Welcome to the beat. I'm Ari Melbourne. We begin with the Trump team and the Justice Department in court today with the special master actually pressing on Donald Trump's lawyers for evidence. NBC reporting that the judge was basically skeptical of the thrust of the Trump argument, pressing Trump's lawyers for refusing to substantiate Trump's claim that the declassified

Mar-a-Lago documents somehow that there were declassification claims that could be supported.

Indeed, the judge seemed doubtful of this entire defense telling Trump's lawyers,

you can't have your cake and eat it too. So there may be a bit of a

rude awakening now that the special master is on the job. Again, you might have heard me say this

if you follow our coverage. There was a procedural step that the Trump folks got, which did

slow things down, and they wanted that. But procedure is not how

you win. It's not how you get out of the clear. It just is a step, a process. And now that they have to

deal with this actual judge and deal with a special master and deal with what is still a fact-based

court system, well, you can see they're already having trouble. Then you have something going on in

Florida where many of the courts lean conservative. You had a chaotic start. Bloomberg reported

that many people who dialed in did not actually mute their phones. Bloomberg calling it a

dissent into chaos, although that might be a bit of a headline writer's overstatement. People

were then screaming at people to mute, and then someone saying,

God bless America.

Today's hearing comes on the heels of Trump attorneys pushing back against, again,

something the special master that they sought then demanded,

which was if you did declassify stuff, and again, that could be a valid defense.

If true, well, which things did you declassify?

So is that a hard question to answer?

Again, I'm not trying to give shade.

If a president, as president, declassified a bunch of stuff, well, that's under the law a good defense.

...