so states after this legislation was passed, where according to state constitutions and statutory law, marriage equality is not going to exist in those states if and when the supreme court overrules its own recent precedent in obergefell, saying that marriage is the constitutional right in the land. >> that's where we have seen this happen, 1859 law. it thawed, like a frozen cavemen coming back to life, to ban abortion in that state after the dobbs decision. of course, the next step for democratic majorities should they get enough votes would be to enshrine abortion rights in federal law. we'll see if that happens, that's what to watch for next. mondaire jones, thank you very much. >> thank you for having me. >> that is all in on this wednesday night. alex wagner tonight starts good evening, chris. i think everybody appreciated that unspoken ensino man

reference. >> cave man. we were calling them -- >> thank you for working pauley shore into this hour. thank you, my friend. also for the astute analysis. always good to see you. thank you at home for joining us. today was a landmark day for democrats in congress. these are the leaders of the democratic party in the house of representatives from 1827 to the year 2000. you will notice that a hot of them hook a lot ahike. in 2003, democrats elected nancy pelosi as their leader in the house. first woman to lead either party in either chamber of congress. and today democrats elected new york congressman hakeem jeffries as their leader in the house. he is the first black person to lead either party in either chamber of congress. yes. it is frustratingly slow progress but it is still progress and that should be

celebrated. and that alone, that alone that makes today one for the history books. but today was also a landmark day for congress because today after years and years of litigation, democrats on house ways and means committee finally got their hands on former president trump's tax returns. you may remember that president trump refused to publicly release his tax returns breaking a precedent followed by literally every other modern president. so back in 2019, the democrats and the house ways and means committee, they requested trump's returns to make sure he was complying with federal law and that the irs was treating president trump like they treat everyone else. and now today after all that time, democrats in the house finally have them. the tax returns. we have no idea what exactly the committee plans to do with them or whether any of the details will be made public. but with republicans set to take control of the house come january, whatever decision the committee makes, it will have to be a quick one.

so again, that alone might be a big deal day for democrats in congress. but today is also a day to remember because today the house january 6th committee interviewed the final witness. republican speaker of the wisconsin state house robin vos. robin vos himself is an interesting character in the january 6 committee saga. voss claims that president trump called him this year, the year 2022 in july, to try to get him to retro actively overturn the results of the 2020 election in his state. there is obviously a lot to unpack. how deeply concerning it is he is trying to overturn the election as recently as four months ago. i think the bigger deal here is the january 6 committee is done. or at least they are done with the investigative and evidence gathering part of their work. the committee anticipate that's they will release the final report, the culmination of that work, before christmas, pretty

soon. having an authoritative, historical record of exactly what happened last year, that matters a ton. it isn't just history the committee has left to right. there are actionable decisions the committee has to make such as whether to make criminal referrals. for example, there are five republican lawmakers who refuse to comply with the committee's subpoenas. jim jordan, scott perry, andy bigs and kevin mccarthy. it's a live question if any of them the committee might refer for criminal charges for lack of cooperation. and then there's the potential that the committee could submit referrals for perjury or witness tampering. if asked if he believed any particular witness that committed perjury, the chairman of the january 6 committee replied simply, stay tuned. thompson also told "politico" we shouldn't expect it this to come

out as dribs and drabs but a massive holiday dump. so buckle up. we're in new territory here. this is the moment right now where the january 6 committee decides how to pass the about a baton. those convictions, the first seditious conspiracy convictions could face 20 years in prison for either of the oath keepers convicted. and the convictions are proof that the department of justice can win accountability from individuals on behalf of the larger conspiracy. which is certainly a pretty compelling backdrop as a doj and merrick garland received the baton from the january 6 committee. if they do decide to submit criminal referrals, they go to the department of justice and merrick garland.

garland then would have a decision to make. should the matters be handled individually or to the newly appointed special counsel jack smith overseeing the larger investigation into trump and his role in january 6 and the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. and then either garland or jack smith will have to make it even bigger decision, do they prosecute? this is no longer hypothetical. it is no longer academic. the ball is in the doj's court. now i want to turn to matt miller. matt, thank you so much for joining me. given everything that is happening here, this moment we're in which isn't -- this kind of, i don't want to say limbo, key moment when the committee turns it over to the doj. how do you think the convictions the doj received yesterday, how

does that inform all of this when we look at other targets in terms of january 6 and the prosecution? >> there was real internal debate about whether they should bring the charges or stick with lesser charges like they brought against other january 6 defendants. i have no doubt that is a call that went to the attorney general and merrick garland made the decision to take the risk to bring these serious charges and take the real risk they might lose in court. as they did with three of the defendants. but knowing that they had serious charges and ultimately they were proven correct with two of them. that's a real marker for history. it puts the wind at the department's sails. if you're the department of justice and you just come through this tumultuous period where you have investigated hundreds and hundreds of individuals and brought hub dreads and hundreds of charges and taken a number of them now to trial and you have other seditious conspiracy trials

about to start and still have investigations underway, there is a way to feel like the last two years you've had this -- you've been through a major amount of work and had tremendous accomplishments. i have a feeling that last two years are going to look like nothing compared to the two years the department has ahead of it when you look at not just the other regular january 6 defendant that's are facing trial and they're still investigating but the big question about what the department does about the former president donald trump. and that's, of course, leaving aside the mar-a-lago investigation which is an entirely other thread they continue to pull. for all the work that they have done, they really haven't seen nothing when you compare the work they're going to have to do the next two years. at the same time they face a hostile republican house of representatives nosing around in their business and trying to interfere in their investigations and prgss. >> matt, how does the hand shake work in this instance between the january 6 committee and its findings and the department of justice? there has been some reported tension in terms of share -- the sharing of trab scripts.

that tension seems to be to have gone away or been minimized. but i mean if the january 6 committee makes criminal referrals, is that something that the department of justice is going to have to then move forward with? i mean to what degree does the january 6 committees assessment here and their referrals, how much does that matter? terms of the doj's next move? >> so the committee the make their own assessments. but they do take these referrals seriously. when they get a referral from congress, they assign that case to a prosecutor and fbi agents who look at the evidence and decide whether it's enough to warrant charges. so in every case that they get a referral, let's say if they do get referrals, we don't know that yet. it is likely they will. those will be assigned to someone in the department who will look through with every potential defendant and decide whether in fact a law was broken. i think one of the tricky things about these referrals from

congress is the department has now bifurcated the january 6 case with the appointment of jack smith as a special prosecutor. jack smith is the u.s. attorney for donald trump. he'll handle anything that involves donald trump, whether the mar-a-lago case or january 6 charges. all the other january 6 defendants, the ones at the capitol are -- continue to be handled by the u.s. attorneys office for d.c. in some ways, the cases are going to intersect with each other. you're going to have this overlap where some will be investigated by the u.s. attorney's office and some of them will be investigated by the spshl prosecutor and have to work with each other inside the department and ultimately flow their recommendations up to the deputy attorney general and the attorney general. >> how do you think that's going to work if they make criminal referrals for members of congress? we mention the republican congressman who did not cooperate with the committee. how does that fit in with jack smith? how does it not fit in with -- how does that sort of separation

work? >> suspect the justice department is hesitant to look at criminal charges for them. they'll look at this as an internal matter for congress. if they really want to take actions against the house they could have pursued ethics committee charges. so i think while they may look seriously at criminal charges at some referrals, the department would look to congress and say you have a duty in your own -- you have a duty in the first instance to police misconduct by own members yourself. >> i wonder how -- the committee is a specific animal in so far as so much of the work was made public. the hearings were prime time televised events. we talked a lot about them on this show and this network. the american public hardened

them. there is a fair amount of pressure on the doj to do something here and follow up on congress' recommendations in some meaningful fashion if for nothing else the american public will demand it. and if you look at the mueller investigation. nothing effectively amounted to anything in the court of public opinion i believe. this has to be different, does it not? >> it does. look, i think the january 6 committee has done incredibly important work. and if we never saw criminal charges come out of their work, the work they've done is still important for bringing -- for shedding light on what happened and bringing public accountability. jail time and convictions are not the only kind accountability in this country. public shame has a real effect. keeping people from getting real jobs can have a real effect. the work is important and important for history.

it will be important if they lead to criminal charges. i suspect they've uncovered evidence through their investigations that the department didn't have. we see the department very much wants to get ahold of the transcripts of the interviews so they can get their hands on some of that evidence. and i think we will see, you know, serious investigations grow out of the committee's work. i think much of the investigation that the department is doing into the former president's involvement in january 6 and whether he has criminal liability directly flows from evidence that the january 6 committee turned up and made public in those hearings that all of us watched and that we know the prosecutors were watching and the attorney general himself is watching very closely. >> matt miller, former chief spokesman for the justice department during the obama administration. always great to talk with you, matt. thank you for your time tonight. >> thank you. coming up next, a labor deal that would avoid a strike by the country's rail workers. it heads to the senate today. transportation secretary joins me with the biden

administration's response on all that. later this hour, for most americans, the justices of the supreme court are unreachable and they're inaccessible. but new reporting sheds light on the wildly underexamined relationship between conservative justices and special interest groups. stay with us. s and special interest groups. stay with us away things. fit together with away things. ♪ ♪ that's our thing.

♪ ♪

last night the country braced for a rail strike. most of america's trains are not running. rail companies and unions are trading accusations and congress

is under pressure to step in. >> when president bush's point man andrew karr went to capitol hill asking for congress to order end to the strike today. democrats who control the house and senate balked. >> we have to be prepared to act in america's best interest and act quickly. >> my fear is that we have a contrived national emergency. >> you are coming here and telling congress to shut down the collective bargaining process. >> i'm asking congress to meet its responsibility for the national economy. >> that is nbc "nightly news" from june of 1992. railroad workers had just gone on strike and that had major implications for the national economy. president george h.w. bush was pushing congress to help end that strike. passing a bill that would allow congress to force the railroad workers back to work. and you heard in that clip how some democrats opposed forcing an end to the strike out of fear it would punish railroad workers who were just fighting for

better working conditions. but in the end congress did pass that bill to end the strike. it passed with bipartisan support in both the house and senate. just a handful of pro labor democrats voting against it. one of those pro labor democrats was delaware senator joseph r. biden. today president biden, president biden, finds himself in it a very different position. the nation is on the verge of yet another major railroad strike with cataclysmic and economic effects. the biden administration is asking congress to step in and to force those workers to accept a deal they previously rejected. if a deal isn't reached, it could mean disaster for an economy that is already been hobbled by supply chain issues resulting from the pandemic. complicating all of this is the fact that railroad workers demands are basically pretty reasonable. the chief demand is for the railroad companies to provide them with paid sick leave, something workers in many other industries already get. rail workers currently get zero

paid sick days for short term illness. now the deal being pushed by the biden administration would offer them only one day of additional paid sick leave to use if they're sick. one of the reasons they don't want to offer sick days is they have less workforce. the railroad industry implemented reforms that dramatically reduce the workforce while at the same time boosting profits for shareholders. "the new york times" reports that at one major rail carrier, the number of employees plunged by a third over the past decade, expanding the company's profit margins and pushing the stock up over 300%. but in the meantime, employees are still human beings who get sick. this is how rail workers describe their situation to the pro labor news organization more perfect union. >> we're considered essential employees and we don't have a single paid sick day to use when we're off. we worked through the pandemic. we were considered essential and

now it seems like we're expendable. >> my guys are coming to work sick and exhausted. we routinely work 14 hours a day. >> we lost two members today and they may have been here today with us if they were able to rest and reset. >> today the house of representatives passed a bill to end the strike. but it passed a bull to provide -- bill to provide the workers with seven sick days. they need 60 votes to pass. a coalition of democrats from progressives like bernie sanders to moderates, they say any bill passed by the senate needs to include seven days of sick leave for rail workers. so what can the biden administration do to avert national catastrophe? joining us now is secretary of transportation, pete butte

ajudge. >> so the position of the administration is that we need to enact this tentative agreement and avoid the possibility of a rail shutdown. i want to make sure that it's clear that a rail shut down wouldn't just shut down the trains, it would shut down the country. there is no system for freight rail systems. so within a matter of days you could see, for example, chlorine not reaching water treatment plants and people in american cities being told they have to boil water or use bottled water. we would see the auto industry effectively shut down within potentially a couple days at some facilities because they don't have that many parts on hand. we estimate about 600, 675,000

workers would be laid off within two weeks of a rail shutdown taking place. it would only escalate from there. it is important to the national economy that shutdown not happen. now what we have in terms of what passed today in the house soon after and very swiftly after speaker pelosi brought it to the floor is a resolution that enacts that tentative agreement that labor leaders and company leaders reached at the table a couple months ago. there were 12 unions party to that. only eight acted to ratify the deal. bottom line, have to make sure that something gets to the president's desk quickly because while the cutoff date is december 9th, you would begin seeing a winddown of things like hazardous shipping materials like chlorine. that can start as early as this weekend or next week if there is no resolution. >> mr. secretary, i think, you

know, given your articulation of the stakes here, i think we can appreciate the urgency of getting something done. i'm having a hard time understanding where you guys are positioned vis-a-vis senate democrats. i know you and marty walsh are meeting with democrats tomorrow. will you be encouraging senate democrats to pass this with or without the extended sick leave and by extend it, i mean seven days? >> look, as you know, the president believes in paid leave for all americans whether they work in railroads or anywhere else. we've been pushing that from day one. we'll continue to push for that. but also if you look at what is going to be able to get to the president's desk and make it through the senate, it's pretty clear that the simplest and straight forward way to do that is to enact the tentative agreement that labor leaders and company leaders reached. that is something that needs to move very quickly because it can -- we don't have a lot of time to lose. and what i'll be doing tomorrow with the senators is making sure from the transportation

perspective that they have an understanding of the things that would begin to happen everywhere from our ports which would begin to back up until the point where ships could no longer arrive there to our farms, to our factories and water treatment plants in the event that there is any kind of shutdown. >> i guess i wonder, it sound like the tentative agreement which is the one that is separate from the extended sick leave of seven days has one day of sick leave in it. you knew what was in this deal for weeks. were you dismayed or at all disappointed that there wasn't more sick leave built in? it's currently a single day of paid sick leave for the rail workers. if you believe the testimony we played, have fairly difficult working conditions. >> they do. and they've been under a lot of pressure. they feel it's difficult to access sick leave paid or unpaid because of the scheduling that they're subjected to. that is a legitimate concern. and one of the many things that the union leaders and company leaders balance when they

reached this tentative deal. but what the deal does have is a 24% pay increase over five years. and that's retro active. bonus that's i think come to about $5,000. and this added paid personal day which i do want to distinguish is a day of paid personal leave which is added to what the workers now get which is, as i understand it, typically up to between three and 12 in which union they're with. these are legitimate concerns about being able to have any of that kind of flexibility. and those are among the different things that labor leaders and company leaders weighed as they came to this tentative agreement. now that that tentative agreement is on the table and house has taken that step, we need the senate to act quickly and get a bill to the president's desk knowing that it's not perfect. none of the parties are completely satisfied or got everything that they want in this compromise and in this negotiation.

but also as happened i think 18 times in the past with congress using authority under the rail waiver act, we need to make sure there is a solution that does not risk ending the economic growth that we're seeing in america and sending us in the other direction. >> secretary, we talked a lot about the rail workers. but what of the rail companies? part of the reason we're in this predicament is because in the 1990s they instituted reforms. dramatically trimmed workforces. does something need to be done here? is there oversight or should there be some kind of reform that congress should be asking of the rail companies so that they can manage their industry the way many other industries manage which is to give employees paid sick leave? >> yeah. so there are a couple things that need to be looked at. across the transportation sector, you see workers coming under enormous pressure under these models that a lot of the companies are adopting. we're seeing variations of this whether we talk about airline

pilots and worker and rail and fewer workers who have less and less cushion in terms of availability and what that means is more overtime, less flexibility and being able to use down time or preplanned -- whether it is paid or unpaid becomes harder and harder. that's a quality of life issues that has really been on the minds of railway workers. the other conversation that we want to have that we've been having since we got here and not going to relent on is the idea that every american worker ought to have paid leave. something the president believes. he is making the case for. just about every other country has this policy. and we think that needs to happen in this sector and every sector. >> i want to turn the page to something that is decidedly happier news and get your reaction to the passage of the respect for marriage act, mr. secretary. and your feeling about that sort

of momentous occasion. >> well, look, it's obviously very good news to see those rights established to see that democrats and republicans were willing to vote for that. i received that with mixed emotions though. just seeing something as fundamental as my marriage coming up for political debate in the first place. the american people are there. 70% of americans now believe that a marriage like my marriage to my husband is as valid as anybody else's and deserves to be protected just as much. and, you know, this shouldn't be as hard as it was. but i applaud the leadership of senator tammy baldwin, senate democrats and the republicans who crossed the aisle to do it. there is a part of me that really wishes it could have been 100-0. i'm not naive about why that wasn't the case. but, look, our marriage is

about -- and my husband wrote eloquently about this on medium yesterday. our marriage is filled with taking care of two amazing children. it's filled with getting scrambled eggs off the wall and getting the kids dressed and out the door in time to make it today care. and making sure bath time goes all right and handling the dogs and kids and our plans and bills and jobs just like everybody else's marriage. and we should be treated just like everybody else's marriage. that common sense principle carried the day in the senate. i hope it becomes law soon and appreciate everybody who's helped to make that a reality. >> universal stress of scrambled eggs on the wall. we hear you. we see you. secretary of transportation, thank you very much for taking some time to chat with me tonight. really appreciate it. >> thank you. same here. coming up, new reporting

alleges a secret influence campaign targeting conservative justices on the supreme court. former clerk melissa murray joins me to discuss ethical guardrails at the court or lack thereof. election day was three weeks ago. results in a couple battleground states were still in dispute as of today. we'll have more details right after the break. break. i earn 5% cash back on travel purchased through chase with chase freedom unlimited. i earn 5% on our cabin. hello cashback! hello, kevin hart! earn big time with chase freedom unlimited with no annual fee. how do you cashback? chase. make more of what's yours. in 3 seconds, this couple will share a perfect moment. oh, wow. but we got to sell our houses. well, almost perfect. don't worry. just sell directly to opendoor. close in a matter of days. get your free offer at opendoor.com before dexcom g6, my diabetes was out of control. i was tired. close in a matter of days. not having the energy to do the things that i wanted to do.

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well, we fell in love through gaming. but now the internet lags and it throws the whole thing off. when did you first discover this lag?

i signed us up for t-mobile home internet. ugh! but, we found other interests. i guess we have. [both] finch! let's go! oh yeah! it's not the same. what could you do to solve the problem? we could get xfinity? that's actually super adult of you to suggest. i can't wait to squad up. i love it when you talk nerdy to me. guy, guys, guys, we're still in session. and i don't know what the heck you're talking about.

the outcome of the 2022 election is settled unless you're living in arizona. the state's county board of supervisors refused to certify the county's election results as of monday which was the statewide deadline. and that is because its republican led elections board doesn't trust the vote tabulation machines they use or the state's perfect ses for certifying them. so now they are facing two lawsuits seeking to force the board to do its job. the board of supervisors has perhaps unsurprisingly decided to fight the suits but since county attorney -- since the county attorney waned no part of this, they hired an outside lawyer and they picked a guy that represented the cyber ninjas, he ran the audit of the

maricopa county 2020 election results. really. the problem is the cyber ninja's lawyer is not interested in the job. he and another attorney declined to take the board's case today. apparently the cyber ninjas had a better case to make than the county board of supervisors. they have yet to find a single lawyer willing to defend them in their court hearing which is scheduled for tomorrow. has no idea she's sitting on a goldmine. well she doesn't know that if she owns a life insurance policy of $100,000 or more she can sell all or part of it to coventry for cash. even a term policy. even a term policy? even a term policy! find out if you're sitting on a goldmine. call coventry direct today at the number on your screen, or visit coventrydirect.com.

in july of 1992, the democratic convention was underway in new york city. bill clinton was the presumptive democratic nominee and running on abortion rights. while he was in new york, clinton was also running literally. he was jogging. >> as he left to jog this morning, clinton was confronted by a man from operation rescue, posing as an autograph seeker clinton recoiled but continued to greet passers by anyway on his morning in the park. >> he approached clinton this day was identified as harley blue. blue didn't act alone. there were two reverend that's helped him pull off this stunt. he and two other abortion opponents were later arrested and charged with transporting a fetus to new york, removal of human remains from the place of death, and improper disposal of a fetus. it was a crazy, gruesome bit of

theater that grabbed public attention. 30 years later one of the reverends is making headlines. he told "the new york times" as head of an evangelical group he was behind a wine and dine scheme to gain access to conservative supreme court justices in an effort to advance anti-abortion interests. the goal was to embolden the justices, lay the legal groundwork for reversal of roe v. wade. basically, to target the justices and social settings as a way of convincing them to take fairly unprecedented and unpopular positions striking down roe. whether his scheme worked, we don't know. >> what we would attempt to do is match our couples to justice couples. so kind of feel out personality

types, interests, age, station in life and so forth and try our best to be matchmakers. try to pair up couples where we thought there was a good prospect for a meaningful friendship to develop. and this particular couple really had an innate capacity for understanding human behavior, what bothered those justice couples they interacts with. what their needs were and they responded to those needs. >> that couple he's talking about here is donald and gayle wright. through his scheme the wrights became close friends with justice alito and his wife. when donald wright died, his family post these pictures. and then there is that particular one with justice alito inside alito's chambers. the wrights and alitos were

introduced through the historical society, a nonprofit organization used as a vehicle to gain access to the supreme court. he gave his stealth missionaries instruction, they were more likely to let their guard down at the historical society annual dinners because they assumed they were properly vetted. this is it a well planned strategy to gain access to the most powerful people in america. he understood that pressuring politicians could cause them to get kicked out of office. but supreme court justices, they have lifetime tenure. and man was this strategy effective. he says that when the wrights wam so close to justice alito, they learned in advance about the court's decision in a case. the suggestion here is that justice alito who authored that

decision leaked the information to his buddies. now alito denied this. but to some agree whether he leaked the decision is the most staggering illegal thing. there is an established network where people with money that want to access supreme court justices in service of their own ideological missions, those people can indeed buy access to supreme court justices. and maybe even further ideological missions and get insanely missions. and no one is stopping this. the wrights are still involved with the supreme court historical society. as of 2021, gayle wright was a distinguished donor of the society which is a title guven -- given to people that donate between 5 and $25,000 in any given year. do you blame her?

joining us know is melissa murray, she is host of strict scrutiny podcast. thank you for coming on the show. this is, i don't understand why this is not headline news across the country and it is shocking and it is unacceptable if you believe in the independence of the judiciary. how can this be going on? >> that is the question. everyone has been talking about the purported leak in the decision. but that's not really the story. that is burying the lead. the real story is this coordinated, highly financed campaign to get access to these justices and actually they were successful. they got access to some of the most conservative justices. we don't know if it shaped the outcome in any decision. but we do know that they had unprecedented access. and there is not just this reporting in "the new york times," there was also reporting earlier this year in "rolling stone" and "politico" that talked about the visits going to chambers at the supreme court to

pray in chambers with some of these justices. this is a highly coordinated campaign. it should be investigated. it is highly unusual. this is the highest court in the land. this should not be happening. >> it's making decisions for the -- huge decisions that affect millions and millions of americans with no oversight. i guess i wonder, you know, the federal judiciary, there is a code of ethics that judges have to comply with. in congress, there is a code of ethics that they have to adhere to. the why what is the likelihood that any kind of code of ethics can be imposed on the justices? >> this is part of design of the supreme court and this is constitutionally ordained. it is meant to be an independent judiciary unbiassed, unbought by either of the political branches. congress can make rules but they can't enforce them. the court is a self policing organism. the fact it is self policing is one of the reasons why this

campaign of incredible influence is so important. there is no oversight. >> what of john roberts? this is his court. i see the smirk on your face. >> it's not a smirk. >> the smile, the knowing smile. i mean what happens here? he is a person that is tasked with overseeing this investigation into the dobbs opinion, right? if anything can happen with that? is anything going to happen with the news about what happened in the hobby lobby case? do we have any hope that he cares enough about this to actually do the work he is supposed to be doing? >> when the story broke last weekend, that this was really the beginning of john roberts' horrible, terrible, no good very bad day. this is the last thing that this chief justice wants. he is a conservative to be sure. but as the chief justice of the united states, he is the institutional steward of this court. he cares deeply about the court's legitimacy. frankly, this court's legitimacy has been in tattered since the

dobbs decision. people believe that the court is highly politicized. they believe that the dobbs decision was not a function of law but rather a function of the changed personnel on this court that we went in one year from being a 5-4 conservative majority to a 6-3 super majority. he knows that. he could not have been happy about this. whether he can actually take steps to do something, whether he can police this conservative super majority that he is the head of, that is a different story entirely. we have seen him basically hobbled in the face of these five justices who seem bent on doing what they like and not what the justice wants. >> and when you talk about justices bent on doing what they like, the impunity with which justice alito appears to have been operating not only this purported leak of the 2014 hobby lobby decision, but potentially the dobbs leak. i think everybody thinks if there is someone that leaked this thing, it was probably justice alito at this point. do you concur with that? >> i think if passed is pro log

and if the first leak was a tributable to justice aleet yo, -- alito, i understand why they think he is associated with this. the leak is not the problem. this is a justice that said to the "wall street journal" that merely questioning the supreme court's legitimacy crosses a line. but praying in your chambers with people who have real business before the court does not cross a line. that takes incredible cheek to look the people of the united states in the face and say you can't question this court and you can't question what we do even though what we're doing crosses so many lines. >> and when you hear the reporting about what happened in the 2014 hobby lobby decision, we know what happened with dobbs, do you feel there are other decisions the court has made that should be revisited to see if anything untoward was happening behind the scenes? >> again this campaign of influence, i think, puts a question mark over everything. everything has an asterisk. who is lobbying the court? we don't know if this campaign was successful in changing the

minds of any justices. it seems clear the justices were really successful in getting access to, these were already sort of died in the world cases. with don't know how much influence it had beyond these three. but the fact that the highest court in the united states is being talked about in this way, that's the problem. the court depends on being understood as legitimate in the eyes of the public. it has no army to enforce its decision. in order for the court and decisions to have any force in american life with, very to believe that this is a court that is legitimate. >> yeah. and to that point exactly, we're not talking just about the mingle willing at receptions. we're not even talking just about the praying in the justices' chambers. we're talking about trips to jackson hole to visit the donors' vacation homes. we're talking about special invitations offered by justices on the supreme court to the we will -- wealthy donors.

the back and forth of the activists and supreme court justices during moments in which the supreme court is hearing cases that directly influence them and are part of their sort of ideological crusade, i mean, it just such a shocking breech of ethics that the justices have to understand how just destructive that is to the legacy of the court. >> it's not even that. it's not simply that the people are wealthy and access, but for most ordinary americans, the work of the court was incredibly inaccessible until the pandemic when the court began live streaming audio of oral arguments. otherwise, you had to go down there, wait in line to get in. unless you knew the justices. no one has this kind of access to the court. but these donors did. and that is the part that is really unfortunate. for most of us, if you want to influence the court, you write a law review article and hope that someone reads it and they don't. you write a brief and hope that someone reads it and wants to

cite it. you don't buy a building across the street from the supreme court which is what this reverend did. he raised over $30 million for this purpose of changing the course of american politics and part of that project was influencing these justices and to do that, he bought a building across the street from the court. he got access to court employees. the this isn't what ordinary people do if they want to be heard by the court. >> this is not how justice works. >> it is not. >> melissa murray, professor at nyu school of law and co-host of strict scrutiny. great to you have on the show. thank you so much for your time. >> thank you. >> we'll be right back. ime. >> thank you >> we'll be right back

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>> that does it for us tonight. "way too early" is coming up next. "way too early" is coming p next we seek to find common ground whenever and wherever possible and we hope that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle as they temporari