This is CBS High in the World, I'm John Bachelord, Professor Richard Epstein of the Hoover

Institution. A week since the indictment of the former president, and a week ago Richard

was kind enough to offer remarks without having yet had the opportunity to read the indictment.

Now that he has, Richard, a very good evening again to you, because the indictment will

carry through for many months, but your first impression is everything. What do you think

of the allegations by the prosecution? What do you think of the Trump supporters complaining

that he's not a spy? Why are they using the espionage act? Complaining that the PRA,

the Presidential Records Act covers everything that was kept at Mar-a-Lago. Good evening

again.

Yeah, look, I think Trump is in deep trouble about this, and I'm going to do it very quickly

in two ways. One, talk about the legal issues and two about the political upshop. On the

legal stuff, you start looking at this particular indictment, it's very strong, because it does

what the Brad indictment did not do. It gives you a very compelling narrative of particular

events that started the take place, all of which turn out to be beyond the pale, respectable

behavior. The Presidential Records Act in my view is a red herring in this particular

case, even if Trump owned these particular documents if they censored it. He's not allowed

to obstruct justice on the one hand, and he's certainly not allowed to show them to other

people who have not had some requisite security commission. He's not allowed to move them

one place or another. So all these things will survive that particular allegation. It's

also the case that the Presidential Records Act does not compel, it seems to me, somebody

to get the papers back from President Putin about his own diaries and so forth. But it's

certainly permits that. It may be only a civil statute so you can't punish somebody on

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