so if all of a sudden the constitutional system, other actors in the system say, i don't know about that, then the court really begins to lose influence. i think that's be dangerous game that it's playing. because it's acting as if the public does not matter, and they can kind of do whatever it wants. it is really risking a situation in which a critical percentage of the public just decides to say, no, we don't have to listen to you at all. >> that's the kind of crisis situation that i worry about and i think maybe barreling towards us. the column is called the supreme court is playing a dangerous game, in the new york times. jamelle bouie, thank you, sir. that is all in for the week. alex wagner starts right now with my good friend ali velshi for alex burg is been a lot of news to get through tonight. you have yourself a great weekend. see you next week. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. with the glaring exception of mike pence, prominent republican leaders across the country have pretty much all

fallen in line behind donald trump. he is the presumptive republican nominee as far as the presidential race is concerned. the republican party is a pretty united front but when you look at the republican party beyond the scope of just the cult of trump. when you look at the part of the party that donald trump would actually have to work with to govern, unity is not the first word that comes to mind. today the republican-controlled house of representatives. states biggest legislative accomplishments so far. it voted to keep the lights on. after kicking the can down the road for six whole months, republicans in congress finally funded the federal government with a $1.2 trillion spending bill and most of them didn't even vote to do that. despite having the majority in the house, only about a half of today's votes came from republicans. it was democrats who actually brought this fundraising extension over the finish line and because congress took so long to pass this thing, it's actually going to keep the government funded through the end of september, which means we have six months and then we are right back into this totally unnecessary mess again.

and i'm not kidding when i say that this is the bare minimum. this vote to just fund the government, to keep it open, to keep the lights on, i'm not kidding when i say it's the biggest thing the republican- controlled house has managed to get done. don't take that from me. remember this outburst from the texas republican congressman chip roy last november? >> one thing. i want my republican colleagues to give me one thing, one that i can go campaign on and say we did. one! anybody sitting in the complex, you want to come down to the floor, come explained to me one material, meaningful, significant thing the republican majority has done besides, well, i guess it's not as bad as the democrats. >> when chip roy made that plea it was republican colleagues last november. this session of congress was on track to be the least

productive session since the great depression and in the four months since chip roy's speech, the republican- controlled house of representatives has accomplished nothing. no aid package for ukraine, even as ukrainian troops are literally running out of bullets. no border deal, even after house republicans spent months hyping one and then negotiating for one that they could agree to. all republican speaker mike johnson and his colleagues have done for months now is waste everybody's time. but again, why take my word for that? today was colorado republican congressman ken buck's last day. he resigned earlier. here he was last week explaining why he was calling it quits. >> this place just keeps going downhill and i don't need to spend my time here. >> that's the kind of statement

you might expect from a disaffected middle manager at starbucks, not a sitting member of congress. congress is supposed to be the greatest legislative body in the world, not a place where people think they're wasting their time. but it's not just ken buck who thinks it's a waste of time. this session of congress has seen more members resigned than any other session on record. it's literally unprecedented, and that makes sense. if you're not a clown, why stick around this long at the clown show? but with all these resignations also comes a glimmer of hope. maybe republicans want to be in charge that much longer, because today we saw yet another resignation announcement. the wisconsin republican congressman and rising star mike gallagher, mike gallagher only announced his resignation today. his actual last day is going to be april 19, which under wisconsin state law, it is too late in the session for his seat to be filled with a special election, meaning that gallagher's deeply red district

seat will remain vacant until january, and all of this is to say that come april 20, the house republican majority will have a one-vote leave and the republican party isn't exactly the poster child of unity now. last week was supposed to be the big annual retreat for house republicans, the retreat where they discussed their legislative priorities and they strategize for the months ahead. i say it was supposed to be that because more than half the house republican caucus just didn't show up. one republican member of congress anonymously told both axios and politico, quote, i'd rather sit down with hannibal lector and eat my own liver. that is one dissatisfied worker right there. and then today the far right congresswoman marjorie taylor greene filed a motion to oust the republican speaker of the house, her speaker, mike johnson, from his position. and while i don't actually think anything will come of representative green's motion,

at least not today, i do think the reasoning behind her motion is notable. she was upset that speaker johnson passed the spending bill today to keep the government's lights on. that was a big complaint. and now tonight, that spending bill, the very basic bill that all but for the republican party a house in the house tonight, that bill is still stuck in the senate where senators have until midnight to pass it or a huge chunk of the federal government in fact will shut down. and one of the key things to watch tonight is if any one senator pushes for amendments, because that could tank the bill. the house is no longer in session, so they'd essentially be sending the bill back to an empty house. as democratic senator sheldon whitehouse puts it tonight, looks like we are headed for asia down at the hands of senate republican gremlins who know that amendments can't pass because there is no house to send an amendment to. he continued, i sure hope i'm wrong but the republican senate caucus is a rudderless ship

right now so the gremlins are running the show, and quote. our national political discourse is centered primarily around how donald trump is able in a china shop. he's antidemocratic. he's xenophobic. he's an existential threat to our nation. but even without him, the republican party right now is dangerous. they are dangerously bad at doing their job and the americans and the world needs america and its key lawmaking body to function right now. joining us, msnbc contributor and columnist charlie sykes and brendan buck, former msnbc political analyst and former house press secretary to speaker john weiner. brendan, you've seen shows, they're not really like this. you've seen shows before where there's been disarray. you certainly were press secretary to a speaker who had

to wrangle a herd of cats. this is unlike anything any of us have ever seen before. >> yeah. bleak is the word that comes to mind and i have a hard time disagreeing with any of your intraday. where does it start? this is bordering on a completely wasted congress and for all of the effort and all of the hyping the republicans did coming in, and how they were going to change washington and do all of these things, they are probably going to end this congress having done literally nothing other than fund the government and increase the debt limit. now there is still a chance. i'm not ruling out the idea that mike johnson could bring up some aid to ukraine and israel and do something really meaningful here. but i think what marjorie taylor greene did today was almost entirely about ukraine. it was about getting attention for herself, of course, but

that was her shop to mike johnson saying don't you dare bring up any ukraine aid, not a single dollar can go there or i'm going to take you out. now i don't know whether she'll be successful with that. i don't know whether democrats will go along with that, but the one thing they could get done and still save the congress having some record of a compliment, she's now done a shot across the bow and i don't know if this is the type of speaker who is going to be willing to risk his job for something like that. >> charlie, what's your take on all of this and how it's going down? >> i mean, look, governing is hard. legislating his heart and this is what happens when you have a party that is not serious about either one of them. they are in this do loop of dysfunction, as you mentioned, and now, watching the majority go to one, you do wonder what's going to happen. i know mike gallagher pretty well. i know that brendan probably does, as well. this is a rising star in the republican party and he's basically said i don't want to

be part of this anymore. you are seeing this exodus, this brain drain from people who go, you know what, maybe if i stuck around i could be speaker, but why would i want to do that, why would i want to sit in this caucus for two more years with marjorie taylor greene and lauren boebert and matt gates? and so they are leaving and the result is this complete do- nothing congress. now i think the interesting question is what do democrats do? do they bail out speaker johnson? do they use this dysfunction as a way to leverage aid for israel and ukraine? we are in totally unprecedented waters but again, it is amazing. you're going into an election year, a presidential election year, and the republican party is putting its own unwillingness to act like a serious governing political party on vivid display on a regular basis, to become a bloodsport. how many speakers do they have to sacrifice on the altar of marjorie taylor greene at matt gaetz's extremism before they settle down to actually doing the business of the country?

>> this is a good question. what do democrats do about this? there have been instances in the last several months where democrats, even while mccarthy was speaker, help out. they helped out the speaker against the anarchy that might otherwise rule. but at some point, the whole thing is unclear. it's not clear whether mike johnson is actually worried about his speaker rolled. he says he's just focusing on the business of the house except there is no actual business of the house. you've got the marjorie taylor greenes. you've got this rule that they can vacate the chair if one person calls for it and they can vote on it. if you are democrats in the house, do you wish to extend a hand to save this or do you wish for this to sort of collapse under its own weight so that something else can happen? >> i think it probably depends on what happens next. obviously we saw with kevin mccarty, they made the decision that it's really not their problem to save them and they were happy to see him go. now that was probably the result of a lot of distrust

that built up over a long period of time. i don't know that that distrust exists with mike johnson but i'm pretty sure the scenario in which marjorie taylor greene brings a motion to vacate would be around johnson living ukraine aid. that's something that democrats want, so i'm not so sure that democrats are going to do the same thing as last time, if the context is they're trying to kick him out for doing something that democrats wanted. that is not a good place to be if you are the speaker, having to rely on the minority to save your job, and it's a terrible way for him to be able to negotiate something. because you know marjorie taylor greene is going to be breathing down his neck the entire time. is terrible politics within his own conference. she's just going to be criticizing him as cooperating with the minority. so i think they would probably say, and you've seen some

comments already from democrats, saying if he's going to bring up what he knows is the right to do, we'll probably save them. i just don't know if he's the type of person who would be willing to put himself in that position in the first place and test it. >> the interesting thing, charlie, you and i have talked about, is the chaos caucus is a minority. there are almost as many republicans who won and biden district tubelike to be reelected again, and yet this entire discussion is weird because it's all things that happened, happened in the republican conference because of these chaos people. it's not even the rump of the republican conference, which is interesting to me. >> yes, and they've allowed themselves to be held hostage by this because the alternative, as brendan points out, relying on democrat votes, in effect creating a coalition government. but we know how that would play with the republican base, and of course the gorilla in the room here is what is donald trump going to do. what would happen if mike johnson did cut a deal with democrats? what would the word be from mar- a-lago?

part of the problem is this chaos caucus is egged on and encouraged by the leader of the republican party, donald trump, and donald trump thrives on this. he doesn't want to see a functional congress. i don't think he would mind seeing a government shutdown. he's certainly not going to support ukraine aid. so this is -- it's hard to figure out exactly how republicans managed to come out of this looking like anything other than a clown car on fire. >> except, brendan, for a few key people in that chaos bunch, members of the conference, they're actually doing okay with it. here is greg murphy, the republican congressman from north carolina on newsmax tonight, talking about something that's been happening in the last few days. >> sadly enough, i just got a text not 30 minutes ago from marjorie saying that i'm wanting to raise money on this. met gates raised money all week on the whole time he was creating chaos. this is not what it's supposed

to be. this is not what adult in the room do. >> so there is some motivation for this, other than chaos, rendon. some people are enjoying this. i don't know what the endgame is for the marjorie taylor greenes of the world, matt gaetz, out of chaos, but there are people who are actually giving them money to say, keep doing what you're doing. >> this is what they're after. marjorie taylor greene filed a motion to vacate and stepped out of the capitol and they were almost 100, it seemed like, reporters piled around her. that's what she wanted. she wants to be able to have us talking about her. she wants to be able to fund raise but it's not just her. this is the game right now. these are the incentives. every single one of them is out for themselves. as we all know, politics is supposed to be a team sport. you can't get anything done unless you are working as a team but everybody out there sees this. everybody so what met tasted.

he traveled around with the president, they'll want to be like that and the irony is, as much as these guys are blowing up the house, all they are doing is empowering democrats. as you pointed out, the bill today was overwhelmingly passed by democrats. anything that happens in the house right now has to have democrats hands on it. there were no conservative goals and that's been the maddening parts all along. these people that blow up the system in the name of conservatism only make things work toward democrats every single time they do it >> thanks for your time tonight, we appreciate it. charlie sykes is an msnbc columnist, brandon buck is former press secretary to the former speaker of the house. we got much more to get to tonight including prompt's upcoming return to wall street, which has sparked a meme stock like crazy, but is it something he can cash in on to post bond? first, over in moscow, the russian investigative committee says more than 60 people are now that after gunmen opened fire in a concert hall. isis is now claiming response ability. i'll talk to a reporter about that next. that next. is he? confidently walking 8 long haired dogs

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by downloading duckduckgo on all your devices today. a claim of responsibility for a major terror attack in moscow tonight has apparently come from a branch devices. at least 60 people have been killed and 145 others reportedly including children have been wounded in a concert hall on the outskirts of moscow. those casualty figures come from the russian investigative committee, which means they are tough for us to verify. isis has provided no proof of its involvement in the attack

or for its claim that the attackers escaped safely. the claim of responsibility was posted on a social media site by the isis affiliated newsagency, i mock. we do know from verified videos from the scene is that the gunmen wearing camouflage started firing on a crowd gathered for a friday night concert by a popular russian rock band and witnesses say the attackers tossed incendiary devices around, as well. fire then broke out, engulfing much of the building and causing a partial roof collapse according to the russian state run media. the massive security breach comes just days after vladimir putin cemented his rule over russia for another six years after a tightly orchestrated presidential election in which he faced no legitimate opposition. joining me now is the nbc news reporter matthew bodner, who has covered russia for quite sometime. thanks for being with us. i know you've been working your sources. what are you hearing this could be? there is a whole lot of confusion as to who is behind

it. a group has claimed responsibility but that's not completely verified just yet. >> correct. i think this is really going to be, moving into tomorrow and through the weekend, kind of the core issue of the story moving forward is who actually did this and more importantly, who is the kremlin saying did this. i think that's really the crux of this. we have course have that claim from an isis media outlet that isis did it and an isis group is responsible. also claiming that at least some of the attackers seem to have made it back to their bases wherever they were operating from so it does seem that this may be ongoing a little bit. but i think this question of who did it is going to be important because basically already from the kremlin, from russian sources, we are hearing all kinds of things but one of them that really stands out to me is the editor-in-chief of russia today, one of i would say the two main chief propagandists for lack of a

better word in russia, alleging, seeming to cast doubt on the isis claim, calling it fake news and i think the fact that the united states is coming out saying that we were warning about a potential isis event, we shared information with the russians that we don't know how specific that information was but the fact that this was coming from the u.s., that you already have people close to the kremlin appearing to reject that explanation and continued silence from the kremlin, for that matter, and it really kind of highlights that this is going to be the key question because as we've seen in the past, russia, this government, this regime i think is no stranger to large-scale terror events. early on in putin's presidency this was something we saw a number of times, and each time it was used to justify, for lack of a better word, a slide towards authoritarianism, harsher security measures, wars in chechnya. so much of what putin's government has become today, major steps were taken in the wake of the fence just like

this one. so this all goes to say, this question of who did it, what happened here, is going to be a little bit of a political foot tall potentially but has huge implications for where this goes from here. >> you are going to continue to check on it. we will, as well. matthew bodner for us in london. still ahead, we're going to bring you new information about a number of stories that we are covering tonight. you're watching alex wagner tonight. we'll be right back. back. if you have chronic kidney disease you can reduce the risk of kidney failure with farxiga. because there are places you'd like to be. farxiga can cause serious side effects, including ketoacidosis that may be fatal, dehydration, urinary tract, or genital yeast infections, and low blood sugar. a rare, life-threatening bacterial infection in the skin of the perineum could occur. stop taking farxiga and call your doctor right away if you have symptoms of this infection, an allergic reaction, or ketoacidosis. ♪ far-xi-ga ♪ for your most brilliant smile, crest has you covered.

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being a journalist is about asking important questions, and i'm about to ask the question that i never anticipated asking in my career. what do you imagine donald trump smells like? well, you don't actually have to guess because the former president is now selling victory 47 perfume for both men and women. according to the product description, each $99 bottle, which i tried very hard to get my hands on tonight, contains the, quote, signature scent of strength and success, a crisp opening of citrus blends into a cedar heart underpinned by a

rich base of leather and amber, creating a commanding presence, and quote. with a discerning enough knows you might also detect top notes of a cash grab by a man whose bill for half $1 billion has come due. monday is trump's deadline to post the bond needed to delay enforcement of the $464 million fine from his new york civil fraud trial. if he doesn't find that money somewhere, the new york attorney general can begin seizing trump's assets, including his seven springs golf course. as the deadline approaches, the former president selling perfume and stocks, mean stocks almost. today from's media company approved a merger to take true social public and the attention has caused the valuation to balloon. the merger is expected to close as early as next weekend from's 60% stake in the company could be worth $3 billion. if those inflated share prices hold for a while, could trump use them to post his bond? i know just the person to ask. joining me now is neil peterson, owner of the new york based peterson and sans surety bond agency. good to see you, thank you for

being with us. we have been asking people who know about these things, these questions all week as most of us know nothing about this. we have no idea how this world of bonds and surety works. let's start with the basics. donald trump has got to do something on monday and he doesn't appear to be able help to have done it. he doesn't appear to have gotten the bonds that he needs. what do you think is happening now and what happens on monday? >> i think he's working diligently to obtain the bond. if he doesn't posted by monday i still think there's an uphill battle for letitia james to execute on the judgment and sees his assets. i don't think it's going to be as simple as going to wall street, as she has said to the press, so i think there is going to be accounts restrained, maybe some cash seized, some bank accounts levied and i think there is going to be further receipt of debt turned over to her, which is going to take some time. >> so what do you think can happen?

he says i can't raise the bond needed. she says actually you can because you don't have to have it done as one bond. tell me what that means. >> in theory you could post bonds from a couple different surety companies to add up to the full value. that becomes a little messy because on the backend you would need -- if it was 10 companies they would be some sort of agreement -- >> what order they get it in. >> yes, so getting 10 companies to agree to anything is very difficult. even if you have four or five, is going to become located. no one wants to agree to be the first person to pay. >> the issue is if you have to pay, meaning if the judgment goes against donald trump, his appeal goes against him and the bond company now has to pay the money, in exchange for that, in theory you would've taken assets worth more than what you

have to pay up. so what's the problem? what's the risk to the bond company? >> so the real risk is that judgments, once they are affirmed on appeal, have to be paid within 5 to 10 days. if you pledge real estate, it's not liquid. you can't liquidate it quickly. that could take months to a year to do. a company doesn't want to lay out $500 million pending recouping about the same or more with interest or penalties, once the real estate is sold. the other aspect is that most real estate has a first or second position. so no one wants to come in as a second door third creditor, right, on the property. and lastly, if the former president gets reelected, a bond secured by identification agreement, it's never been -- a surety company has never had to execute on an indemnity against a sitting president. that is going to have challenges in itself. >> bottom line is the surety companies are like, we've got

enough business, this is to compensated for us. >> correct, they are not very forward thinking companies. one of the oldest industries in the country. they're not reinventing their underwriting cycle or process. they're taking select risks that are intelligent. it's supposed to be a zero loss game. >> if you were good at this. if you knew how to handle real estate, the real estate in manhattan and you said you know what, you're probably going to lose your appeal, i'm probably going to because, as the bond issuer, to pay up in short order. but i've got this building or i've got these assets. would you do that for the discount that you could get? in other words, it's a zero loss game. could there be a way that say all right, donald trump, you've got to put up $1 billion worth of property to get a half $1 billion bond? >> it's unlikely. i haven't seen the former president's financial statement but we are also not able to secure minority interests in

properties, so if he is a 50% owner, a 30% owner, how do you secure that? >> because now you're negotiating with other people who make decisions about whether that property is going to be liquidated. >> correct. we also have a very difficult commercial real estate market. office space is empty. plenty of value for this property's, the debts and you refinance are all major questions that go into the underwriting equation. >> let me ask you about this company, this tree social merger that he's going into. in theory that will net him some money. i have no idea how that works. in theory he can't get that money for six months but does that come into the negotiation that maybe the guy is going to come into a whole lot of money real soon? >> it's definitely going to be a factor, but at the end of the day, again, if you can't pledge or secure an asset, the surety company is not going to take it. i talked with a couple different special-purpose acquisition companies and if they can't pledge their stock or they have a very small float, it's not really attractive proposition. let's say you take $1 billion in that stock and you have to sell $1 billion but the volume

is 10 million, you're going to completely crash the stock so the value of your asset that you used to secure the bond has diminished. >> it's possible that donald trump might be trying to use that against getting the money but it's not going to be from a surety company, we might have to do it with other business partners or something. >> correct, the business partners or some sort of specialty lender. >> there has been talk that as of monday, letitia james in theory can do something. she can go into a bank where he's got money and can she actually get her hands on the money? >> i'm not an expert in post- execution but i believe she's going to levy the bank accounts and eventually that will be turned over to the sheriff or the marshall and eventually it's going to be turned over to the state of new york to satisfy a portion of the judgment. it's probably also going to be some further court proceedings to do so, so it's not going to be immediate on monday. maybe two or three weeks. >> how do you see this playing out? you seem to think that donald trump has got a plan for he's

just trying to not execute on whatever plan it is because he'd like to basically use someone else's money if possible. >> i think he has a plan. i think at the end of the day when he's backed into a corner and has to post the bond, i am confident that he's going to find a way. >> all right. neil, good to see you. thank you for this. i appreciate it. bill peters and is the owner of new york-based peterson and sons surety bond agency. thanks for your time. coming up, new details about the doj's investigation of january 6 under attorney general merrick garland and how it all unfolded. to what degree did choices made early on play right into the hands of donald trump and his propensity for delay tactics? that's next. that's next. oh, not the fries! where's the ball? -anybody see it? oh wait, there it is! -back into play and... aw no, it's in the water. wait a minute...

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and delivered right to your door. it's smarter, healthier pet food. get 50% off your first box at thefarmersdog.com/realfood donald trump has literally done everything in his power to delay his january 6 terminal trial. at the margate his argumentative immunity has put the brakes on from's case as the supreme court considers to consider it and that may work by putting a possible trial date closer and closer to the election. today we're learning new details about how the justice department's investigation into january 6 itself unfolded and how the process may have

inadvertently played into trump's hands. "the new york times" reports that at the start of the probe the attorney general merrick garland encouraged prosecutors to, quote, follow the connective tissue upward, adding a directive that would eventually lead to a dead end -- follow the money. with that he set the course of a determined and methodical if at times dysfunctional and maddeningly snow investigation that would yield the indictment of donald trump on four counts of election interference in august 2023. as the time notes, as a result, prosecutors and the fbi spent months sticking to their traditional playbook. they started with smaller players and worked upward despite the transparent, well- documented steps taken by mr. trump himself in public and behind the scenes to retain power after voters rejected his bid for another term. joining me now is on kush carberry, senior writer for politico magazine and a former department of justice federal prosecutor who specialized in financial fraud. thank you for being with us.

>> thanks for having me. >> tell me what the issue is here this did unfold. the investigation sort of unfolded like a financial crime investigation would. you find people lower and lower on the totem pole and you move your way up until you have enough evidence to connect convict the people on top. why was that not the right strategy in this case? >> it's not necessarily how a financial fraud investigation works, or to clearly if you have a very large organization and a managerial class at the top and you can roughly analogize that to what we saw on january 6. you have all these people at the bottom and then you have a hierarchy at the top. trump, all these white house folks and the people in the trump campaign orbit who are doing something at a higher level that may also warrant some scrutiny. these tabs, like pursuing the rioters and pursuing potential trump campaign officials and people around him, rudy giuliani and the like, they were not mutually exclusive. that was the big problem with

the premise underlying the justice department's approach here. they keep saying even in this piece that we were just following a traditional book, moving ourselves from the bottom to the top, but it never had to proceed like that and it shouldn't have proceeded like that, and it's important to remember that it was just a few days before january 6 that we all heard the call that donald trump had with georgia secretary of state brad raffensperger. that call alone, and i wrote a piece on this that published on january 6 actually, that call alone warranted the opening of a federal criminal investigation, as soon as biden took office, as soon as marek garland took office. >> that's the question that many people have, and that is that if there appears to be evidence out in the open with participants in matters that needed to be examined, who could be subpoenaed and one could get information, why not move in that obvious direction? what was holding them back? were they worrying about something else? was there an investigation underway for which these added pieces of information does not

lend themselves? why wouldn't the obvious be the case? >> it's a very good question and this piece doesn't really answer it, right? even though it's remarkably good reporting. my sense, having also done a little bit of reporting around this, is that there was a real reluctance to pursue trump in a manner that made it look like it was political retaliation or that it was a democrat pursuing a republican or some sort of partisan affair and that that sort of was something that marek garland in particular was quite concerned about and you know, some of the arguments in the piece that we hear from some of the officials that were involved frankly had me kind of pulling my hair out because the piece quotes someone saying that in 2021 it was start but, unquote simply inconceivable that trump might ever return to the political stage. that person is quoted anonymously and my sincere advice to them is to stay anonymous forever, because that was not true. >> there was nobody who

believed that was true. i want to point out what you talked about, marek garland, on the first anniversary of january 6 merrick garland was asked by reporters about why this is taking so long. here is what he said. >> we understand that there are questions about how long the investigation will take and about what exactly we are doing. our answer is, and will continue to be the same answer we would give with respect to any ongoing investigation. as long as it takes, and whatever it takes for justice to be done consistent with the facts and the law. >> the problem is the as long as it takes and whatever it takes are now coming up against one another. >> that's exactly right and i think the easiest way to think

about kind of the path that was not taken by the justice department is to look at what the january 6th committee did as they did pretty much exactly what i'm describing. straight to the top, go to the principals, don't dillydally with the rioters and hoping you can work yourself from them to trump years down the line. straight to the chop. efficient. move aggressively. move quickly. and i think that the january 6th committee did a considerable service for the public adjusting revealing the facts but they also demonstrated that the justice department's approach was deeply flawed. >> i want to ask you this is somebody who has dealt with financial crimes in the past. the times reports that garland told prosecutors to focus on the money. department leaders believe the best way to justify prosecuting mr. trump and the willard plotters, talking about the willard hotel, was defined financial links between them and the rioters because they thought it would be more straight forward and bless risky that a case based on untested election interference charges. look, we have the benefit of evaluating that thinking in hindsight.

didn't turn out to be true but what did you think about the fact that they started by taking that approach? let's connect the money. we hear about that all the time, follow the money. >> again, these things are not mutually exclusive. that's why the premise that the offenders here have adopted, it's just simply not true. let's just remember again, trump was already on a recorded call over january 6 and it was apparent even from that call that trump might have criminal exposure under title 18, section 241, which is one of the statutes he was eventually charged under. it is an election fraud statute so these are not obscure issues. these are not things that people are not thinking about in real time, arguing about and advocating for in real-time, including candidly myself. i wrote a lot of pieces about this and my concerns that the justice department was moving too slowly, and in particular that there would be a problem if trump eventually tried to return to power, that he may

actually be able to outrun the case and we are seeing that. >> these cases are all- important but the january 6 case, because it's election interference, because it's about the right to vote and have your vote counted, it is the most important case. what's your sense of the likelihood of this going to trial before the election? >> i think it's unfortunately just brass tacks it's fairly low. i would like to see it go to trial. i think the public's interest in the public imperative here is very strong and if the loft is on the side of having it before november. however, the supreme court is moving slowly. i'm concerned that they may try to send it back to chutkan with some instructions to conduct some legal analysis and potentially pulmonary fact- finding. if that happens that could be the whole ball game. >> g >> preliminary fact-finding. if that happens, that could be the whole ball game. >> thanks for joining us tonight. we appreciate your analysis and expertise. as a former department of justicent federal prosecutor specializing in white-collar crime -- one more story for you this evening, the biden administration has a choice to make after benjamin netanyahu vows to go through with an

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first and foremost, we want to see an immediate and sustained cease-fire as part of a deal that leads to the release of all hostages being held by hamas and other groups, and will allow much more life- saving humanitarian aid to get

into gaza. every day without a deal means more needless suffering. this resolution will move us closer to securing that deal and help us alleviate the suffering. >> today, the united nations voted on a security council resolution that was put forth by the united states, a resolution that among other things supported an immediate and sustained cease-fire of the war in gaza. while the vote was largely symbolic, the u.s. resolution contained some strong condemnations of israel. it is the strongest we have seen since the start of the war. it represents a shift in u.s. policy that has doubled over the past few weeks. the resolution failed. russia, china and algeria all voted against it, arguing the resolution was far too ambiguous and had no direct call for a cessation of fighting. simultaneously, as the failed vote was happening, other diplomatic efforts got underway. secretary of state antony blinken was in israel to meet with button and -- benjamin

netanyahu as part of the diplomatic push toward a cease- fire. and to deter an israeli offensive into the last corner of gaza. over 1 million civilians are now crammed in there. even the vice president said she cannot see any safe way for gazans to evacuate ahead of an offensive., quote, there is nowhere for these people to go and be safe, she said. but after that meeting between secretary blinken and benjamin netanyahu, it was clear but the united states this push would not be enough to deter him. it appears he is dead set on invading rafah with or without the help of the biggest ally. he said, we have no way to defeat hamas without going into rafah.

i hope we will do it with the support of the u.s. if we must, we will do it alone. to be clear, when it comes to military action, israel is never alone. the u.s. supplies most of the money and material for its military. it has been that way since the inception of israel which is the largest recipient of u.s. funds since its inception. president biden has another choice to make as it relates to the conflict. will the u.s. use its tools at its disposal? control over a lot of the military aid that goes into israel to prevent what could become the bloodiest stage of the war, or will it stand by as benjamin netanyahu continues to be defiant with the continued financial and military backing of the united states? as palestinians continue to die from injury and starvation by the thousands, the rhetoric from some u.s. leaders about the brutality has indeed begun to change.

the question is, will their actions change? that's our show for tonight. you can catch me sunday at 10:00 p.m. eastern. i will be convening a special meeting of the banned book club tomorrow to discuss one of the most banned books of all time. it is one that is frightening -- frighteningly relevant, george orwell's 1984. my guest, a political scientist, and the author of the band look, boy erased, a memoir about growing up gay in a fundamentalist family. it is time for a special edition of the last word, hosted by lawrence. and that starts now. ♪ good evening, and welcome to a special friday edition of the last word, focusing on defendant trump. donald trump has not come up