"Why ain't this dude in jail?" is the burning question a whole lot of us are asking. On this Saturday's The Cross Connection on MSNBC, guest host Jason Johnson asked The Nation's Elie Mystal about what he thought Trump's legal team's strategy would be once the affidavit have been released, and this was his response.

MYSTAL: I mean, I can't believe they haven't already just started shredding everything, right? Like, look, Jason, my top level expert, legal analysis of the affidavit is why ain't this dude in jail? Like, what does this man have to do to go to jail?

I think one of the things that's gotten kind of like, messed, or missed in the media narrative crawling for the last 24 hours is that these 15 boxes that we're focused on, that's what they already found on the man. The man, president the sticky-fingers already stole classified documents, top secret documents. Dude had the NOC list from Mission Impossible sitting in his basement, right?

We know about these because that was the probable cause for them to go search for more stuff that he wouldn't turn over. So the NOC list is what he was willing, after two years, to give back. We had to raid him to get the stuff he wasn't willing to give back.

How is this man free? So that's the top level question. In terms of their legal defenses, Jason, people need to stop be beclowning themselves by defending the president, because he has no legal defense, alright.

This argument that he declassified the documents, that's stupid for many reasons, but specifically, on the law, what we saw from the affidavit is that they're not even going after him for mishandling classified docs. They're going after him for illegally appropriating national defense information. That's a separate section of the espionage act, and they can prosecute him up to ten years in jail simply for having national defense information that he wasn't supposed to have that they are already found in these 15 boxes.

Who knows what they found from the raid this summer, right? So legally, that is where his box is, okay? The idea that he declassified this, the idea that they're not that important, remember, there is a reason why we have different levels of security clearances in this country, and Donald Trump, the ex-president, that failed president, has zero national security clearances at this point. So any documents that he has is a mishandling of sensitive information.

Johnson also asked Mystal about Karl Rove tossing Trump under the bus this week and the fact that what Trump did was even a bridge too far for someone like Rove, and whether that might impact how Trump's legal team is operating, or whether anyone else will want to come to his defense, and Mystal, again, didn't pull any punches as to just how serious Trump's mishandling of this information is.

MYSTAL: Well, I think what we are seeing here is one of, potentially, the biggest security breaches in American history. I mean, that's not hyperbole. We don't know what this man had, but like, one of the things that Karl Rove, and I'm glad you played that, because we know Karl Rove as like a professional liar. He is good as it, right?

So one of the things he's saying right there, is Trump shut up, because you're bad at lying. Because every time you open your mouth you accidentally confess to more crimes. So what did Trump say yesterday? He said “nothing nuclear,” “nothing nuclear in the affidavit.” But again, like I just said, the 15 boxes were the stuff he already turned over.

So now he's talking about nothing nuclear, that makes me think there was something nuclear in the boxes that they raided, and got from him this month, right? So do you see what I'm saying? Trump, whenever he talks, he just, for him to exist is for him to be in the commission of some sort of crime, and what Karl Rove is partially saying is shut up and let your lawyers talk for you, because every time you talk you confess to more crime.

So that's one thing that's going on, but I think that when you talk about the general Republican party here, at some point they have to realize what kind of dangerous threat this man still is. Not was, not could be, like still is, right now, today, if he's sitting there holding a secret national defensive information.

Again, you can't make what he had already found more serious, right? We're talking the information on our spies. We're talking about defense information. We're talking about sources and information in terms of how we conduct national security.

There are lots of people who would want to get their hands on that kind of information, and not all of them are friendly to us, right? So the idea that he can just have them, not sitting in a box in his basement for him to see, but sitting in a box, and I don't mean just his random phony friends, Jared, Steve Bannon, people that we know are on the grift just looking for the way to make their next buck.

We have no idea how many of Trump's cronies have seen this sensitive information, and what they're willing to sell it for. So the threat here is by all means real, and so I kind of go again, like how did you know that he had all of these documents back in January or February and he was still free in August. How is he still free in August, and now you raid his stuff and you find more information, and he is still free as we head into September. How is he still free is like the splinter in my mind.

Unfortunately for us, it's more than likely the damage is already done. Whether we ever find out about all of it is the question.