Hello, there I'm Chuck Todd. This is the Chuck Todd cast. So after Monday night search of

former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residents, a lot of elected Republicans jumped

at the opportunity to question the legitimacy of the DOJ's investigation, calling the institution

corrupt, politically polarized, and even a threat democracy, all without any information

about what evidence they had to go through with what they did. This search is the latest

development in an investigation into whether the former president violated the Presidential

Records Act by holding onto confidential records when he left office, instead of

handing them over to the National Archives, is this really about paperwork or is there

something more here? All of this, of course, the latest turn of events in Trump's

tumultuous relationship with every law enforcement agency in this country, let alone the Department

of Justice, that it could be assigned, that the department is investigating the former

president's actions a bit more closely than many people had thought. Later I'm going

to talk about the political implications with Brendan Buck, but up first to talk about

what may come next in this investigation is Alberto Gonzales. He served as the 80th Attorney

General under President George W. Bush. He was also a White House Council, so he understands

sort of this from multiple points of view. Alberto, welcome to the talk cast.

Well, thanks for having me, interesting times. It is, and I want to talk about procedure

first. This is what, so there's a part of me that's very frustrated. I don't like the

unwritten rules of baseball, and I don't like the unwritten rules of the Justice Department,

but help us understand some of these unwritten rules, because I sit here, the Justice

Department has a protocol, the FBI has a protocol, unless there's an elected official involved,

unless there's an election coming up in 90 days, unless and less and less, you get my point

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