a world where untruths have almost become normalized, how we can see something in front of our very eyes and deny it`s happening. I mean, that`s the environment we`re living in. You could look at January 6th on TV, and you have some people who actually don`t believe it happened. How could that possibly be? And it`s now spilling over in denial about public health principles.

So I wish I had an answer, but I don`t. I mean, I do have, as I`ve always been, someone who is cautiously optimistic and always feeling that we will be able to extract the good out of people, and there are the possibility that we`ll see, as I say, the better angels in our society prevail.

But what`s going on out there now with the distortion of reality is very troublesome, and I don`t have an answer for it right now. But it certainly is interfering with the proper approach to a public health challenge.

MADDOW: Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases for the past 38 years, currently now the chief medical adviser to President Biden for a few more months -- sir, thank you for a lifetime so far of service. I can`t wait to see what you do next, and thank you for being here to talk with us about it tonight. Thank you.

FAUCI: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

MADDOW: All right. Much more ahead tonight. Stay with us.

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[21:44:11]

MADDOW: Today marks two weeks since the FBI executed a search warrant on former President Trump`s estate in Florida. As I mentioned at the top of the show, "The New York Times" is out this hour with some striking new reporting. "The Times" is reporting that former President Trump had more than 300 classified documents at his Palm Beach home. That`s over 300 documents marked as some level of classified, retrieved by the government, starting with the initial batch of more than 150 classified documents they got back from him in January, but ultimately totaling up to more than 300 total classified documents, including those taken in the FBI search just two weeks ago.

I mean, again, it`s just two weeks since the search happened, but the more we learn about what happened here, it does keep sort of getting worse by the day. This is not -- I mean, you don`t end up with 300 classified documents because they were accidentally tucked in with your grocery lists. You know what I mean? This is a lot of stuff.

I have to tell you, NBC News has not confirmed this new breaking news from "The New York Times" tonight. But here`s a little bit more from the story.

Quote: The 15 boxes Trump turned over to the Archives in January, nearly a year after he left office, included documents from the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the FBI, spanning a variety of topics of national security interest.

Also this. Quote, Trump went through the boxes himself late last year, in late 2021, according to multiple people briefed on his efforts, before he turned the boxes over.

He went through the boxes himself, i.e., Trump did it personally, which means no passing the buck and saying it was somebody else who did it and you had no idea, and that`s the kind of crime you leave to the little people. I mean, if it was him in there with his big old hands, his big hands -- little hands -- his hands in the boxes himself going --

"The New York Times" report tonight also gives us this curious detail, that in addition to finding all these documents in that storage area that`s been described at his estate at Mar-a-Lago, FBI agents also found documents in a separate container in a separate room. Specifically they found more documents in a closet in Trump`s office.

Again, new breaking news from "The New York Times" this evening. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee joins us live to respond next.

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[21:51:08]

MADDOW: Joining us now live is the chairman of the intelligence committee in the House of Representatives, California Congressman Adam Schiff. He is also the author of the number one "New York Times" best-selling book "Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could." "Midnight in Washington" has just come out in paperback.

Congratulations on that, sir. Mr. Chairman, thanks for joining us tonight.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): Great to be with you.

MADDOW: Let me first just get your reaction to this breaking news from "The New York Times" tonight, quantifying for the first time the amount of classified information that may be in question with the former president`s estate in Florida. "The Times" is reporting that the FBI has now obtained more than 300 different classified documents from Trump`s home that reportedly include documents from the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI.

What`s your reaction to that reporting?

SCHIFF: Well, it`s staggering for all the reasons that you mentioned, just the sheer volume of classified documents. It`s not like there was a classified paper mixed in with a bunch of unrelated information. It seems that it must be quite deliberate if the volume is that great and if the reporting is accurate, it covered a broad range of topics.

There goes frankly, Rachel, my theory, which is that he was bringing home a bunch of Russia-related documents that he thought might be beneficial to him somehow. If they covered a wide variety of topics, it really begs the question, what was he doing? What was he thinking? What was the purpose behind this?

And then finally, evidence that he reviewed them himself is going to make it much more difficult to foist responsibility onto others, which as you point out, is a favorite pastime of the former president.

MADDOW: Yeah, that is striking reporting if "The Times`" reports are accurate that last year, so before the government was able to start obtaining this material and getting it back, Trump, they`re saying, personally went through these boxes, meaning that he personally reviewed this material before withholding, before deciding to withhold more of the material that was marked classified and not hand it over. That would seem to indicate personal -- that the president is potentially personally implicated here in a way that can`t be passed off as like a systems problem or a staffing problem or a communication problem, right?

SCHIFF: I think that`s exactly right. What has struck me about this story from the beginning -- and of course, we had no heads-up about the search or anything like this -- but is the degree to which evidence seems to be coming forward of willfulness. I`m particularly struck, for example, by the reporting that one of the Trump lawyers signed an affidavit saying that they had turned over all the classified documents when plainly from the search inventory, that wasn`t true.

Now, was that not true because the lawyer was deliberately deceiving people, or was it not true because his client had deliberately misled him? I`m sure the Justice Department is trying to find out.

From the intel committee perspective, though, we`re just really frightened of what`s in that stockpile, particularly those that are marked top secret, SCI, sensitive compartmented information because those generally mean that there`s a very sensitive source involved, like a human source whose life could be put at risk, or a technical source that if it`s discovered means we`re going to have a blind spot where we used to be able to see. So we`re deeply concerned about all of this.

MADDOW: As intelligence committee chairman, do you believe you should be allowed to see the material that was retrieved from Trump`s home? You say you`re concerned about the specific content of some of that material. There`s been reporting today that some members of Congress, some in the leadership of congress, have formally requested access to see those documents.

Have you made that kind of request? Do you think you should be allowed to see those documents?

[21:55:03]

SCHIFF: The request I made so far is for a damage assessment by the intelligence community. It`s something they traditionally due to determine if this material is compromised, if it did get in the wrong hands, what is the damage, and how do we mitigate it? How do which protect a source if that source`s life may be at risk, or how do we protect the technical source?

So that, I think, we should be briefed on. I would at some point like to see the documents themselves. I realize that what complicates that is this in the middle of a criminal investigation, and I want to make sure that nothing impedes that criminal investigation.

But I would hope that if we can`t see the documents themselves, we get a full briefing from the intelligence community about essentially what`s in them. What are the risks? What needs to be done to protect those intelligence sources?

MADDOW: As intelligence committee chairman, your oversight role, you have a better claim to them potentially doing that than almost anybody else.

Congressman Adam Schiff of California, the chairman of the intelligence committee -- sir, thanks for joining us tonight. I know there`s a lot going on. I really appreciate you making time.

SCHIFF: Thank you. Great to be with you.

We`ll be right back. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MADDOW: You know, tomorrow`s a big primary day in Florida and New York. It`s 7 p.m. Eastern when polls close in Florida. Her son definitely big high-profile races in Florida.

The real banana stuff is likely to be in New York tomorrow, thanks to a sort of botched redistricting process. There are big Democratic primaries in New York tomorrow where more than a handful of incumbent members of Congress might get primaried right out of their seats.

So the Florida results are going to be dramatic, the New York was alternately really dramatic. The polls in New York closed at 9:00 p.m. Eastern tomorrow night, which means you`ll be able to watch coverage of those polls close on MSNBC`s brand-new show, which is called "ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT". Alex`s show premiered last week in which was a big primary night. You will not want to miss her tomorrow night at 9:00 p.m. Eastern. Be there or be full of lasting regret.

Now it`s time for "THE LAST WORD WITH LAWRENCE O`DONNELL".

Good evening, Lawrence.