I am Ari Melba. This is The Beat, and we're beginning with the story of the escalation of the stolen classified documents.

It's a criminal case against Donald Trump. The DOJ went to court today to do something that we first reported this week.

They had a very aggressive request to try to hold Trump and his legal team in contempt because they were not forking over all the documents.

Now, this is a secret hearing, which means unlike really the vast majority of court proceedings,

we don't have a real-time set of transcripts or information about what happened.

But the DOJ will not confirm anything either.

But NBC News is reporting that we are basically seeing the contempt of effort go down.

It's still an escalation in the case that the DOJ, led by the special counsel, wants to

hold Trump in contempt in the first place.

But NBC is reporting that the judge basically hearing that request has decided not to yet

go there, not to hold Trump's team in

contempt, which is different than what we've seen in New York and other places where it's gotten

that bad. Now, Donald Trump turned over at least two additional classified documents from a Florida

storage facility. That happened this week. And that itself is in conflict with a June affidavit from Trump lawyers where

they said they'd done a full diligent search and they thought they'd turned over everything. Trump was

also rebuked by the appeals court in that special master that was temporarily operating but is no

more. That was someone sifting through the evidence, but also slowing down the process. And two of the three judges who ruled on that were Trump appointed.

So what you have is an escalation in this case, a series of signs that there may still be stolen documents on the loose or allegedly stolen,

depending on what is ultimately determined.

And then this special counsel-led documents probe hitting a new

aggressiveness, even as reportedly the judge is not yet willing to hold this former president

contempt at this juncture. We're joined now by John Flannery, a former federal prosecutor,

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