Expect a federal indictment of Trump soon: Rosenberg; But who else might prosecutors name? 42:19

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Subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts to get new episodes of Morning Joe and the Rachel Maddow Show ad-free. Plus, ad-free listening to all of Rachel Maddow's original series, Ultra, Bagman, and Deja News.

And now all MSNBC original podcasts are available ad free and with bonus content, including how to win 2024 prosecuting Donald Trump. Why is this happening? And more subscribe to MSNBC premium on Apple podcasts. So there were four of them altogether, four of them thus far. The first one was put up in 2008.

It was in Glendora, Mississippi, which is a tiny little town in Mississippi. It's less than 200 people. It was right on the bank of the Tallahatchie River in Glendora.

At this spot, from the 1840s until the 1890s, there had been a big steamboat landing there on the bank of the river. So it's kind of a bustling spot. There had been a lot of coming and going. It was a site of commerce. There were roads and buildings, of course, around there because of that steamboat landing. But in the 1890s, a tornado came and wiped out that steamboat landing on the riverbank. And they never rebuilt it.

And so all that's left at that spot to this day is just kind of a wide spot, just kind of a clearing, a break in the vegetation through which you can get down to the river. That is where they put the sign up in 2008. But as soon as they put it up, somebody came in and tore it down.

This was the posts that it was standing on. You can see it's been cut off. They tore it down. They cut it off its posts. They threw the sign in the river. It didn't last there six months before somebody destroyed it. After that first sign got torn down, they put up a second one, another one just like it. This was the second sign. What are all those holes in it? Well, people started shooting at it. By the time this one was taken down in 2016, it had 317 bullet holes in it.

317. In 2018, they put up yet another new one, a third one. This time it was a big sturdy one that they thought really could stand up to it. This time the sign was really heavy. It weighed 50 pounds. Lasted barely a month before that one was full of bullet holes too.

In July of 2019, three fraternity brothers, three white fraternity brothers from Ole Miss, from the University of Mississippi, which is actually kind of far from there, it's an hour and a half drive away, they posed in front of the shot up sign, holding rifles and a shotgun in the picture. So that third sign, it came down as well. So now it is the fourth version of the sign that is up now. And this one doesn't weigh 50 pounds, this one weighs 500 pounds.

It's made of half-inch thick AR-500 steel, which is what they make good armor plating from. It was a company in New York, actually, a company called Light Bright Neon Studio in Brooklyn, New York, that made this sign pro bono. They made it, they shipped it, they installed it at their own expense. And this time, the fourth version of this sign, this time it's made to be able to withstand a rifle round. And of course, it needs to be.

The reason this sign, the reason all of these signs, all four of them in succession, were put up there on that bank of the Tallahatchie River is because in 1955, that's the spot, it's believed that that's the spot where the body of a 14-year-old kid was hauled out of that river. He was 14 years old. He was from Chicago. He was staying with relatives in Mississippi. He was accused of whistling at a white woman.

The white woman also said that the 14-year-old boy had grabbed her and made lewd comments to her, as well as whistling at her, but he had not done that. More than 50 years later, she finally admitted that she'd actually lied and made that all up. But of course, by then, it was more than 50 years too late. Two white men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, abducted the 14-year-old boy. They threw him into a pickup truck. They tortured him horribly, and they murdered him.

and they were put on trial for murder in front of an all-white jury, which acquitted them. Those two men admitted in court to the kidnapping part of the crime, but when a grand jury was asked to indict them for kidnapping, which they admitted to in open court, the grand jury wouldn't even indict them for that. So acquitted of murder, not even indicted for kidnapping.

And soon after they were acquitted of murder, the two men did a magazine interview that they got paid for. And they cheerfully admitted in that magazine interview that, of course, they'd committed the murder. Of course, they'd killed that kid. The boy's name was Emmett Till. And the site where his body was found, that's where the sign memorializing his murder has been found.

torn down and thrown in the river and cut off its supports and spray painted and doused with acid and shot at literally hundreds and hundreds of times. The marker noting the place where his 14-year-old body, tortured, mutilated body was pulled out of the river, that's the place where that sign keeps having to be rebuilt and re-put up.

Tomorrow, the president of the United States will designate that a national monument. That site. The Emmett Till and Mamie Till Mobley National Monument will be designated, created by President Biden tomorrow. And this new monument includes three sites. That Riverbank site, where the sign has gone up and up again and up again and up again, and it's now a bulletproof 500-pound version of the sign. The Riverbank site.

Also, the site of the courthouse where the men who admitted killing Emmett Till were acquitted by the all-white jury, that courthouse will be part of this national monument as well. That courthouse is also where local officials apologized to Emmett Till's family in 2007, which is the year before the first sign went up on that riverbank. The third site in this new national monument will be in Chicago at a church, at the Roberts Temple Church of God and Christ.

where more than 10,000 people turned out for young Emmett Till's funeral in September 1955, after he'd been murdered. His mother, Mamie Till Mobley, she made the decision to allow a photograph of her brutalized son to be taken for Jet Magazine and the Chicago Defender newspaper.

Emmett Till's mother made the decision that her son would lie in an open casket at his funeral so everybody could see what had been done to him. Again, that national monument that'll be designated tomorrow by President Biden will be named both for Emmett Till and for his mother. It's called the Emmett Till and Mamie Till Mobley National Monument. Becoming a national monument means

Technically now, this is protected land, protected by the federal government, protected and maintained by the National Park Service in perpetuity.

With this particular new national monument, with that site in particular on that riverbank in Mississippi that's been treated like a shooting gallery that has had four different markers go up, the latest one 500 pounds and bulletproof, protected by a gate and alarms and cameras, but where a white nationalist group nevertheless tried to shoot an anti-black white power propaganda video just a few years ago in 2019.

With this newest designated national monument, I don't know how it's going to go for that to be federally protected land, something that the National Park Service agrees to maintain and protect in perpetuity, but they now have that responsibility. And that is a start. That's something. President Biden will sign that proclamation designating the new national monument tomorrow on what would have been Emmett Till's 82nd birthday, had he lived past the age of 14.

And this designation, this decision to do this by President Biden, this comes at a time when it certainly feels right to do something like that. It comes at a time when the state of Florida has just approved bizarre new mandates for teaching African-American history in the state of Florida. These new rules created under Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, um,

these rules order teachers in Florida to say effectively that slavery wasn't that bad. Had some upsides at least, according to Florida's new official history instructions for teachers. Enslaved people were lucky enough to learn skills and trades while they were being enslaved and sold and tortured and raped and murdered with impunity. These new history regulations in Florida are

compel teachers to point out the upsides of slavery. It's just astonishing. Florida's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, who of course is at the helm of a floundering presidential campaign at the moment, he frankly seems divided within himself as to whether he wants to distance himself from this abomination. He sort of tried that a little bit. "Oh, that wasn't me. I didn't do that. That didn't have anything to do with me."

He's sort of divided within himself as to whether or not he should distance himself from it, say he had nothing to do with it, or maybe he should embrace it. Because after all, he loves controversy, particularly when it relies on racial provocation. And maybe there might be some way for him and his campaign to benefit from this particular racially provocative controversy.

But this new national monument also comes at a time when Alabama's state legislature, which of course is overwhelmingly Republican, Alabama's legislature appears poised to do something very, very radical to make sure that black voters in Alabama cannot elect representatives of their choice. You may have heard the Supreme Court of the United States. This may have crossed your radar. Supreme Court of the United States, you might know.

right now is a very conservative body. A 6-3 hard right conservative majority on the nation's highest court as we speak. But even so, even that hard line conservative 6-3 court could not swallow the recent decision by Alabama's legislature to draw up congressional districts in that state. So there's only one black majority district in the whole state, in a state where a quarter of the population is black.

The High Court ordered the state of Alabama to make a new map where there are two such districts where black voters might be able to elect a representative of their choice. They have been ordered to do this by the federal courts. Alabama is refusing to do it, even though Alabama technically is a state.

in the United States of America, which is a country that is technically subject to the rulings of the Supreme Court of the United States. Even the Alabama parts of the United States are subject to federal court orders. But apparently they're deciding on this issue that they maybe don't want to be.

So we're going to talk about this more in detail a little later on in the show tonight with someone who's right in the middle of this fight. But Alabama deciding it just might not follow federal court orders when it comes to black people voting in 2023.

It's not like a rascally little tantrum that Alabama is throwing here. This is a whole point of the country kind of stuff. This is as serious as it gets. I mean, defying federal court orders to state the obvious, that is a fast drive down a short road for any country. And any state in the deep south, any state that, say, seceded during the Civil War, is very, very well aware of that. They are very well aware of how radical this is.

But of course, it's even more resonant. It's even more incendiary to do it right now because Governor slavery was not that bad. DeSantis really does not look like he's going to go the distance in the Republican nominating contest. He's just running a terrible, terrible campaign that's sort of getting worse and more expensive by the day.

He seems to be the only person who ever had a prayer of being within shooting distance, proverbial shooting distance, forgive me, of the Republican frontrunner. I mean, the Republican Party really does poise, does look poised to renominate its frontrunner, to renominate the candidate who is dominating all their presidential polling by 20, 30, 40 points.

And if nobody can get anywhere near him, if they do re-nominate Donald Trump as their candidate for president, that means the whole campaign for president, the whole election for president of the United States over the course of this next year is going to be in large part a referendum on this question of Trump.

whether we follow court orders anymore as a country, whether the legal system binds us, whether it binds all of us. Because the likely Republican nominee for president, as things are going, the prohibitive favorite to be the Republican nominee for president, he is facing a trial in October on a quarter-billion-dollar civil fraud case brought by the New York Attorney General.

Then another civil trial in January on defamation claims related to sexual assault allegations against him. Then another civil trial later in January on a multimillion-dollar civil fraud case related to an alleged pyramid scheme type thing that he was involved in. Then a criminal trial in March on the New York State hush money charges. Then a federal criminal trial in May on his federal felony criminal indictment for his handling of classified documents.

And meanwhile, we're waiting on news of additional potential criminal indictments of him personally, both at the federal level and in the state of Georgia related to his efforts to overthrow the government and stay in power after he lost reelection. So if that's the, you know, personal schedule of the Republican Party nominee for president.

A, busy, and B, the election is going to be about this. It's going to be the referendum question posed both implicitly and explicitly by his candidacy. Do we choose him or do we choose law? Do we choose the law? Does the law apply to us all? Does it protect us all? Does it constrain us all? Or do we want this guy instead? And all of the myriad things he has to offer.

The sixth and final episode of my new podcast, Dajon News, just posted today. It's been six episodes altogether. Now we're done. It's been a blast. It's been a ton of work, but I'm really glad that we did it. You can listen to all six of them for free on any podcast app. It's called Rachel Maddow Presents Dajon News.

And the finale episode that posted today in part tells the story of protests and marches that happened in America in New York City in 1935. In 1935, this is just before World War II, right? Benito Mussolini was the dictator of fascist Italy. He had essentially proclaimed that he was going to send Italian troops to Africa. He was going to invade Ethiopia, right?

He was going to conquer Ethiopia and make it a colony of fascist Italy. And there is just this amazing story about how the U.S. and the major countries in Europe

handled that threat from Mussolini, how they handled the question of whether or not to defend Ethiopia, the question of whether Mussolini should be stopped in his effort to go invade that country and take them over, whether he could be stopped from doing that, what the Western powers effectively should do to try to stop him from doing that if they decided he shouldn't be allowed to do it. It's a fascinating story. But there's also this domestic part of it

which feels more and more resonant with each passing day to me. Black New Yorkers at the time lined up and volunteered. They effectively enlisted to go fight the fascists, to go stop that invasion. Look, hundreds of African-American men in Harlem lining up, volunteering to go fight in that war, even if the U.S. military wouldn't. 25,000 New Yorkers marched through New York City demanding that the fascists be stopped.

Another 10,000 New Yorkers packed into Madison Square Garden for a huge rally against the fascists. They destroyed a 20-foot effigy of Mussolini on stage. 10,000 people there for that. In other episodes of Deja News, we've looked at the huge protests that erupted very recently in Poland, when their new far-right government mounted a conservative takeover of the courts and then banned abortion.

Biggest protests in Poland since the fall of communist rule there in 1989. This weekend, I thought about a little bit when we saw New Yorkers take over the Brooklyn Bridge.

in solidarity with the huge, huge protests that are rocking Israel at the moment as we speak. The right-wing government in Israel today mounting effectively a takeover of the judiciary in that country, which will not only be very convenient for their prime minister who's under criminal indictment, it will also broadly remove the ability of the courts to constrain the government in lots of important ways.

Without a written constitution, Israel has no written constitution, the court's ability to constrain the government is effectively the only constraint on the government. And if they're going to get rid of that, well, the government will be unconstrained, starting presumably with the prime minister's ability to dismantle the corruption charges that penned against him while he serves as prime minister.

Tens of thousands of Israelis have been protesting for six months now against these proposals. The government finally pushed through the first of them today.

Knowing that was likely, Tuesday last week, a few hundred protesters set out from the city of Tel Aviv for a march to the capital of Jerusalem. That's about a 40-mile march. They left Tel Aviv on Tuesday against several hundred people. By the time they got to the outskirts of Jerusalem on Saturday night, their numbers had swelled from a few hundred people to 20,000 people.

Took them four nights camping out along the way to get there. But during that time, their numbers grew from several hundred to 20,000. And the protests and demonstrations and roadblocks continue there tonight in Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv and all over that country as demonstrators try to stop their government from taking this huge step away from democratic rule and from limited authority of the country's leader. We are in a moment

at home and abroad, where the hard right, the authoritarian nationalist right, is aggressively ascendant. I think it's fair to say as aggressively ascendant as they have been since the 1930s. A descendant of Mussolini's fascist party is now in power again in Italy. The very far right, the racist far right, made a hard run at the French presidency just a couple of years ago.

The hard right is in place, in power in Poland, as I mentioned, where they just banned abortion, in Hungary, of course, in Russia. We all thought they might be in power by today in Spain, but voters there actually surprised everyone this weekend by turning back their far-right nationalist party and sending them packing. They really thought they'd be in power in Spain by today, but instead, in this weekend's elections, they got shellacked. Hello, Spain.

But thinking about our own domestic challenges along these lines, running as we are, hard up against these basic questions of whether we're sticking with the rule of law or moving instead toward authoritarian rule, knowing that our likely nominees for the presidency next year are effectively going to be setting up the presidency as a referendum on that guy or the law—

Knowing that that's what we are hard up against here in this country, looking at our domestic challenges right now, looking at images from our own history and from Israel this weekend. It's days like this when it's good to remember that it's not just the authoritarian right that is ascendant as a global trend. It is also resistance to authoritarianism that can be a global trend. That is a global trend. The fight back is ascendant too.

Resilience matters. The first sign came down. Second one came down too, full of bullet holes. Just like the third one after that. But the fourth one is built stronger and it still stands. And as of tomorrow, it's a national monument of the United States of America. Resistance to this stuff trends too. It is also contagious and emboldening. Thank God. More to come tonight. Stay with us.

There are some football feelings you can only get with BetMGM Sportsbook. That's right. Not just the highs, the ohs, or the no, no, no's. It's the feeling that comes with being taken care of every down of the football season. The feeling that comes with getting MGM Rewards benefits or earning bonus bets. So, whether you're drawing up a same-game parlay in your playbook or betting the over on your favorite team. Check it out.

The BetMGM app is the best place to bet on football. You only get that feeling at BetMGM. The sportsbook born in Vegas, now live across the DMV. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. See BetMGM.com for terms. 21 plus only, DC only, subject to eligibility requirements. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER.

Subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts to get new episodes of Morning Joe and the Rachel Maddow Show ad-free. Plus, ad-free listening to all of Rachel Maddow's original series, Ultra, Bagman, and Deja News.

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On the MSNBC podcast, How to Win 2024, former Senator Claire McCaskill is joined by fellow political experts and insiders to examine the campaign strategies unfolding in this all-important election. We have emerged with the teacher, the coach, the veteran, the governor, Tim Walz. I always think it's better to have somebody on the ticket that has actually won in a state that's hard. Search for How to Win 2024 wherever you get your podcasts and follow. New episodes every Thursday.

In 2020, Republicans in seven states sent these fake elector documents to the federal government. It happened in Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania and New Mexico, all states that were won by Joe Biden. And as you can see, all of the things they sent in look kind of the same.

Republican electors in all of these states signed their names to these forged documents, pretending it was actually Trump that won the most votes in the presidential election and that he should receive their state's electoral votes instead of Biden. But somebody clearly organized this effort. All of the documents that were sent in in these states all followed a similar kind of template.

Well, last week, the attorney general in Michigan brought criminal charges against the 16 fake electors from Michigan. Eight felony counts for trying to overturn the election results in Michigan. But again, Michigan was just one of the states that did this. A version of this scheme was run in seven states. What's going to happen to the fake electors in the other six states where they tried this exact same thing? In some cases, looking like they were playing out of the exact same sheet of Mad Libs.

Well, in two of the seven states, Pennsylvania and New Mexico, we know that the fake electors changed the template a little bit. They changed the language in their fake documents to include a caveat.

which basically said, well, we know we're not the real electors now, but we're submitting these documents anyway just in case we become the real electors in the future. Those caveats seem to have been added to try to shield those fake electors from legal liability. And in those two states, in Pennsylvania and New Mexico, it's possible that that has worked.

But there's still four other states where the circumstances sort of sort of yet to be determined. Well, sort of. In Nevada, we pretty much know that we shouldn't expect charges. The attorney general there has explicitly said he's not planning to bring charges against the six fake electors from his state.

That still leaves Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin, though. In Arizona, we know that an investigation reportedly is ongoing into the perpetrators of the fake elector scheme there. In Georgia, the fake elector scheme is apparently a focal point of District Attorney Fannie Willis' investigation into activity related to efforts to overturn the election that includes actions by the former president himself.

The fake electors part of that has had Willis's attention for quite some time. She has granted immunity to at least eight of Georgia's 16 fake electors in exchange for their cooperation in her ongoing investigation.

That leaves Wisconsin, where the state attorney general has refused to talk about whether or not he is investigating the fake electors there. Now, we've reached out to the Wisconsin attorney general's office. Their office will neither confirm nor deny the existence of any such investigation, telling us tonight, quote, attorney general call strongly believes that those who committed crimes in an effort to unlawfully subvert the outcome of an election should be held accountable for

which is great, also very generic, still telling us basically nothing. But among these seven states from which we had fake electors, it's a lot of fake electors, right? I mean, 16 of them already charged in Michigan, more of them being investigated as we speak, at least in Arizona and in Georgia, maybe in other places as well.

It's a good reminder that in all these investigations that we are following around particularly the efforts to overthrow the results of the 2020 election, it's not just former President Donald Trump who's in the crosshairs. For example, in special counsel Jack Smith's classified documents case, charges have, of course, already been brought against Trump and also his staffer, Walt Nauda.

But we also have reporting that another Trump Organization employee has been told that they're the target of that investigation and could face additional criminal charges. Again, so yet another person could be charged in the classified documents case. A person has been warned of charges, effectively given a target letter in that case. And while we have yet to see any charges in the January 6th case, in the overturning the election part of the case, one of the statutes reportedly listed in the target letter that Trump has received on that is

is conspiracy. And if there's one thing we know about conspiracy charges, it's that a person cannot conspire alone. Are there more names to drop? And what would that mean for the likely progress of these cases? Joining us now is Chuck Rosenberg. He's a former U.S. attorney and senior FBI official. Chuck, it's great to see you, my friend. Thank you for being here. Oh, my pleasure, Rachel. Thanks for having me.

So in the Trump adjacent investigations, obviously there's lots of moving parts, lots of people potentially with legal liability besides Trump himself. We've seen that come to fruition in terms of charges brought against a co-defendant in the classified documents case already.

How are you thinking about Trump's potential co-defendants or people being charged with similar crimes alongside him in terms of how that affects the way these cases are going to proceed? Yeah, it's a great question. So let's just talk about the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case for a minute because we have a co-defendant. We have a co-conspirator. In some ways, it makes sense. If the government believes in good faith that more than one person committed a crime, then you ought to charge...

more than one person. However, the disparity between Mr. Trump and Mr. NADA is significant. One was the former president, one was a relatively low-level aide. And the problem the government will face at trial with two defendants is that there'll be two teams of defense counsel. They will have two opening defendants.

They will have two closing arguments. And every single government witness will be cross-examined twice. And that can create some noise and confusion in a courtroom and for a jury. So I don't know that it's necessarily an easy decision. I don't mean to say it's a wrong decision, but I don't know that it's necessarily an easy decision to indict other people with Mr. Trump and try them jointly.

If Trump is charged with conspiracy, and again, we should say we have reporting about what's in his target letter. Even if we had definitive knowledge of what was in the target letter, there's no guarantee that what's in the target letter is indicative that charges will be brought or that the charges that will be brought are those that are related to the statutes mentioned in the target letter. I have to give you all the caveats. But

So with all those caveats, if Trump is charged with conspiracy, there's no guarantee that his conspirators, people he conspired with, would be charged under the same indictment or indeed charged at all, right?

That's exactly right. One can be an unindicted co-conspirator. In fact, if you think back to Michael Cohen's charges in the Southern District of New York, Cohen, of course, Mr. Trump's former personal lawyer, in that indictment, we learned about an unindicted co-conspirator. Individual one is how the government described that person in the indictment, and that turned out to be Mr. Trump himself.

You know, charging a case as a conspiracy confers on the government certain evidentiary advantages. I'm not going to bore you with those now. So, it makes sense often to charge a conspiracy and

Often when you charge a conspiracy, you have multiple defendants at trial. But to your point, Rachel, you're exactly right. You don't have to. You can have unindicted co-conspirators that are flagged by the grand jury and mentioned in the indictment, but not sitting next to the defendant, perhaps Mr. Trump, at his own criminal trial. Chuck, I have to ask you, I can't let you go without asking you one last question, which is the question on everybody's mind in the news business this week.

which is what our expectations should reasonably be about the relationship between that reported target letter and any indictment and any unsealing of an indictment against Trump if one is in fact coming.

Yeah, another great question. Well, when I was a federal prosecutor, I would occasionally send out target letters. I would never send out a target letter to somebody that I did not intend to indict. They're not bluffs, they're not games, they're not make-believe. So here's what you ought to expect.

If Mr. Trump really did receive a target letter, then he will be charged with federal crimes. If he really received a target letter, that will happen relatively soon. Now, to your points earlier, your caveats are wise. Target letters are not contracts, and the government could change its mind. But in my experience, that would be unusual. What you should expect is a federal indictment of Mr. Trump and a federal indictment soon.

Chuck Rosenberg, former U.S. attorney, former senior FBI official. Chuck, it's great to have you here as always. Thank you. My pleasure. All right. We've got much more ahead here tonight. Stay with us. There are some football feelings you can only get with BetMGM Sportsbook. That's right. Not just the highs, the ohs, or the no, no, nos. It's the feeling that comes with being taken care of every down of the football season. The feeling that comes with getting MGM Rewards benefits or earning bonus bets.

So, whether you're drawing up a same-game parlay in your playbook or betting the over on your favorite team, the BetMGM app is the best place to bet on football. You only get that feeling at BetMGM, the sportsbook born in Vegas, now live across the DMV. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. See BetMGM.com for terms. 21 plus only, DC only, subject to eligibility requirements. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER.

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell. When I was working in the Senate, I didn't realize that it's the perfect training for the job that I have now. Covering government, covering politics, the complexity of it all. Mastering the detail is crucial to being able to present anything.

that happens in Senate buildings or any other news centers that we have to focus on every day. The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, weeknights at 10 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC.

Hi, everyone. It's Chris Hayes. This week on my podcast, Why Is This Happening? Author and philosopher Daniel Chandler on the roots of a just society. I think that those genuinely big fundamental questions about whether liberal democracy will survive, what the shape of our society should be, feel like they're genuinely back on the agenda. I think it feels like we're at a real, you know, an inflection point or a turning point in the history of liberal democracy. That's this week on Why Is This Happening? Search for Why Is This Happening wherever you're listening right now and follow.

This map captures just it's like a checklist of noncompliance. There was never any intent in this building to comply with that court order. Never. Also, there was never any intent in this building to comply with the voting rights act.

That was Alabama state lawmaker Chris England speaking on Friday, a Democrat lodging one final objection as Alabama Republicans defied an order from the United States Supreme Court to fix a very problematic congressional map. Last month, the Supreme Court found Alabama in violation of the Voting Rights Act.

In Alabama, one in four voters is black, but Republicans in the legislature cleverly constructed the state's congressional districts. So only one of seven congressional districts in the state is majority black.

That was too racially discriminatory even for this hard right conservative United States Supreme Court. And so the court ordered Alabama to redraw the lines so black voters would make up the majority or something quite close to it in two congressional districts, not just one.

To that, Alabama Republicans just basically said, no, we won't do it. They did draw new lines for new districts, but the new lines don't include anything like a new majority black district. So what does this mean? I mean, the sort of best case scenario

Terrible scenario here is that Alabama Republicans are trying to stretch this out as long as possible to try and give themselves another shot at holding another election with illegal, racially discriminatory maps that favor Republicans. That's the best case terrible scenario. The worst case terrible scenario is that Alabama Republicans are just deciding that they don't recognize the authority of the federal government and federal courts.

And that, of course, brings back all sorts of bad memories about what Alabama is capable of. But when we're about to have a presidential election in which the central question is likely to be whether or not we as a country follow the law, whether the law applies to everyone, this is a particularly incendiary move by Alabama Republicans, one that Alabama Democrats like State Rep Chris England have been raising the alarm about. One thing that I always say about Alabama Republicans

It continues to be the place where the dead bury the living. We're haunted by a ghost of the past. And every time we get to a critical juncture where a better or better angels could lead us in a proper direction, we refuse and we say we dare defend our rights. Joining us now is Chris England. He is a Democratic member of the Alabama House of Representatives. Representative England, I really appreciate you making time to be here tonight. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

I'm going to ask you about those two scenarios that I just mentioned there. Do you think that Alabama Republicans are just sort of playing for time and knowing they're going to lose this, but they're dragging it out as long as possible? Or do you think they really are making an attempt to resist or nullify this federal court order? I think it's a host of different things. I think at the bare minimum, it's an attempt to protect status quo.

But at the worst of it all, I think it's an attempt to also buy time to use this legal map for two more years. But the other part of it is, I think it's an extension of the work that was done to eliminate Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in the Shelby County case to now

Maybe using this non-compliant, defiant map to go back to the Supreme Court and hopefully convince the justices that, you know, we're all conservatives here. So throw us a bone and maybe finish off Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act as well.

So if the Supreme Court was already willing in the Shelby County case to gut the Voting Rights Act by getting rid of Section 5, but Section 2 still exists, you think they may be doing this basically to tee up a case that would throw out the rest of the Voting Rights Act, that would throw out Section 2 as well?

No, I don't doubt it. I think it's a long legal strategy that ultimately buys in either time or makes another argument to go after Section 2. But on the other hand, it also throws the entire map to one or two people. A special master will draw it, and we basically shirked our constitutional responsibilities to represent our constituents and use them essentially as collateral damage for a

political cause, and it was actually driven by people who don't even live here. I don't know if you've heard this or not, but the Speaker of the House, McCarthy, called the Senate sponsor of the map and told him he's interested in keeping his majority. But I think Alabama citizens were probably more interested in the state keeping up to its obligations and following the law.

Kevin McCarthy encouraging this, encouraging defiance of the federal courts in order to eke out more illegally defined Republican-leaning districts obviously has disturbing national implications. But so does just saying that court orders don't matter, that if the federal courts are going to stand up and tell states what to do, states have an option to do it.

to disobey those orders. I wonder, Representative England, what's been the reaction among Alabama voters, among your constituents, among black voters in Alabama in general, as this fight has played out the way it has? Disappointment, disgust, but not surprised. There's interesting context here that many African Americans who occupy elected spaces in Alabama

are representing districts that are majority minority and that were created by court orders from lawsuits that were filed years ago. The 7th Congressional District itself was a district created by a lawsuit and a court order. And interestingly enough, not only is the Black voting age population in the newly created 2nd Congressional District 39%,

But the 7th Congressional District, this was created by a court order for the specific purpose of electing an African-American, saw its Black voting age population in this new map go from 55% to 50%, which is just another, you know, just outright slap in the face if you're considering the fight and the history that Alabama shares with the rest of the country in terms of courts and the federal government having to force Alabama to vote.

to do the right thing in situations like this. So it is not a surprise, but still disappointment in the fact that Alabama once again gets to this crucial threshold and fails to do the right thing. Alabama State Representative Chris England. Sir, thank you for joining us tonight. I know this is not over. We'd love to have you back and keep us surprised as this fight keeps playing out.

Oh, yeah. Anytime. I got a lot more to say. All right. Well, I'll be back, sir. Thanks. We'll be right back. Stay with us.

This is an amazing story. I can't believe this is real. It's real. This is the Republican Attorney General of Texas. His name is Ken Paxton, although he is not currently serving as Attorney General because he has been suspended from office by the Texas legislature pending an impeachment trial. Now, how bad do things have to be for the Republicans in the Texas legislature to impeach their own Republican Attorney General?

Well, where do we start? Almost the entire time he's been Attorney General, he's been under indictment for felony securities fraud.

Meanwhile, he's facing potential disbarment from the practice of law entirely over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Also, he's under criminal investigation by the U.S. Justice Department on serious corruption allegations, allegations so serious that eight high-ranking officials in his own office went to the FBI to report what they had witnessed in his office.

Earlier this year, Paxton reached a multi-million dollar settlement in a lawsuit for allegedly firing several of those officials as retaliation for them going to the FBI. It has been a lot with this guy. But hilariously, it was only when Paxton demanded that Texas taxpayers fork over the millions of dollars to pay that settlement that Republicans in the legislature finally started to get a little bit cranky with him.

The Texas House impeached Ken Paxton by an overwhelming margin, so that means the Texas Senate now has to put him on trial. They'll hold an impeachment trial in September. If he's convicted at that Senate impeachment trial, he will lose his job permanently. Now, here's where it gets amazing. That trial will be presided over by the president of the Senate, the lieutenant governor of the state, a man named Dan Patrick.

As the presiding judge overseeing Paxton's impeachment trial, he'll have immense power. He'll be the ultimate arbiter of, like, the rules and the admissibility of evidence and all that stuff. Here's the thing I can't believe is real, but it is. So Dan Patrick, the guy who's the presiding judge in this impeachment trial, just had to release his new campaign finance report. And would you look at that?

He just received $3 million from the Ken Paxton Super PAC. Wow, what a coincidence. Dan Patrick isn't even up for reelection until 2026. All he has coming up is this impeachment trial that he has to run in a few weeks. And here's the PAC campaign.

For the defendant in that impeachment trial, dumping $3 million on his porch. Just ahead of the trial. Wow, everything is bigger in Texas. Amazing. We'll be right back. All right, that's going to do it for me tonight. There are some football feelings you can only get with BetMGM Sportsbook. That's right. Not just the highs, the ohs, or the no, no, nos.

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