The Legal Trap: How "Classified" Labels Are Used to Silence the Press

Ajouté : 2026-05-17

[00:00:01]And now, for a moment of clarity.

[00:00:06]What is the purpose of these investigations? You know, they're not going to get a successful prosecution, presumably. It's to raise the costs for the journalists. These are organizations that don't necessarily have a ton of money.

[00:00:17]And it's to discourage leakers and scare them from coming forward. Well, that's why I I was just going to say that's why I I insist, as I noted, if if the institutions in media pulled themselves together and created that wall, that First Amendment wall, then those journalists know they have the protection. And so, to the extent that you And you're absolutely right.

[00:00:41]Individually, it is very expensive for one newspaper, particularly a small newspaper, um, or outlet to sort of go up against the behemoth of the White House and the allegations. But, if everybody's kind of working together and saying, "No, no, no, no. We're the only thing that's only business that's mentioned in the Constitution, that we have this this space." I think it would be I think it would send a very important signal in this moment. So, there is that. I I just got to tell you what I'm going to say.

[00:01:07]>> your I just I They are not being honest, which, lol, every day. But, we can't just take their statement about classified information being leaked on face value. Classified information does not equal information the public does not doesn't know.

[00:01:22]Classified information is actually very specific, right? But, in the way in which Todd Blanche is using it, anything that was discussed in the Department of Justice, or in the Pentagon, or in a White House meeting, right? That is not public information, that is given to a journalist, they are grouping that in, given his statements, as classified information. That's actually not true. Again, Todd Blanche is very good at making these statements and making it sound normal, but it's not normal.

[00:01:50]>> But, that goes to the point you made before. Okay, that's that's not that we consume that at this table. We can talk about it and frame it expertly like you did.

[00:02:01]Folks out there sitting around getting ready for, you know, work tomorrow or the weekend or the next thing and they're like that's a level of minutia they don't need to get into. To your point which is good I mean not good for us but I mean it's good for Todd Blanche because then people at home are like oh, well they're leaking classified information of course they should be going after them.

[00:02:18]>> the point and but then you have to at some point get to a prosecution. Right?

[00:02:24]Now Donald Trump grabbed a whole bunch of classified documents and had them in the bathroom down at Mar-a-Lago. Largo.

[00:02:31]What happened there? They disrupted that process, right? Because they knew in fact where that could end up. They got it found a judge that sort of said no no we're not even going to investigate that any further. We're going to stop it here.

[00:02:45]That's not what's going to happen with the stuff they're doing now which creates a real problem on the back end.

[00:02:51]Meanwhile the public to your point is thinking oh my god they're, you know, leaking classified information and the press is involved in that. I heard a little bit out of on the radio on the way here today from some callers into a show.

[00:03:03]But the reality still rests at the end of the day you've got to prove it. And so now you've now sandwiched these Justice Department officials between the reality of doing their job and trying to do it right so they don't come up on the short end of the stick on the back end with, you know, charges against them and the political pressure that the president's putting on them.

[00:03:23]Yeah. Well and you know it's not even obvious that this investigation is targeting the journalists specifically.

[00:03:28]Nominally the only people that might have potentially have committed a crime would be people that are leaking classified information.

[00:03:34]Catch Michael Steele on The Weeknight, Monday through Friday at 7:00 p.m.

[00:03:39]Eastern on MSNBC.