their connection is unreal. and we could all un-experience this whole session. okay, that's uncalled for. hello and welcome to our new special. the state of new york versus

donald trump on this first trial of an ex-president in american history and what we can say is we report right now what will be donald trump's only criminal case that is definitely headed to trial before this election. tonight we'll hear from legal experts mia wiley and michael beschloch on an unprecedented trial and reckoning for the nation. we begin with the facts. how we got to this momentous trial as jury selection is set to begin monday. we don't know how it will end, but we know it will be marked in history and in law schools and in many other conversations for decades to come in this nation. the new york da, alvin brag, made legal history, as the very first prosecutor to ever indict any former president know decade, any century, any state. this is the first. he was the first to indict trump

and the case is based on what is in many ways a set of proven hush money payments that we all now know occurred in 2016. what is new, and the reason that donald trump could be facing a felony conviction or a jail sentence, is that this d.a. indicted those now known payments and scandals as criminal lies. he has charged donald trump for falsifying business records in how he handled those payments orchestrating a scheme to distort the election purchasing negative information and intentionally mischaracterizing those then recorded payments. let me tell you something right up top here as we get ready for this trial of the decade or the century. this is ultimately about facts, and by the standards of, say, whether you have the evidence to show something is true or the standards of journalism when we say we have reported or confirmed something as a fact, that part i just mentioned is a fact. it is established. there are detailed records of

those purchases. there are several eye witnesses and direct participants to it. it is established. we begin right now with another hard legal issue for this d.a. what i just said sounds bad for trump but is not in itself a felony under the law. to make this a felony case this d.a. used a powerful tool that, to be clear, many prosecutors use all the time. he took all this damning evidence against his potential defendant, trump, and he combined it into a legal argument for a larger crime. it's the same way we've seen from movies to real life other prosecutors use rico or financial schemes to argue that a group is part of a larger conspiracy. that is the kind of approach this d.a. took. taking what i just referred to, the kind of established lies, the business records lies which are a misdemeanor in new york state, a smaller infraction, and

using a valid law to combine it into an election plot felony. what you see on your screen is what the jury will see, and this is from the d.a.'s office. this is not one of those summaries we've made here as journalists, this is basically the theory going down through those arrows about how all of these lies, some of them proven basically, like the lies about the retainer payments, becoming an election crime. if you remember nothing else, keep that in mind. it is the crux of the case. the d.a. telling the jury, okay, a lia lone is a misdemeanor, but this was a lie plus a grave campaign crime. trump is legally presumed innocent and he will have defense lawyers who can argue that the state basically took a bunch of different things that they argue is small and take all of the small things, throw them against the wall. they'll argue this isn't really a true big felony case and it

should be resolved the way other financial misdemeanors are resolved. the jury is going to hear messy details about back room deals, secret payments and alleged trysts. the d.a. will argue those to hide and illegally buy stories as a big deal and to understand all of this, the jury, and anyone else following, which might be you and a heck of a lot of other people who are interested in law, justice and politics, to get into it you have to go all the way back two election cycles and the infamous tape that many thought including republicans and trump insiders at the time would basically be the end of donald trump's hopes for the presidency. >> ya know, i'm automatically attracted to beautiful women. it's like a magnet. and when you're a star, they let you do anything. gram 'em by the [ bleep ]. >> now you take a look at that,

you take it all together and let me show you the next point here. that was a big deal. the blowback was powerful and a lot of people thought the race was over. >> donald trump's presidential campaign in turmoil tonight facing withering political fallout. >> when the tape comes out he drops from 41 to 38. then on the weekend after everybody's seen the tape he falls through the floor. that's why they are driving the republican party and donald trump off a cliff and into the political abyss. >> you do not recover from this. this election ended. all i can say is i'm sorry. >> now the election did not end. those polls and much of the criticism did probably capture something, an initial horror and revulsion away from trump, and that's important for the reasons i'm going to explain now legally. the point is not that pundits overreacted or people thought america could not stomach that guy on that tape becoming

president. we've had those debates for years. we can continue to have them. tonight we're looking at how this will matter only in the context of this it criminal trial of defendant trump. the defense heard trump and he did get fewer votes and he did lose women over 40 but he won the electoral college. the legal case only cares about how that tape and the reaction may show donald trump's motivation at the time, what prosecutors call criminal intent. the d.a. is arguing donald trump is a criminal. this isn't about some later november quarterbacking post election even though this relates to an election. it's not about that. the case will involve politics only to go back to trump's criminal intent. again, his lawyers may have defenses to this, but there will be fascinating political observations in the service of proving what the d.a. says was trump's clear criminal intent because they had a campaign criminal motive. so we've heard about these

reports of a total panic within the campaign as the indictment notes there was a catalyst from that panic to then get the hush money payments first going towards stormy daniels. that was arranged by now star witness michael cohen. 130 k to hide the story which was fin nushd up three days after that "access hollywood" tape broke. indictment alleges trump would drag it out so he never had to pay daniels at all which is misleading or disingenuous is not any type of crime. again, it goes to criminal intent because he instructed cohen to delay making the payment to daniels until after the election. at that point it would not matter if the story became public, quote, unquote. d.a. bragg cites that as the exact evidence of why this was a campaign crime coverup rather than a generalized desire to

make that story go away. trump's lawyers may argue, no, this was an embarrassing thing. he may have paid for these kind of things before and therefore they're going to argue it wasn't with a criminal intent to break campaign laws. more evidence bolsters d.a. bragg's side and the allegations because there was another scenario you may remember, karen mcdougall. she was also paid 150 k just from a different source. instead of cohen taking that money on behalf of trump, the tabloid, the enquirer, used trickery to get her to be silent about her history with trump. the publisher has already confirmed this to federal prosecutors. when i said some of this has been established, well, all the way back in 2018, different office than the d.a., got that confirmation with receipts by

giving that tabloid figure immunity. when i asked if they were aware of the intent when getting that story? >> i'm not so sure if it was -- if i was aware of it at the time that it was their intent to bury the story, but i think they had clearly announced their editorial preferential candidate. >> was the national enquirer acting as the arm of donald trump and michael cohen? and if they were, was there something wrong with that? >> we strongly suspect they were. >> those are lawyers speaking like lawyers but saying they had the reason to believe the evidence, suspecting material that that was the plot. now that was years ago because as i told you, we always try to go as close to the source as we can. if the source won't talk, if they have an ally or lawyer, we talk to them. the d.a. said trump was aware of those and cohen was concerned enough to secretly tape trump at the time. this is back when cohen worked

for trump, long before he flipped. now it's evidence showing trump was apparently in the loop about the sorted tabloid views including with the tabloid chief, david pecker. >> i need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend david. i spoke with allen about it when it comes to the financing. >> what financing? >> we'll have to pay -- >> oh, no, no, no, no, no. >> pay with cash. if you've watched the beat i've watched this before. i bet you the jury is going to get an earful about this because it's so bad with trump. in that private secret setting he may have thought it would never come out. he clearly didn't know cohen would -- >> he said we can pay with cash to continue to hide it. he didn't plan to tell the truth, tell the irs, anything like that. cohen says no, no, no. the what happens next is why the d.a. says they are so confident

they can nail him, bring home the case and win it. this is our special report. we're going to fit in a break and i'm going to show you that damning evidence when we come back in 90 seconds. ds

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worked with a man who's right now as i'm reporting this for you back doing his second term at rikers island in new york. trump cfo allen weisselberg. he was involved in the payments in which cohen made. the images may look familiar because over the course of 2017 trump sent cohen several checks that they called for retainer or tax purposes and what's bad for defendant trump is while he might be a busy president and he might be a busy business owner, he was personally signing all of these checks himself. the d.a. alleges that put the trump organization on the hook to then false phi records and call what were payments to an external party, quote, legal fees. now in business you can't just pay a and call it something for b. if anyone could do that all the time, well, you wouldn't have any taxes paid or accurate records. all of this came out when the wall street journal broke the

original story in 2018. donald trump lied. in his first public comments he first claimed he didn't know what was going on when he was intimately involved in this for years. we have the tape showing that that's why i can accurately, carefully and clearly call it a lie and then he went on to blame his lawyer. >> mr. president, did you know about the $130,000 payment to stormy daniels? >> no. what else? >> then why did michael cohen make it if there was no allegation? >> you'll have to ask michael cohen. michael is my attorney and you'll have to ask michael. >> no, the claim there is a bald faced lie and there aren't a lot of ways to spin it because it's so clear. no, he says he didn't know about something that we have him on tape strategizing about. no, he says about something we have him on record paper signing about and he does tend to keep track of the money that gets

pulled out of him. as i mentioned earlier in the report, it was a long time coming to even get those bills paid. now this wasn't going to hold up. you had cohen out there, you had investigators out there and a lot of paper records, financial records out there, so other lawyers who were involved for donald trump who have also themselves gone on to be indicted were then figuring out the strategy. so while it might look sloppy, we know a lot more now than we did then. what we know now is that lawyers around trump figured this is going to come out so we've got to start getting it out. someone who then was relatively new to the legal team rudy giuliani discussed it on fox. take a look. >> they funneled it through a law firm. >> funneled through a law firm and then the president repaid it. >> oh, i didn't know -- he did? >> yup. >> there's no campaign finance law? >> zero. >> you can hear sean hannity law's disembodied voice.

you have to change your talking poirnlts if all you do is listen to donald trump. rudy giuliani would go on from that failed coverup to the big lie to as i mentioned being a co-defendant in donald trump in the rico case which may not go to trial before november. trump was saying he was not involved in the payments and we know that to be false for the reasons i stated. knowing it was false and someone was lying doesn't mean they've yet met the burden of a criminal conviction. we do know they were lying. stormy daniels then attorney, who also has had his own problems, michael avanati, back then was leading this charge against trump and cohen and called the claim ludicrous when he appeared on this very program "the beat" in 2018.

>> this suggestion that somehow mr. cohen was operating on his own volition, not reporting to anyone, spending all of this time -- i mean, this was not a negotiation that took 30 minutes. the fact that mr. cohen wants the american people to believe that he was just out there doing all of this on his own and not reporting to anybody about it? it's not believable. >> daniels then attorney saying it wasn't believable. it wasn't very believable and cohen would later recant. cohen first took the fall, pled guilty to tax fraud and lying charges in connection with this very payment and he don't a federal campaign finance crime which, again, was not for his own personal benefit at the time but was for donald trump and went to prison for all of that. in an effort to reduce the sentence he also did something that weisselberg who's in rikers now did not do, who giuliani's not done. cohen did flip on his former

boss and he revealed in high stakes, significant testimony to the united states congress that trump was in on all of this. >> what i did each and every time is go straight into mr. trump's office and discuss the issue with him. he acknowledged to alan that he was going to pay the 130,000 and that alan and i should go back to his office and figure out how to do it. >> that was about five years ago. the blow by blow of what everyone thinks of these figures could be avanati went to prison, could be cohen who went to prison, could be weisselberg. the question is not about the feelings of these people, not supposed to be the jury's feelings. in fact, there could be very compelling testimony from people that jurors don't like, that they hate, that they might fear, convicted murderers, drug dealers, gang members, senior

mafia capitols. they sometimes make the most damning witness because it ain't a popularity contest, certainly ain't supposed to be a political campaign even if it involves discussions of past campaigns. much narrower question. does this person have firsthand knowledge of what they're talking about and can any of it be corroborated. in mr. cohen's case the answer is yes, which is bad news to mr. trump. the new york d.a.'s office continued to investigate all of those sorted schemes and payments to see whether it added up beyond what he said. what did he know, what did he do but what else on paper corroborated all of this? and after a pretty lengthy process, we've pressed people including people close to him, they pressed trump and heard testimony from those witnesses including cohen, daniels and the reclusive but pivotal figure in all of this, the tabloid

publisher, david pecker. many of them are expected to bring their testimony, the testimony which helped charge donald trump, they're going to bring it to this trial. then there's joe tacopina. he was a key defense lawyer in new york for donald trump on this high stakes case. we had him on "the beat" and he vehemently defended were the reasons why he said this shouldn't be a case for his then client donald trump when we discussed this on "the beat." >> these payments were made, and they were, according to federal filings, classified on the trump side as legal services. >> uh-huh. >> that was false, wasn't it? >> the payments were made to a lawyer, not to stormy daniels. the payments were made to donald trump's lawyer, which would be considered legal fees. this would exist irrespective of the campaign. >> you're making a potential defense he would have paid this

out regardless? >> now that was interesting. all these years later, and that was just about a year ago, tacopina, who at the time was representing trump, he's since left that case, was making the cohen argument. cohen fell down but tacopina is making the same argument. whatever money went to the lawyer, whatever trump said he wasn't in the loop. a couple minutes back i said criminal intent. that's what matters. the debate's not over the money. we know the money went over there. the debate is over whether donald trump had the criminal intent and knew what was going on as cohen and others say he did or whether it was just signing something and as tacopina argues, just went over the lawyer's legal fees, the other people were filling in the details. the d.a. ultimately was the first prosecutor to indict a president, others have followed since then and again in our effort to get the facts we actually had the then sitting d.a. bragg, who's now leading this case and not doing any

interviews lately, it was months before that happened when he came on "the beat" and i asked him about indicting trump back then, how much controversy there had been about the process, there had been other theories and other possible crimes people said he should act on. here's what he told me. >> as i said back in april in a statement, the investigation's ongoing. this is one chapter. i caution people against reading ahead. the work never stopped and we're going to continue to do that. >> one chapter and we're going to continue. that's what the d.a. told us face to face while sitting in the office. now we don't know exactly what was in his mind at that point. was it up in the air? was he still gathering facts? was he closing out one case to continue on another? was he thinking this was winding down? or did he say one chapter because he knew the biggest chapter was about to begin and that he would do something that no one in the history of

american law and every prosecutor around the country, and prosecutors do dream about big cases but they're supposed to follow the facts, he knew the chapter coming would be the biggest chapter of all, the indictment of a former president and he acted first. while there's been much discussion about the other cases are legally much more potentially serious, by acting first he got the cases going. trump and his high priced lawyers and they have gotten other cases slowed down, delayed, fouled up. not new york where there's an independent prosecutor. not new york where a future president would have no ability to pardon any crime convicted in new york. the d.a. did what so many others had not, he acted first and that is part of the reason why he now will be the first to put defendant trump on trial. we have two new york legal experts here to get into all of this when we return. te to severa disrupts my skin, night and day. despite treatment, it's still not under control.

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yeah, i would testify. absolutely. i'm testifying. tell the truth. i mean, all i can do is tell the truth and the truth is that there's no case. >> donald trump facing questions about the trial set to begin monday. we are joined by maya wiley and kristie. we looked at the long road here and why so many of the details that seemed proven are still subject to debate in the courtroom about getting both crimes proven in the context of trump's criminal intent about the election. your thoughts based on the road we've just gone down. >> i would say this case has all of the hallmarks of a serious fraud case with tremendous jury appeal. it is easy to understand. it leaps off the page. fake settlement agreement to

release peggy peterson. her false claims against david dennison. these are fake names to disguise donald trump and stormy daniels. it's interesting. there were no claims. obviously this was just an agreement for hush money payments. you know, the shell company that's being used so that we can keep trump's fingerprints off of any of the payments. and then, you know, he reimburses the payments with his very distinctive signature. you've got a great case in documents and then the question is going to come down to the witnesses but, you know, as much trouble as michael cohen is going to have, he is in many ways corroborated i think by documents and witnesses. and most importantly by donald trump's own words as you played parts of that audio recording. the part that stands out for me in that recording that really goes to his intent, he's talking generally about all of the damaging information that he doesn't want to come out and he says at one point, you know,

well, just -- we can just delay, something to that effect. and, you know, delay until what? it was clear from the context, delay until after the election. the timing of those payments, these were affairs that he had many years ago. these payments just on the eve of the election, it was quite clear that the reason that these payments needed to happen when they were happening was to make sure that he would silence these women and it wouldn't affect the outcome of the election. so i think proving that piece of criminal intent will be very easy for the jury to do. >> let me slow you down though. let me slow you down. you're almost a new york fast talking lawyer and it takes one to know one. it matters to new york law that he only wanted to pay before election day why? >> so just to level set, if you pay -- make a hush money payment, that in and of itself

is not illegal. if you false phi business records, that is on its own a misdemeanor. what makes this a felony, what makes those hush money payments illegal campaign contributions is the fact that they were made with the intent to influence the election. that is the key element here that alvin bragg and his team are going to have to prove to elevate these crimes to felonies. >> right. and so, maya, we're going to start with jury selection monday. it's going to take some time before we get into the heart of it, but when we get to the heart you can imagine the prosecutors through the witness questions trying to show over and over to the jury that the guy has 100 k plus payments going, which that's real money, and if you could just have any corporation, i don't care if it's a tabloid or some secret corporation or your rich friend's corporation just make 100 k expenditures on

your behalf to help you in the campaign, we wouldn't have a campaign finance system. there seems to be a larger point be that they can express to the jury once you get through that long history we showed. >> well, look, absolutely. and i think here's the point of what we're going to see in the process of selecting a jury, and one is if you're donald trump's lawyers, you're hoping you can find some jurors who just like donald trump. and they're not going to say it that way, but you're looking for the people who although they're neutral, right? if they're getting to this stage of the process, they're going to be holding themselves out as neutral, but find trump relatable and to your point, find the situation relatable. the job of the prosecution in this case is also to sus that out and say, look, we can't have any stealth trump supporters in this trial. we want people who understand what the actual case is about

and are able to understand essentially what the judge has already said. count 1, this is a case about people getting together to make an agreement to interfere with an election and this is the process by which they're doing it. that's for the jury to decide in applying facts, deciding what the facts are, deciding what witnesses to believe. that is the jury's job. but what the jury -- what they're going to look for is who's going to do that fairly and really listen? i think christi is exactly right when she says this is a case that a lot of people are going to understand as being about defrauding voters at its core, concealing, hiding so voters don't have all of the information to make an assessment that they want to make before they cast their votes. >> yeah. >> and there are witnesses who can actually corroborate that as well in terms of his state of mind on "access hollywood" as you so rightly point out. >> yeah.

and we just showed a lot of the reporting we've done and the people we've heard from. i showed stormy daniels earlier lawyer and her later lawyer. he broke his silence. he hadn't spoken in a long time when i reached him by prison phone call. cohen, weisselberg, others, these are people who have information, regardless of what one thinks about him. he said something, maya, which he thinks the case is not perfect, not the strongest case in the world, although he does think trump will be convicted. take a listen. >> i think the case has a lot of problems. now that does not -- i don't mean to suggest that that means trump will not be convicted because i think he will be convicted. i believe he'll be convicted in the case, but i don't think it's going to move the needle to the degree that some people believe that it will. >> maya? >> well, i think it's a case in

which the prosecution has to be able too get beyond a reasonable doubt on intent. you talked about that already in your setup, ari. i think explained why there's a lot of evidence. christi did the same. there's a lot of evidence here. no matter what you think of donald -- i mean, mr. cohen, what they're going to try to do obviously is impugn their ability to be truthful, but cohen's never changed his story on this. the there's lots of ways that they're going to be able toll rehabilitate any attacks on him when he's on the witness stand be -- >> i'll let you finish. i'll let you finish. he was part of the coverup. you mean he never changed his story after he recanted the trump version? >> my point is his story about what happened with him signing those after he essentially did what people are supposed to do, right? remember, we were all shocked that he did it but he said, i'm going to come in. i'm going to come clean. i'm not even going to ask for a deal. who goes to the southern district of new york and says

i'm just -- just go ahead. hold me accountable. i'm going to fix this. i do think there are ways to rehabilitate him. the real point is it's not whether it's a hard case or an easy case. prosecutors have to do the hard work of proving their case always, especially when you are going to have a lot of witnesses like this. i think kristie said it, you said it, it's the corroborating evidence. it's the audio tape. >> right. >> it's the fact you're going to have people who might take the stand from trump's own campaign and say, yes, he was completely -- that state of mind about how he was feeling after "access hollywood." so there is a lot of evidence here is the point, and going back to the point that this is a story that jurors can understand, particularly a manhattan jury, that you want to win an election, you know it's a bad story that's suddenly come up as a door man who says you have a baby and there are two other women out here who are going to talk about your affairs with them right after an "access

hollywood" tape. something for some of these stories have been going on for ten years. he wasn't concerned about melania finding out five years ago. he's concerned when he's ready to run an election. there are facts there. they have to fight hard for that case. that's what all prosecutors do in every case. look, no prosecutors want to bring cases they think they want to lose. they bring cases they think they have sufficient evidence. right. >> this judge has actually agreed that he's going to let some of this evidence in in a way that i think has the trump team also worried about what they have to do at trial. >> yeah. all really interesting, maya and kristie, our leadoff guests for this special as we prepare for the trial. thank you. ahead we are going to answer a big question. how do you pick a jury to actually be fair in new york city about one of the most famous people in world history, donald trump? we have new insights on that tonight.

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they say i have the most loyal people. i could stand in the middle of fifth avenue and shoot somebody and i wouldn't lose any voters. that's incredible. >> that was trump all the way back to '16 talking the kind of

loose talk his people dismiss as jokes or a certain style but in fact by this year we've learned his own lawyers argue that he should have the literal power as president to assassinate people and no one be could charge him for it. we are in an unprecedented time in american history. we are going towards the first criminal trial ever of a former president. we're joined now as we try to make sense of history by someone steeped in it. thanks for being on our special. first i do have questions. i give you the floor as we think about what's coming next week. >> you've said it extremely well. what's different about this moment? we never in history have seen a president come close too being in a criminal trial. ulysses s. grant hired a special prosecutor. richard nicks nixon is the closest they came.

a majority of congress said if you do not resign we will impeach and convict you. so nixon went back to california and he began to have nightmares. he called people up in the middle of the night and said to senator, friends, on the new president gerald ford, i think i'm going to prison. i have dreams about the cell door clanking shut. mix on's friends and families circulated false stories that got to ford saying he was so depressed he might commit suicide. ford who was a merciful person pardoned nixon so we never saw the criminal trial of richard nixon that would almost certainly have occurred in 1975 or '76. the question now is, and i'll close with this, are presidents above the law? if you or i break the law, ari, i don't think we get special treatment. i hope we don't.

in the case of a president of the united states, it happened once before with nixon. are we going to see donald trump getting a better deal than any of the rest of us would? >> yeah. you remind us that this whole accurate but heavy term, unprecedented, is because of that one unitary man who was close to nixon and reasoning through it. we would have had a trial. we wouldn't say oh, my gosh it's now only happening in new york. >> when the president does it that means it is not illegal. >> you have to give a president full and total immunity. >> if, for example, president roosevelt had decided the assassination of hitler before

world war ii would save 5 or 6 million jews, i'm not sure that that wouldn't be a tough call. >> take a look at harry truman. he wouldn't have done -- if you think hiroshima, not a nice act, but it did end the second world war. >> michael, the question i have goes beyond the trial itself but to what we're experiencing as we live through this history together. while so much is made of donald trump and his opponents talk a lot about his distinct, what they sometimes view as extreme or even unique negatives, it is not any defense of him to learn from history that we have many such threats and we have many people who talk about oh, for extreme reasons or for your safety they might have to become a dictator or something close to it. so i'm curious where that fits in for you, that this is in some ways unique but in other ways the fabric of our history from

politics to law to how you govern war involves these tough debates about where the line is. >> sure. and if nixon were here, what he would say in the spirit of what he said to david frost in that great clip that you just showed us would be lincoln during the civil war abridged civil liberties, habeus corpus. franklin roosevelt did break-ins with the fbi and eavesdropped on people in a way that was illegal but they were doing it to win wars and so was i, nixon would say, because i was the president during vietnam. i think that is ridiculous and i wish that ford had not pardoned nixon because what that has done is basically given a president like gerald -- like donald trump the idea that, you know, if nixon wasn't sent to jail, he knew nixon very well on his retirement in new york, city, he tried to get nixon to get an

apartment in trump tower and trump actually leaked that he was coming there falsely, believe it or not. i know it sounds very out of character. the point is, i actually talked to ford in his retirement and i said, i can understand that you wanted to pardon nixon, but why didn't you at least get him to sign a confession saying i did obstruct justice. i did terrible things and i'm grateful that i've been pardoned. ford said nixon has suffered enough, he retired. i don't think he did suffer enough. and the result is that the presidents of the future, like donald trump, like richard nixon think that they can break the law in a way that the rest of us cannot and get away with it, and the worst punishment is retiring to your oceanside mansion, as was true of both nixon and trump, then we are going to be in a world of hurt and presidents are going to be dictators. >> an important note of caution here as we go into it. historian michael beschloss,

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>> on curb larry david trying to use the voir dire process to pick his jury and get people dismissed. that was the joke version, although it was a trial involving voting. on monday the jurors will go to the courthouse and answer questions that will narrow it to 12 jurors and 6 alternates in this trial. judge merchant has shown us no cameras in court. everything happens in court and now we before it starts monday have the questionnaire. there are 42 baseline questions just to get it started like have you ever attended a rally or campaign event for trump and have you considered yourself a supporter of qanon, proud boys, oathkeepers and so on. the point is not to do any discrimination but see which people need to not be krim snated against but take it from a partisan perspective.

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donald trump's first criminal trial begins monday. msnbc will be covering it all day and then we have rachel leading one of our special coverage breakdowns. we'll start in the 6 p.m. eastern hour. you can see there rachel and our whole team breaking down day one of the historic trial. i'll be there with joy, lawrence, nicole and everyone. 6 p.m. eastern. you can watch during the day. that will be our special breakdown to go through like the nixon/watergate era as we live through this history together. and you've been watching this msnbc special. keep it locked right here as our coverage continues. tonight on "the reid out." >> just minutes ago standing beside