that ensures we use community safety cameras to catch repeat offenders and hold them accountable. vote yes on e. welcome to this special edition of "the beat" with ari melber. we talk about history, we talk about precedents and the unprecedented. we're going to show you in our

special what we've been working on why we've lived through a truly historic week. and that is not a comment on politics or media, criticism or media speculation. i can tell you as a point of fact the supreme court ruling this week and the d.c. circuit court ruling this week will be taught in law schools and in books about american history for many decades to come. right now in those cases the supreme court is basically grappling with key issues involving citizen, defendant and candidate trump, which could shape not only this year's election, but legal and political boundaries in history as we know it. >> it's on this monumental day, judicial history. >> a legal case that could rock the race for the white house. >> donald trump is now at the center of a u.s. supreme court battle. >> considering whether the leading candidate for the republican presidential nomination should be banned from running again. >> it seemed like there were at least seven votes against

colorado. >> he is very much lashing back at a lot of the wave of all these different legal cases. >> that d.c. appeals court that had taken up this issue of presidential immunity, the court has denied trump's argument. >> if you read through the 57-page court order, you won't find a single sentence that favors or even slightly sympathizes with donald trump's argument. >> this is a big win for special counsel jack smith, and clearly a setback for former president donald trump. >> the intent to appeal this decision to the u.s. supreme court -- >> which is the legal equivalent of i want to speak to your manager. >> we know former president trump and his legal team are trying to do anything they can to delay. >> it's a landmark decision. >> i felt pride that the law still means something in this country. >> the law meant a lot across this week. these are precedents that matter

a tremendous amount. as you saw in that kind of, oh, wow, we lived through it, but a lot happened moments that we just showed you, even on fox, even out in the culture, and many other ways you can measure it with a lot of other things happening in the country, from super bowl to the grammys, this thing, these cases matter. colorado had basically anti-trump activists and other legal experts arguing that he should be struck from the ballot, basically potentially preventing him ever being elected if he's caught, you know, booted off several states' ballots. we have more on that big case that ended the week coming up later this hour. we begin with what is probably, best we can tell, the most significant set of legal developments, trump's criminal trial which is back on for plots to overthrow the election results culminating in january 6th. a federal appeals court, highest other than the supreme court, green lighting the case, and this is the jack smith trial. this is the multi-pronged effort

we've been documenting in the ways that donald trump tried to overturn the 2020 election. you can see in the upper left, starting in early november 2020, lawsuits which were allowed and the state plots, the congress plot, the pence plot, on and on. and the court has now set this precedent for holding someone accountable, even if they used to be president, rejecting what were those farfetched arguments that got so much attention, donald trump basically saying he should have permanent immunity and his lawyers saying that means if a president commits murder of american citizens and abuses power and is out of office afterward, even that isn't prosecutable. what happened this week, no former president has ever gotten in this much legal trouble or been indicted. this week is where an appeals court knocked down those bananas arguments by trump's lawyers and made this precedent. for this case, former president trump has become citizen trump. he will be prosecuted like anyone else if the system deems

that the just process. it also dealt with that bonkers immunity claim and said if trump were right about that, it would collapse our system of separated powers, placing the president beyond the reaches of all three branches, and telling him, no, you're wrong. donald trump has announced through his campaign and his lawyers, they will fight this all the way to the supreme court. as you can imagine with the other case i just mentioned, this court has to decide in both cases whether first to get involved, they already took the colorado case. if they do get involved, what to do. right now it is jack smith one, donald trump zero, with a brand new precedent saying no one, including a former president, is above the law. i told you this is a special we've been putting together, and boy, do we have verbal guests. andrew weissmann is a former prosecutor in the mueller probe with experience on all these issues, and we have the senior editor and legal correspondent for slate. welcome to both of you. andrew, i want to go big

picture, which is why i just showed here in "the beat" our producers and journalists put together that mash. it's broader than just legal junkies reacting to these cases. some americans feeling a little fatigued and hard to keep track of it all. starting with the d.c. circuit ruling, what does it tell you that it took the alleged criminality of donald trump to get this ruling, and what does it say for american law and accountability? >> i love that you're sort of pulling the lens back and thinking about the fatigue that people could feel. because sometimes i really think that what happens is we get enured to the day to day without sort of understanding that the process itself is in many ways the story. i keep on wondering, yes, we want to see criminal accountability, meaning there will be a verdict one way or the

other that the public is entitled to. but i think if we were to think three, four, ten years, you're saying historical relevance, i think people will look back on this claim of immunity that you're focusing on as the story. this isn't trump's lawyers saying it. this is trump saying it. the leading candidate in the republican party saying that i should be -- the way i view the presidency and the role of the president is outside of the bounds of the other branches of government. that i literally could kill somebody as president and get away with it. that that is an appropriate function for a president of the united states. i think that is the picture. that is sort of regardless of what would happen in a criminal

case. that is where we are in this country. in many ways, it's the message, and in some ways i think it is what we are experiencing in the course of these litigations that's the message. i think we tend to forget that because we're so focused on where does it go on the clock, when is he going to have his trial, will it happen before the election. but if you stop to think about what it is that somebody is saying who is running for president, and not just running but succeeding so far in running for president, i think that's really the story. >> yeah, i appreciate you putting it that way, the heft and substance of that. if this wasn't such a big news week, i would pull him out on screen and have him say you know nothing of my work and how you became a professor of film or in this case law is beyond him. we don't have time for that kind

ofhijinx. the news anchor is telling me it's historic. but best we can understand, this d.c. circuit ruling on accountability will be taught for decades to come? >> ari, i think i would probably pick up exactly where andrew just left off, which is every other institution has had its crack, right? we had an impeachment. we had a massive investigation and report. we've seen a bunch of criminal cases filed, a bunch of civil cases filed. this in some sense is an historic week because this is when it all lands at the doorstep of the supreme court and the d.c. circuit. in some sense, if we believe that institutions held in the last election and that they're holding now, this is the moment

where we get to kind of ponder that as lawyers and people who watch the courts. and i think maybe this country is so obsessed with the arc of trials, right? trials are -- if you're a country that thinks about rule of law, if you're a country that thinks about accountability in any meaningful way, then this is an historic moment we're seeing sort of the output of what a system of rule of law looks like. what does this come to, what does this mean? and it goes to andrew's point about time. we're doing this under, like, a shot clock, right? we are obsessed with how many convictions we can get, can we get him knocked off the ballot, and we're doing it through this lens, this very compressed lens of all of this needs to happen before next november.

and i think that that is a really inept way to look at the story of how trials work and how the rule of law works. so i think we're just in this very, very strange, and i agree with you, historic moment, where it's kind of the court's turn to step in and other institutions have done their piece, and the anxiety around whether this can get done in time to print ballots or get done in time to have a felony conviction before an election, that's a little bit ancillary. that's an anxiety we're imposing and we're frustrated about that time. but i think this is how the system works and we are sort of standing in the midst of it watching that play out. >> yeah, and to that point, andrew, there are legal facts. some legal issues are debatable and lawyers get paid, in part, to try to make the area of debate wider than it might be. but there is still an obligation of truth in court, there is still perjury, there is still

being an officer of the court. and i say that because donald trump's impeachment lawyer said a true thing that everyone knew to be true, former presidents can be charged. take a look. >> after he's out of office, you go and arrest him. so there is no opportunity where the president of the united states can run rampant in january at the end of his term and just go away scot-free. the department of justice does know what to do with such people. >> andrew, that trump lawyer was referring to what is sometimes called black letter law or established precedent or, of course, nixon took the pardon because he could have been charged. it was controversial for other reasons. everyone understood, of course, we can be charged. you can't charge a sitting president by his own employees because of the structural complexity. but if you did something bad enough, you could be impeached and then charged. we've spent months until this

week with people trying to double-check or sort of look at the bananas baseless argument that, no, you get lifetime immunity. we've just never heard about it before. with that comes the license to clear, which as fun as it may be in a .007 film, we don't want to live in a country with a president with a license to kill others. speak to us again from this bigger altitude for our special tonight about why that ruling matters and why trump's own lawyers were admitting the obvious and we just had to spend a while through the looking glass, as if this was a close debate. >> well, i would note that that statement that you just played was one of the things that was relied on by the d.c. circuit. >> right. >> saying, you know, you might be saying this now, but that is not what you said before. in a normal case, that would

lead to a waiver, meaning if you took a contrary position and people relied on it, you don't get to change your mind later with no cost to it. i think to go back to the point that we're talking about in terms of big picture, not looking at the end result but the process, i do think that the topic you're raising feeds into that. remember donald trump saying, you know, it's important to have immunity because -- one example he gave was harry truman, he would not have been able to make the difficult decision about whether a bomb should be dropped to what he hoped would be the end of world war ii. well, that makes no sense for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which there wasn't presidential immunity, there isn't presidential immunity, and he still made the decision. it is just a nonsensical

argument that this is something that's structurally needed. what it tells you is that when donald trump says i am going to be a dictator, i am going to run as if there are no other branches that should have a hold on the presidency, and then tries to walk that back to say, well, i really just meant only on day one, that's not the argument he is making in court. that is not what he's saying how he views the presidency. he has told the court how he views the presidency, which it is above and beyond any sort of check by the other branches. and you have the court saying that is not america. so, again, the process is bringing out the truth of who people are, and that could be true for any candidate. but with donald trump, you get to see in real time what he's

saying he's running on. >> yeah. running over on time, dalia, i'll give you 30 seconds and the hardest question. is our republic in a better place after this week or too early to tell? >> too early to tell. but i think that the system is holding so far, and i think that there's a good chance, ari, that the supreme court maybe does the wrong thing on the colorado case, but the right thing on immunity. and that's sort of a split the baby resolution that will be, i think, in the long run, a decent resolution. >> interesting. i want to thank you for joining our special. andrew, the mic is hot, and we are asking you to stick around later for something special. so thanks to both of you. we're going to get into these other unprecedented arguments. first, maga lawmakers say mike pence's decision to support the united states constitution was wrong. why are they saying that?

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top republicans in washington say that mike pence who was, of course, credited by many people, including, in fairness some conservatives and republicans at the time when he said the constitution governs, not donald trump's demands, and certainly not the violent threats that he faced on january 6th. now they're saying he got it wrong, and if they get a do-over, they would do it differently. take congresswoman stefanik, in-house leadership, she got the post after they ousted liz cheney for standing up for the constitution. here is what she says. >> i would not have done what mike pence did. i don't think that was the right approach. i specifically stand by what i said on the house floor, and i stand by my statement, which was there was unconstitutional overreach. there was unconstitutional overreach in states like pennsylvania.

we need to make sure the election is constitutionally legal. >> fact check, false. you've heard me say republicans have every right to discuss and debate and raise the issues they have with that election. indeed, we have a top republican linked official coming up later this program, in this special. that is different from saying that a sitting member of the outgoing administration should abuse power and use elector fraud to try to override the actual rightful lawfully submitted state electors. now, what she said is not criminal because she's voicing her opinion. if she did what she says she wanted to do, if she abused that power in office, she might become a co-conspirator to that plot if they try it again. watch the plans because they're being discussed in the open. senator vance said he would have taken a different tack. >> if i would have been vice

president, i would have told the states like pennsylvania, georgia, and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors and the congress should have fought over it. that is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks think had a problem in 2020. i think that's what we should have done. >> if you were watching that clip, say, online or on tiktok or tv, you might see someone in a suit using their words, talking about multiple slates of electors. it sounds almost normal, even boring to some people. what he's doing because he's a skilled communicator, i'll give him that, is using that language to cover up for something that actually is currently an indicted criminal conspiracy plot. the pressure campaign in the indictment, of course, discusses all of this. jack smith indicted the underlying behavior and the electors that were being falsely submitted to pence. it's notable that vance and stefanik are being floated as

potential vp picks for donald trump. a running mate, who if elected, would have pence's spot and be in a position to do that for whatever donald trump wanted, whether it was an illegal third term or just a, quote, unquote, stealing of the race for a different republican. how seriously should we take all of this? we bring in someone who has served as special counsel to congressional probes, and former federal prosecutor, john flannery. welcome, sir. >> good to be with you. >> good to have you. as i mentioned, politicians, including members of congress in the speech and debate clause, can say many things. even if we might find them completely objectionable, horrific, some things they say. what they are talking about is conduct that, if they did it, they could be running mates, they could be vice presidents, and now they're saying we would take what has been indicted as fraudulent electors and use that to overthrow the election. is that them floating essentially a criminal plot? >> well, it's a coup 2, i

suppose, if the circumstances are similar to what happened in the first effort at a coup that failed, the insurrection, and trump lost and biden won, we could be in the same place if we didn't prepare for it. you ask, what should we do in anticipation, and i think we have to take it seriously. you have two people and there are others saying that in order to be vp, they're prepared to commit the crime that pence would not commit. and keep in mind, and you and i have been over this, i think this is closer to home, in article 14, section 3, they took an oath. and you just heard them talk about how they did what they did then and they're prepared to do it again, i suppose, and they should be barred from appearing. and i think if we get into this problem with coup 2 and people are wondering how to deal with it, we can't be arresting them on the floor of the house when it goes off the rails. assuming there's a republican control of the house and

republican control of the senate. and so what we have to do is anticipate that. i think the way we anticipate it is if peer put on notice that they're going to violate their oath and try to overthrow the government in a new and fine way in their mind, and they present this clear and present danger to our democracy, i think we have to deal with it. i think we have to deal with these two people. we make the mistake too often of laughing this off. we did nothing with the senators and the members of the congress when this arose to investigate them. >> john, and senator vance is pretending to be a sort of normal establishment figure. he is obviously an autocratic extremist if he is saying, yes, the elector fraud, the indicted crime should be the fruits of overturning the election. so that's two crimes for one, john, because the elector fraud is what creates the lie, the pretext, and then overturning

the election is the second big crime. but i'm emphasizing this tonight because you might see him, if donald trump gets the nomination, he's one of the people you might see on the running mate stage. he'll go to wall street and sit with bankers and they'll say he's smart and an ivy league guy. he's saying it's more complicated than that. he's not selling this, i would note, to the most proud boy militia rally. he's trying to sell it to the rest of the elites, which is dangerous in a different way. stefanik has had a whole evolution, so you know he's basically completely changed her positions. now she's selling trump's license to kill stuff, which andrew and i were discussing earlier. take a look. >> of course the president has presidential immunity. you can't handcuff a sitting president of the united states for future presidents to go after them. it would not allow them to do their job in their official capacity. i expect the supreme court will overturn that as well. >> john?

>> astonishing, and it doubles down on exactly the category we were discussing, which is that we have people in the congress that are the enemy of the people in a very real sense of democracy and of the constitution, and of the notion that we don't have kings. you're not even supposed to accept favorites from nations like great britain that might confer honors on us. she's overthrowing the position that republicans have had until the last 20 years, 10 years, and she's taking on the notion we can't win electionness a democratic way so we have to seize it to take it. she's transparent in her purpose. and for her to say that the supreme court -- i hate to say this, but the supreme court has no trust in america in the sense you can't believe they're not going to make a hack choice because they got there the way they did, and i think they're intimidating the other three justices as to how they handle, for example, barring trump from

being on the ballot. so america is in a situation which we've gotten ourselves in this by not dealing with the problems as they arose, one by one. >> i'm only smiling -- why am i smiling? there's probably layers. once is how much i like and look up to you because you're john flannery. i'm smiling because we don't have the evidence. we're watching that case. >> are you questioning my credibility? >> not your credibility, counselor. just you're laying it out, and we will see. we'll follow that evidence, because we've been covering that case as well. but we value your views and we don't have all one note views here. i hope you're having a great weekend and thank you for joining us. >> thank you for allowing me to join you. i enjoyed it. thank you very much. >> yes, sir. we have a lot coming up, including someone who knows that ken starr era of special

prosecutors. this person knows it inside and out and we're going to have that as a special interview before the hour is done. plus, the supreme court confronting the violent part of the shameful violent criminal insurrection. who said that? donald trump's own lawyer, caught not so much on tape, but under oath admitting on behalf of his client before the supreme court that it was shameful violence. stay with us. the start of a domino effect of gum disease. all of these signs could lead to worse. parodontax is clinically proven to reverse the signs of early gum disease. parodontax, the gum experts. meet the jennifers. jen x. jen y. and jen z. each planning their future through the chase mobile app. jen x is planning a summer in portugal with some help from j.p. morgan wealth plan. let's go whiskers. jen y is working with a banker to budget for her birthday. you only turn 30 once. and jen z? her credit's golden. hello new apartment.

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during this big week for law and justice in america, the supreme court also heard the trump ballot ban case over whether a state could ban trump as an insurrectionist. the stakes are high and here is how it played out. >> the supreme court heard arguments about whether colorado can ban republican front-runner donald trump from the ballot, with the justices sounding skeptical. >> there's clearly five votes, if not nine, that are going to reverse this case. >> i think the advocates for disqualification probably expected a cold reception, but this was perfectly glacial. >> justices from across the idealogical spectrum, for better or worse, are saying this shouldn't be up to colorado. >> everybody's eyebrows shot up to their hairline today when center left justice kagan said this. >> i think the question that you have to confront is why a single state should decide who gets to be president of the united states.

>> the court largely avoided discussion of whether january 6th was an insurrection. >> it's not like it's every day that people try to overthrow the government. >> there's a reason section 3 has been dormant for 150 years and it's because we haven't seen anything like january 6th since reconstruction. insurrection against the constitution is something extraordinary. >> this was a riot, not an insurrection. the events were shameful, criminal, but did not qualify as insurrection as that term is used in section 3. >> why would you allow someone to run for office if they are ineligible to hold that office, i don't know. >> they're creating their own special off-ramp and they're building it out themselves. >> you sort of feel like the justices are hurtling their bodies against the sides of the train, just being, like, get me off this train. >> get me off this train. the justices appointed by both parties, including the new biden justice, seem skeptical of colorado taking this measure to ban trump from the ballot.

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if congress has the ability to lift the vote by a two-thirds majority, then surely it can't be right that one house of congress can do the exact same thing by a simple majority. >> yeah, there certainly is some tension, justice kagan, and some

commentators have pointed this out. >> then i must be right. >> one of the few lighter moments and jokes during the oral arguments this week. that was justice kagan, appointed by obama, who like her republican-appointees counterparts was skeptical of colorado's effort to ban trump from the ballot. we are joined by a special guest i previewed earlier, robert wray was the former independent counsel in the clinlten area. he replaced ken starr and defended donald trump during the first impeachment. he wrote a brief in support of trump's position in this case. welcome. >> thank you. it's always a pleasure to be with you. >> great to have you. one thing i've found all lawyers like is to be heading toward a win. i mentioned you're amicus because you said colorado was wrong and it seems like you have eight, maybe nine votes agreeing with you. what did you think of what we heard in the oral argument?

>> you know, it's always, of course, hazardous to guess just based on oral argument what the outcome will be because every good lawyer knows, you know that there are times when the questioning doesn't necessarily reflect the outcome or the thinking of the justice. but i think in this one, i think i agree with some of what you had previewed about the case, that the supreme court is looking for an off-ramp here for practical reasons. i think justice kagan is right that you can't have a system in which every state gets to decide the qualifications for office for the president of the united states. and i think, as others mentioned, i think she was one of them, as well as amy coney barrett. this looks like a federal issue where congress should step in first and set the ground rules where you have states decide on their own how to handle a presidential election. at least insofar as it relates to something crucial like a qualification for office. that's what i think.

i mean, there are other issues in the case. i think the off-ramp here is likely to be that congress has to act first. but i don't think that's one that the supreme court newly has to create. i think it was created by a chief justice, not chief justice john roberts, but chase in the 1860s, an abraham lincoln appointee, who knew about that era and knew about what the purposes were of the 14th amendment. >> yeah. and as you say, that came up in the case, and i'm only jumping in because before we move on, i'm curious what you thought of the ability of the trump lawyers to try to get the court thinking about this as really a remedy issue and not a politician issue. let's stipulate that there are people who strongly believe donald trump should lose or not run, and there are others who strongly believe robert menendez should lose or not run. let's say they have strong views. the court seemed concerned about

backing that debate up to ballot eligibility rather than other ways, the more traditional way, shall we say. do you think the lawyering helped move the ball toward that? >> i do. i think that president trump's lawyers were very able on the point of not taking any position more than was necessary in order to prevail. so what i mean by that is they were very careful to sort of zero in on, look, you sort of start with the notion that the 14th amendment, section 3, deals with the ability of somebody to hold office. not what the qualifications are determined at the time of ballot eligibility. and i think that gives some pause and something for the supreme court to think about. i think the issue also about whether or not the president is an officer of the united states, at one time that issue was dismissed as an eccentric position, to take the one we

took in the amicus brief, a close look at the constitution suggests that the president is not an officer of the united states. and i think the supreme court may have something to say about that as well. i know that a number of the justices, particularly the newest justice, justice jackson, was very -- seemed to be concerned about that issue, as was justice gorsuch. >> i'll jump in to say fact check true, because i was in the room, i could see her. you can glean more, she leaned in and agreed with kavanaugh, she was warm to that argument. it may sound wonky, but the point is whether in this case you have five or more justices to go with it. so that's really interesting. while i have you, i mentioned you supported the trump position in that case. but given your history, i'm curious, do you accept the generally understood law that a

former president can be prosecuted in america? >> well, of course. i mean, you know, i certainly had a hand in that. i certainly believe that bill clinton, once he left office, could be prosecuted, even though he would at that point be a former president, and it was the threat of that prosecution and the commissioning of a grand jury that enabled that resolution to be achieved so that i could exercise my discretion and decline to prosecute him, but full well knowing and i think he full well knew that he was subject to prosecution once he left office, just as richard nixon was subject to prosecution, until such time as president ford thereafter granted him a pardon. to answer your question, ari, the immunity case and the argument from the president's lawyers that double jeopardy applies as a result of the second impeachment, that's obviously, i think, all can recognize, that much heavier lift. i'm not saying they're

necessarily wrong. i think they have an argument. i think it's likely that either the d.c. circuit and/or the supreme court of the united states may have to reach that issue as well. >> let me slow you down. >> i do think it's important. >> you're jumping to the ultimate argument on double jeopardy issues. before you jump ahead. you're a smart, fast lawyer. you keep it moving. let me remind viewers. here was kavanaugh on that issue. >> just to be clear, under 2383, you agree that someone could be prosecuted for insurrection by federal prosecutors and if convicted could be, or shall be disqualified then from office? >> yes, but the only caveat that i would add is that our client is arguing that he has presidential immunity, so we would not concede that he can be prosecuted for what he did on january 6th. >> understood. >> that was a very telling moment, robert. i want to remind everyone, and you alluded to it, this is the supreme court kind of briefly

touching on that other case where jack smith is trying to put trump on trial. you mentioned nixon knew he needed the pardon because otherwise he could be prosecuted. clinton knew the same thing and negotiated the deal not with ken starr, but with you, ken starr's replacement. since this is one of our specials, we dug into the archives and here we have that moment. >> the nation's interests have been served, and therefore i decline prosecution. >> interesting to see it now. you declined prosecution because it was well understood that you could prosecute him once he left office. do you expect the supreme court to take this challenge by trump's lawyers, and if so, what would they do with it? >> well, ari, it puts them in a very difficult position, because ordinarily in criminal cases you don't have a right to

interlocktory appeal, and then you can raise all of the issues that come up during and including whether you had a valid motion to dismiss the indictment. this is a little different because this is an immunity and potentially a double jeopardy argument, one of the few exceptions to the general rule that appeals in criminal cases are not permitted. so the supreme court has got to consider, if it thinks it's an important issue, whether to take the case now and really shouldn't allow the case to go forward unless it thinks the argument is completely frivolous. in the d.c. circuit it was 3-0, including an appointee of a republican administration, so it's not like the colorado ballot case where the lower court, the colorado supreme court, the issue was split 4-3. there was unanimity in the d.c. circuit. it will be interesting to see on monday what president trump's

lawyers decide to do. are they going to take it to a full court or petition directly to the supreme court for the supreme court's review. i don't know. and i think it's kind of a toss-up as to whether the supreme court takes the case. and if they do take the case, all i will say is it's a much heavier lift than the colorado ballot case from president trump's side. >> really interesting. i'm glad you could come back for the special and get your very historically steeped perspective. thank you, robert. >> thanks. i was glad you were in the courtroom. it was a good day. >> interesting. it was very interesting, yes, sir. before we go, we've got to bring in andrew weissmann. we could learn a lot from all the people with experience. i did want to get your reaction to anything we just heard. >> i'm very interested on what's going to happen on monday, because that is the deadline by which, if donald trump does not indicate to the d.c. circuit that he is filing an appeal in

the supreme court, the mandate, that is the green light essentially or the football is going to be handed off and back to judge chutkan. so the one area where i slightly disagree with mr. wray, who i greatly respect, is that i think that means that donald trump really by monday is going to seek a stay in the supreme court and the big open issue is what the supreme court will do. my own view is that even if it wants to put its premature on the issue, i don't think it would be to overrule the circuit, i think it would be to affirm it. >> what did you think of hearing a donald trump lawyer, saying, of course, you can prosecute a former president? >> well, you know who also seems to have said exactly that is

brett kavanaugh, because brett kavanaugh also, who is now on the supreme court, obviously, was part of that same group of special counsel, and obviously thought that bill clinton when out of office would be able to be prosecuted for crimes. let's call it for what it is. the only person who is really saying that is somebody who is currently indicted, trying to figure out how to -- >> trying to duck a trial. >> is failed in the district court, it has failed in the court of appeals. if the supreme court takes it, it will fail there. it is really, it's strategy that defense counsel has which is delay. that is really the purpose, not really the merits of the case. >> yeah, andrew weissmann on more than one topic on this special historic week, thank you, sir. we'll be right back.

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tonight on "the reidout" -- >> i would not have done what mike pence did. i don't think that was the right approach. it was unconstitutional overreach in states like pennsylvania. it's very important we continue to stand up for the constitution and have legal and secure elections which we did not have in 2020. >> elise stefanik knows going full election denier will boost her chances of winning the apprentice autocracy season one with the dubious prize of becoming trump's running maim, hang mike pence not withstanding. her absurd comments kept a week of republican embarrassments which included knifing the border bill they demanded and