What the FBI told senator about threats related to possible Trump indictment
Former President Trump finds himself right where he wants to be. In this case, Waco, Texas, near the 30th anniversary of the standoff with that infamous cult, the former president was there at the center of a new political maelstrom Saturday afternoon, lashing out at his enemies and nursing personal grievances alongside his diehard fans, lying about the 2020 election and making martyrs of the folks who violently stormed the Capitol. As so many in his party seem to be snapping back into line behind him. In his first official 2024 campaign rally, Donald Trump spent much of his time railing against the multiple criminal investigations into his actions and his behavior. Tomorrow, the grand jury in New York, Hush Money Case, is set to reconvene as district attorney Alvin Bragg weighs, indicting a former president for the first time in American history. And in a separate Justice Department investigation this week, a federal judge rejected the Trump team's claims of executive privilege in the probe into January 6th and the judge ordered top Trump White House aides to testify. The Justice Department is also, of course, investigating the former president over that classified documents case, just classified documents discovered at Mar-a-Lago.
Joining us now, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, Chairman Warner, good to see you. Let me start with the fact that Donald Trump is explicitly raising the possibility of, quote, death and destruction if he ends up facing charges in the Manhattan-Hush Money Case. A charging decision could theoretically come as soon as tomorrow. How concerned are you that there could be more violence because of Donald Trump's rhetoric? Well, we all recall the horrors that took place on January 6th, spurred on by then-President Trump. I think the fact that he's calling for protests again, I've been briefed by the FBI. They say they're fully prepared, but this kind of outrageous behavior, this man obviously has very little moral compass, and if he spurs on additional violence, it would be one further stain on his already checkered reputation. What can you tell us about what the FBI is telling you? Are there genuine threats of violence because of the things that Donald Trump is telling his supporters? I got briefed before the supposed Tuesday indictment.
That didn't come to pass. We've had an update. They've seen no specific strains, but the level of rhetoric on some of these right-wing sites has increased. Again, I would hope that some of your Republican guests on your show this morning would also say you've got a right to have a First Amendment protest, but that right should not pass into violence. The horrific activities that took place on January 6th, God willing, we will not see them repeated this week. Should any one of these cases move forward on Trump? Well, let's talk about the fact that the first one might be this New York case, which has to do with the hush money payment made to a porn star and director. It is a business offense.
It might be a misdemeanor. Your fellow Democrat Senator Mark Kelly told me that there are risks in taking the unprecedented step of charging any former president and that prosecutors better have a strong case to back it up if they go forward. Do you agree? Well, I do, Jake. I think that whichever of these prosecutions move forward, and Lord knows this guy appears to have done lots of things inappropriately, but I hope whoever moves forward has a rock solid case. A federal judge this week ordered Donald Trump's lawyer to testify before the grand jury investigating Trump's handling of classified information. You and your counterpart on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Marco Rubio, said that a Biden administration briefing last month on the documents quote left much to be desired and the Biden administration's refusal to provide more details quote doesn't pass the smell test. Is there anything you can and will do to compel the Biden administration to let you know more about what these documents are to even turn them over to you? Well, Jake, remember, our interest from the intel side is not about the mishandling by Trump, Biden, Pence.
That's a criminal investigation. Our job is to oversee the intelligence community. And while we have some sense of what some of these documents are, and clearly I want to make sure that if they fell into the wrong hands, there's been mitigation efforts, we have an obligation to see these documents and again make sure that if there's any potential compromise, it's mitigated. We took the first step. I'm not satisfied. We have expressed that and it just makes no sense to me that somehow the special prosecutor's equities on the criminal proceeding somehow takes precedence over our article one responsibility to oversee the intelligence community. We've made that clear.
We have some additional ways we can ratchet up the pressure on the IC, Senator Rubio and I. And frankly, this is completely bipartisan. All the Democrats, all the Republicans on the committee feel the same. We also are going to try to press the Justice Department harder to make sure that we do can do our job as well. We learned yesterday shifting topics to overseas that Russia is planning to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. It's yet another escalation of tensions with the West and tensions with Ukraine. Russia says it's just doing what the U.
S. already does with countries in Europe. What's your response to the Russian move? My response is twofold. Putin is a dangerous man. We've always known that. We've seen that the Russian offensive in Bakhmut, that the city in the eastern part of Ukraine, seems to have stalled out. I'm hopeful that the Ukrainian counteroffensive is going to be successful.
And I think it also drives home the point that any wannabe American political leader that refuses to acknowledge how dangerous Putin is or that somehow that if Putin is successful in Ukraine, that is against our national interest. What that would do in terms of threatening the Baltic States, what it would do in terms of threatening Poland, what it would do in terms of giving President Xi more of a green light to potentially take action against Taiwan. Anyone who doesn't understand that is remarkably naive or not understanding the kind of geopolitical challenging times that we live in. The United States retaliated with airstrikes on Friday after an American contractor was killed in Syria and five service members were wounded. This is by a suspected Iranian-affiliated drone attack in Syria. Since then, there have been four additional attacks on U.S.
forces by these Iranian-linked groups. How worried are you about the risk of further escalation? And on the other hand, do you think the Biden administration has maybe not been doing enough to deter these kinds of attacks against U.S. troops by Iran affiliates? There has been this low level of violence in Syria literally over the last year. And the strikes that the administration took that took out and caused casualties amongst some of these Iranian-backed groups, I think was appropriate. And I think if they continue, we ought to up the ante in terms of the strikes that we send back. But remember, we have a couple thousand troops there in both Iraq and Syria working with the Kurdish forces who still are in the process of wiping up the final remnants of the ISIS folks.
And there are a number of ISIS prisoners being held. It's a dangerous area, but I do think the administration's response so far has been appropriate.
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