>> donald trump's growing legal challenges test american democracy. >> the doj has become a weapon for the democrats, and absolute weapon. >> former president trump is put on notice by the special counsel again, this time related to january 6 and election interference. >> no person is above the law, including donald trump. >> the likely indictment is one of many legal challenges confronting the 2024 republican front runner as a judge sets the start of the classified documents trial well into primary season next. >> this is "washington week." corporate funding is provided by -- >> for 25 years, consumer cellular's goal is been to

provide wireless service that helps people connect. we offer no contract wireless plans and our customer service team can help find one that fits you. to learn more, visit consumer cellular.tv. >> additional funding is provided by -- the yuen foundation. rose hirschel and andy shreeves. robert and susan rosenbaum. the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> good evening and welcome to "washington week." tonight, the country waits for what could be former president trump's third indictment. trump announced earlier this week he was notified by special counsel jack smith that he is the target of a federal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election. according to reports, the letter

cites three statutes, conspiracy to commit offense or defraud the united states and tampering with a witness. his is the latest addition to ump's legal jeopardy. the current gop front runner responded to the likelihood of more criminal charges while campaigning in new hampshire. >> if you say something about an election, they want to put you in jail for the rest of your life. it is a disgrace. >> trump already faces brand-new prosecution in the classified documents case. the judge denied his request to delay the trial until after the 2024 election. he is also under indictment in the new york hush money case, and a district attorney in georgia is expected to decide in the coming weeks if you will charge trump for election interference. it is a remarkable set of circumstances that will challenge the country's justice

system, presidential election process, and democracy. joining me to discuss this and more, the chief correspondent at the washington post, and the editor and chief of "the atlantic," the political director at cbs news, and the justice department for "the wall street journal." thank you all for being here tonight. "the wall street journal" first reported some of the details of that target letter sent to the former president with those three statutes. what is included in the statutes? >> what we know is that prosecutors have amassed a trove of evidence that they think shows that former president trump played a key role in efforts to overturn this election and really was the mastermind of those efforts. what i found interesting was that one of the sentences, a federal civil rights offense,

the deprivation of rights statute. this is something that was passed in the reconstruction era after the civil war. its original intention was to prosecute efforts to prevent black people from voting and has recently been used in voting fraud type cases. there is broad range of conduct that could potentially fit into that category. we know jack smith has been working on everything from if people in trump's orbit committed crimes by sending so-called big slates of electors to congress. we know he has been looking at things like if trump's efforts to fund race off false allegations of election fraud constitute a crime. he is also looking at efforts to persuade pens to forward the

certification process. it will be very intereting to see what specific conduct prosecutors think fits into that statute. could be any number of things. the other interesting statute to me is this witness tampering statute. it is actually broad and covers obstruction of an official proceeding. this has been charged against hundreds of rioters already, and many of those defendants have argued unsuccessfully that statutes should not cover what they view as a ceremonial procedure like elections, but it was intended for things like document destruction or tampering with a witness. we know trump has a propensity to reach out to witnesses. we saw this during the january 6 committee hearings. that is interesting, but the big question these charges raise for

me that is still outstanding as if it is a conspiracy to defraud the u.s., who is the co-conspirator? >> who else could be named in this indictment? >> that's right. >> how is trump preparing for this? >> right now politically, it is all systems go. they say it has not impacted them. they feel emboldened. as you have seen, a new poll came out showing that among republican voters, 50% say that he should not drop out of the election. if anything, overa, i just spoke to a senior official behind the show, and thesay trump feels defiant, they feel strong, and they say the placement of this is actually good for them. it comes right after the crux of the primary election contest.

if you look back to 2016, this essentially was already done by that point. according to them, they feel emboldened. they feel prepared, and it is all systems go. >> the one that potentially comes as early as next week regarding january 6 would be the second federal indictment for the former president. these possible criminal charges, can you put them into context, how monumental it is that the former president will be facing them? >> of all of the investigations that are underway, this is by far the biggest. this goes to the heart of what we have been talking about for the last better part of three years. it goes to the heart of the threats to the democratic system . it goes to the core issue of trump's lie about what happened

in 2020 and the degree to which this has infected the rest of the republican party and parts of the country. i don't mean to minimize any of the other cases, but this is the big one and in many ways could be a very difficult one to prove , and i think the stakes are obviously very high for the former president but also very high for the justice department. >> this week alone, for electors were charged in michigan. trump received the target letter from the justice department and is reporting in georgia that it is looking at charging criminal conspiracy. this all have to do with efforts to steal the 2020 election. when congress certified the 2020 election results after the insurrection and went a number of election deniers lost in 2020, there was talk of democracy held. do you think we will look back on this week as another example of democracy holding? >> well, it is still holding.

it is not done yet, but the challenges here are unique. it is funny you mention this, i was just talking to a senior official in a government department, and i ask this person an honest question that i did not know the answer to. i said, can you be president from jail? i did not know the answer to that, and this person said that they did not know the answer and that it is amazing that we are at this place. this is a live question. finally, the answer is yes, probably. the answer i've been getting so far is yeah, maybe you can run the country from jail, but what it means is that we are facing one novel situation after another, and what it shows to me obviously is that there is no

respect for norms. it is very, very hard to maintain a democracy. the law is incredibly important, obviously, adhering to the law, but if you have people who are willing to step outsidthe norms of democratic restraint that have governed most everyone who has ever participated in government, that puts you in another zone entirely. obviously, this country has been going for quite a while. i don't want to be overdramatic and say that's proof that it's finished. all i will say about this week is that it is only july of 2020. who knows what august will bring us? but going week by week at this point, but it is all novel. quick speaking of people who have broken democratic norms, rudy giuliani, as far as we know, trump's former lawyer has not bn named or has not received a target letter from the justice department as far as

we know. does that mean he is in the clear or not or any of the other potential lawyers that have been in trump's orbit? >> i at this point don't think anybody is really in the clear. the grand jury is continuing to hear testimony this week from witnesses and is still continuing to call witnesses to come down and testify, so this is still an active investigation, so i would not say that anybody is really in the clear at all at any point. >> news today which has been alluded to earlier, but aileen cannon decided that in the mar-a-lago classified documents case, that trial was going to begin may 20 of next year. what does her decision tell us about the judge and the way she will handle this case? are there any avenues left for trump to try to delay the trial? >> certainly. she is someone whose actions we

have been watching closely because she prevent -- she presided over a lawsuit previously related to the mar-a-lago case and made several favor -- made several favorable rulings toward trump's team. in some ways, she did try to strike a justice -- try to strike a medium between what the justice department wanted and what the trump team wanted. the trump team wanted to start after the election, saying you cannot get a fair trial and cannot actively campaign while this is going on, so she struck a balance and put it at may 2024. if he is still -- by then in 2016, he was already the presumptive nominee, so he is the clear nominee at that point, you know, and if he is convicted before the convention, he will be going into the convention and the november vote a felon facing

possible jail time. the alternative to that is that if he is acquitted, he has all this ammunition to say this was a politically motivated attack. >> i was just going to say in comparison to the 2016 cycle, this summer is more winner take all stakes then before, so it bodes well for trump. politically, you look at that trajectory, where it lands, the crux of elections in the primary phase have already occurred, and by that winner take all, a premise, it just really bodes well for trump politically. >> in the primary? >> in the primaries. hoit affects the general election is the big question. if you look at the polling numbers, independents are very, very -- his numbers have

dropped. they are not strong, and he goes into that phase facing trial dates, facing all these things into the general election, and it does hurt. >> just to underscore how remarkable this is, stipulating that we don't know how ron desantis is going to do, tim scott, etc., but right now, it is fair to say there is a very good chance that the presumptive republican nominee for the president of the united states in may or june of next year will be a convicted felon. that is astonishing if that is what occurs. again, we don't know how any of this will shake out, but the trends are the trends, and here we are. as all of these legal perils pile up for the former president, jeff was saying we will be in uncharted territory potentially if he is convicted. do you see any chance in here of

a senator tim scott surgeon or chris christie's attacks on the former president actually working? >> i would say not great chance, but i think we know from the history of presidential primaries that there are often surprises. in some cases, the front runner goes from start to finish as a winner, but in many cases, they hit a speed bump or something worse, and then there is a battle underway. i think a couple of things here. i think chris christie's path to the nomination is very difficult, but the question is if he and the former president are on the date stage, is he able to inflict more damage? he is clearly itching to try to do that. the other question is as these early states vote, to what extent will be seeing something other than what we saw in 2016 which was at that time, people were loath to drop out. they wand to hang out as long

as they could. everyone knows that helps donald trump. will people drop out of the race, and will we get to the situation in which it is trump versus a principal challenger? in that kind of situation, it is also unpredictable. the odds are donald trump emerges as the nominee, but, you know, the only certainty of politics is surprise, so there will be some kind of surprise along the way. the question is how does that or does it really shake anything up? >> as all these cases are converging, trump shared a threatening video on his social media site, truth social. here. >> you do something bad to us, we are going to do things to you that have never been done before. >> that type of message is part of a pattern from the former president, and at "the atlantic," you have directed reporters to cover extremism and

radicalization very closely. how dangerous are videos like this? especially as we know that number of domestic extremist groups have rallied around trump. >> well, i mean, they are extremely dangerous, obviously. they are also very clever in the sense that the threat is not directed toward an individual or group. it is very hard for someone to come in and charge him with making violent threats because he's just saying -- in his mind, he is just reporting what could happen. we have seen this before with him. he has talked about himself, obviously, and the language has gotten darker and darker. people remember 2016 and some of the interesting ways he used language to make this point. we are in a much darker place now, and recently he talked about himself as being the

voters' retribution, his peoples retribution. all of the humiliations and setbacks they have faced in life . it is obviously to appeal not just to the base but to the base emotions of the base. the real issues when you talk about moving from violent, threatening language to violence itself is that he can plausibly say, i am not telling anyone to be violent. i'm just reporting that people could be violent. some people listen to that and take it as direction or as a demand by the -- a small number, but you only need one or two or 10 people in this country to cause chaos, so it is extremely dangerous. >> you mention him being vague or coy about it all. he also this week speaking to an iowa radio station said it would be a very dangerous thing if he were put in jail because his group of voters are more passionate than they ever have been. you have been across a number of

the early voting states -- iowa, nevada, florida. what is your assessment of how they are feeling about trump? >> in a word, strongly. what you see, with these investigations, indictments, looming investigations, is that politically, his hold on the party has only gotten stronger. someone actually told me it was more like a chokehold on the party, but if you talk to these early state voters, they see what is happening and they are circling the wagons. if you look at his chief rivals, they have sharpened the criticism a bit, but for the most part, they still stand behind trump by not directing their attacks at him. in many ways, he is the incumbent of that party, and it

is a very difficult, uphill climb in trajectory for them at this point. there chris christie, asa hutchinson to a lesser degree, who have been making noise, who have been critical of donald trump, but the rest of the field have been staying out. >> the other element is jury selection, which i know he has been paying close attention to. as we have all talked about this, at least the mar-a-lago trial is going to be happening right in the middle of campaign season. >> it certainly makes it more complicated. it will be complicated to find jurors who have not already come to an opinion about this or have not read a lot of stories about it or who felt like they could be impartial. >> you need to be an extreme low information voter. >> yeah, i mean, those people do exist, but i also think it will

be kind of challenging from a security standpoint at the courthouse if you have people walking in every single day, even prospective jurors and saw a scene like what we saw in miami where it was basically an miniature trump rally, and at one -- at what point does it become intimidation of a juror or something like that? i think federal law-enforcement is already taking a lot of measures to keep this circus-like atmosphere to a minimum and protect all the people involved. we have seen investigators in the case getting threats. that type of rhetoric is only escalating. >> everything we have talked about is very unprecedented territory. when we just look at the primary, how much do you think all of these indictments and trials will and -- will disrupt that process. >> if the trial in the documents case does not start until may,

we could have -- i won't say a normal primary season, but it could play out as something that could have been. we don't know when and if the indictments come in the january 6 case what would come in that trial. with that trial happened before the documents case? i don't know. could it happen after the election? there's a lot of uncertainty about that, but this is a central part of the atmosphere of 2024. donald trump has changed everything, and this is the latest version of that. whatever we say about the timetable of these cases, this is a core issue that will be in people's minds. people will vote accordingly, but it's not as though you are going to have a normal primary in which people are just talking about the normal things and voters thinking, oh, that is the only thing i have to worry

about. this is part and parcel why the selection is so coequential. >> it is really sucking all the oxygen out of every other issue, right, in the primary? >> as donald trump has done for the last few years. >> on that point, republicans are not really running on the economy right now. it is hard to imagine they will be heading into the general election. president biden is staying quiet. that way, all these legal peril issues can dominate the news. abortion access appears to be galvanizing democrats. are republicans running on any issue that could actually erode their voting base in the general election? >> it does not seem like it right now, but the ron desantis playbook is to exploit cultural division. obviously,, the harder he goes at it -- he goes at it hard and it does not seem to pay dividends for him, but there are

many reasons why he is not very popular. this christie is in there to take down trump. -- chris christie is in there to take down trump. that is what he has decided. you don't really hear a lot, and that is part of the oxygen sucking environment trump has created and that we in the media are participating in. we are talking about this and not the economy, not ukraine, not abortion access, etc., but we have to talk about this precisely because it is unprecedented. precisely because it is tremendously important, but i don't see anything, republicans saying anything about the economy, cultural issues, ukraine, nato, foreign affairs, the rise of china,nd ai. when have you heard a republican candidate or really any candidates, to be fair, come out and give a considered, thoughtful position on how do we

regulate or not regulate ai into this sort of circus-like atmosphere? nothing substantive can penetrate, and that's a problem because we have a lot to talk about. >> there are a lot of existential issues facing the country, but for now, as we await this potentially third and historic indictment, that is what we will be covering extensively, and we have to leave it there for now. thank you to my panel for joining us and for sharing your reporting, and thank you to all of you for joining us as well. don't forget to watch pbs news week and for a look at the women's world cup and efforts to achieve equity. good night from washington. >> corporate funding for "washington week" is provided by -- >> for 25 years, consumer cellular has been offering no-contract wireless plans designed to help people do more of what they like. our u.s.-customer service team

can help find a plan that fits you. to learn more, visit consumercellular.tv. >> additional funding is provided by the yuan foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. sandra and magnuson. robert and susan rosenbaum. the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪

chris williams: people aren't ignorant to the things that have been done to black people in this country, and then for african-americans, there is no generational wealth. i think we're smart enough now to understand the only real progress is gonna be made through peace and through empathy, but what makes this time now so special is it's, uh, black people of america have woken up to their socioeconomic power. jonny rhodes: as long as we see soul food as a means of our survival, as a means of our ingenuity, a means of our journey, i think that that's what soul food is. soul food is a segue of the black journey through all, and the black journey is vast, and it's very broad. marlon hall: you have to know that the state of texas has a long history and tradition of