Hello and welcome to the Bill Press Pod Reporter's Roundtable.

I'm Jeff Dufour, editor-in-chief of National Journal, sitting in for Bill, who is on vacation.

Here in Washington, D.C., it's about 8.30 in the morning on Friday, September 23rd. Well, we had another week that contained about a

month's worth of news. Donald Trump's legal peril somehow gets even worse. Biden takes Putin to the

woodshed of the United Nations. The Fed hikes rates again amid more signs of a wobbly economy. Congress

takes some action on the Electoral Count Act and the climate

while it tries to keep the government's lights on, and the race for control of Congress just seems to get tighter all the time.

Here to help us sort it all out. Sarah Wire, Justice Department and National Security Reporter at the Los Angeles Times. Good morning, Sarah. Good morning. And we also have not one but two National Journal alums. Leah Iscaranam, who is now senior editor at Grid News. Hello, Leah. Good morning, Jeff. And Alex Rorty, White House correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers. Hello, Alex. Jeff, hello. Thank you for having

be on. Sure thing. Okay, we don't want to bury the lead. We'll start being right out of the gate.

Sarah, the special master appointed by the court in the Trump documents case, said he needed to put up

or shut up when it came to his claims that he declassified all of the material. And then the

next day, a federal appeals court essentially said that Trump has no possessory

interest in these documents, that they belong to the American people.

But then Trump appears on Sean Hannity's show and said something rather extraordinary.

Let's listen to it.

If you're the president of the United States, you can declassify

just by saying it's declassified, even by thinking about it, because you're sending it to Maralaga

or to wherever you're sending it. Sarah, you are an expert in federal law in the courts.

Can a president, in fact, declassified documents via telekinasis?

No. Okay. That's settled. I feel like that a Geico commercial, that's not how this works.

That's not how any of this works. So give us a sense of these two decisions, the special master's opinion, coupled with

the appeals court's opinion a day later, taken together, what does this mean for the future

...