Target Letter 36:32

Hello. Well, we planned to answer some listener questions in our episode today, and don't worry, we're still going to get to that. But while we were recording, we got the breaking news that Donald Trump received a target letter from Jack Smith in connection with the former president's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. So here are our live reactions to that news. ♪

Wow. I hate to interrupt, but I just got a notification on my phone that Donald Trump has truth socialed, truthed that he has just gotten a target letter from Jack Smith's team about January 6th. Here

here we are in the middle of this podcast with a plan to have listener questions. Mary, by the way, the hardest part of that question is the thing called truth. True. Although I guess it is true. So my take on this is he is reporting that he got a target letter. That seems like the, in some ways, the least important because, of course, he is a target of the federal January 6th investigation. The import of a target letter, though, is that it's

It is something that is a common practice at the Department of Justice for some prosecutors under what's called the Justice Manual to issue that to people before they're indicted. It doesn't mean just because you get a target letter that you will be indicted, but it is

certainly ominous. If you're a defense counsel, that's what you're preparing for. I think the more ominous part is that Donald Trump reports that he was given essentially an opportunity to appear in the grand jury, but he has to do so, according to him, within four days. That, to me, suggests, given the timeframe, that they're saying, look, if you're

you're a target, you have an opportunity to testify if you want to. Obviously, you can decline it. Almost every defendant does decline it. Donald Trump certainly is going to decline it. He is never going to testify for the same reason he didn't testify in the E. Jean Carroll case, for the same reason he didn't come in and talk to us in the Mueller investigation. It would be malpractice for a defense lawyer to permit him to do that because he has, let's just say, challenges with the truth.

So I think this is just a clear sign, though, that while there won't be a federal charge this year,

week, or at least early in this week, it is definitely coming because of the invitation to him. So, Mary, what's your take on timing, what this means to you? Yeah, well, you know, we're both just digesting this literally in real time. But I agree that the fact that Trump says they're giving me a very short four days and he claims that the notice came to him on Sunday night

That would mean Thursday. So at least we won't see an indictment before Thursday. It is possible, I suppose, that if his attorneys say we're not going to come in on Thursday, that Thursday the grand jury could return an indictment. But definitely not before that. And I also agree with you, the fact that they invited him to come in. I mean, they wouldn't do that till the end. And they probably know that he's likely to go out and tell the world that because so far every single thing that has happened in

in the federal cases involving Donald Trump, he has announced to the public before the government has announced to the public. He announced the search of Mar-a-Lago first. He announced that he had been given word that he was being charged at Mar-a-Lago first. And now he's announcing essentially in his words that he's going to be indicted again. And it appears that if what he's saying is accurate about this target letter, he's probably right about that. So I don't think the department would

send this and give him those four days to come in if they weren't ready to return some sort of charges. Yeah. So-

You can better believe we'll be doing an emergency episode, right, Andrew? Yeah, absolutely. The one thing that we haven't heard that I'm going to be interested in is we haven't heard that defense counsel has gone in to make a presentation to either Jack Smith or to appeal it to higher ups at the Justice Department. As people may recall, that happened before the documents case. It happened in the Bragg case. So it may have happened here and we just don't have the report.

reporting on it. But certainly with getting a target letter, it is something that if it hasn't happened, is going to happen in short order, that some kind of presentation or argument will be made. It would, in my view, be

I don't know what you think, Mary, would be malpractice for defense counsel not to at least take that shot. I don't know what the downside would be to not make a presentation. No, they have to at least try. And that's probably what they'll be scrambling to do right now. And I think like last time, they're going to try to go straight to the attorney general. Is that certainly what they tried last time? But we'll see how it's handled.

or we may or may not hear how it's handled, I suppose, depending on the reporting. So one thing this definitely says is Jack Smith can walk and chew gum, as we've been talking about, because he is appearing before Judge Cannon at 2 o'clock today.

And he is also proceeding with the January 6th case. And we saw that again when the day of the arraignment on the Mar-a-Lago documents case where he was there. But we also knew that the grand jury was doing work in D.C. So this is a real sign that he has his foot on the pedal. There's no question. So, Mary, I will look forward to talking to you, as we say, to borrow a phrase from Fawnie Willis, imminently. That's right.

But now we really are going to turn to those listener questions.

Well, we've been asking you for weeks and weeks and weeks to submit your questions, whether in writing or by voicemail. And this week, finally, Mary and I have the pleasure of turning to three of those questions. But even if we don't get to your question, you should know that we go through the questions and it really helps us figure out exactly what we should be talking about and how to answer questions in the course of our discussion. So if we don't get to you,

your questions, apologies, but it really does help us. So keep them coming. So we look forward to talking about that. But before we get to the questions, why don't we talk a little bit about what's going to happen today in Mar-a-Lago with the case before Judge Cannon? Because I think there are two

issues in front of her. One is sort of just a, it's called a SIPA sort of scheduling conference. And that's really just about scheduling and when things have to happen. But it's really important in this case because it relates to the second issue, which is the trial date. We,

We are recording this before the hearing today in front of Judge Cannon, where she will be taking up the issue of the SEPA scheduling order. That's the Scheduling Order for Classified Information Procedures Act hearings and filings. But she also has made clear she's going to take up the motion to change the trial date. And that motion originally was a motion of the government to change it from August 14th to December 11th.

that was opposed last week by Mr. Trump and Mr. Nada, who gave all kinds of reasons that we discussed. And now the government has come in and said, oh, come on, rebutting in very short order each one of Mr. Trump's and Mr. Nada's arguments. They've said,

Your legal arguments that you say you want to make are not novel. Presidential Records Act doesn't excuse any of this. Your argument that the special counsel itself lacks authority to bring this case, that's been resolved in the past by binding court cases. So those are not legitimate reasons. Your argument that the discovery is too voluminous is not really legitimate because we've pointed out to you in elaborate detail exactly where to look for everything. So even though there's lots and lots of material we've told you where to look at,

And your impartial jury argument is not valid because there's all kinds of high profile cases where there's a concern about getting an impartial jury. And that's what voir dire is for. The defense lawyer is saying, well, you know, it'll be really hard to pick a fair jury before the election. What I love about that is it's

nothing's going to change after the election. And this is going to be a controversial case. It's going to be a difficult case to pick an impartial jury. We're about to talk more about that. But that's true before and after the election, regardless of what happens in the election. So that basically, that argument is basically saying, hey, you can't pick a fair jury before. You can't pick a fair jury after. So guess what? Don't ever pick a jury. Right. So it'll be really interesting seeing what Judge Cannon does here. But yeah,

I have to say, if it were me, the one part of the defense argument that resonates for me is that they haven't seen everything.

Let's assume that they've done everything that they should to get clearances. Some of the lawyers actually have, not all of them, but some, and some actually have interim clearances. We learned that in a filing yesterday. I think that if I were a judge, because they haven't seen all of the discovery yet, and that's not a knock or a fault of the government, they have been turning everything over completely.

really quickly, much more than they're legally required to at this stage, but they're doing it for a reason, which is they want a fast trial date.

If I were a judge, I would pick a definitive trial date, meaning a set trial date. But I would say to the defense, I'm going to do this without prejudice to your making an application based on discovery that you are getting after this, where you can make an argument to me as to why that discovery is something that necessitates trial.

In other words, give them an opportunity to be heard later, but it has to be grounded in something that has happened. It can't just be fanciful. And I'd really lock in a trial date, whether it's December or whether it's January or February or March. That's not that important.

important to me. And I think reasonable amounts can differ as to that particular timeframe. But I do think it's important to lock something in. And for a whole variety of reasons, defense lawyers never want to go to trial in a normal case because the client is...

It's better to just have everything put off for a whole variety of reasons. I just think it's also one, as you mentioned, Mary, about scheduling. You want to make sure that people have locked this into their calendars so that you don't have a problem with defense counsel taking other cases and being on other trials. So you really do have to do that. And it'll be interesting to see what Judge Cannon does.

Because this is really, as many people have noted and we have noted, this is the first real test to see whether she has, I hate to put it this way, but changed her stripes in terms of how she's behaved during the investigation versus now. And that's a good time to talk about, I think, some of the pressure that's on her recently. I was

Not surprised, but still disappointed to see the former president doing the same kind of thing that he's done to pressure so many people in the past, including his own vice president. I think it was over the weekend that he was asked about Judge Cannon and said, I know it's a very highly respected judge, a very smart judge, a very strong judge.

But she's very smart and very strong and loves our country. We need judges that love our country so they do the right thing. This is the kind of pressure that we've seen before. And a federal judge ought to be able to not listen, not pay attention to that, but

It's really comes very close to trying to obstruct, to trying to influence the judge, particularly because this judge, if she's been paying attention the last several years, will see what kinds of things happen when the former president makes those kind of statements. And so I think this will also potentially need to result in extra security for the judge. And that probably has already taken place, frankly. But, you know, I think these are things that the judge will have to look out for. Now, interestingly enough,

So far as I'm aware, Jack Smith has not sort of raised this issue. And the judge herself, of course, today maybe will be the first time we hear her respond. I mean, it just happened a few days ago and she may or may not say anything.

And I think if I were Jack Smith, I basically wouldn't be saying anything unless we got to a point where he felt like Mr. Trump was directly trying to influence witnesses or potential jurors, that kind of thing. But it's an early statement that's very concerning because we're still many, many months out from a trial. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is quintessential Donald Trump, which is signaling that

that he has a bully pulpit and he's going to use it. You know, with Paul Manafort, he did the same thing about he's strong, he's virile, he's handsome. I mean, it's all these great things. He said the same thing with respect to essentially Mike Pence until he doesn't like him or Bill Barr until he doesn't like him. He is saying the same things with respect to Walt Nauta. Remember, it's

This is all sort of like I want to keep people closer, but it's also signaling, as you said, this sort of like I have my eye on you and this can turn in a flash. It's also so preposterous. Even Judge Cannon, she might think she's doing a good job, but she's been on the bench for a minute and 32 seconds. I don't think that she yet has a reputation for being impulsive.

an esteemed judge. That's right. It's not a knock on her. It's just she's very new and it takes time to establish your reputation. So it's so transparent and childish if it weren't also so dangerous. We'll be back with more prosecuting Donald Trump target letter in just a moment.

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell. I have an obligation to find a way of telling this story that is fresh, that has angles that haven't been used in the course of the day, to bring my experience working in the Senate, working in journalism, to try to make sense of what has happened and help you make sense of what it means to you. The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, weeknights at 10 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC.

So, Mary, why don't we turn to our first question from Mark about jury nullification. Considering that

publicly known evidence, it seems like Trump's best prospects for getting off are either delaying his trial until after the election or jury nullification, which might be a heightened risk if the jury pool is drawn from southern Florida. So my question is, what tactics can the special prosecutor employ to reduce the risk of jury nullification in the trial? Thanks. Super great question, Mary. I know you've

done a lot of trials and thought about this. So what tools in the toolkit does the government have and the court have to deal with the problem of jury nullification? Yeah, it is a good question because we certainly are, this is not the first question along these lines, right? People concerned about the jury pool and nullification. And just to be clear, what nullification means is that a jury, and it doesn't have to mean all 12 jurors because it only takes

one juror to hang a jury. That's not an acquittal, but that means that jury can't reach a verdict and then the case can be retried or maybe it doesn't get retried, but it would result in there not being an actual verdict rendered in a case and it only takes one. And so oftentimes jury

nullification is done by just one or two people because they decide they're not going to follow the law in a particular case and not going to follow the evidence and the judge's instructions. And they're just going to go with their personal views about a case, regardless of whether those views are consistent with the law. So that's referred to

as jury nullification. It's less, I think, about strategy of prosecutors on how to avoid that other than prove your case by such overwhelming evidence that even a juror who might go in skeptical, who might go in feeling like, I don't really believe in this case, will be so overwhelmed by the evidence that the juror will follow the instructions and render a true verdict. But

In terms of tools, there's a lot of legal tools that will be used. And the first one takes place before trial. That's what voir dire is for. And that's that process of going through questions with the potential jurors, because what happens is a summons goes out to many, many more people than the 12 who actually end up being on the jury, plus another four, in this case, maybe six alternates in case someone gets sick or can't participate or something like that. Many, many more people come in. They go through this jury selection process. They answer lots of questions.

And the questions and they answer questions sometimes on paper, which I think they will do in this case and also in the courtroom. So they can sometimes weed out some jurors by paper questions. Like if a juror says, I know I can't be fair and impartial because I think

Donald Trump is guilty or I think the government's on a witch hunt. Those are things where they would just be disqualified, really, before you even need to bring them into the courtroom for cause because of inability to be impartial. But in court on the day of jury selection, there's also the opportunity for all of the counsel, that's the prosecutors and the defense counsel, to ask questions.

of the juror. And that whole process is designed to try to come up with an impartial jury. And I know, Andrew, you have some examples of how that has worked, even with people who might have admitted later that, gosh, you know, they came in with a certain point of view. Right. But before we move on, and I want to hear that story, that anecdote, the other major tool is in the jury instructions at the both closing arguments and the jury instructions in closing arguments.

The law, including in the 11th Circuit, where the Southern District of Florida is, is very clear that it is not proper. It is objectionable for a defense counsel to actually ask in closing argument for nullification. That is not proper argument, and that would be struck if an attorney attempted to do that.

And also that it's not proper to give an instruction that tells the jury that it can nullify. In fact, the instructions in the 11th Circuit are just to the opposite. The pattern model instructions there say your decision must be based only on the evidence presented here. You must not be influenced in any way by either sympathy for or prejudice against the defendant or the government. And you must follow the law as I explain it. The I in that case being the judge.

You must not single out or disregard any of the court's instructions on the law. So the jury's actually told that's what it has to do. Now, again,

They don't get prosecuted if they don't follow those instructions. But these are the kind of tools, legal tools that are available to at least minimize the risk of that. And we know sometimes it helps. Like, I think you've found that, haven't you, Andrew? Just to your point about written questions, you know, in the Manafort trial, we had in the second trial that and he ended up pleading guilty the day before it was supposed to start. But we had 500 juror questionnaires filed.

And both sides reviewed all of that to look for the people who have to be weeded out for cause. And then you bring in, the court brings in everyone else, and then there's a process of talking to them. So there's a huge number of questions. The judge goes over the questions in the written questionnaire. She will have total control over what gets sent out.

And then in terms of questioning them, some judges actually let the parties do the questioning, even in federal court. It's much more common in state court to allow that. But in federal court, certain courts allow that. Other times, the parties give the questions to the judge and the judge decides which questions to ask. But there's a whole process to try and weed that out. The problem in a very high profile case is,

is that you occasionally have jurors who want to get on the jury. And that's pretty unusual because usually people are not sort of waking up in the morning saying, I can't wait to do jury service. You should, because it's a really wonderful experience. And I clerked for a judge who thought it was like military service. It was part of what it meant to be a citizen in this country was to do that service to the country, which is jury service.

But in any event, so the problem is that you have some people who really want to get on and they really have views and strong views and they either for a variety of reasons, they want to be on it. In one of the Enron cases, we had a problem with our foreperson

who ultimately ended up voting to convict, but during 10 days of deliberation, had all of the exhibits brought into the jury room and was copying them down verbatim so that he could write a book. Now, not joking, I have to say you knew that this was a sign of the politeness of people in Houston because I kept on thinking in my hometown

town of where I grew up as a prosecutor, if this had happened in Brooklyn, I think there would have been a revolt, if not physical harm to the juror if they deliberated for nine days or didn't deliberate for nine days just to write down things. But to leave this topic on a good note is that jurors

in general, take their oaths very, very seriously. They take an oath as a juror to follow the law and to assess the facts as presented in court, not anything that they read in the news or preconceived views that they have coming into the case. And the one juror in the first Manafort trial who spoke publicly said that she was a

a supporter of President Trump. She had a MAGA hat and she said she literally left her red MAGA hat in her car. And she said that Paul Manafort was guilty. She voted that way and she added as an aside, it would be a mistake to pardon him given what he did. And that's just an example of people can act out of principle.

Now, that doesn't mean that you don't take precautions to make sure that you don't have one or two or several jurors who are not going to do that. But I think most people who have dealt with jurors end up with a very good experience and think that people really do try to rise to the occasion. But that was a great question.

question mark. Let's move on, Mary, to a question that we have about fake electors, which I think is very timely in light of the fact that there is lots of effort of federal and state level with respect to examining this issue. And there may be charges at one or both of those levels.

Hi, guys. This is Dan. My question is, why are the fake electors any different than the rioters, and why can't you just charge them individually, one at a time, bang, bang, bang, bang, just like you're doing the rioters? Is there any downside to that, and isn't that a simple, straightforward thing to do? I know somebody has mentioned you want to do the big thing first so that if the big

Big thing fails, you can still charge the little thing, but it's a surface thing that they did the fake document. It's obviously fake. So why would that just not be similar to the rioters? All right, guys, we'll love the podcast and talk to you later. Bye. Well, thanks, Dan. I think that's a really terrific question. And I'm tempted to be a little glib and say the answer is yes.

meaning that it's totally fine. You can charge them both federally and under state law. And there are different types of laws that could be used either at the state level or the federal level. And Mary, do you agree that this is when, you know what? I agree. State and the feds can walk and chew gum. In other words, you can charge them and you can still go after the larger fish, so to speak. I do want to point out that there is a

potential defense that you do have to worry about. As a prosecutor, you think about what are the possible defenses. So the fake electors, one argument for at least some of them, I don't think it's going to be true at all for all of them, is that they were duped. And what I mean by that is that somebody could think,

There is a pending legal challenge in my state with respect to the election. If that were to prevail, there is a need to have the alternative slate of, alternative, not fake, alternative slate of electors prepared and ready in case the judge were to rule in favor of Donald Trump on that there should be an alternative slate. So if an elector thought that,

That would be what people have referred to as the Hawaii example, where this happened during the Kennedy election. And so there's nothing wrong with that. The problem is factually that for many of the so-called fake electors, that's not what was happening. And there are many facts that make it clear that some

of the electors were not duped at all. They were participating in the fraud. But it's important to segregate out those people who you think may have that defense and those people who you don't, who don't have that. And even for the ones who you think don't, you have to sort of be prepared with all of your proof as to how you're going to show that they weren't duped and this was actually part of a scheme to overthrow the will of the people.

And it also is something that, by the way, can be charged at the state level and it can be charged at the federal level. And of course, at the state level, one of the advantages is that it's pardon proof, regardless of who becomes president during the next upcoming election. Yeah, I

I agree that I think that prosecutors looking at this would want to really be thinking carefully about the relative culpability of the different individual fraudulent electors. But being duped itself is not like a legal defense. It would either have to be you were relying on the advice of counsel, which has its own criteria for it, or that you just didn't have the intent because and that's, I think, what you're getting at. Maybe with Duped, right? You really didn't have the intent to commit any kind of fraud because you actually thought. Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

So one of the things that I think is something to be considered by those looking into this federal prosecution and state prosecutors is that there were slates of alternate electors in a couple of states who, when they did meet and they cast their ballots and they signed a certification, they had a caveat on that, that this was only to be counted in the event that a court were to set aside or some other legal mechanism set aside

the ballots of the winning candidates, Biden and Harris. And five of the other states where we had these alternate slates did not do that. So when they were signing

the certification without any caveat in it. That's, I think, where you get into that. That's a fraudulent signature at that point, or that's arguably, I think this would be the argument, that's arguably committing fraud by signing something as though it's valid without any caveat on it. The other thing is, and Dan, this is why your question is so timely. Today, the

announcing charges being brought against the 16 fake electors in Michigan. And this was a state where they did not include any caveat on their certification of the ballots for Donald Trump. And we haven't had a chance, Andrew and I, to study the charging documents in that matter. But

That's a case of a state attorney general trying to seek accountability. I will also say that, you know, in my day job as an attorney working at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, my organization, ICAP, has co-counseled with another nonprofit in Wisconsin. And we represent some legitimate electors in Wisconsin in a lawsuit against the fraudulent electors in Wisconsin using civil mechanisms, not criminal mechanisms.

But using civil laws to seek an injunction and declaratory relief, meaning a declaration that this is unlawful. You can't go meet when your candidate didn't win and cast your electoral college ballots and submit them to the vice president as though they were legit and an injunction to prevent those.

electors, the Donald Trump electors, from doing that again in the future. So accountability comes in many ways. And of course, we're all still waiting to see what Fannie Willis will do in Georgia as a matter of state law and what Jack Smith will do in terms of his bigger January 6th investigation. So accountability can come under federal law, criminal law, state criminal law, or even on the civil side with civil causes of action like the case in

Yeah, I actually think parsing out the difference between criminal accountability and civil accountability will become relevant to this really excellent question about Rudy. Hi, my name is Renee.

My question actually was from last week with Giuliani's proffer. And if he had previously gotten an undated blanket pardon from Trump while Trump was still president, how could that affect the proffer if he shares incriminating information and then whips out this undated?

dated blanket pardon, does he get off scot-free? And then the blanket pardon would not affect Georgia. So I'm a little confused as to what

Giuliani is doing with the proffer? Really interesting question. There are lots of issues with pardons that are not decided by courts yet because we haven't really been in this situation. I'll say that there's no evidence that there has been this sort of anticipatory pardon by President Trump when he was president. It

It also, I think, would not be okay to give a pardon for future crimes. It would have to be for past crimes. So if Rudy Giuliani is being looked at for things that he did after...

January 20th, that would not be something that he could have a sort of a future pardon for. If he, though, did get a pardon already and it just hasn't been made public, there would be legal issues about whether that is valid if it hasn't gone through official channels. I think probably a court would say it is. The pardon power is extremely broad, but that has not been

I think it's more likely that what we would worry about is could Rudy Giuliani be pardoned in the future?

for any crimes that he's committed in the past. In other words, would Donald Trump in his second term or another Republican who is sympathetic be able to pardon him? And in that case, that on a federal level does wipe the slate clean to the extent of the pardon. Some pardons are very broadly written. Some are more narrowly written. But there's nothing you can do about that because it's in the Constitution. So it's an extremely broad sentence.

if there is a future pardon. Here's maybe a little bit of good news, which is that it does not affect state charges. So if there's a state investigation, that can go forward. And this is to Mary's point about the really excellent work that she does with her team at ICAP, which I really can't commend people enough to...

to go to their website to see the work that they do because it's really the kind of thing I look at and I'm just in awe of knowing the great work Mary did when she was in government and now looking at what she's doing and thinking, "Oh my God, how can you do better work

you know, from one thing to the next. But okay, I digress. So I think Rudy Giuliani is facing at least civil accountability. He is being sued in connection with the Dominion case. He is being sued by Ruby Freeman and her daughter in D.C. He has been sanctioned by Beryl Howell, the judge in that case, for discovery violations and been sanctioned to the tune of

six figures that he is going to have to pay. And he is facing disbarment proceedings in New York and in D.C. for his conduct. Now, I know that's not criminal exposure in terms of going to jail, but for somebody who used to be the mayor of New York and a senior official in the Department of Justice, this is quite...

a dispiriting turnaround. So there is at least those consequences. And remember, a federal pardon does not affect any civil case. Those things all go forward, even at the federal level. I think that, you know, again, the only place for criminal accountability would be out of the states. But I think we may see that the states have been a little bit slow to move forward. But now with

Michigan's activity today and we're looking to Fannie Willis to take action, there could still be criminal accountability. But for a lawyer like Mr. Giuliani, who has made so much of his money based on practicing law to

to face disbarment. And certainly the D.C. Court of Appeals Bar Committee was extremely strong in its recommendation of disbarment from Mr. Giuliani. And to face disbarment there and in New York, where he practices, that's the end of his career as a lawyer. He may try to do some other things, but he's always made his career around the law. So it is at least a measure of accountability. And I think this is a really good example of what we're seeing with

with respect to so many things involving January 6th is the importance of accountability. And it's not just something that is being left up to just the Department of Justice. There's, like you said, Andrew, so many different government officials and non-government actors, people injured and others who are taking action using the legal tools that are available to hold people to account. And that's important for our system of justice.

Absolutely. And it's so in keeping with what we're trying to do in the podcast, which is we're going to be so focused on the place where there can be accountability, which is in the courts and seeing how they act.

rise to the occasion or not at the federal and state level, and how they deal with the onslaught that is coming from Donald Trump and from his allies, because that is the last measure for them in terms of holding them to account because they don't have complete control over what can happen.

So I can't wait to get back to talk to you about everything that happens, especially with Judge Cannon and Mary to get your take and also for us to all be back together in the same time zone to be able to do this again. Me too. Looking forward to it. If you've got questions, you can leave us a voicemail at 917-342-2934.

Maybe we'll play it on the pod. Or you can email us at prosecutingtrumpquestions at NBCUNI.com. Thanks for listening. We'll be back next week with much more.

The senior producer for this show is Alicia Conley. Jessica Schrecker and Ivy Green are segment producers. Our technical director is Bryson Barnes. Bob Mallory is an audio engineer. Jim Maris Perez is the associate producer. And Rebecca Cutler is the senior vice president for content strategy at MSNBC. Search for Prosecuting Donald Trump wherever you get your podcasts and follow the series.

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.