'Damning evidence': How Trump is trying to play 'the art of the deal' in plot to return classified documents

It was revealed over the weekend that Donald Trump attempted to bribe the government into turning over all of the documents he stole from the White House if the government gives him all of the documents they have on the Russia investigation.

Trump has long been obsessed with the Russia probe, explained NBC political analyst Mike Schmidt. But it was former DOJ prosecutor Andrew Weissmann who noted that looking at it with his prosecutor's hat on, he sees "damning evidence."

"Because the typical defense for somebody like Donald Trump is what a CEO argues which is 'I didn't know the details, I don't have the knowledge or intent to have violated the law,'" he explained. "Meaning I didn't know what was at Mar-a-Lago. I didn't know the content of what was at Mar-a-Lago, and so I didn't have an intent to illegally take or retain these documents. That would be what a CEO would probably argue and is typically what we see in CEO cases."

Weissmann told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace that the trick is to find out what Trump knew and when he knew it.

"How do you show that somebody like Donald Trump knew what was at Mar-a-Lago, and it wasn't just his lawyers or underlings who knew the details?" Weissmann posed. "Well, he's trying to engage in the 'Art of the Deal' with respect to classified documents, and he's saying these documents were 'all mine.' Those are incredibly damning statements that go directly to knowledge and intent. And you can be sure that the DOJ prosecutors are doing what I'm doing, which is listening to this. This is making it that much easier to prove the only element that could pose any real difficulty for the Department of Justice in bringing a case [against] the Mar-a-Lago documents. So, yes, I agree with you, there are all sorts of horrendous things when you take the big picture, that he's thinking of trading these documents and using them this way when they're national security documents. But from a criminal perspective, his statements are even more damning and are going to be I think much more harmful to him."

Wallace went on to say that Trump's behavior reminds her of the Mueller investigation where the crime went along with the obstruction.

"One really good reason, Nicolle, for that to be done is the reporting about the lawyer, Alex Cannon, who refused to sign a false certification supposedly that he was -- his arm was being twisted by people including Donald Trump — it's exactly analogous to what Don McGahn said happened to him as the White House counsel. So, you have two really similar acts of obstruction. So, if you're the department, you kind of want those to work together so there is a reason to do both of those. There also is the issue that, if you don't charge that soon, something called the statute of limitations is going to run out because you only have a certain amount of time to bring criminal charges after the criminal act has occurred. But having said that, I don't think that the department is going to do that. they did not look like they were terribly interested in following up on in the Mueller report when they took office. and so it's a great question. It could come in as potential evidence at a trial related to Mar-a-Lago, but I wouldn't hold your breath, as I think you probably know, on whether the department's going to include those charges."

See the conversation below.