Special MSNBC coverage of Donald Trump's second federal indictment 01:45:49

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Good evening, and thank you for being with us tonight for this special coverage. He is, of course, innocent until proven guilty, and he will and should mount a robust defense against these charges, and he should be acquitted if he didn't do what he is accused of. But if the allegations made by the Justice Department in this indictment are proven, if the former president did what he is accused of,

History is going to ask a different question of this time than what we might have otherwise been expecting. If the allegations in this indictment are proven beyond a reasonable doubt and a jury convicts him of these crimes, history is not going to ask, wow, how did America get to the point where they had where they indicted a former president? History instead is going to ask, how did America get to the point where they had

where such a person could be elected to the presidency of the United States, where actions such as these could be carried out from the Oval Office directed by a person who was elected president by the American people, along with his advisors.

This is a grave day and a serious one for our country. Thank you for being with us here tonight. We know you have every choice in the world, but we're happy to have you here on what will go down in U.S. history as a black letter, bold faced date. August 1st, 2023 is the date.

on which a former president and the leading presidential candidate of the Republican Party was indicted in federal court accused of leading multiple criminal conspiracies to try to hold power by force after he was voted out of office by the people.

In this special coverage tonight, we're going to talk about all of it, the charges that have been brought, these four felony charges, the unindicted, unnamed, but for the most part, pretty clearly identifiable co-conspirators whose actions are described in detail in the indictment alongside the alleged actions of the former president himself.

We'll also talk about what we know about how the case will proceed, particularly alongside all the other legal proceedings, including criminal proceedings that are already pending against this same very high profile defendant.

Whatever satisfaction there may be in seeing the country demonstrate rather than just say that we're a nation of laws, that the laws apply to everyone in this country, no matter how powerful, whatever the sort of civic satisfaction is in seeing our country tested on that point and rising to the occasion when it needed to happen.

I think everyone will now need to concede that things are about to get complicated. I mean, just in logistical terms, here we are. In addition to the 34 felony counts he is facing in New York state concerning hush money payments made to affect his election to the White House in the first place in 2016, in addition to the 40 felony counts he is facing already in federal court in Florida related to his handling of sensitive national security material and alleged destruction of evidence after he left office,

Now we have four new federal felony charges unsealed against the former president for conduct of his while he was president. He's due in court, Washington, D.C., 4 p.m. on Thursday to be arraigned on these charges. He is charged with obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding.

He's charged with three different conspiracy counts. He's charged with conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. He's charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States. And he's charged with conspiracy against rights. Now, that charge has an interesting history. It's Section 241 of the U.S. Code.

And it makes it a crime to conspire to injure, oppress, threaten or intimidate any person in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or the laws of the United States. Now, it sounds like a general sort of generic definition of what a crime is like.

But what this specifically is, is something that was enacted by Congress after the Civil War. So federal agents could go after Southern whites, including the Ku Klux Klan, who were engaging essentially in terrorism to prevent black Americans from voting. That is the origin of this part of the U.S. criminal code. So that fourth count against Trump, that conspiracy against rights,

It's something that is sometimes called the Ku Klux Klan Act. It has really chilling resonance because of its historical origins.

In terms of how it is used now, though, it's no longer something that is so tightly associated with racial terrorism. In the modern era, it has been used more broadly, including especially in cases of voting fraud conspiracies, vote rigging, casting false votes, conspiring to not properly count the properly cast votes in an election, all those sorts of things. Those are the four charges. And let's start tonight by talking about how the indictment lays this out.

First of all, as I mentioned, it is unequivocally clear and this is now new territory for us as a country. The indictment is is very clear that it is about conduct that happened while Trump was president. All four felony counts in the indictment have specific dates on them.

And they're all while Trump was president. They all start on November 14th, 2020. The significance of that date, according to the indictment, according to the special counsel's allegations against the president, is that November 14th is the day the indictment says Trump knew he lost the election. So all four felonies are alleged to have started to be committed as of November 14th, 2020. And the conduct described in the indictments then ends, uh,

On a couple of accounts on January 7th, 2021, so the day after the attack on Congress, and the other two counts, the conduct ends on January 20th, 2021. So at the inauguration of Joe Biden. This is all conduct that took place while Trump was president. Now, whatever national agita we may have had about whether a sitting president can ever be held accountable for his crimes is

Now, as of today, we know by this action from the U.S. Justice Department that even if the U.S. Justice Department does think a sitting president can't have charges brought against him while he's still sitting as president, now we know for sure that the Justice Department is willing to bring charges against someone for actions they committed while they were president. They just apparently insist on waiting until he's out of office to bring those charges.

It's interesting. He is described throughout the indictment as Donald J. Trump and the defendant. He is at one point at the very outset of the defendant described as someone who, quote, was the 45th president of the United States. But he is never again described as President Trump because he is no longer president. He is just a citizen now being charged for having tried to overthrow the government by force when he was president. So I can't.

I can't do much better, I think, than the indictment itself does. So here's how the indictment starts. The defendant, Donald J. Trump, was the 45th president of the United States and a candidate for reelection in 2020. The defendant lost the 2020 presidential election. Despite having lost, the defendant was determined to remain in power. So for more than two months following Election Day on November 3rd, 2020, the defendant spread lies that there had been outcome determinative fraud in the election

and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the defendant knew that they were false. More on that in a moment.

But the defendant repeated and widely disseminated these claims anyway to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, to create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and to erode public faith in the administration of the election. The defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim falsely that there had been outcome determinative fraud during the election and that he had won.

He was also entitled to formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means, such as by seeking recounts or audits of the popular vote in states or filing lawsuits challenging ballots and procedures. Indeed, in many cases, the defendant did pursue these methods of contesting the election results. His efforts to change the outcome in any state through recounts, audits, or legal challenges were uniformly unsuccessful. Shortly after Election Day, the defendant also pursued...

unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results. In so doing, the defendant perpetrated three criminal conspiracies. And then the defendant lays out the three felony conspiracy counts, all described with reference to those statutes that I just described. Then it continues. Each of these conspiracies, which built on the widespread mistrust the defendant was creating through pervasive and destabilizing lies about election fraud,

targeted a bedrock function of the United States, of the United States federal government, the nation's process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election. Then on page three of the indictment, we get the sort of narrative explanation of the first conspiracy count,

And this indictment in total goes on for about 45 pages. The explanation of that first conspiracy count does basically all the work of the plot of this movie sort of spells out the bulk of everything that Jack Smith and his prosecutorial team have brought in this indictment to levy against Donald Trump. And that part of this, it starts off with this purpose of the conspiracy.

The purpose of the conspiracy was to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by using knowingly false claims of election fraud to obstruct the federal government function by which those results are collected, counted, and certified. The defendant enlisted co-conspirators to assist him in his criminal efforts to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election and retain power. Among these co-conspirators were...

And then it gives you descriptions of six unnamed co-conspirators. These are people who are not named in the indictment. And as far as we know, they themselves have not yet been charged. More on that later. But given the descriptions and a lot of really specific detail about what these folks allegedly did, it's not that hard to figure out who most of them are.

Co-conspirator one is clearly Rudy Giuliani. Co-conspirator two is right wing lawyer John Eastman, the man in the fetching hat here. His own lawyer lawyer has confirmed that tonight that Mr. Eastman appears to be co-conspirator number two. Co-conspirator three appears to be the Kraken. Trump lawyer Sidney Powell. Co-conspirator four is Jeffrey Bossert Clark.

the Justice Department official who Trump had tried to take over the Justice Department to enlist the Justice Department itself in this coup effort. Co-conspirator five appears to be a man named Kenneth Cheesebro, Chesbro, I don't know. Looks like Cheesebro...

It's also awkward because Wisconsin, he's a Trump campaign recount lawyer in Wisconsin who we know spearheaded the fake electors schemes in multiple states.

Then there's co-conspirator number six. All five, those five that I just mentioned, all the five of them are all lawyers. Only co-conspirator number six is apparently a non-lawyer, at least is not described as an attorney. And this one isn't quite as clear who exactly it is. This is a person who is described in the indictment as a, quote, political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent states, fraudulent slates, excuse me, of presidential electors.

So we know of at least one Trump ally who is sort of involved with all these folks who fits that description that's in the indictment. But we don't, to be blunt, we don't exactly know who co-conspirator number six is, at least not comfortable enough to sort of confidently speculate. It's nothing so clear as the rest of them. But the five lawyers, yeah, they're all kind of cast pretty, pretty specifically to type.

The indictment then gets us sort of two other operative descriptions before it gets to these like pinpoint allegations of who said exactly what and who did exactly what. The first is what's called manner and means. Quote, the defendant's conspiracy to impair, obstruct and defeat the federal government function through dishonesty, fraud and deceit included the following manner and means.

And this then lists kind of the meat of Trump's alleged actions that form the basis for these charges. It's basically five main things that Trump has described as having done that from the basis for all of these conspiracy counts, for all four of these felonies. Number one, pressuring state officials.

to overturn election results in the states. Number two, sending up those slates of fake electors. Number three, trying to get the Justice Department to get state officials to overturn the election results and use the fake electors, that effort to use the Justice Department to effectuate this plan. Number four, pressuring Mike Pence, the vice president, to count the fake electors instead of the real ones or to otherwise mess up the counting and the certification of the electoral count. And number five...

is what the indictment describes as, quote, exploiting the disruption. And this is about January 6th itself and the violence that day. The indictment accuses Trump and his allies of exploiting the disruption that was caused by the mob attack on Congress on January 6th to try to get this thing done, to try to further delay the certification even beyond what was forced by the violence and ultimately to flip the results and keep Trump in power. So that's the manner and the means.

And then one last thing before we get to the long, detailed point by point narrative of how Trump and his co-conspirators allegedly did all these things. There's one last section of the indictment that I didn't necessarily know to expect.

It's here in very great detail. It's right up at the front of the indictment, and it therefore appears to be key to this case. We'll talk to some of the lawyers here about this to get more clarity on it. But you'll see immediately what they're getting at here. It starts on page six of the indictment under the headline, The Defendant's Knowledge of the Falsity of His Election Fraud Claims.

This is he knew it was all a lie. Quote, the defendant, his co-conspirators and their agents made knowingly false claims that there had been outcome determinative fraud in the 2020 presidential election. These prolific lies about election fraud included dozens of specific claims that there had been substantial fraud in certain states, such as that large numbers of dead or non-resident or non-citizen or otherwise ineligible voters had cast ballots.

or that voting machines had changed votes for the defendant Trump to votes for Biden instead. These claims were false and the defendant knew that they were false. And then it goes on immediately through a litany of Trump's specific false claims about fraud in the election and how it can be documented, how it has been documented by the prosecutors who brought this case that Trump knew those things weren't true when he said it.

And that is apparently a linchpin contention of this prosecution. And then we're off to the races. We get all we get all the detail that Trump and his alleged co-conspirators pressuring state officials in Arizona, starting on page 10, in Georgia, starting page 12, in Michigan, starting page 17, Pennsylvania, page 19, Wisconsin, page 20. The fake election.

scheme in bloody detail, starting on page 21. The effort to get the Justice Department involved in the plot, to get DOJ to tell the states that it would be OK for them to throw out lawful election results. That whole plot starts on page 27. The pressure against Vice President Mike Pence, that starts on page 32.

And so we're in special coverage. We've got a lot to talk about in terms of the strength of this evidence, the nature of the charges, the decision about how to charge this, what it means to have these alleged co-conspirators, but to have them not themselves charged, the closeness of these findings to the contours of the blockbuster January 6th investigation in Congress and how that may have changed how we got to this day. We have a lot to get to. But I just want to note for the record that

That when you at home have a chance to read this thing, and you should, just to page through it when you have a quiet moment. Trust me, you have read things longer than 45 pages. This is double-spaced. You'll get through it. If you have a quiet moment to read this, and I hope you do, if you are like me, I think the thing that will jump out at you is the violence.

Not descriptions of violence on January 6th, but the way Trump and his alleged co-conspirators talked about how violence was going to be part of this, how that was factored in to this alleged conspiracy in a way that these folks seem to expect. They're not charged with riot. They're not charged with sedition. They are charged with exploiting the disturbance of

that they apparently, allegedly, intentionally caused. They knew to count on violence. They factored it into their planning. That comes out in the indictment in a way that will keep you up. It comes up, for example, in the section on trying to decapitate the Justice Department and then put in this guy Jeff Clark and use the authority of the Justice Department to tell the states that they should throw out election results.

This is just something I want to show you here from page 30 of the indictment. The alleged co-conspirator that's being described here is Jeffrey Bossert Clark. He's the guy who Trump tried to put in charge of the Justice Department, apparently named him acting attorney general, so that Clark could carry out this plot there. Just look at this. On the afternoon of January 3rd, co-conspirator 4, who we believe to be Jeff Clark, spoke with the deputy White House counsel.

The previous month, the Deputy White House Counsel had informed Defendant Trump that, quote, there is no world, there is no option in which you do not leave the White House on January 20th.

Now, the same deputy White House counsel tried to dissuade Jeff Clark from assuming the role of acting attorney general. The deputy White House counsel reiterated to Clark that there had not been outcome determinative fraud in the election and that if defendant Trump remained in office, nonetheless, there would be, quote, riots in every major city in the United States. Jeff Clark responded, well, that's why there's an insurrection act.

The indictment continues. Also that afternoon, Clark met with the acting attorney general and told him that defendant Trump had decided to put Jeff Clark in charge of the Justice Department. That same afternoon, Trump decides to put Clark in charge of the Justice Department. After Clark says that day, oh, the country is going to rise up in every city in the country because we're going to try to hold power by force. Well, we'll use the Insurrection Act. That's what the Insurrection Act is for.

What does the Insurrection Act do? It allows the president to call up the U.S. military and use the army to take over American streets and use military force against the American people. That's what the Insurrection Act is for. That's why there's an Insurrection Act. Now, look, a few pages later in a part of the indictment that's about pressuring Vice President Mike Pence. We're still on on January 4th at this point. So it's still in advance of January 6th. And look at this.

Also on January 4th, when co-conspirator to Trump lawyer John Eastman acknowledged to defendant Trump's senior advisor that no court would support his proposal for overturning the election results. Trump's senior advisor told John Eastman, quote, you're going to cause riots in the streets. Eastman responded that there had previously been points in the nation's history where violence was necessary to protect the republic.

On the morning of January 5th, at Defendant Trump's direction, Vice President's Chief of Staff and the Vice President's Council met again with Eastman. Eastman now advocated that Vice President Pence do what Defendant Trump had said he preferred the day before, that Pence should unilaterally reject electors from the targeted states.

During this meeting, Eastman privately acknowledged to the vice president's counsel he hoped to prevent judicial review of this proposal because he understood it would be unanimously rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court. The vice president's counsel expressed to Eastman that following through with the proposal would result in a, quote, disastrous situation where the election might have to be decided in the streets. Decided in the streets.

The indictment continues, quote, that same day, defendant Trump encouraged supporters to travel to Washington on January 6th. And he set the false expectation that the vice president had the authority and might to use his ceremonial role at the certification proceeding to reverse the election outcome in the defendant's favor. John Eastman saying sometimes we need violence. Hey, this might be decided in the streets. Trump says, let's get him in the streets. He is innocent until proven guilty.

This will be an adversarial process and the country, for the sake of history and for the sake of the country, has to hope that he has an excellent defense and that this is well fought and fair. He is innocent until proven guilty, but if the allegations made by the Justice Department in this indictment are proven, history will not ask how we got to the point where they had to indict a former president. History will ask how did a person like this get elected to the U.S. presidency, where these actions could be carried out from the Oval Office.

directed by an American president. Joining us now to discuss all of this are my beloved colleagues, Lawrence O'Donnell, Chris Hayes, Alex Wagner, Ari Melber. Joy Reid is with us from Washington. We've got Andrew Weissman here helping us.

As well. Chris, let me go to you first on this. You've had as much time as I have to absorb it. I know there's been a lot of reaction already. We've had reaction from a lawyer for the president and everything. Overall, how are you feeling about your expectations for this versus what it's turned out to be?

Well, my first reaction, which is just a personal one and having covered this, I think, you know, like all of us have and many of the viewers are in the weeds of it, too, is like, right. Yes, I'm not crazy. Yeah. Like, if this wasn't a crime, nothing is a crime. We watched him do it on television. We sat at this desk a year ago at the January 6th committee. We knew what he was doing. If that is not a crime, then nothing is a crime. So that part of it is just like I find really important and gratifying. There's a kind of ballast to it. Yeah.

This, yes, yes, of course, this was corrupt. Of course, this was fraud. Of course, it was a conspiracy to defraud the U.S. We all saw him engage in the conspiracy to defraud the U.S. The second thought I had, it's just about the magnitude of this moment, which I think is just worth taking a second on. I mean, with Donald Trump, lots of things are unprecedented. The first time he was indicted, it was unprecedented. And the second time he was indicted, it was unprecedented because a federal indictment had never come down.

This is in the canon of American events, January 6th and its aftermath. And the reason is that for 159 years after the cannons fire on Fort Sumter, there is an unbroken chain of peaceful transfer of power. And not only that, the core story of the American experiment is a fight within itself to be true to the radical promise of democracy.

That is why Lincoln says at the battlefield at Gettysburg that the question before the nation is whether a nation of, by, and for the people can long endure. It is a test whether the thing can last. And that's in a category of itself in American history, the Civil War and the death and misery. But this is the gravest political crime since secession.

And the gravest test that Lincoln called on the battlefield of Gettysburg of whether a nation of, by and for the people that we are our masters, whether that can long endure. So I feel profoundly gratified by reading this document because it calls the question in a way that it has not quite been called yet. Like,

if the law is not for this, then what it is for? It also calls the question as to these asserted facts. These facts will now be tested in court in an expert, professional, calm, adversarial process from which there is no escape hatch. I mean, yes, you can plead out. I guess that's your escape hatch. But if there's going to be a trial, he's...

I mean, if this were the indictment against me, I'd plead. But if he goes to trial, these facts will be tested and they will be proven or not. And it's one thing to decide that you prefer, you know, talk radio guys and the way they describe the world versus people who talk about the news in a way that's more balanced and based in fact. It's another thing to have the facts tested by the best defense he can mount and to have him held accountable for them. We just haven't had these facts in that kind of a context.

Well, we also haven't had the facts tested in the middle of a presidential campaign. I mean, that's the thing I think that strikes fear into the heart of a lot of people who look at this and say, this is this this appears to be irrefutable. Look at this mountain of evidence. And yet there's going to be two two iterations of this trial. One is the trial itself. The other is the primary and the election. But one of them is binding. Right. I mean, one of them, the trial results are binding regardless of what happens.

That is there in time. Yes. I mean, they're just so there are so many unknowns about whether that happens and what the reaction is from the Republican Party. This is on the Republican Party politically right now. It is not on the Democrats to do much with this because they spent a long time investigating this with the help of Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. And.

And and now it's a question of what Republican voters are going to do with this, because I do think there is a real question as to whether this trial goes forward before the election, whether it goes forward. I mean, what the sentencing could be if he's found guilty, what the implications of that might be for someone who has maybe won the Republican primary. Maybe I mean, this is happening the same day that we have a poll showing Donald Trump and Joe Biden are running neck and neck.

Maybe maybe that's nothing. Maybe that maybe it's too early to know. But man, there are a lot of storm clouds on the horizon. As of tonight, this case is on the fastest track to trial of any of the Trump indictments. There's one name on the front side of this indictment. There's one name.

And there's six co-conspirators in here. This is clearly Jack Smith deciding, I want to get this to trial as fast as possible. I don't want six separate defense attorneys in the room in jury selection. Rachel's taught us what that means in her podcast, Ultra, where in 1944, there were dozens of defendants that made that case almost impossible. So this is going fast. There's no classified information here.

There is no complex discovery here. This is a very clear story that the whole country knows. Any jury that's selected for this already knows most of this story, which ends in the description of the criminal conduct. The final entry of criminal conduct in this document is

is at 1144 p.m. on January 6th, when Donald Trump is still directing a criminal conspiracy in this indictment. At 1144 p.m., the Congress, everyone will remember, is back in session. Joe Biden is well on his way to absolutely being certified. And Rudy Giuliani is on the phone continuing to try to commit crimes for Donald Trump that night.

And this tells that story from the beginning to the end. And even though they don't have a specific charge about something that people were hoping for, people who thought they saw it was sedition,

Most of the crimes described in this document, the heaviest day of crime in this document is January 6th. That's where most of the criminal conduct that occurs on one day occurs. And it is an incredible stream that includes every single thing that, as Chris so eloquently said,

You saw that day and then learned about later and thought, well, that must be criminal. Jack Smith thinks it is. Yeah. And to Lawrence's point, how you end the indictment, how you end the story, how you end the case is what's most vital. Juries always remember the closing argument more than the opening.

A lot of lawyers like to go second. What you, Rachel and Lawrence both allude to is the fact that while no, there is not battery or insurrection charged in this filing, the violence is key. And Smith ends, as Lawrence shows us, with Trump continuing after the violence, but

Which is evidence, criminal evidence for the jury that the violence was not a departure from the plan, but part of the plan. Yeah. And there are things that are instruments of a conspiracy, to use the legal jargon, that aren't always separate crimes of themselves. And so...

This is likely to go to trial. I don't see anything here that would keep it out. Nothing about the posture of the case, its judge or its location gives a lot of doubt to that. Nothing about government rules or secrecy gives doubt to that. And so this case, when I look at this tonight, I see that Donald Trump, who is running for president and who is legally presumed innocent, he's trying to get back into the Oval Office.

Tonight, this indictment makes it a lot more likely that he would be headed, if convicted, to a rectangular cage. Can I say one just quick thing about the timing here? Because the other it feels a little churlish to say this, but I'm going to say it because I feel it strongly. I think this is an indictment of Merrick Garland because we all saw the crimes committed and we know that there was no.

predicated investigation in the Department of Justice. We sat here one year ago at this table and we watched 85 percent of the facts present here, I would say, somewhere in that range, laid out before the nation. Because the Congress, congressional investigation. Yes, the congressional investigation did an incredible job. And in fact, I think this indictment reads as an endorsement of their work in many ways. The reason that we're now, you know, the fast track question is we're now in a tighter space.

a year later about a guy who's running for president to stay out of prison. He is literally running for his freedom than we would have been a year ago. And I, you know, there's hindsight 2020 and Mary Carlin is a very difficult job and I would grant him that. But I do think that like this makes me think that the year when there was apparently not very much happening in the Department of Justice about a criminal conspiracy that happened on live television as we all watched was maybe not the greatest thing.

30 seconds in defense of Merrick Garland. And I do this retroactively because I had all of the questions that everyone else had as this was unfolding. What's he doing? What's going on? He kind of physically looks like a timid man when he comes out in the past, you know, to a microphone. But the way I have seen this unfold, I believe now that the Nancy Pelosi designed, brilliantly designed,

Congressional investigation done publicly was a necessary precursor to where we are tonight, because now imagine a country in which this document came out without us having any preparation for it, without us ever having heard from Cassidy Hutchinson, without any.

us ever having heard Eric Hirschman and these White House counsel on video saying all this stuff, right? It would seem hard to believe. There are things in here that we know are on tape, but we don't know when we read this document. And we would be sitting here saying, well, if you can prove it,

We know so much of what the evidence is, thanks to the congressional investigation, which only could have gone before. If Merrick Garland went first and Bigfooted the Congress, there would have been no investigation whatsoever. This document would have come out of the blue, as it were, to a country that would be taking this information in for the first time this way.

Provided we believe that the Justice Department was capable of developing these facts on their own. Maybe they weren't. Maybe it took the congressional investigation to get these people to come forward in a way that wasn't compelled by subpoena or compelled by the legal system, in a way that they could sort of follow the contours through the congressional investigation, in a way that the Justice Department wasn't.

up to the task for. I mean, the Justice Department is clearly good at what they do. They're the only people in the country who prosecute federal crimes, so we don't have anybody to compare them to. But maybe the congressional investigation did stuff that DOJ was not capable of doing. But then DOJ did much more than they were capable

of. Remember all those ignored subpoenas that the House did. Nobody ignored any of these subpoenas. Mike Pence is in here under oath. And you can see in this document, and this was something the congressional investigation never could have developed because Mike Pence refused to even talk to them. Mike Pence, the vice former vice president of the United States,

is going to take an oath as a witness in federal court in Washington, D.C., against the former president of the United States. And Mike Pence is going to be the star witness. And only the DOJ could have done that.

I just I think it's also a pretty remarkably restrained indictment as well insofar as January 6th. To Ari's point, I think it should we should. It's really interesting that this is not seen as the culmination of this investigation, the way January 6th was very much for the House investigation.

committee investigating January 6th. It's seen as a tool in the larger plot to commit fraud and to obstruct and to deny the rights of American voters. That is a really, I think, innovative framing of January 6th in the same way that the fake electors were a means to an end. The violence of January 6th

was weaponized to conduct fraud, to disenfranchise the votes. This just doesn't end in the DOJ having to prove that Trump was trying to stage an insurrection or incite a revolution. It just puts that day, that moment in the arsenal of other weapons he uses for several months. Yeah.

to overthrow the results of an election. And it makes you see it in a more instrumental way. I feel like we all do sort of know these facts, but if you step away from the trees that we've all been studying and look at the forest in this way, you see that, you know, the normal course of events, the way we've done this for the entire history of ourselves as a republic, needed to be disrupted somehow. And so you needed to have

a way that that process had a hitch in it. There had to be something that messed it up. Okay, well, we'll bring a violent disruption to effect. And then we need some way to translate that disruption into the possibility of Trump getting more electoral votes than he legitimately has. Okay, we'll need some fake electoral votes. Okay, and then we'll need the Justice Department to tell the state legislatures, yeah, okay, those fake electors. And if you put all those pieces together, eventually you can get to

Trump staying in power after he's been voted out. But key to it, none of it can happen without force. None of it can happen without violence. And January 6th is the linchpin event. It's not a bad side effect of what happened. It was necessary. And they make a point of focusing not on Trump's inaction necessarily as the insurrection unfolds, but the fact that he's making calls to senators because he's using the violence of January 6th.

as a tool, basically a delay tactic for him to continue his outreach to those in power who are there to certify the votes. It's the most violent smokescreen one can imagine. The worst case of the dog ate my homework. This is why we can't do this right now. Yes, exactly. But that's...

That is what January 6th is, as the DOJ frames these events. And we've been talking about democracy since Donald Trump assumed the presidency. This is the first time we talk about how many indictments, this third total, second federal. This is the first time the United States has ever reached the point you raised in your introduction.

That we've gotten to the point that we have to actually indict someone for what they did in the White House in office. Now, Nixon is a footnote because it could have gone differently. But that's what this is. This is the first time Donald Trump has ever been indicted for acts he took in office. And you don't have to go to law school to have kind of the feel that, well, if you can drop bombs, you can start wars without Congress, basically. I mean, we know that.

You have the feeling it seems like they have a lot of power. Yes. And this is the Justice Department saying he went even well beyond that. The reasons each of you have each mentioned, it's it's a list that gets so long that it's damning. It's not that we want a commander in chief, for example, to worry about overstepping in one meeting or one statement.

No, no. This is over and over for several months, including violence and also several measures of abusing power. And some of them are quite arcane. And I think it's fascinating what Smith has uncovered. I don't think we've mentioned this on our air yet tonight that they talk about how they even had to lie to some of the activists

activists or Trump fans who would become electors because some of them, as rabid as they were, I'll do almost anything. But they said, but but what this isn't going to be like a coup. That was their line. Right. And they were lied to in some states. So some states like Michigan have charged them. But in other states, Smith says, in fairness to some of those people, they were duped by these co-conspirators. And then in New Mexico, they

There was a plot that said, oh, well, this would only be we would only need you if we overturn the election with a lawsuit. Except, oops, they didn't have any pending litigation. So it says he lost by 10 points. Well, and it was a blowout. There's that other thing, Chris, you remind us he lost very badly. He lost the whole election. That's relevant to stealing it. But in New Mexico, Smith then goes way into the evidence to find that they then added a

a sham lawsuit to create a pretext to say, well, here's a pending litigation. I can tell you as a lawyer, you're allowed to file all kinds of lawsuits, things that go right up the line of frivolous. You are not actually allowed to knowingly file a

Criminal or fraudulent suits for the purpose of executing or supporting other crimes. That's what they stand accused of there. And this is and it should. I mean, I said it before, but note that of the six described unnamed co-conspirators of the six, at least five are lawyers. And this is a lawyer's coup. They tried to paper this over. Mm hmm.

In the same way that, you know, dictators in foreign countries hold elections that aren't real elections because they want to say they're democratically elected. This was a coup that was legalized with people who are described now as unindicted co-conspirators with the president. And I think Smith very there's two there's a bunch of different places where Smith is at pains to say, here's First Amendment protected speech. Yeah, you can lie. No one's saying we're indicting you for lying. Obviously, it's the case. The First Amendment protected.

protects politicians lying to people. Right. It's a huge part of the job. Then here's what he was doing that was fraud, right? There's even this moment in paragraph 54, and it goes to A and B. It's talking about one of the unindicted co-conspirators. We think it's Cheesebro. And it basically says- It's Chesbro. Chesbro. It's so hard for it not to be Cheesebro. Let's go with what feels right. He's an inherent mnemonic device. Just go with what feels right. It basically says, look, this guy wrote two memos.

One was a legitimate legal memo and one was a commission of fraud. It basically says like, here is the line. First, he writes a memo that says, look, we don't know what's going to happen in these lawsuits, but it could be the case we win them. But then we've missed the deadline for having a slate of electors. And so to preserve our

Our recourse, we should be able, we should have this, the electors. Make these, yeah. Then it goes, it marked a sharp departure from his memo by December 6th, where they're basically saying, screw it. Just, let's just shove these fake electors. Yeah, just get it out there because we need the process. And that to me is such an important point about, you know, because obviously the defenders of the president will talk about criminalizing speech and free speech. And it's like, you know, walking up to a bank teller and handing them a note that says, like, give me the, you know, I have a gun, give me the money. And I'm being like, oh, I guess writing is illegal now.

It's not speech, really. So that's going to be the defense. But it is interesting the degree of work of prebuttal put into the indictment itself to delineate between legitimate, if sketchy, protected activity of politics, politics being politics, and criminal fraud. Let's bring in our friend Joy Reid, who's standing by in Washington. Joy, tell me about the...

distance, if there is any, between what you were thinking this day would be like and what this day is like? Well, first of all, I miss you guys. And I wish I was there. It is. First of all, I have to start by saying that it is weird to have read this indictment in the neighborhood. You know, this is the scene of the crime.

And, you know, I was in D.C. on January 6th. I was here, you know, not far from here, you know, a 20-minute drive from here. And seeing it happen here in D.C., knowing the locations, having been at the locations, you know, and worrying about

whether the insurrectionists were going to find the Black History Museum and ransack it, as you know that they're going near. I mean, just all of the things that I was thinking on that day, reading through this does bring a lot of that back. And it strikes me that, first of all,

It feels late to me. I associate myself with those of you on the panel who have said that, in a way, I have been a very big critic of Merrick Garland in how long it's taken to get here. But I also agree with Lawrence that I think...

What we saw in the January 6th hearings needed to precede this, because in a sense, that's the public trial that I hope we will get in this case. But I think that the country needed to see that this is a story about Republicans, that this is a story about people who even in this indictment, people are saying no one wanted Donald Trump elected more than me. And yet.

I can't go along with these schemes. So this is not never Trumpers or Democrats who are out to get Donald Trump. This is Donald Trump conspiring to commit an armed robbery. It's an armed robbery against the voters of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. New Mexico wasn't even in contention.

This was an armed robbery. And the way that the indictment goes to such great pains to point out Donald Trump's absolute knowledge of the fact that he was lying about each of those states and lying in order to steal the votes of the people in those states, to steal the election from them. Just real quick, Georgia.

On November 25, co-conspirator three, who we now know is the Kraken lady, Sidney Powell, filed a lawsuit against the governor of Georgia falsely alleging massive election fraud accomplished through the voting machine companies and election software and hardware. We know that's the Dominion stuff. Before the lawsuit was even filed,

Donald Trump, the defendant, retweeted a post promoting it. The defendant did this despite the fact that when he had discussed co-conspirator three's far fetched public claims regarding the voting machine company in private with advisers, the defendant had conceded. Trump conceded that they were unsupported and that co-conspirator three sounded crazy.

And this goes for each of these states. It is Donald Trump being told point blank. When you're saying 100,000 people fraudulently voted or dead people voted in state X, it isn't true. He's being told that by Republicans.

He's being told that by his own people. He's being told that by people he hired. He's being told by the election security chief he hired that it is a lie. And they go through very painstakingly to establish that, as you pointed out, Rachel, in state after state, page after page after page. So by the time we get to the violence,

and the armed part of the armed robbery, it is very clear that Donald Trump understands he lost the election, understands he lost the election in each of these states, and is still determined to steal the election in each of these states, including by lying to the fake electors, as Ari points out, by saying, don't worry, you're only going to have

to commit this crime and fill out these fake forms saying you're the electors and we'll only use these fake elector forms if we win these lawsuits. And then they're like, surprise, not true. We're going to use them. I mean, the whole thing, it definitely needed the January 6th hearings. I agree with that. I think we needed that. But the last thing I will say, Rachel, is I hope and pray that we can have a public trial here because despite how conservative

clean and elegant and, you know, conservatively drafted this indictment is and how really simple it is. It's very no-nonsense. I don't think these facts that are all about Republicans will be believed unless the American people can see this trial.

This has to be like the George Floyd case. And the one thing that scared me tonight was Neal Katyal saying that it's up to Chief Justice John Roberts, that Chief Justice John Roberts can make the decision of whether this case is tell of this trial is televised. Jill Wine Banks did add later that the statutes say that the federal judge in this case can make that decision and can allow cameras in the courtroom.

I dearly hope that we have a televised trial because as simple and straightforward as these facts are,

I think they need to be believed at least by a substantial portion of the American public because this is an unprecedented case. We've never had a president try to remain in power by force and by armed robbery. And I think we need to see this trial happen on television. And that alone, that question of how much public access to allow to the proceedings is yet another test for the judicial system, a test for the legal system that is...

that you just hope they'll be able to rise to meet the challenge, right? It's not necessarily that one answer is definitely right and one answer is wrong, but you would hope that they would recognize that this isn't just any other case and this isn't just any other moment for the country, that this is something that they're going to need to answer to history for.

Think about the George Floyd case, right? You know, one of the most divisive things that we've had in this country are these questions of police brutality and the police killing of unarmed black people. That case was it was unprecedented to televise that that trial. Right. That court normally doesn't televise those cases. But I think seeing it allowed people to understand that when Black Lives Matter is marching, they're not making up.

what they are protesting against, that it wasn't a lie. And I think that in many ways did change people's attitudes toward these issues of police violence. And I think this is, if you just think, I mean, we have never had a president attempt a coup. It's so unprecedented that I think if we don't get to see it, like we got to see the January 6th

you know, those hearings, the fact that we could see it and see that these are not haters of Donald Trump, that these are not his enemies, that these are his friends, his own associates, his own people. I think it's so important that that happened and that it not be filtered through Fox.

And the difference between January 6th hearings, as we saw them, and any such trial, if it were televised, is that we would get to see Donald Trump mount a defense. It is an adversarial process. He will hopefully have a good defense. And that is part of the fairness of the process. I want to bring in our friend Andrew Weissman. Andrew, I feel like we are having a lot of loose talk over here about...

how definite it is that this goes to trial, how straightforward and or simple this is as a case, and that the American public would be able to follow the relatively straightforward allegations herein. Is that accurate? Are those perceptions accurate to your eye?

So the first thing I did when I looked at this is thought about it as a former prosecutor and thought about the evidence. I sort of was where Chris is, which is, you know, we all saw the crime in real time. And then when you read about this and you think about the January 6th committee and then what got added in afterwards.

And there are a lot of details that got added in. This is just to build on what Joy said. This is just a list of if you are the prosecutor and thinking about how are you going to make this case, you've got, and these are all Republicans, the White House counsel, the White House deputy counsel, the vice president, the vice president's chief of staff, the attorney general, the acting attorney general, the acting deputy attorney general, numerous Republican state officials.

The head of the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of National Intelligence. You have the defendant on tape in the Georgia case. You have the result of 60 court cases. And then you have the defendant's own words being repeated in texts, tweets and to these people.

So in terms of the strength of the case, in terms of what will be presented, the amount that this is tethered to hard evidence of the defendant's own conduct. I mean, this is an overwhelming case. So this isn't going to be a case, I think, about the facts. I think the way that Joy phrased this, that this is an armed robbery, that's the kind of language that you're going to hear today.

from the prosecution, making this very simple. This is about lies to stay in power. So I think this is not complicated. I think the key issue here is going to be whether it gets to trial.

and whether it gets to trial before the general election. I think that is going to be the key decision for Judge Chutkan, who is assigned, who's an excellent judge. But that is really the issue that Chris raised about whether

The delay that caused Jackson to be appointed so late in the day is going to have a real effect on the trial date here. And in terms of the trial date and how quickly this could be both put on trial and adjudicated once it was in the courtroom.

Should we be looking at the fact that there's just one defendant, that, yes, there are unindicted co-conspirators who are mentioned, but they are not charged and so therefore they will not be in the dock alongside him? Should we be looking at the fact that there doesn't appear to be reference to, for example, classified information, which has all sorts of complicated and time consuming handling requirements, even in the courtroom? Do those things make a difference in terms of how quickly Judge Chuck can can move here?

Excellent question. So I read this as the reason that those co-conspirators are not charged is precisely because of the concern about getting this to trial quickly. If I were, for instance, Jeffrey Clark, I would not be sleeping well. This is my opinion. He is going to be charged, but he is not going to be charged in this indictment.

This is clearly, I think, tailored to try and get to trial quickly. One quick note on that, which I think is relevant to the decision here, is that Alvin Bragg made a statement last week on a radio show that was quite interesting, quite statesmanlike, where he said, you know, if it is necessary to use my March trial date,

I am open to that, to what justice requires. I'm not going to be saying that, you know, my case came first, so I want my trial date. So that's an opening for the judge. So you're saying that Lawrence O'Donnell is probably right when he says this case immediately goes to the front of the line in terms of what gets into court? May very well happen, yes. Hear that, Lawrence? It's always the safe place to be, saying that I'm right. Andrew's going to get another chance to say I'm right at 10 p.m. when we do our show later.

But let me just add something. I'm so great about having a show. Let me add something darkly realistic to the litigation schedule here. Every one of these cases is going to take at least four years because a guilty verdict is just the beginning of an appeal. It's not

the end of the case. Donald Trump will be on the steps of the courthouse with any guilty verdict telling all of his friends, I'm appealing this. He'll tell them convincingly that he's going to appeal it. And those appeals will take in very varying degrees, a couple of years or so. He'll try to get to the Supreme Court on every one of them. So the notion that you're going to get some kind of completion that shuts up Donald Trump as a litigant before the election is impossible.

Much more still to come on the historic indictment of former president and current Republican frontrunner Donald Trump on multiple felonies for trying to hold on to power by force after he was voted out of office. Congressman Jamie Raskin from the January 6th investigation is going to join us. We have been talking a lot about that investigation. He is the man we're going to speak to about it directly when we continue this night of special coverage here on MSNBC. Stay with us. ♪

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Go beyond the headlines with the MSNBC app. Watch your favorite shows live. Get analysis from live blogs to in-depth essays and the latest updates on the 2024 election. Visit MSNBC.com slash app to download. Welcome back to our special coverage of today's federal indictment of former President Donald Trump. Specify.

A grand jury in Washington, D.C., has indicted the former president tonight on four felony criminal counts, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy against rights, which is essentially an allegation that he deprived Americans of their right to vote.

and their right to have their vote counted by trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and stay in office after the people voted him out. Apart from and sort of away from the nitty gritty details of this indictment, it really is just as stark as that. According to the charges laid out in this indictment and what we have seen from the January 6th investigation in Congress, what we know of these facts, he gave us a choice.

Trump gave us a choice between the Constitution and the vote of the people determining who the President of the United States is, or instead, violence and force determining it. As alleged in this indictment, he chose the latter, and he failed at it.

And now the country, the federal government, will attempt to hold him criminally responsible for what he tried to do for that alleged felony criminal conspiracy. We, of course, have been expecting this indictment for a long time, but it is no less stunning and bracing for having been foreshadowed for so long. This is a federal criminal indictment of the former president for trying to overturn an election and keep himself in power. The indictment also describes six

co-conspirators, five of the six of them lawyers, primarily those who crafted the bogus legal arguments that underpinned Trump's alleged attempts to undermine the electoral process. I say, hmm, because there's been some really interesting efforts within the legal profession to essentially police itself and mete out accountability of various kinds for a lot of different Trump lawyers who took part in this plot. This sort of, I think, reifies some of those efforts within the legal profession to say, yeah, this was,

A plot that wasn't just hatched by Trump alone. He did have co-conspirators. And in many cases, they were lawyers who ought to know better and to, if by the political, if by the professional bars to which they attend, or if by their profession, if not by the criminal justice system, they should be held accountable too.

The indictment alleges that Trump tried to get state officials to overturn election results, that he tried to get the Justice Department enlisted in his effort to overturn the election results, that he organized an effort to have fake electors submitted.

To overturn the election results in Congress, add it all up and it is four new federal felony charges. Joining us now are Stephanie Ruhle and Chris Hayes and Alex Wagner and Ari Melber. Also, Joy Reed and Jen Psaki are both joining us from Washington. Jen, let me start with you because you haven't been part of our discussions here, at least while I've been here this evening.

You know, Alex Wagner raised a really good point earlier on, which is that the timeline here is going to line right up with the presidential election process and the campaign. And, you know, these claims are going to be tested in court, but they are also going to be tested in the court of politics. I know that President Biden went to a movie tonight and isn't commenting on this and likely never will. But I have to ask what you think this does to the campaign.

Well, the first thing is, Rachel, we don't know yet, right? Because this is going to have to play out in the public, whether that is seeing some of the trial or reporting on the trial and all of the events that are going to happen between now and November 2020, 2024. What we do know, though, is while...

We've seen in recent polls, including the New York Times Siena poll, which showed that and this was a startling number to me. Twenty two percent of respondents who thought that Trump had done something criminally wrong also still supported him. So that is a troubling sign for our democracy in the Republican primary.

But we also know that in 2022, last November, that democracy was on the ballot. People ran on it. Candidates ran on it. People who ran against democracy, who were believers or pushers of the big lie, lost in primaries, lost in the general election or lost in the general election, I should say. So that is a good sign. What I think if you're sitting in the White House right now, one, you're probably at home because the president is at the movies, as you just said, Rachel. Right.

But you're also thinking about the timeline of next year, as we have all talked about over the last several weeks. Yeah.

including, yes, when the trials are. But at what point the president will start making the version of the argument that he made so strongly in 2020 and updated. Right. Which is that, you know, there are choices for the public, for the American people about who you want standing up for you in the Oval Office. Are you going to stand for democracy or against it? Right. That is not speaking to the specifics of the trial. I agree with you. He's not going to break that. He's an institutionalist.

But I do think he will harden this argument about our values, our morals, the history of our country, institutions. That is true to who he is. And that is another way of making the argument.

I think I think that's exactly right. And Steph, I was thinking about the the that potential argument from from President Biden, which we've seen him make even when the sort of pundit class thought he shouldn't make it. And he gives a big speech about democracy and about the rule of law and about constitutional order. And all the pundit class is like, you should be talking about gas prices. You know, I mean, we've seen him willing to go there even when I think the political class doesn't think that he should.

But now this indictment puts sort of something else on that, which is not just about like this sort of gauzy idea of democracy. It's about violence. It's about this is going to be decided in the streets. It's about let's use the military against the American people. I mean, that's what the president was talking about with his co-conspirators, as alleged in this indictment. And so it's not I.

I guess it's a political question about how far President Biden and Democrats want to go with this. But this indictment makes it not just about concepts and political science and different forms of government. It's about whether or not you want things in this country to be decided by people fighting it out in the streets. Well, when you think about what Donald Trump is doing right now and his bid to be the next president, he's not talking about gas prices or health care or

or the border, he is running because this presidential bid is so he can raise money for himself and keep himself out of jail. When you look at what he's facing right now, and when he's out there on the podium talking about running again, he's trying to save himself. That's what this entire thing is about. And what I'm looking at all of this, and I'm saying, I'm sorry, I watched Fox News for the last hour, so you did not have to. And you know what their lower third says?

Free speech has been indicted. And Jack Smith made it very, very clear. You want to lie? You want to tell stories? Go for it. That's not what this is about. This is about trying to hurt the American people, keep them from voting, changing the outcome of an election. So Fox News is going to have a hard time keeping this banner and keeping this argument up for long because Jack Smith is making it really clear. Tell your lies.

It's what Trump did. Well, just to extend what Jen said, I mean, look, a lot of times in politics, you are cross-pressured between things that are important and right and things that are politically popular, right? You have to make these compromises. The worst thing Donald Trump ever did, which was January 6th, is also the least popular thing he's ever done. The incentives here are perfectly aligned.

Substantively and legally, it is incredibly important to hold him to account. Politically, the lowest moment in his political popularity was in the aftermath of January 6th. It is the most unpopular thing that he has ever undertaken.

And it deserves to be put before the nation as a question as he heads towards most likely being the nominee and to be talked about in the August debate on the Republican primary stage with him there or in his absence. Like, to me, what is heartening to Jen and Seth's point is that, like,

The arrows do all point in the same direction on this question. Except Republicans won't go there. His Republican primary rivals for the nomination are not actually running. We're not actually running for office. Well, you were running and I was the front runner. Would you not be going for my jugular? Instead, they're like, hey, dude, I'll see you later. You're not running for office.

And Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, right, who are all polling at zero percent if you round to the nearest zero. They're all taking him on in this regard. But all the rest of them are going to say that the lesson of today, the important thing to know about today is that the Justice Department is terrible. The FBI is terrible. And American law enforcement needs to be dismantled because conservatives can't get a fair shake. And they're coming after Trump because they can't come after you. But it's only because they want to come after you. That will be the reply.

line of the entire Republican political class. We've already seen it today from Kevin McCarthy. Aren't all the witnesses, just like almost all the people who spoke in the January 6th hearings, Republicans? Yes. I mean, Mike Pence, the guy who figures prominently in this indictment today is saying, I chose the Constitution. That's what this reflects. But also, this is a distraction from President Biden's failed economic policy. That is a tough one. If I

If I were Joe Biden, I wouldn't say anything about this, but I would go have a rally at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta and I'd go to Detroit and I'd go to all of the other places where Donald Trump was committed this election. And by the way, I just want to say this.

conspiracy against rights. This is the Civil War era statute that basically had, as you say, racial terror as its underpinning. Let us not forget that the thing Donald Trump was trying to do was disenfranchise the votes of urban Democratic centers where there are disproportionate numbers of black and brown voters. I am not saying that racism was the explicit goal, but it is certainly a cross current of what was happening here. Call them up,

in Detroit. Call them up at the State Farm Arena. I mean, all these centers where they wanted the recounts, where they thought there was fraud. The invocation of Ruby Freeman and Shea Moss multiple times on the phone with the Georgia Secretary of State. Twenty times.

The obsession. Giuliani calling them drug dealers. Exactly. The notion that somehow these these black and brown Democratic votes needed to be thrown out. These were the centers of fraud. I mean, there is something there. There is a cross pollination with the legacy of the statute that he is being charged. And I was going to say Trump's also on a huge losing streak.

So we're just talking about him in politics. He got fewer votes than 16, but eked it out to the Electoral College. They lost badly as a reaction to Trump in 18. He obviously lost 2020. That's what this coup is about. They've massively underperformed. Everyone followed. We have very informed viewers who lived through the red fizzle. And this stuff hurts. And so while you said such important things tonight, Rachel, that we all take seriously, that he is legally presumed innocent, that nothing about this should be approached indiscriminately.

inside the DOJ or the government from a partisan lens. And thus far, we haven't seen evidence of that. And if we did, we'd report it. That would be bad. Having said all that, if we're talking about the trajectory in American life,

Being convicted is bad. Being a defendant with a lot of evidence is bad. Being a convicted person who has the right to appeal. And he definitely does. And Lawrence reminded everyone that tonight is also bad. And so it's interesting when we think about the civil rights context, which you and others have raised tonight. You know, they wanted the racists wanted to show Martin Luther King in the prison garb and put that photo out there and to make the point that he's a convict.

And he was arguing, well, no, there's something wrong with the laws. We talk about free speech. You are allowed to criticize the laws in this country. That's a good thing. And so the fact that you've been convicted of something somewhere doesn't automatically mean anything for your wider public life. But if you are badly convicted or appealing your conviction on something as serious as

trying to end our democracy because of your terrible losing streak, right? Which is where the loser stuff, he is a repeat loser of elections and the alleged now evidence of coup stuff combines into a very unpopular sandwich. And Donald Trump, you know, if you will. And

And Donald Trump on it. You're not an unpopular sandwich. That's not what he meant. No. You're a very popular sandwich. Not between us. I've always thought of myself as a popular sandwich. Well, you guffawed, so I want to hear the guffaw. But that's where that all comes together. And it's something Donald Trump knows because he's always calling everyone what? Loser? Loser. Or accusing them of being a criminal that this person's crooked or that person's under investigation. Or what was his first impeachment about? Failure.

faking a foreign investigation of the Biden. So he understands that. So, again, the case has to go forward without politics. But if we are asking in a reality based society, are the politics on this good? No. And it's such an important point that litigating the litigating the conspiracy is in some ways litigating the election, because the important factual predicate to it being a conspiracy is that he lost and knew he lost.

And all the nonsense, the big lie was not true. So there's there's a sort of substrate of the whole thing that's like going back to remind everyone he lost to Joe Biden, which in the view of Republicans like Joe Biden, such a ludicrous figure. Right. So preposterous that you would lose to Joe Biden. In fact, that's the argument Trump flirted with for there being fraud. How could I, me, your favorite president lost to Joe Biden? But.

The litigation of this and what's spelled out in the indictment is like reminding everyone that, yes, indeed, you lost to Joe Biden by seven million votes. One of Trump's lawyers is already saying tonight in response to the indictment that they're looking forward to the trial because they're going to disprove all these assertions that these were false claims of voter fraud. They're going to prove once and for all that the election was stolen. And so think about

what Mike Pence wants to do. He's saying to the American people, let's focus on Bidenomics. You know who else wants to do that? Joe Biden. Joe Biden would love for us to be doing a primetime special talking about the successes of Joe Biden and Bidenomics. State Farm Arena. He would love to go down there and talk about the infrastructure project. So it's like, have at it, Mike Pence. Joe Biden's desperate to talk about those successes because he's threaded this needle and it's working. Joy Reid, when you look at this in terms of this parallel track that we're about to have, how

over the course of this next year. I mean, we all know exactly what we will be covering this time one year from now in terms of what's happening in the campaign. What do you think that the Democrats and Joe Biden should do with this? I think we all expect that Joe Biden will never talk about it directly. But do you think that this means that the referendum issue of Donald Trump and the rule of force versus Joe Biden and the rule of law, it becomes the only framing for the election?

Well, I think it becomes one frame of the election because I think that you might have made the point earlier, but the panel made that, you know, the idea of saving democracy actually turned out to be a powerful factor in the midterms, as did obviously abortion. But I'm with Alex. If I'm the Biden campaign, to go back to my old world of being in a campaign role, I would

I would go to each of these states because one of the things that the Democrats writ large are a bit concerned about is—and they're always sort of concerned low-key about black male turnout, right? About the turnout of black voters, and they hope that it'll be as robust as they need it to be to win. And obviously, they're always concerned about the drift of some Latino voters toward the Republicans. Well—

if I'm them, I'm going to Wisconsin. I'm going to Arizona. You know, I'm going to Detroit, Michigan. I'm going to each of these states, to New Mexico, to all of these states where the robbery was attempted and make the case that this man attempted to steal your votes, doesn't respect your right to vote, and that the Klan activists

to be used against him because of his attempted theft and his attempted coup, because it wasn't just a coup against the Constitution. It was a coup against you. It was essentially saying that your vote is criminal. I would go to Georgia and say, remember, Ruby Freeman and Shea Moss were called drug dealers for attempting to help you vote.

They were people who were trying to help their community vote. That Latino voters in Arizona had an attempted robbery committed against them. Right. That voters in Wisconsin, in all of these places, had an attempted theft committed against them. And that that is a case for reelecting Biden if you're a Democrat. But I have to read you one thing. You know, Rachel, you love to do that. Can I just do one quick dramatic reading for you? Oh, yeah. Please.

Because I just pulled it up. Ron DeSantis, however he's pronouncing his name, today has put out a statement. And he says, as president, I will end the weaponization of government, replace the FBI director, and ensure a single standard of justice for all Americans. While I've seen reports, this is the most important line. I read the indictment. Ha, ha, ha.

I do, though, believe we need to enact reforms on what Americans have a right to remove cases from Washington, D.C. to their home districts. Washington, D.C. is a swamp, and it is unfair to have to stand trial before a jury that is reflective of the swamp mentality. What is he saying about D.C.? One of the reasons our country is in decline is the politicization of the rule of law. No more excuses. I will end the weaponization of the federal government. And he says all that, multiple paragraphs, every single paragraph.

hasn't read the indictment. He couldn't get through 40. I'm a slow reader, but he couldn't read 45 pages. It's now 917. He couldn't read the governor of the state of Florida could not read 45 pages. I mean, this whole like I will end the weaponization of the federal government. OK, one of the criminal categories

counts that has just been brought in this indictment, which was about to be tested in the highest profile criminal trial to ever happen in the United States, including the Lindbergh baby. I mean, everything back to the very beginning is that Donald Trump sought to use the U.S. Justice Department to tell states to throw out their election results so he could stay as president and to bring investigations and to advise them that there was so much fraud. Don't worry, you can throw out your results. Talk

about using the federal government for a politically weaponized purpose. I mean, he's literally been charged with that. And so if the idea is that Republicans are against that, maybe you should read the indictment because guess what's in it? Weaponizing the federal government. This is a guy

who's literally, he ran 2016 on Lock Her Up. He's now running, promising to indict Joe Biden and his son who has nothing to do with government. He's literally running on I'm going to lock up all the Bidens. This is the guy who had his Justice Department lock up Michael Cohen for writing a book and for reviewing, right?

After he did the crime for him, he cried for him. And then he said, oh, but you're too dangerous. You're writing a book. Lock him up. He put him in prison. It is so insane that you have Republicans now claiming weaponization of federal government when that is all Donald Trump really did with his Justice Department. Which is a great political tie.

Whatever you have done, make sure that you accuse other people of doing it. So then it sounds like everybody does it and nobody can then use the accusation against you. I mean, that's literally where we got the fake news idea, right? From the 2016 campaign where we had accusations

Yeah.

all news, fake news. And so therefore the allegation loses all meaning and becomes just part of the noise of politics. I mean, that's, that's, that's, that's why hypocrisy is an empty charge. Like, what do you say?

But Rachel, not reading the indictment is further evidence he's not running for president. The only part, it is irrelevant to say what you're going to do to the Justice Department, what you're going to do to the FBI. If you cannot pass go and go is Donald J. Trump, nothing else matters. To not read the indictment, he should be reading every damn word and coming up with slogans and bumper stickers to go after Trump. And the fact that he's not, he is not running. Can I just say,

Tom Winter in The Atlantic makes a really important piece, a point. And I think everybody who's watching this program should listen to what he's saying, because I think there's a there it has tendency to sort of dismiss. Oh, well, Republicans aren't going to read this to sort of accept that Republican candidates are going to say, I didn't read the indictment or that Republican Congress people are going to say I haven't had an end to end sort of to move past that. And he makes a point.

You've got to get your uncle, who's a Trump supporter, to read this. You've got to get your neighbor, who's an avowed big lie supporter, to read this. This is democracy. To your point, these are people ready to invoke the Insurrection Act by force to overthrow democracy. It is incumbent upon all of us as members of this society, as part of the project of American democracy, to familiarize ourselves with the playbook that was written

going to be employed to overthrow our system of governance. They tried to employ. Yeah, exactly. And to not let this one go by as like, just do I have to talk about it at family dinner? Do I have to bring it up with my aunt who's down the Facebook rabbit hole of whatever conspiracy theory theorist she follows? This is the time to have the tough conversation. And sometimes when you're online, and I use the internet a lot, so I have nothing against the internet. Yeah.

Tom Nichols, sorry, not Tom Winter. Oh, but sometimes when you're... Tom Winter probably thinks... Tom Winter is also great. Sorry, Ari. So many, you know, so many Tomlets. That's a succession reference. So true. But sometimes...

But sometimes when you're on the Internet, especially. She knows pop culture. You're not the only one who's hip. Ari Melville. Alex watches Succession and I'm going to back her. Alex, that's from the other one. Do you have anything you want to say at family dinner? I'm visiting from 1987. I'm the one who wants nothing. Feel free to try all that on me. But sometimes with politics on the Internet, it feels like a book club where no one's read the book. Yeah.

And so it's a lot of ideological projection on, well, here's what I already think. Or, oh, I know about that. Right. And yes, we believe in reading it. We've MSNBC's put the link up. Yeah, it's up right now. If you want to go get it right now while you're watching, annotate it. Alex said it. We've all said it. I'll just read one short part that everyone should know. I don't think we've gotten to it yet. Correct me if I'm wrong. But late in the in the story, page 41, we learn something about Donald Trump's

view of the violence, which Rachel and others have emphasized tonight. 4.17 p.m., he sends out the tweet. Then the defendant, remember, he's not a president as far as this thing's concerned. He's a criminal defendant and says, quote, the defendant joins others in the outer Oval Office to watch the attack on the Capitol on television. The defendant said, and this is in quotes, so this is very meaningful legally. The defendant said, quote,

See, this is what happens when they try to steal an election. These people are angry. These people are really angry about it. This is what happens. End quote. He is invoking the violence even at that late hour in complete contradiction to what they got him to tweet out about stay peaceful.

And Jack Smith has someone or something in the room. He either has direct testimony of someone who heard this and wrote it down in a way that they think they can prove it in court or the alternative. And I'm not reporting this. I'm just saying either he has a witness or this was somehow otherwise recorded at the time. But that's the only way those go in quotes. And so.

Yes. When you start reading this and you start going through the details, you're getting a version of what happened from the inside, including from people who spent their careers helping Donald Trump because they have agreed with other parts of his vision. And now they're saying under oath, under penalty of a lot of trouble or going to jail. This is what happens. All right. We're going to have with us tonight someone who served as the lead manager on the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump, which was about January 6th.

and on the House investigation into January 6th. He is one of the most effective and consequential members of Congress from either party, from either house. Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland is going to join us right after this. You will want to see this. The attack on our nation's Capitol on January 6th, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy. As described in the indictment, it was fueled by lies, lies by the defendant,

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A U.S. Senator destroyed by blackmail. He was not bound by the truth or by facts. The country's most outrageous political demagogue ascending toward the peak of American power. Millions upon millions of devoted followers. This is a story of heroes willing to face down tyranny and the risk to the country if they fail. Rachel Maddow presents Ultra, season two of the chart-topping original podcast. All episodes available now.

The career men and women of the Justice Department engaged in what has become the largest investigation in our history. Mr. Smith and his team of experienced, principled career agents and prosecutors have followed the facts and the law wherever they lead.

Attorney General Merrick Garland speaking earlier today after special counsel Jack Smith announced four felony counts against former President Trump.

Donald J. Trump that pertained to his efforts to stay in power even after he had been voted out by the American people. Joining us now is Maryland Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin. He served as the lead manager during Trump's second impeachment, which was related to January 6th. He was also a member of the January 6th investigation in Congress. That investigation is how we, the public, came to learn the basics of this story and

where we first heard from so many of the witnesses to this scheme, discovered so many of the incidents that we now know form the basis for today's indictment. Congressman Raskin, thank you so much for joining us this evening. It's a really important day in U.S. history. Thank you for having me, Rachel.

If you were ever doubting the effectiveness of what you and your colleagues did as part of the January 6th investigation in Congress, I think it seems clear you can put that to rest tonight, having seen this indictment. At least all of us sitting here tonight at MSNBC headquarters reading the indictment today, we feel like this is very much not an outgrowth, but a reflection of the work that you did and the evidence that you turned up. How does it seem from your perspective?

Well, that's right. I think that the indictment closely tracks a lot of what's in our report. One of the passages that jumped out at me is somewhat new is the one that Ari was citing where Trump said, you know, this is what happens when you steal an election. Actually, this indictment is what happens when you try to steal an election. What we saw happen on January 6th is what happens when Donald Trump loses an election.

That's when you get riot and violence and insurrection and attempt to steal an election. But the proper response is precisely what we saw happen today. So I view this as a tremendous vindication of the rule of law in American democracy. And I am especially impressed by Jack Smith and the prosecutors bringing forth the charge about conspiracy to deprive Americans

Americans of their rights, specifically the right to vote. And this resonated so much with me because I love that passage where Abraham Lincoln says that insurrection is a fundamental assault on the first right of democratic government, which is the right of the people to choose their own leaders. And what really was January 6th about and everything that led up to it, it was an attempt

to usurp from the people our right to choose our own leaders, our own president through the electoral college system such as it is. You, sir, in addition to being a member of Congress and being part of these key investigations and the impeachment process, are also a constitutional law professor, which we're reminded of on nights like this for all the right reasons. I have to ask, just from that perspective, what do you make of the decision to charge this the way the prosecutors did? How serious are you?

Are these charges, aside from the resonance and the patriotic import of that one particular charge you just referenced, how serious are these charges? How serious are the penalties associated with these charges? And did they leave anything on the table in terms of things that you think they could have charged, given the evidence as they laid it out, but they may not have put out there?

Well, they're very grave and serious charges, of course, but extremely well anchored in the facts of the case. We know that our friends across the aisle are trying to mobilize some big free speech defense of Donald Trump here, which is just comical because, of course, you have a right to say, for example, oh, I think that the –

meeting of the House and the Senate in joint session to count electoral college votes is a fraud or is taking away Donald Trump's presidency. You can say whatever you want, but the minute you actually try to obstruct the meeting of Congress, you've crossed over from speech to conduct.

It's like, you know, you can say, well, I think the currency is phony and everybody should be allowed to make up their own money. You can say that. But the minute you start printing your own money, now you've run afoul of the counterfeit laws. And it's the exact same thing with the Electoral College. They can say, well, we don't think that Joe Biden really won in these states, even though every federal and state court rejected all of their claims of electoral fraud and corruption. But the minute they start

manufacturing counterfeit electors and trying to have them substitute for the real electors that came through the federal and state legal process. At that point, they've crossed over from speech to conduct. And so I think that the indictment is really tight in terms of focusing just on the conduct. And in fact, they left out one charge that the January 6th committee had put in there, which was about

aiding and abetting and giving aid and comfort to insurrectionists. And I suppose they did that because it's a statute that has not been prosecuted much before. Donald Trump, you know, everything in his world is a case of first impression, pretty much. But they tried to stay away from that because I think they didn't want that debate about

freedom of speech, even though I think it's clear that Donald Trump did give aid and comfort to the insurrectionists, calling them great patriots and telling them never to forget this day and egging them on in the middle of the insurrection, saying that Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what needed to be done. But in any event, they've stuck with

Actual conduct, the actus reus, and they have overwhelming documentation of his intent, of his guilty mind, his mens rea, because, you know, he repeatedly said and those around him repeatedly said, of course, he lost the election. And there was nothing to these claims, which his own attorney general, a complete sycophant for the rest of the administration, William Barr, called BS. Congressman, it's Alex Wagner. I wonder if you have thoughts on Mark Meadows. He's been there's been a lot of controversy.

suggestions. There's been a lot of assessments about whether he might be a cooperating witness in all this. He is mentioned in the indictment. I know he played sort of footsie, for lack of a better term, with the January 6th committee in terms of handing over some material but not all. I

He is mentioned specifically on page 14 of this indictment, and it quotes a conversation that has had between Donald Trump and Mark Meadows about how state election officials in Georgia were conducting themselves, and this is in quotes, conducting themselves in an exemplary fashion. This isn't an email. This isn't a text message. This is a conversation. Does that suggest to you that Mark Meadows is cooperating with this investigation, especially because he is not a named co-conspirator in this?

Yeah, I mean, it's hard for me to venture a real guess as to what role he's playing precisely because there are so many faces to Mark Meadows. And what we learned over the course of the investigation was that he tended to agree with and validate anybody he happened to be speaking to, especially Donald Trump, but also people who were questioning Donald Trump. So I think that's a big question mark.

where he ends up over the course of the investigation and prosecution.

Well, to that end, I guess I wonder whether you, Rachel has made, I think, the point very aptly that a lot of the co-conspirators in this that we can, that we have identified thus far are lawyers. And as someone who's an expert in constitutional law, I wonder if you could elaborate on the degree to which it is a breach of legal ethics to do what they did. John Eastman has reportedly in the last week suggested that he was

just doing creative lawyering and giving this advice to the president. I wonder how you think that stands up in a court of law.

Well, if this is not a violation of professional legal ethics to participate in an attempt to overthrow a presidential election, which was won by more than 7 million votes, 306 to 232 in the Electoral College, then there really is no such thing as professional legal ethics. But it's similar to what we experienced a week or two ago in the Oversight Committee when Marjorie Taylor Greene projected

pornographic photography in our hearing. I mean, of course, if that had been in a book, she would have wanted to ban it, but she put it in our committee. And I said to the chairman, if this doesn't violate the rules of congressional decorum, then there are no rules of congressional decorum. But I think we're getting to that place where the Republicans are actually in an epistemological sense,

questioning whether there's a difference between truth and falsehood. And a lot of them will just say, well, who is the government to tell us what's true and what's not true? And of course, the whole judicial system is based on the idea that you've got to prove facts beyond a reasonable doubt and the finder of fact, the jury can sort it out. And, you know, there are these burdens of proof and

The courts will determine what actually happened and what's a lie. But now the people who claim somehow to speak for ethical absolutism, at least, you know, when it comes to matters of theology or morality, when it comes to law, throw up their hands and say, well, there's no way of knowing.

whether or not that violates the rules of ethics or whether or not Joe Biden really won the election. And so this will be a vindication of the Constitution, democracy, and I think also a fact-based government. To that point, Congressman, this is about protecting, defending, holding up democracy. On what ground are your Republican colleagues in the House even beginning to make this comparison that they are today with Hunter Biden?

You know, it's difficult almost to torture out

some explanation for it. It's obviously a frantic and desperate effort to distract everybody from this unprecedented and phenomenal crime against American democracy. Hunter Biden was not and has not been an elected public official. He was not, has not been a member of the Biden administration or a government official. He apparently conspired

committed some crimes. And Donald Trump's own appointed U.S. attorney for Delaware, David Weiss, has been prosecuting those crimes. And we're going to allow the justice system to work it out. But you just can't equate these two things. I mean, you're talking about an encyclopedia of outrages and scandals against constitutional government versus what's

you know, at best a comma or a footnote in the annals of American political history, because you're talking about the son of a president. But of course, they haven't laid a glove on Joe Biden and they have not been able to link him in any way to any of their alleged corruption scandals. And in fact, Rudy Giuliani's right hand man, Parnas, who gallivanted all over the world with Giuliani looking to cook up

some corruption scandal with Joe Biden, wrote a letter to Chairman Comer and to me saying, there's nothing there. There's no evidence of a crime. We tried to find it. There's no evidence of corruption. And he literally called on Chairman Comer to call off the wild goose chase against President Biden. Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland, again, a really big day. And we really appreciate you making time to spend some of it with us tonight. Thank you so much, sir.

You bet. All right. We're continuing to watch the reaction to this indictment tonight. Four new felony charges brought against former President Donald Trump trying to stay in power effectively by force and violence. When the voters decided that he should leave, then he lost the election. These four felony charges are on top of the dozens of other felony charges he's also facing in his other federal term.

felony criminal trial and the felony trial that he is facing in New York state. And we are awaiting potentially additional charges against him in the state of Georgia. It's a lot. Much more of our special coverage of Donald Trump's arraignment expected later this week. Stay with us.

You're not focused on the future of the country. You're worried about not dying in prison. He's 78 years old. And if any one of these counts is found, he's found guilty, he's going to be in prison for the rest of his life. In the other federal criminal indictment against Donald Trump, the Trump documents indictment that's in federal court in Florida, you may have noticed in the news there's been some

It's not exactly the right word. There's been some consternation about the federal judge overseeing that case. She's a Trump-appointed judge. She's very early on in her career. She's had very few hours on the bench actually overseeing any trials of any kind.

And in terms of Trump specifically, she was very bluntly smacked down by an appeals court when she went way out of her way to side with Trump in a way that the appeals court said was very inappropriate in an earlier case related to him.

That's the federal documents criminal case against Trump in Florida. There's no such controversy with the judge who will be overseeing this new indictment against Trump in Washington, D.C. The judge assigned to this case is named Judge Tanya Chutkan, C-H-U-T-K-A-N, Chutkan. She was nominated to the D.C. District Court in 2014 by President Barack Obama.

And not to be too reductive about it, but I don't think anybody would give you a good faith fight if you described Judge Chutkan as a normal judge, a very normal, uncontroversial, well-tested, good, mainstream, smart federal judge. I think that's pretty universally her reputation.

I should also tell you this is not her first January 6th related case. She, again, sits in federal court in Washington, D.C., and that's where so many of the charges have been brought against hundreds of January 6th defendants. Judge Chutkin has presided over about two dozen of the January 6th defendants' cases.

For what it's worth, she has consistently handed down some very tough sentences in those cases when people have been found guilty. She is the only judge in any of the January 6th cases who's handed out longer sentences than DOJ prosecutors even asked for at sentencing.

You should also know that this isn't Judge Chutkan's first time presiding over a legal matter that involves former President Donald Trump. In 2021, during the congressional investigation into January 6th, Trump sued to try and block congressional investigators from accessing some of his records from his time in the White House. In that lawsuit, Judge Chutkan ruled against Trump. She allowed the January 6th investigators to access his presidential records, and she did it in memorable terms.

She wrote in her ruling, which you might remember, quote, presidents are not kings. That was Judge Chutkan. Let's bring in Andrew Weissman again. He was, of course, one of the senior prosecutors on Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation. He also served as FBI general counsel. Andrew, on the issue of what's going to happen here next, do you have any impressions that you could share for us of Judge Chutkan and how she runs a courtroom and also what we should expect on Thursday when Trump will be arraigned before her?

Well, everything you said about Judge Shutkin is exactly right in terms of her reputation. In general, the D.C. District Court has really excellent judges, and she is one of them. It's worth noting that she, prior to being on the bench, was a defense lawyer.

She is not viewed as somebody who is, you know, sort of, oh, you want to be in front of her because you're the government. She is one of those judges. You need to have your ducks in a row on no matter which side you're on. Doesn't suffer fools and is no nonsense. And it's exactly what you want from a judge, regardless of what side you're on, if you want sort of a good result.

And so I think with the arraignment on Thursday, those are usually pretty boring affairs in a normal case. Somebody enters a plea, there's issues of bail, there's conditions. She may, because of local rules, be interested in

Making sure that the defendant complies with sort of free press fair trial rules, which is to not make statements that could prejudice a prospective jury. That was something that we saw when I was a special counsel Mueller's team and very famously Roger Stone violated those, as did Paul Manafort.

So I think the big issue for her is that there are now three trials. So you have Donald Trump that is he's been indicted for crimes before, during and after his presidency. And she is going to have to figure out when is she going to be able to slot in her trial. I don't know if that will come up.

at an arraignment. She will be interested, though, in moving the case along. She'll be very interested in whether discovery has been turned over. And I expect that we will hear prior to Thursday from the government a report about what they have done with respect to discovery. We saw that in the Mar-a-Lago case, and it's the way that the government can try and prompt the judge to try and be focused on a date prior to the general election.

So, Androids, Chris Hayes, so we're in the same room, so you knew that. Just with the TV magic of it all, I'm looking into the camera. So I guess my question is,

Like, there's no precedent here for, I mean, take away precedence. I can't think of a defendant, you know, just a defendant facing this many different trials in different venues all at the same time. I think it's probably hard to come up with that. So I guess the question is, like, is there a jurisdiction that has that?

gets to trump everything else? How are they going to manage this? And how important is it what Smith's office's preference are in terms of what goes when?

So I don't think there's any precedent for somebody being indicted in three separate jurisdictions that I'm aware of. I've seen two, and usually the judges speak to each other and they obviously hear from the parties. They will want to hear from the government and the defendant. And then the judges speak to each other. There are all sorts of ways to sort of slice and dice this. But remember, we may be very soon having four

Right. Cases. And so there will will need to be some discussion. And usually judges behind the scenes are having those conversations. And it'll be interesting to see exactly what happens. Remember, the federal cases are ones where there really is controversy.

quite a timeline because depending on what happens in the election, those cases could go away. That's not true with respect to the current case in Manhattan. And if there is a case in Georgia that everyone's anticipating, that also would not go away. So you can imagine

the two federal judges thinking that there might be some reason for those cases to go first. And you also could imagine the state judges thinking that that's right. Yeah. I mean, just to underscore the point there, like I think a lot of us think about federal courts getting deference and that federal cases go first. And Tish James, the attorney general in New York, has talked about that in terms that I think raised some eyebrows. But in this case,

I mean, to the to as you've been talking about, Alex, as these things proceed, both in court and in politics, there is something that happens at the next election, which is that if Trump is the Republican nominee and he is elected, he will eliminate the Justice Department for all intents and purposes, at least as it pertains to these cases, and they will disappear. He can't pardon himself or do anything to affect elections.

as president, something that happens in a state court. And so there is a strategic case for the state cases to go ahead, even potentially before the federal cases, even though that would usually be the other way around. Well, and by the way, the states are picking up speed in terms of their prosecution of people involved in January 6th. Today, two fake electors in Michigan were indicted. The states have said very plainly that that is not

the end of the road as far as their January. Michigan has said very clearly it's not the end of the road in terms of them prosecuting January 6th. Bonnie Willis has been very clear that she's ready to go. She has been there is a lot of common ground in terms of her investigation, the fake electors and Jack Smith's investigation here. And then, you know, we don't know what's going to happen in other states that Trump targeted to disenfranchise voters there. But I think the state attorneys general are fired up and ready to take up

the mantle. I mean, just in Michigan alone, we've got, as you said, we got 16 fake electors who were indicted two weeks ago. Now we've got additional Republican activists and the former Republican candidate for attorney general indicted for messing with election machines, for messing with voting machines. And there is yet new stuff in the Michigan section of this indictment.

that was brought today and showed to the public. There's pages and pages of stuff that we didn't know before in terms of what happened in Georgia, in terms of including brand new information about what happened when Mark Meadows went down to insert himself into the recount in Georgia. I mean, while Fannie Willis is considering whether or not to bring charges not only against Trump, but against fake electors in Georgia. I mean, this stuff is...

This stuff is all going all at once. And to me, it didn't really seem clear until today the case for why the states might go first, but maybe they will. Right. But the thing is that in like the trials can't, the trials happen to have to happen serially and not in parallel. So like the investigations can happen in parallel, but, but, but,

But as the defendant, you are well within your rights to say, look, judge, to all the judges, we can't provide an adequate defense. Well, criminal defendants have to be in court. We don't try in absentia. So they have to be there. So it's like you've got a real bottleneck, right? There is like zero sun. There's a serial processing of the many indictments of Donald Trump that the various systems are going to have to work out that is going to be enormous.

Consequential for possibly the fate of the country in the world because of the deadline. And here's the thing. The founders meant it this way. They defined it this way. I mean, we hear words like federalism and separation of powers and they can sound very vague. The fact that states have these independent powers to try to.

as a jurisdictional matter, serious crimes in their state, right, which could still happen in Georgia, that's part of the system. And he is just a citizen. That's why Smith keeps referring to him as just a defendant. I don't think all these questions are resolved yet. But the fact that both before or even during any future government service, he can't

everything as a federal power is part of our system. How do you run for president during this? Right. We're trying to lock in these trials, per se. And then how do you schedule a presidential debate? Right. Like how are the grand poobahs of the Republican Party? Right. What is Ronna Romney McDaniels looking at? She's going, oh, this is good. How?

do you run for president while you're trying to schedule all this? Like, I don't even know how the math works. Remember during 2016 when Trump signed the letter of intent to build Trump Tower Moscow on the day of the third Republican debate? Apparently these guys can multitask. True. Well, they'll also be fundraising because after every indictment there is a spike in Trump fundraising to pay the legal bills of all the people who are... That's the largest growth industry of Trump at this point. But let them. If people

want to give their own private money. And he's now making it clear it's to pay my legal bills. Have at it. Right. You know, go for it, dude. Give me your money and then elect me president so that I can dismantle the American constitutional system of government so as to save myself. And then good luck with it. I'll be old. Even though I'm super rich and don't need anything because I'm so super rich. Can you pay my bill?

One of the other things that we're going to have to be watching for, unfortunately, is that with his two previous indictments, you saw the president both threaten and then effectively try to organize people to turn out in the streets in response to the indictment. He has promised that if he was indicted by some of these prosecutors who he's called terrible names, that the American people and his people would rise up and there'd be protests like you'd never seen before in this country. That has not really borne out. I

either in the New York indictment or in the case of the Florida federal indictment, that'll be one of the things that people have sort of ear to the ground to see if he tries to do that again, tries to organize a sort of physical response by his followers, even after having been humiliated when he called for that in New York and in Miami and didn't get it in either place in any significant amount. So, yeah.

Obviously, a lot still to work out, a lot still to understand in terms of how this is going to go. But in terms of what happens next, we do believe that there will be a 4 p.m. Eastern Time Thursday arraignment in federal court in Washington on this new indictment. And we do believe that our special coverage of Donald Trump's indictment will continue right now here on MSNBC. There are some football feelings you can only get with BetMGM Sportsbook. That's right. Not just the highs. The ohs.

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