good day. i'm chris jansing live at msnbc h in new york along with my colleague katy tur joining me in the rnc convention in milwaukee. we're tracking four huge stories unfolding in realtime and centered around one man, former

president donald trump. >> donald trump will be in the convention hall later today as he is officially chosen as the republican nominee. it will be his first public am appearance since a shooter tried to take his life on saturday. it is here where we have just been told that he will also announce his vp pick later today. >> and all of that coming against the backdrop of a sprawling investigation into trump's assassination attempt in pennsylvania and the security failures that led up to it. but we start with an extraordinary legal victory for the former president that came down just a short time ago. judge aileen cannon dismissing the florida classified documents case on the grounds that the appointment of special counsel jack smith was unconstitutional. we have a great panel to talk to about it. nbc news justice and intelligence correspondent ken dilanian. vaughn hillyard is in milwaukee. also with us, andrew weissmann, former fbi general counsel and with me here in studio msnbc

legal correspondent lisa rubin and former deputy chief of the nypd division, kristy greenberg. >> we have jake sherman, an msnbc contributor. along with me here onset is mark short, former chief of staff to former vice president mike pence. ken, aileen cannon said that the special prosecutor, the special counsel appointed to this case was not constitutional. explain it to us. >> first, i want to say that this ruling says nothing about the merits of the case, nothing about mishandling classified documents or obstruction of justice. it dismisses the case entirely on technical grounds. cannon wrote the central question was, is there a statute in the united states codes that authorizes appointment of jack smith. she wrote that the answer is no. the bottom line is this, the appointments clause is a stems

from the separation of powers and it gives to congress a considered role in determining the propriety of vefting appointment power for inferior officers. the special counsel's position, she added, effectively usurps that important legislative authority transferring it to a head of a department and in the process threatening the structural liberty inherent in the separation of powers. let's translate that to plain talk. she ruled that there must either be a law establishing the office, which there isn't, or special counsels should be appointed by the president and confirmed by the senate. something jack smith was not. this ruling upends a system that the justice department has been using for 25 years and one that has been upheld by several judges including a trump-appointed judge in washington, d.c. under cannon's logic, by the way, robert mueller was also improperly appointed even though a judge in washington ruled otherwise. the justice department almost certainly will appeal this ruling and the issue is likely to be decided ultimately by the

supreme court where justice clarence thomas telegraphed his view on this who also questioned whether jack smith's appointment was lawful. some wondered whether that would embolden judge cannon to rule the way she did. the doj has other options in addition to appealing. they skrould the u.s. attorney in florida, for example, refile the case. we're awaiting a statement from the justice department. there's no doubt this is a huge defeat for jack smith and merrick garland and a major legal victory for donald trump guys. >> lisa, this is an enormously big decision, 93 pages long. it is hefty. let me read more specifics from what the judge wrote. the court is convinced special counsel smith's prosecution of this action breaches two structural corner stones of our constitutional theme, the role of congress in appointing constitutional officers and the role of congress in authorizing expenditures by law. as ken pointed out, this has been used for a very long time

across both republican and democratic administrations. so why is this the first time that a judge is coming to this conclusion? >> that's a very interesting question and i think a good one to ask. as ken noted, there have been other judges both in the d.c. circuit and in other places in the country that have come to different conclusions. why is this issue being raised now? obviously it's being raised in the context of a former president who will litigate almost any issue he can to try to get rid of the indictments against him. this is one of seven motions to dismiss that the former president's team filed. i'd like to say this is happening not because judge cannon already knew she was going with this decision, but she held an evidentiary hearing last month that many legal observers including nbc news producers who were in the room felt didn't go very well for former president trump's lawyers. then, of course, we get the immunity ruling from the supreme

court on july 2nd, and with it justice thomas' concurrence which telegraphed his views about this very issue which had not been raised by the parties in that d.c. case. although at oral argument, john sauer said we intend to raise it. they ud on the yet. this is justice thomas' telegram to judge cannon coming to its full fruition. >> vaughn, it has been a series of good real rulings for the former president. there was the immunity ruling from the supreme court that forced a reconsideration or at least a delay in the sentencing for the hush money/election interference trial as judge merchan considers the immunity ruling. now there's this ruling from judge cannon tossing out the case entirely. how is the former president reacting? >> reporter: and the potential

of the federal election interference indictment. part of the some of the charges being tossed out because of him being determined to have been protected by immunity, but also the reality that these trials are not going to be taking place until after the election. if donald trump geltz back in the white house, he has the right to use his department of justice to toss those federal indictments against him. i want to let you look at a social media post of him reacting here to this news of judge cannon's decision in florida in which he writes in part, quote, as we move forward in uniting our nation after the horrific events on saturday, this dismissal of the lauls indictment in florida should just be the first step. he goes on to say, let us come together to end all weaponization to ur justice system. the doors to this convention just opened in milwaukee. it's set to be gaveled in in a matter of moments and the roll call slated to take place this afternoon. for donald trump, he has made at the cornerstone of his campaign the idea that he is being

politically targeted and that the persecution of him is being weaponized in order to take down his political prospects. and for the next four nights he's going to have primetime slots with a cadre of allies that are going take the message that a federal judge has tossed one o of the major indictments against him. we have heard him call this a witch hunt, a hoax. we've watched him sidestep the actual underlying allegations and charges against him with the broader message that charges shouldn't have been brought against him in the first place. now a fund-raising email out to his supporters paying attention to the fact that this has been dismissed. this is a pivotal moment for this case to be dropped here 113 days from the general election, and with his cast of more than 2,000 delegates filling this convention arena here to the news that this florida case has been dismissed. >> great news coming into the

convention for donald trump. i want to ask about that language there, the weaponization and whatnot of mark short in a moment. first, andrew, another question on the legal front, judge aileen cannon, this is surely going to get appealed by jack smith. it's going to go to the circuit courts. she's already been overturned by these circuit courts and, you can argue, admonished. what might happen? >> first, let me make a point about the weaponization which is really important which is that the reason that judge cannon said that this was an improper appointment is because jack smith is too independent of the department of justice and the administration. it's the contrary of what the attack on jack smith is politically, that he's just a lackey of the administration, weaponization. she said, no, the problem with the special counsel is he's too independent of merrick garland and joe biden. so that's an important point

here. to your question about what could happen, they could appeal to the 11th circuit. the 11th circuit could easily reverse every single decision that has happened to date. up to judge cannon to say this is constitutional. and they could reverse her. they could also take her off the case. that's one road. the other thing that the department might decide to do is jum forego the legal issue because judge cannon is such an outlier, and they could just have the u.s. attorney in miami refile the indictment. in other words, they could be like, you know what? we don't need to take on this legal issue because there's no question that the u.s. attorney's office has the authority to have brought these charges, and they could just short-circuit this and next week represent this by the u.s. attorney's office and go forward then. in some ways that might be the better course in terms of not

having the delay of the 11th circuit and the supreme court. we've already seen how much delay that can engender in connection with the d.c. immunity case, katy, that you just referred to. >> so i want to ask you both of you who are onset with me here about the broader impact. "the new york times" reported today that prosecutors and justice department officials basically threw out their schedule this morning after this decision came down. nay had spent the weekend, frankly, working on the assassination and the investigation there and instead are now assessing the impact of judge cannon's decision on other cases including hunter biden's where there is a special counsel. how broad could the impact be? >> certainly hunter biden or anybody else that's in his situation dealing with a special counsel case is going to rely on this. i don't think it's going to get them very far. the opinion is terrible. she takes supreme court

precedent and she just completely distorts it. she takes lines about -- in nixon, a case followed by other appellate courts, is difficult agrees with their opinions on the case, lines that congress vested the power of the attorney to assist him in the discharge of his duties. the language is plain as day. she then says it's stray language, it's passing remarks. it's a supreme court case. you have to follow it. this is not inexperience of a judge that's new. when judge are inexperienced, they tend to follow supreme courts, appellate courts, precedent. that is the gold standard. instead she's going rogue and doing her own thing. she had the invitation from justice alcohol mass where this issue hadn't been raised or argued. i can't stress to you how unyoushl it is for a supreme court justice to be opining on something with no relevance whatsoever to the issue before

him knowing this is a live issue in a completely unrelated case. it was an invitation for her and she took it. others may look at this and try to use it to their advantage, but it's so bad that i don't see it working. >> let me take what you just said and build on that along with what andrew just said, if i can, lisa. there's been reporting that smith's office has been putting together essentially a list, dossier, whatever you want to call it, of what they see as bad decisions by judge cannon. let's assume they decide to appeal to the 11th circuit. are they ready to go? can they do it quickly? as andrew touched on, is it possible they could also petition for a new judge which is an extreme and extraordinary step, yes? >> it is. i don't think they had enough to ask for that prior to today's decision. that's in part because of a number of the decisions she made that we would look to as decisions weren't either full and final in the way an appellate court would consider a

full and final decision, or they were delays. while they were definitely decisions by delay, meaning she made decisions about the trajectory of this case by not making decisions. that's not grounds for an appeal. this does give them grounds for an appeal. what they can point to now is other indicia of bias in addition to this. but the rules for her circuit have been clear. chief judge pryor in the 11th circuit has said this in response to citizen complaints about her, delay is not in and of itself bias in the sense that a counsel of a circuit court of appeals would view it. coupled with some of the distortion of prior resident, that that wouldn't give the 11th circuit grounds to do so, particularly if you go all the way back in time before the indictment to when there was an investigation with the special master process that she basically created out of whole cloth only to be swatted down by

justices of her circuit, not once but twice including that same chief judge who is perhaps the closest friend in our appellate courts to justice clarence thomas. >> andrew, how long could all of that take? in the meantime, whether or not you think this very voluminous decision by judge cannon is going to be overturned or not, if you're david wise or anyone else involved in a special prosecuor investigation. as we said, there have been many over the years. do you need to do your due diligence and look at what this means for your case and what your alternatives are? >> well, one of the things that we knew prior to this decision is that the trial before judge cannon was not going to happen before the election. she was sitting on it. as lisa noted, there was debuilt in by her de facto pocket vetoing this case. so so that hasn't really

changed. in some ways what has changed is there's now a vehicle for jack smith to go to the 11th circuit. but that does take time vm nothing would happen very quickly if that were to happen. the very quick thing they could do, though, is re-present the indictment through a u.s. attorney's office. that's something that could happen in a matter of days. that would forego all of the delay that would entail if they were to go to the 11th circuit and then eventually one side or the other would try to go to the supreme court. with respect to david wise, the special counsel in the hunter biden case, one thing to note -- this is getting into the weeds, but one huge difference between david wise is jack smith is that david wise is a confirmed senate-appointed -- senate

confirmed, appointed u.s. attorney, in addition to being special counsel. in other words, he came from within the department and had that blessing of the senate. that's not something that is true of jack smith. that's one way in which there will be a way to distinguish his appointment and say it was legal compared to jack smith. that all being said, everyone should remember judge cannon is the outlier here. she is the only judge in 25 years to find that this is an improper method. republicans and democrats have appointed special counsels. republican and democratic -- judges appointed by democrats and republicans have found it to be constitutional. most recently, dash any friedrich appointed by donald trump found this to be constitutional. so she is really an outlier. but there is a way for jack smith to go forward by judge

re-presenting through a u.s. attorney's office and leave the legal decision as a district court outlier decision by judge cannon. >> let me follow up on that, andrew. if he hands the case off to a u.s. attorney, does the u.s. attorney have the ability to pick it up and move quickly? does he inherent any of the staff from the special counsel's office? can all of that, the documents, the research and the staff get transferred over? >> the answer to that is yes. even jack smith can be hired as a federal prosecutor and not -- he's under a special status as an outsider who was brought in. he can just be hired as an assistant united states attorney. that's a fancy term for a federal prosecutor. many of the lawyers, the prosecutors who are on this case are assistant united states attorneys, are federal prosecutors at the department of

justice just on detail. i've worked on many details. for instance, the enron task force going back 20 years was a group of people that were created from within the department of justice to investigate everything related to enron. the same thing could happen here. the oddity, the thing that's so ironic here is remember the republican attack on jack smith is that he's too aligned with the department, that he is just a lackey of merrick garland and joe biden. essentially the decision today is saying no, no, no. he's too external to the department. he needs to be more internal. well, there's a way to do that which is to just have the case be pursued by a u.s. attorney's office and the staff and the agents assigned to it can also still work on the case. >> u.s. attorney weiss, he was

u.s. attorney before made special counsel for the hunter biden case. i want to put back on the screen the trump truth social post in relax to judge cannon's dismissal of the classified documents. i want to drill down with mark on the language. donald trump after what happened on saturday talked about changing tone and uniting and moving forward saying that the speech he had planned wasn't quite right. when you look at what he's posting on truth social. lauls indictment in florida, january 6th hoax. fake claims about a woman i never met, political attacks, democrat justice department, weaponization. these are tried and true trumpisms he's been using forever. it doesn't sound like he's changing his tone much from the reaction here. >> katy, i do think the tragic events over the weekend do offer an opportunity to try to unite -- continue to unite the party and bre i don't understand including independents around him. i think the question, as you

say, is will that last. i don't believe january 6th was a hoax, but i think that he does still have an opportunity where millions of eyes will be on him this week to make that question. >> what is the desire among the republican party right now, the people who have gathered here, to hear him tone things down? will they want to see him fight? >> there's two different audiences. there's an audience in the convention and then outside in america. we are at a moment when there's been significant political violence. this is a long string. i think a lot of america is weary and tired and anxious for a leader who can unify and tone down the rhetoric. i think he's going to be given that opportunity in front of millions of americans. as you said, how long will that last? in 2016, when you won that

night, he changed his speech for one more director to hillary to talk about unifying the nation. by inauguration day that rhetoric changed. >> it changed quite particularly. this is why stick mics here and face mics. it's going to get really loud at the convention. i want to go to jake sherman. you're following the developments happening here, the people choosing to come. also a lot of talk about who his vice president might be. and there are three finalists. there's marco rubio, doug burgum and j.d. vance. j.d. vance specifically has been very vocal in the past few days following the assassination attempt on saturday. does that tell you anything? >> katy, if you want to be vice president and chosen by donald trump, you need to be on his same page. you neat to outshine him. you need to not have grander ambitions which i'm not sure j.d. vance does not have.

quite frankly, to be honest with you, the conversations i've had, katy, over the last six to eight hours indicate to me that j.d. vance is in the front running. as we wrote in our afternoon edition today, nothing is official until it comes out of trump's mouth. even then nothing is official in donald trump's universe. i would say this, if vance or rubio are chosen, a governor from a red state would have a selection to put someone new in the senate. i will say this. j.d. vance has spent his short time in washington, not there that long as a senator, marching basically in lockstep with the trump line. has translated trump's language to the halls of congress which is what i think a lot of people in trump's orbit want. they want somebody who is a quote, unquote, fighter, somebody who doesn't stray too far off the page. in j.d. vance, they'll get that. i think that's exactly what they're looking for. to be honest with you, i think a lot of people on capitol hill will be happy about that as

well. seeing j.d. vance as a fellow traveler in donald trump's orbit and someone who says what he says and does what he wants. >> marc, you've been in a situation where donald trump is making a choice for vice president. you were chief of staff to the vice president, mike pence. what is this situation like as you're waiting to find out who it's going to be? >> i think president trump likes to keep everybody waiting and likes the pageantry of it. i don't think people don't know until he gives the actual conversation. even then it's not certain until you absolutely do it publicly. >> do you have a recommendation? >> well, i can't say a recommendation. i do think j.d. hans has been the front-runner all along and i think that's likely where he's headed. to our earlier conversation about uniting the country, there's certain signals that go into your vice presidential pick. whether that fits with the unity message is an open question. >> marc, it's chris jansing back

in studio. i'm wondering if there's a way to pick someone who can be both a unifier, which is what drum says he wants. he says he's changing, rewriting his speech to reflect that. can you be a unifier and the kind of fighter we have come to expect from followers of donald trump at the same time? >> i'm not sure marc can hear you. can can rubio be a unifier and a fighter, can vance with a unifier and a fighter? >> certainly. i think it's certainly possible. that's the rallying cry in 2016, a lot of people felt be troid by their government and wanted somebody who would fight for them. i think the resilience he showed after the assassination attempt rallies people to his cause. absolutely you can be both. but time will tell whether you're really sincere or not. >> it's always unwise to make predictions about donald trump.

>> you perfectly said it, my question to jake, which is this. i'm just looking at my phone jake. drum and team have put out a fund-raising email saying should i pick my vice president today, but i still haven't made my final decision. one thing you can't say about donald trump or his team is that they don't know how to build tension, expectation or, frankly, just get old-fashioned attention. >> reporter: listen, traditionally -- and we're far from traditional times -- the vice presidential choice would have been announced already. i wouldn't take a ton from the opportunity raising emails which i by and large think they are scams anyway. they're just attempts to get people to click on links and give some money. but i do believe based on my

reporting over the last 12 hours that there is -- that donald trump has been going back and forth, at least a little bit. people have been making the case to him for somebody like marco rubio, for somebody like doug burgum and someone like j.d. vance. it's not a far fetched thing to say that there are a ton of people who want marco rubio to be chosen, who prefer rubio to vance. vance is kind of a pain in the neck to the republican leadership and to the establishment in d.c. he has not been a helpful senator on a whole host of fronts. ly say this, though, vance has had a little bit of a bipartisan streak -- little bit of one, he did a rail safety bill with sherrod brown, his home state senator who is in a really difficult fight for his senate seat. he's not somebody who always throws bombs. but if you are an establishment pick in d.c., you probably don't want to see donald trump pick

j.d. vance. on the other side of the coin, you might not be too upset to get rid of j.d. vance from the halls of the senate. >> thank you all. jake sherman is staying with us. former president trump could make his first public appearance since he was shot. as the rnc gets under way, the official gavel will take place soon. we have our experts on the ground in milwaukee standing by after this. ground in milwaukee after this while i am a paid actor, and this is not a real company, there is no way to fake how upwork can help your business. upwork is half the cost of our old recruiter and they have top-tier talent and everything from pr to project management because this is how we work now. - i got the cabin for three days. it's gonna be sweet!

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former president donald trump is in milwaukee after deciding not to let the assassination attempt delay his arrival. he could make his first public appearance since the shooting that came about an inch or so from ending his life. >> in multiple interviews today the former president is grappling with just how close that bullet came, acknowledging that but for the last-second tilt of his head, that bullet would have been the end. quote, i'm supposed to be dead, he said. in light of that trump said he had to change the keynote speech on thursday, change the message, telling the washington examiner that this is a chance to bring the whole country together, even the whole world. the sfeech will be a lot different than it would have been two days ago. let's bring in dasha burns also here in milwaukee along with nbc news chief political analyst chuck todd and presidential

historian douglas brinkley. dasha, what do you know about the changing of the speech? >> reporter: katy, the basic run of show hasn't changed. everything about the tone, the tenor and the spirit has absolutely changed in spirit, in tone and in tenor. this was going to be a very classically trumpian event. his speech, as he told the washington examiner was going to be a humdinger, was going to go after biden, do all the things we've come to expect from the former president at his rallies. the event was going to be raucous, at times potentially incendiary as we've seen at these events. that now seems to be something that the former president and his team themselves are trying to tamp down. here is one of his aids today. listen. >> this is a moment in our country's history where we're in a tinderbox, so much political division, so many people hurting

from the economic woes, hurting from the chaos at our southern border. look at the families of lake kin riley, we have to put our country in a different direction. we have to come together. savannah, the disunity and unrest happening at the national level simply isn't good for the country. cannot persist. we have to come together in this moment. >> of course, this has impact ld everyone that's been watching and feeling the effects of this in some way or another. katy, i've got to tell you. in talking to the people who were there, there is something indescribable about actually going through that experience. if you're the former president and that bullet was inches, perhaps sent meters away from a lethal shot, that can have a serious and deep impact on a person. it seems that he is leaning into that and walking into perhaps a

different version of himself. we'll have to see how this transpires over the next few days. but the signs point to a very different type of event. >> dasha, we heard over and over and over again as i was covering this this weekend from people who were there. obviously they were shocked. it's a horrible experience to have to go through. i was struck by one woman who said she decided to get in her car and drive to milwaukee. she's not a delicate. she just wanted to go as a sign of support, so was going to drive from pennsylvania. i'm wondering how the people attended the rnc, the delegates you've been speaking the are reacting to what happened. >> reporter: everyone is thinking about this. everyone is talking about this. a lot of people echoing the former president's cal for unity. take a listen. >> it's a time to unite, whether you're a republican, democrat, independent, black, white, asian, i don't care. but something like that is

inexcusable, and i hope i never have to see it again. >> we should all be disturbed by the violence, the magnitude of violence in that regard, assassination or shooting someone. i don't care if you're a democrat or republican, everyone should be bothered by what happened yesterday. >> i think the divisive rhetoric in this country needs to come to an end. we need to come together and decide, hey, let's debate the issues, lit the vitriol cease. >> reporter: as i've been traveling the country talking to voters this entire election cycle, there's been such a heaviness, such a bleakness reflected in their sentiments when it comes to politics as we've been having this conversation. just about everyone i've met is deeply saddened by the polarization in our country. this event is just about the highest level, the starkest, darkest example of that. and what people are telling me

now this could go one of two ways. either this turns the tide in a different direction and brings people together or it only deepens the divides. >> thank you, dasha burns. it brings me to you, doug and asking you in a historical look. you think of the '60s with the kennedys, medgar evers, martin luther king jr., the attempted assassination of ronald reagan. we've had violent political rhetoric in our past. what does his sfri tell us about what dasha just mentioned, does this bshg a unifying force or further entrench the divisions? >> it has the potential to unify us. boy, that's going to be a reach on the political divide which is very large. i think the key of this moment, a little like after jfk was killed in '63, lyndon johnson had to run that famous 1964

convention in atlantic city he was teasing lbj who would be his vp, and trying to get the mood of the country going in a different way. the beatles had done that earlier, but in a political realm. it worked in the sense that johnson won and at least brought the country together in this very strong one direction. it happened to be progressivism. when trump was shot in pennsylvania, people didn't know quite what to do. there will be in a convention like this, they need president trump to break the ice with some humor. he's going to need a couple of one or two-liners. he's already unspooled the idea of saying to a reporter, look, i should have been dead, i shouldn't even be here. i think working with script writers, getting a couple of

boom-boom funny lines, relax people at some point, in addition to honoring the dead and injured of that horrible event. he's running like "the apprentice" in reverse. who is it going to be to get fired you're watching. here you're looking at this process of who is the big-time winner. really right now i think it's looking towards vance, but it's an equal playing field. >> chuck, you and i have been in a moment like this together so many times, so times in 2016 when the rallies got violent, when donald trump increased the violent rhetoric himself. january 6th we were together watching that unfold. we've come to all this inflection points, and yet it's only gotten worse. it's not gotten better. it's gotten worse. somewhat this moment going to be? >> i'm trying hard not to

presume the worse is it. i'll be honest. obviously, if you look back, we keep getting worse, not better. i also believe the reason this president race has been stuck is i think the country wants to move on and they don't think either gentleman can do it. look, this is the opportunity for donald trump now. i didn't think he was going to get another chance to speak to people who were probably not going to vote for him. but he actually has that opportunity this week. how does he use it? let's see. i think we're going to learn a lot. i'm very curious. i don't want to presume that everything goes back to the way it was by the end of the week. you just don't know. you go through something like that. it can change a person. i think everybody is curious to see what does he do, what does he sound like? i understand past the prologue, and i get that.

but in a moment like that, i think at the end -- like i said, he has an opportunity, how does he use it? previous leaders have had moments like this, and they have taken them and gone in one direction or the other. that's the opportunity he has. which direction does he choose? >> naturally people will be skeptical. if anything can change it, it can be a brush with death. >> that's right. >> i have had conversations with people who follow politics closely. maybe this might change something, maybe, even understanding it hasn't in the past with this candidate, this political moment that we're in. there's also so much about what is going on. >> we're drowning in it. this is where -- i'm going to go on a tangent here. this is the tech companies. they have done this to us, when you go online the conversation is dominated by conspiracy theoriesists left and right. you talk to real americans.

can we somehow tone this down? can we have a debate about what the authority of the constitution is without saying the republic is at risk. have a little more faith in the american people to make a decision about the democracy, and to make this election feel as if it's armageddon which there are people on the left and the ride have made this an armageddon like, if our side loses, it's over. to the wrong mentally disturbed person, they can hear that the wrong way. i do think we've got to be a little more realistic. look, i think the left hars been not focused on the right ways to campaign against trump. i think they sit in way too many hypotheticals that are sort of 1% chances rather than focusing on what is he most likely to propose? ditto with how the left goes -- how the right goes after the

left. >> a lot of policy to discuss. >> absolutely. >> also the economic policy that you and i touched on the other day. >> i think it's like -- he wants to raise taxes on everybody. that's a huge issue. >> democrats and independents will argue, look at january 6th. you've got to take that seriously. if that isn't a threatening event for the democracy, what is? >> absolutely. it's not -- to me it's fair game to bring that up. look, this goes back to how the entire biden justice department handled the beginning of this investigation. we have an unresolved investigation that i think, frankly, incompetent handling of it by the justice department. >> chuck todd, thank you very much. dasha and doug, appreciate it. coming up, the latest on the investigation into the gunman's motive and the major efforts under way to keep everyone here at the rnc safe.

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the delegates will say who they back, most of them, if not all of them, will be for donald j. trump. katy is right now making her way onto the floor where you can see the delegates have all arrived. but outside there's a lot of protesters who have also arrived in milwaukee. i want to bring in nbc's maggie vespa who is at the protest march near the convention hall. what are you seeing and what are people telling you? lots of folks there. >> reporter: chris, definitely. this is easily thousands. this is the coalition to march on the rnc 2024. they are here for a number of

reasons. you see behind me stuff to do with reproductive rights, immigration rights, basically all of them say they have huge issues with the gop and they wanted to get -- what they keep saying is within side and sound of the republican national convention and make their displeasure with the entire gop platform known. i say the sight and sound part. this is the result of a years long court battle. as soon it was decided if rnc was going to be in milwaukee, they took the city to court to get as close as they possibly could to the rnc. for those who haven't been following milwaukee's planning of this convention, there was a couple of first amendment zones they say aren't close enough to make any protests in their mind matter. they went back and forth over the course of two years, and it wasn't until this past friday that they were given permission to walk through the city. if we can come a little closer to the march, i'll let you go up

and let the camera go along the line. you can see all the different kind of takes we have here. basically one last final point, the big question of the weekend. do people feel safe being here? everyone we talked to said they feel relatively safe. they know this is risky, but to them this is easily worth it. >> maggie vespa, thank you for that. the security concerns of course arising out of the attempted assassination of donald trump 550 miles away in pennsylvania. and right now the fbi is working around the clock trying to figure out what motivated to shooter to take aim at the former president on saturday. the fbi believes 20-year-old thomas matthew crooks acted alone, and the firearm he used was purchased legally. they've also found suspicious devices in the suspect's home and car, all part of what the department of homeland security secretary is calling a failure of security.

shaquille brewster in bethel park, pennsylvania. also with us, carol leonnig and former fbi supervisor rob d'amico. shaq, what can you tell us about the investigation and where it stands at this hour. >> reporter: we heard from the fbi director yesterday saying that although the suspect is deceased, the investigation very much ongoing. it seems as if we're reaching the next phase of the investigation. we're getting the first real look of the suspect's home. we know he lived with his parents. that perimeter that used to be around his home with multiple law enforcement agencies is fading away. you see the house right there. we saw members of law enforcement going around the area, seemingly canvassing the going through, collecting evidence, piecing together that investigation, and what we have heard from the fbi is that they're not just looking at motive, but they're also trying to see if they can identify and put a time line together of the

suspect's actions and movements before that shooting. you know they have his cell phone and they're going through that trying to gather whatever evidence they can. they also say that they've received more than 2,000 tips at this point from members of the public. we also know they're having interviews and conversations and say the family is cooperating in that. as that all is taking place, we're learning more from people who knew him or at least were familiar with this suspect. we know that he worked as a nursing aide or a dietary aide at a nursing facility, that he was a member of a gun club that's about a 30 minute drive from where we are. that gun club confirming that he was a member and releasing this statement both sharing their condolences but the attorney also saying that obviously the club fully admonishes the senseless act of violence that occurred on saturday, and again, extending their condolences there. a lot of pieces that are being formed together as many questions are still unanswered

as to what happened on saturday and what investigation needs to occur now. >> i don't need to tell you that people want answers and the fbi is in charge of finding those answers, and you always in these early days get often a fractured picture of who the shooter is. he's somebody who won a prize for math and science in high school but also by the accounts of some people who were in school with him was bullied. we heard that he went through a background check for his job as an aide at a nursing home, but nothing came up, that he was a good worker. what is the fbi's real job here in terms of finding out who he was and for a lot of people the key question, why he did this. >> i think the most important thing right now, the priorities that make sure that there were no other co-conspirators. everyone may think he was a loan loner but with the rnc coming

up, they need to see do we have somebody else he had been talking to about this. was it something that, i don't want to say planned, but was there anyone else involved who may show up at the rnc. so that's the priority. the rest of the investigation is going to go just as they do. i think this is more -- this is getting to be more like a mass shooting or a school shooting investigation when you look at it. he was young, he was bullied. there was a number of people that have come forward and said that. every time someone comes up and says something, the fbi is going to have to verify it. if someone comes up and says, hey, this is what i saw, then you're going to have to go back in the investigation to prove that to see if it makes sense. the priority right now is getting on that phone. they've already done emergency search warrants on all his social media to make sure that communication, and they have a lot of agents on that with the rnc right there, that's a priority. the rest of it, i don't want to say it can take its time but it's going to go out in a normal investigation and they're going to have to verify everything. >> that is the key here. answering the question how in

the world could this possibly happen. you are incredibly well sourced inside the secret service as anybody who has read your writing knows, i covered a story simultaneously with you about the white house fence being breached but also that particular breach ended up with the suspect inside the white house, a story that you did extraordinary reporting on, so what are you hearing now from inside the agency. >> well, chris, thank you for that lovely introduction competing with you i'm sure was difficult for me many a time. i am hearing from inside the agency just the shock that this had happened at all, line of sight, which is where you have the ability to have a clear shot at the president or the former president or a senior official is one of the things that keeps agents up at night. and they have all said to me uniformly whether they are current or former, that this is distressing, deeply distressing

to them that somehow a shooter was able to get on a high roof and have a clear shot at donald trumping and was not obstructed, this line of sight was not mitigated by a bus or a van or a truck being parked in front of it, and that it appears, at least right now that the building where this man lifted himself onto and used as a shooting platform was not properly secured, obviously, because he was able to get there and shoot before anybody could detect him or at least stop him. the other thing that i'm hearing is that the secret service is, while pretty defensive about their security protocols and feeling that they did a lot of things right, they did do some things right, including evacuating donald trump. while all that is true, the secret service is reeling from what it is reeling from every campaign season, being stretched too thin, covering too many bases, and that a lot of its tactical specialized teams are

quite depleted during this time period, and they are run from pillar to post covering the president and then various campaign rallies, the vice president, the first lady, all of these people need intense security and in this instance, there were gaps in their security plan and the secret service is trying to figure out exactly what those gaps were. and secretary mayorkas is demanding now with a separate investigation that the president called for, he is going to be drilling down into how did this happen. what were the gaps? why was such an obvious risk, one we've known about for more than half a century not addressed. >> yeah, and in fact, the secretary is going to be at the white house in the briefing room a little later on, so maybe we'll get some more details from him. carol, i want to play for you, we did obviously a lot of reporting there on scene just one interview with someone who was outside that perimeter near the building where the shooter fired from. take a listen.

>> there was no security on the site at all. >> are you shocked? you're this close to the president, that there was no security? >> i kept asking her -- >> thinking about it now, yes. >> so we know that the secret service works with state officials, local authorities to fill in some of those gaps that you talk about, but ultimately, however many other law enforcement members are on the scene, whatever they're tasked with, does the buck always stop with the secret service for their protectees? >> absolutely. for every event they craft a game day plan for the entire site and also the outer perimeter. they do that in coordination with the local police, and you know, it's one thing -- it's one thing for local police maybe to not have been well-trained for a very specific tactical mission, like being counter snipers.

there were local police who were doing some of the counter sniper work here, ultimately a secret service agent who is an expert marksman is the person who took out the shooter and the suspected gunman, but it is a -- it is very normal for local police to be the entity that is protecting the outer perimeter looking for trouble, looking for suspicious behavior, trying to spot anything that looks like a potential breach in the making or even something as dramatic as an attack, and there is a way that they are instructed to communicate with the secret service about what they spot, but in this case it doesn't appear that those communications happened quickly enough and we don't know all the answers, but the secret service is the entity that helps structure that perimeter plan. >> carol leonnig, rob d'amico, thank you both very much. coming up, what we're hearing inside the trump campaign as

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