that. and when it comes to the classified documents case from the reporting from "the new york times" they say he's interviewed almost everybody at mar-a-lago but he's got somebody from the inside. what can you tell us about -- i mean we have 10 seconds left -- your explanation for jack smith. >> we interest do have a unanimous verdict from nine men and women who decided he was liable. and i think that speaks volumes, even though it's not criminal, it's not a deprivation of his civil liberty. >> remember she did not ask for any damages at the top of this. that's what they decided to reward her. breaking news donald trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation. e. jean carroll awarded $5 million. don't go anywhere. "deadline white house" starts right now and nicolle will no doubt be talking about this.

hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york, an extraordinary and historic moment unfolding today in a manhattan courthouse where a jury of six men and three women ruled that the disgraced, impeached, indicted ex-president and now also liable for sexually abusing writer e. jean carroll inside a luxury manhattan department store in the mid-1990s. trump was also found liable for defamatory statements he made toward carroll including calling her claims a hoax and a con job. in total this jury awarded the former journalist nearly $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages. the jury did not find trump liable for raping e. jean carroll. it's the only claim on the ten count verdict that went in his favor. while the jury's unanimous verdict was decided in less than three hours it carries no criminal implications for donald trump, it is nonetheless a

historic moment of accountability for the ex-president and current republican front-runner. donald trump with his long record of lying and spreading misand dits information has been credibly accused by sexual misconduct by 26 women. today he was found by a jury to be not only liable for his statements but also for his behavior. as she exited the court room carroll and her attorney roberta kaplan did not stop to speak with reporters with kaplan saying only this, quote, we're only happy. joining us with breaking news coverage of this decision from outside the courthouse lisa rubin is back with us, and also andrew wiseman, former senior member of robert mueller's special counsel investigation. mary mccord is back, formal top official in the justice department's national security division. we see you were inside the courtroom for so much of what went on during this trial. first your reaction to the

jury's verdict. >> you know, nicolle, i was astonished the jury returned a verdict so quickly. glenn kirschner was on earlier today and said the general rule of thumb at least among federal prosecutors is for each week of trial you should expect a day of deliberations. given we've been here for two-plus weeks the idea the jury would return a verdict in three hours was astonishing to me. that said i could not conceive having had sat through this presentation that all nine jurors would unanimously find for donald trump and in a federal system and even in a civil case there has to be a unanimous jury. i think this verdict today while surprising was what i predicted would happen. the first degree of accountability for donald trump doesn't come from a prosecutor or a special counsel or even elected district attorney. it came at the hands of a 79-year-old advice columnist who had the courage to stand up to

donald trump and say what you said about me was wrong and malicious and i'm not going to stand for it. and we can all take a lesson from e. jean carroll's bravery in this post-me too era and critically decision on sexual assault and hopefully an evolution we've made as a society in our treatment and understanding how victims behave. nicolle. >> i want to go through the actual decision by the jury with you, andrew wiseman. it was the first question that the jury said no, but the second one that the jury said mr. trump sexually abused ms. carroll, yes. tell me your view and the significance of that. >> so it's important to know what is difference between essentially the charge the first allegation and the second. and it's a semigraphic, but this is what the jury was asked to decide because frankly this is graphic allegation because what's now been found with what the former president did.

so the first sort of complaint has to do with actual rape, which involves sexual penetration. the second has to do with sexual assault, which doesn't go that far. it doesn't require -- it doesn't include penetration. and so what the jury did is separated out between those things, those first and the second. to my mind what it suggests is that the jury was very careful and was looking for corroboration of e. jean carroll. that's pretty typical of a jury they look to see, we think this person is telling truth but if there's any kraubication you think what the other two victims testified about was also about sexual assault. what the defendant here donald trump admitted and confessed to in the "access hollywood" tape was sexual assault, that you can grab people by the genitals,

women by the genitals, a confession that what these women were complaining of was something he said he did. so i think that is why to my mind they may have separated those two the first and second allegations. >> it's so interesting. you know, it was not a courtroom confession of sorts, but it was played in the courtroom. and it was a confession in a belief pattern that when -- actually, i'm going to play it. this is what was played before the jury. >> and when you're a star they let you do it. you can do anything, grab them by the [ bleep ], you can do anything. that's what you said, correct? >> well, historically that's true with stars. >> it's true with stars they can grab women by the [ bleep ]? >> well, that's -- if you look over the last million years i guess that's been largely true. not always but largely true unfortunately or fortunately. >> you consider yourself to be a

star? i think you can say that, yeah. >> so, mary what a jury heard is in a long line of stars going back 1 million years you are allowed to, quote, grab women by the "p" word. and again i don't mean a confession in a criminal context, but what the jury heard to andrew's point is corroboration that trump agreed he could do what e. jean carroll accused him of doing. how impactful do you think that is when you look at, again, trump raped ms. carroll, the jury decided no. mr. trump abused ms. carroll, jury decided yes. that she was injured as a result of misconduct, jury decided yes. if yes, leave the dollar amount as $2 million for that liability on his part. mary? >> this is a civil case as we've been talking about, and so the allegation in the complaint was that mr. trump committed a

battery against e. jean carroll. and in her own complaint she said that violated numerous criminal law. it was forcible rape. the jury declined to find it was forcible rape. she also said it was sexual abuse. in violation of criminal law the jury found it was sexual abuse. she also said it was a forcible and unwanted touching also in violation of new york criminal law, and the jury didn't have to go to that next level down because they found there was sexual abuse. and i think in addition to what andrew said about that's one easier for the jury to corroborate, it also could reflect a bit of a compromise, right? there could have been some members of the jurors that believe there was penetration and there was rape and another number that said i'm not sure about that, but i'm sure there was a sexual abuse, an offensive sexual touching that maybe didn't involve penetration. and so all nine were unanimous as is required in federal court even in a civil case. but it could have been they could have reached that

compromise. we'll not know unless, of course, anyone talks to the jury and some of the jury members might be willing to speak about how they decided this. but either way it's very significant because, again, we were talking about a woman coming in and telling these intimate details how she was sexually abused, and she was telling them about a person who was one of the most powerful people in the country, the former president of the united states. it took an incredible amount of courage and something she only said she really started thinking about after the me too movement, after women started feeling more empowered to go ahead and be public about things they had kept private in some cases for years or in ms. carroll's case even for decades because it's not okay to do this including when you are a star. >> lisa, we talk so much about the strategy, joe tacopina's strategy was not to show any empathy for e. jean carroll for whatever it was she'd been

through. it was to beat her up, for attack her for not acting like he believed -- he seemed to act like he believed a rape victim should act, that a rape victim should scream and because she didn't she wasn't a real rape victim. the jury doesn't seem to have bought the other very important pillars that were on trial. can a jury all these years later accept a story being told with some contemporaneous accounts from friends when nobody went to the police at the time? i know you wrote a thread earlier last week about that. what are your thoughts about what we understand today that maybe we didn't know yesterday? >> well, i thought michael ferarra made such an important point yesterday and saying mr. tacopina wants you to believe there is such a thing as a perfect rape victim. a perfect rape victim screams, a perfect rape victim reports in

realtime and uncomplaining and she never achieves professional successp again, she never finds personal happiness, and mike ferarra stood up and said that's ridiculous. when people are grieving and they move on we didn't say they didn't love that person at all, we don't think they loved that person any less. we understand both those things can be true and the same is true of rape victims. the truth can be weird and only fiction neat and tidy. and what you saw in this verdict what i think is total repudiation of that trope, all the reasons to disbelieve e. jean carroll, this jury is saying yes, we're not buying that. she doesn't remember the date, doesn't remember the year. it took over 20 years to talk about it at all and maybe even longer to process what she's experiencing is trauma and nonetheless we believe her. we believe she's sexually

assaulted, we believe donald trump defamed her and i want to go back to one thing you said that this was in esessence a confession and that's what ferrara called it yesterday on rebuttal. he said i've been around locker rooms in my life and that was no longer room talk. that was a confession pure and simple. and i think that had a lot of impact with a jury of six men and three women as well. >> andrew wiseman, i think there's real trigger to see how this lays over our politics, which would force us to suspend something we all accept and know to be true, that our politics are broken. i don't think it matters, right, how this polls in iowa. i mean the truth is a jury that tacopina signed off on found him to be full of you know what and believed e. jean carroll and jessica leads and women who trump turned into political pinatas for political purposes, but when the facts were laid out

outside of the trumpian echo chamber, and when they were not pierced by constant disinformation, it feels likethrust a disinformation -- and we're going to get to this. it feels like the truth was very much on the line with this decision as well. >> absolutely. so two points on that. as lisa and mary have pointed out this has to be and was a unanimous verdict, meaning all nine jurors. and there's essential reporting now that at least one if not more of the jurors were quite sympathetic to the maga movement and got their information at least from people who were sort of aligned with sort of far-right conspiracy theories. and that to my mind really reminds me very much of the

manafort jury where one of the jurors if not the only juror who spoke was somebody who voted for donald trump and had a maga hat that she said she literally left in her car, and she like this jury did their duty. so you have a unanimous jury regardless of political background willing to follow the law and listen to the facts. and i just think that is -- that's just so important. and to your point about the politics of this, it's worth noting that at least in 2017 when quinnipiac did a poll regarding the then-president and what people thought if he had -- was found to have sexually harassed women, which is much les than what was found today by a unanimous jury, that 61% said that he should resign from office.

so it remains to be seen whether this has a real effect. and of course this may just be one of the sort of tumbling blocks that the former president is facing and an incredibly significant one and incredibly personal one. because there's a lot of women out there and even men -- a lot of women and daughters and mothers who are very sensitive now to this topic as they should be. >> as promised and previewed i want to add to our conversation, a law professor at the university of utah and first amendment scholar. i want to get your reaction to these decisions by this jury. did ms. carroll prove by a preponderance of evidence that trump's statement was defamatory? yes. did ms. carroll prove by clear and convincing evidence that trump's statement was false, that trump it was statement was made with actual malice? yes and yes.

was ms. carroll injured? yes. and damages amounting to -- not great at math, but $2.7 million for all of that with more to come further in there decision. your reaction to that. >> yes, well, it's been less of the focus during this trial and understandably so because the allegations about sexual assault have been so prominent and so serious, but there is also of course this second claim here. it is a claim for defamation that is wholly separate and apart from the damages that e. jean carroll suggested to the jury she had experienced as a result of the assault. she said she had also experienced damages to her reputation from donald trump telling a knowing lie about her. and that defamation suit was racked up in this suit, and among the things that we saw

over the course of the arguing of this case were e. jean carroll's lawyers making arguments that went to the krenlt of trump on the sexual assault suit but were also the keys to this defamation suit. we heard them arguing not just that there was a pattern and practice of assaulting women but rather that there was also a pattern and practice of telling known lies, which is the core of this case, the defamation piece of this case anyway. here the jury has concluded not just that trump told a lie, told a falsehood and not that just that falsehood damaged carroll's reputation, but also that it was told knowingly, that is that it was a deliberate falsehood, that when he said it he knew it wasn't true. this is a really staggeringly high constitutional barrier that is employed in cases involving

public figures of these sorts, both key players here are high profile public figures. and it's very, very rare for there to be such a holding, a holding that there was knowing falsity spoken by someone of this caliber. it's really in and of itself a quite historic moment. >> well, wow, let's not gloesz over that. mary mccord that you have a jury, as andrew said there's some copious reporting as well that this jury included some publicly proud maga supporters. found unanimously that trump knowingly lied and awarded $1 million in damages other than the reputation repair program, another 1.7. what does it say to you that even people within that movement know that trump knowingly lies and that those lies do grave damage to the people he lies about? >> well, i think it says two

things. one, i agree with andrew in my experience trying cases -- and i actually tried sex offense cases for a few years in the u.s. attorneys office for the district of columbia, that jurors really do take their obligations seriously. they, you know, listen to the instructions of the court, which the court gives instructions that often take about an hour about how they are to evaluate the evidence, what elements they have to find in order to answer the questions on the verdict form. they explain how they're supposed to fill out that verdict form. and jurors, you know, they've sworn an oath, right, to be imparls, to listen to the facts and evidence and follow the jury's instruction. and it just shows that jurors regardless of what they might think politically, most jurors will follow the rule of law. not all occasionally you have a rogue juror, but most jurors will follow the rule of law. and here in a record amazing three hours -- i don't think i ever got a verdict in three hours -- you know, they all

agreed. and the other thing i'll say is that when you've seen lots of reporters who have gone out and talked to trump supporters and many will admit that he lies or that he fabricates or he exaggerates and they'll like him anyway because they say they like his policies. they say there's a difference between maga and trump. they can believe in his policies and not like the characteristics of the man. so it's not necessarily inconsistent that a juror who believes that trump, you know, had policies that juror agrees with would still think, well, here's a case where trump lied. and remember the lies were not just that he didn't sexually abuse ms. carroll, it's that he didn't even know that woman. he had nothing to do with her, and by the way, she's not his type. >> i want to go back to everything that was at stake here. i think anyone that had watched

this, it was a white knuckle day. you don't know what a jury is going to do until a jury comes out and tells you. the person who seemed to be in the most disbelief i think was joe tacopina who asked i think for a poll of all these jurors. we'll get to that in a second. jessica leads testified. when she came out of the courthouse afterwards she says i hope i never have to talk about this again. the testimony of natasha was also part of this trial. trump does damage in this constellation of a pattern where the blast radius of trauma around each and every one of those dots is unknowable to every one of us. but all those women were willing to go through the trauma again and relive it again and the jury that may have included a committed maga member found that everything truffle said about e. jean carroll was, one false defamatory and intended to do actualal malice and that he is

liable for sexually assaulting e. jean carroll. lisa, i wonder if you've had a chance to hear any reaction from any of those other witnesses today. >> i haven't heard a reaction, nicolle, from any of those other witnesses, but there's no question in my mind that having to be here and having to relive their own assaults was a retrauma or retraumatizing for both jessica leads and nunausea stoinoff. there's also no question in my mind she's going to the unheralded of this trial other than e. jean carroll and her lawyers. she deserves a tremendous amount of credit. her testimony was so credible even joetack pena didn't lay a hand on her in cross. the only question he asked her in cross-examination was isn't it true you don't have a claim for damages against mr. trump before this jury, and she said,

yes, that's true. and he then rested because there was nothing about her story that he believed he could discredit. she wastia thoroughly believable from start to finish. she cried several time and her relationship with the trumps was wholly different from that of jessica leads and e. jean carroll who were strangers or veritable strangers to donald trump when they had their encounters. natasha by contrast she was the beat reporter for people magazine. she had interviewed trump and melania somewayed eight, nine, ten times. after she got taken off the trump beat after telling her direct supervisor she no longer wanted any contact with him she ran into melania as she was pushing them baby barron in a

stroller. that it was a group enterprise much like the me too movement and its reporting was as well, nicolle. >> you know, i want to come back to you on this question that the jury answered specific to this case and this evidence and the questions they were asked to answer about defamation. but i want to ask you if there's anything to read into to defamation victories and the size of this settlement for dominion and the size of the award for e. jean carroll with the same bucket of lies in the middle. obviously one is against fox news, the other against donald trump personally, very personally. but the patterns and practices of gaslighting, of not just denying but saying she's a whack job, it's a hoax, this almost projection as a smear and a defense, are you seeing something? i mean -- i hate to be optimistic at a moment like this and project onto my own hocks in

politics but are you seeing the behavior that lines up a little bit, one a company that is in that business, the other a jury having such a sizable financial punishment for that kind of conduct? >> well, both of these recent suits give us a chance to take a really close look at this constitutional standard that we have in defamation and give us a chance to think about this really quite new phenomenon of attempting to use defamation law as a tool for battling sort of wider problems of wider societal lies, in one instance defamation problems and two pushing back against accusers in the me too movement. and both of them seem to have been quite successful uses of defamation in that respect. and they're particularly

interesting i think because neither watered down the standard that we're talking about here. and the constitutional standard is incredibly defendant protective in these situations. it makes it very, very difficult to combat even sloppy and problematic and offensive lies that are told by people who are in this public space. but in both of these instances on the one hand we resulted in a settlement on the dominion front, but in this instance it is an instance in which we had a jury conclude that that very high standard of having to show knowing falsity, that is that they thought this was a lie and that they thought by clear and convincing evidence that donald trump knew that it was a lie when he spoke it, when he said that e. jean carroll was a liar, when he said that this was a hoax and that she was a con artist, they conclude that that difficult standard had been met.

this is a sort of one-two punch that we see after a very long stretch of not really seeing that "the new york times" vs. sullivan standard invoked or certainly anything close to it being achieved, we now see an instance in which a jury using that very high standard has concluded that a public figure is able to show that another public figure told a knowing lie, a deliberate falsehood. >> mary, again, knowing that i'm trying to bat down any optimism this will rein in any of the rampant lying in our politics i want to read you something asa hutchinson said lifelong republican. quote, over the course of my 25 years experience in the courtroom i have seen first-hand how a cavalier and arrogant contempt for the rule of law can backfire. the jury verdict should be treated with seriousness and is another example of the

indefensible behavior of donald trump. again, you need to look forward to find a republican that says something like that, but we looked and we found one. the rule of law very much on trial. we talk about it on this show all the time. mary, we press you harder than we've pressed just about anybody else about whether it was made for donald trump. is there anything to read into what happened today to make people feel more confident that the rule of law can withstand, you know, in this statement what is described as indefensible behavior? >> i mean i do think both this verdict and the settlement in the dominion case are important milestones because even though the dominion case was against fox, remember the heart of what fox was being accused of defamation for were actually repeating the lies donald trump himself was telling. and they were repeating them and

they were agreeing with them in certain way. and so his conduct, his flaunting rule of law feeling he's above the lie, he can lie about anybody and anything whether it's an election or whether it's a sexual assault on a woman, you know, these results, the verdict and the settlement do show a measure of accountability. and i think for several years now many of us have been really just crying out for some accountability for a man who has shown just disdain for the rule of law. who we can go back to his early days, right, and, you know, firing james comey, for essentially wanting to do an investigation that would abide by the rule of law. and i will tell you, though, it doesn't appear that he's changed because i just had sent to me that he's now -- donald trump saying now post-verdict i have absolutely no idea who this woman is. so he just defamed her again. the jury found that was a lie, that that was false.

and so i think it's important -- i don't know it's going to change his behavior, but i think for the rest of us, and i think that there will be other supporters of trump and hopefully other republicans who have to say something about this and will be pushed to say something about this. and i'm glad to see asa hutchinson saying what he said because it's absolutely true. >> i want to show one more moment that, again, now we can sort of talk about what was imfactful and what wasn't, and we won't know the full answer to this question unless and until this story tells us, but this was a piece of tape from his deposition that seemed to blow out of the water the trump defense -- and we've heard it for jessica leads. we've heard it for e. jean carroll, we've heard it for a lot of women, she's not my type. he mixes her up with his second wife. watch. >> i don't even know who the woman -- let's say -- i don't know who -- it's marla.

>> you're saying marlap in this photo? >> that's marla. it's my wife. >> which one are you pointing to? that person you just pointed to is e. jean carroll. and the person on the right is your wife ivana. >> this is the picture. it's very blurry. >> the picture is not, for the record, blurry. it's a little old but it isn't blurry. i read the transcript and watched the tape. it's one of the remarkable things i've ever seen. you're saying marla is in the photo, which woman are you pointing to? the lawyer says, no, that's carroll. trump, i see. kaplan says the person you just pointed to was e. jean carroll and the same, that's your wife. there's the photo. this might be a turning point.

i remember this depo was first made public and we rushed to get it on the air thinking oh, my god, i can't believe that happened and your reporting it played in court. i know i'm asking you to speculate but what impact could this have had? >> i think seeing is believing. it's one thing to read the excerpts in this deposition. and as you just noted the excerpts for that particular piece came out in january and they were stunning at the time and we couldn't even see the photograph at the time. but to see him point in to say that's marla, that's my wife, and were it not for his improper coaching of his lawyer and said no, that's carroll, i wonder how far trump would have taken that? he was absolutely certain the smiling buoyant e. jean carroll in that picture was marla maples. and i think the jury was astonished by that.

i also want to go back to something, nicolle, if we can about the impact of the defamation verdict here. because without down-playing that verdict there's something else that happened here that i think is remarkable. the damages on the sexual assault claim themselves were $2 million, and that's not because as a result of the sexual assault she suffered reputational damage, right? that's not about the truth or falsity about any statement. that's just from the assault itself. and this is a jury, again, consistent of six men, three women, at least one of whom had a rather bizarre and not particularly carroll favorerable media diet of listening to tim poole. they decided she was damaged to the tune of $2 million because the assault resulted in any number of loss of companionship, mental anguish, emotional distress, fear. that shows a real evolution not just in how we use defamation claims to address larger

societal harms but also how we think about sexual assault in this country, and that shouldn't be down-played or underestimated either. >> yeah, andrew wiseman, let me read that for you. so ms. carroll was injured as a result of mr. trump's misconduct. yes, if yes insert a dollar amount that would fairly compensate her for that injury or those injuries. the jury's response, $2 million. your response on that unanimous ruling. >> one thing i think useful to note as your panelists are commenting on, which is, yes, it's unanimous. but especially with respect to it defamation claim which as noted it's a very, very high standard because of the first amendment concerns. the jury was not just unanimous but they found it that the facts were shown by e. jean carroll by clear and convincing evidence. so to be in the leads, a

preponderance is just 50% and beyond a reasonable doubt, which is the criminal standard is the highest standard in the law. but clear and convincing evidence is between the two. it is a high standard to show defamation. and yet it was a unanimous jury on that defamation claim. so it's really -- this is quite a resounding verdict. i also think -- and mary can probably speak to this better, but i also think this is pretty much bulletproof on appeal. you know, this is really a factual finding by the jury, and it's also by one of the most respected federal judges in the country and certainly in the southern district of new york. you don't get a more serious judge than lewis kaplan, so i think this is quite solid in terms of any sort of appeal that is going to be made by donald trump. >> yeah, mary, i've been eyeballing trump's responses,

and you never know, again, who's typing them or whether they have any relationship to the truth, so i didn't reair it. but he does indicate some interest to an appeal. do you agree with andrew wiseman's assessment of the strength and solidity of the award i think it totaled $4.89 million. >> with the caveat i was not in the courtroom like lisa and i have not read the transcript of every day, i haven't heard any reporting of any sort of rulings on evidentiary issues or anything like that made me alarmed, and the judge was careful even after mr. trump's attorney joe tacopina said he's not going gobe testifying, your honor, the judge said you know what i heard he was putting out some posts from scotland or ireland saying he was going to confront the witness, so i'm

going to give you several extra days. this was on a thursday. i'm going to give you until sunday evening to tell me if he wants to testify. and if he wants to testify, he can come in and testify. thejudge really went out of his way to make sure trump's rights were protected again. with the caveat i wasn't in the courtroom and i haven't read the transcript, i don't see anything that would raise any big red flags here. as andrew said he practiced in new york and i practiced most of my time in d.c. when i was a prosecutor this is a very, very well respected judge with a lot of experience. >> just picking up on -- and i thank you for drawing our equal focus to the defamation findings and an award. do you think there's any declarations going on? donald trump defames in costco sized batches of defamatory statements, and the majority of them are in writing. i remember robert mueller investigated trump's tweets as

part of his obstruction prong, and there are footnotes in the obstruction volume 2 of the mueller report. he defames through the same methods, and i wonder if you think there are conversations going on with other individuals or businesses or people who think they've been defamed by donald trump. >> i mean almost certainly there are. one of the things that i think is particularly interesting anatizing to what folks were just saying is that libel cases are at best a credibility contest. they are asking a court, asking the jurors on a court to say who they believe were telling the truth and who they believe was lying. and we saw e. jean carroll's lawyers really leaning into this reputation for falsehood in building not just the sexual assault case but particularly in building this defamation case. at one point in closing

arguments robby cablen, the lawyer for e. jean carroll said, if you were going to find for donald trump here, you would essentially need to show -- you would need to conclude that donald trump in her words the nonstop liar, is the only one in this entire courtroom who is telling the truth. so his reputation for telling known lies was very much on trial here. maybe predominantly on trial here. and defamation lie is tricky as a tool for solving at the telling of known lies because it has to be brought by -- a defamation suit has to be brought by someone who is specifically targeted by that. that's why we see in this instance e. jean carroll as the plaintiff here. right, she isn't just suing to say donald trump told a series of lies. she had to prove up a case that he told a known lie that was specific to me and that harmed my reputation in a provable way.

her lawyers demonstrated, they put on evidence that proved up that $2.7 million figure that the jury ultimately awarded. there was evidence introduced throughout the course of that trial that that was the amount it would cost her to run a large scale campaign to try to remedy those reputational harms to compensate for the harm that was done. so societal liesplore broadly are not necessarily going to be tackled in this way. and lies told by donald trump are not necessarily all going to serve themselves up in ways that can be combated with a defamation suit. but this suit does give some suggestion that accountability is findable in circumstances where there's a target of that who can bring a defamation suit and prove up knowing falsity. >> we're going to listen to tacopina and here's why. outside of the political arena donald trump's lawyers who throw many punches do not seem to be quite as effective in court as

they are in politics, so let's listen. we'll have that conversation on the other side. >> i'd argue that's probably an accurate assessment based on what happened today, and it's something we're very confident about. the "access hollywood" should not have come into this case. we made many motions we thought would create issues for appeal, and we're going to employ them now. there were things that happened in this case that were beyond the pail. we made a strong motion. we went through a job because of the rulings and we believe bias displayed by the court. this judge had been overturned already once in the second circuit in carroll vs. trump and we think he's going to be overturned the second time. we march forward. he was found not liable for the rape and that was it.

that was not something when donald trump was accused of making statements that this was a politically motivated claim, and the judge wouldn't let us go into that. and, you know, it's -- there were plenty of issues for us to pursue. >> you were complimented by not only the judge but opposing counsel. how do you feel about that? >> i appreciate that. i appreciate they complimented me, but for me it's just about the results. and at the end of the day while, you know, it was strange, a part of me was obviously very happy that donald trump was not branded a rapist. i didn't think there should be any liability findings, so we'll pursue it. we'll pursue that. that's what i just said about the appeal, right? we're going to appeal it. but she claimed all along she'd been raped by donald trump. that's what this case was all about. yeah, this was a circus atmosphere, and having him be

here would be more of a circus. and again, but i said in the summation yesterday rings true, holds true. what more could he say than i didn't do it? i could say you stole my pen, prove you wouldn't do it, how would you prove it? say you wouldn't do it, right? that's sort of where we're at. it's very simplistic to say, oh, he had nothing to say. >> you talked a bit about how perplexing the verdict was. >> good seeing you. >> good seeing you. how does that play in the appeal? >> yeah, i think it's an inconsistent verdict, right, and something that will obviously be another issue for appeal. the issues for appeals relate really months ago when things like donald trump's attempt to have the dress tested for dna after they sent it into a lab and didn't come up with semen i think that's something that was important.

reid hoffman who ms. carroll was not candid about when she testified under oath in the deposition that should come into this case. the "access hollywood" should not have come into this success. there's plenty of issues to appeal, and look, that's what happens, right? we're in one sense gratified. and i know some people in this camp are very happy that, you know, the rape claim was rejected, but, you know, i'm not. and i am happy about that certainly, but i'm not happy he was found liable for anything because he shouldn't have been. >> how is mr. trump taking everything? >> he's strong. >> okay, that's joe tacopina. i think sometimes when you cover the trump story long enough the truth seeps out. quote, i'm happy donald trump was not branded a rapist. at the end of the day i'm not

sure for donald trump there was too much more than that on the line, andrew weissman. >> yes. i mean, let's just cut to the chase here. you had three women who were found to be unanimously credible saying that they were sexually assaulted by the former president. he is on record saying with respect to them and everyone else who has made these claims that it's all false. this really is a question of the judicial system or the facts and law still matter coming into -- two things colliding with each other, which is donald trump's alternate universe and a place where reality and law still

matter. and i think what we're ultimately going to be seeing when he step back is a continued assault by donald trump and his allies on the judicial system because this is sort of going to be a drum beat of the law holding donald trump to account, and here in an incredibly important way in terms as lisa has pointed out what it means for society to be taking these kinds of claims seriously and understanding them in the way adults should understand them. and the same thing with respect to charges in manhattan, and we may see the same thing in georgia and with jack smith federally, but that means we're going to have an enormous assault on the judicial system by donald trump because that is the institution that could hold them to account. >> mary, i want to come back to you with specifics. joe tacopina showing his hand

for his client i'm sure with the "access hollywood" tape. but it seems to me without playing the tape you ask donald trump do you believe you can grab women between the legs, his answer under oath which is what tacopina seemed to be hinging the tape trial on was, yes. mr. trump sexually abused ms. carroll, yes or no? yes. it's something that he can do today. >> that's right. and so tacopina is doing exactly what i would a defense attorney to be doing after a verdict like this. you know, the spin he's putting on it is mr. trump's not been branded a rapist. that's the best as you said he can get out of it, although i'm sure he does think that's quite important. and i don't doubt there is some rhetorical value to that. but the rest of the things he's mentioned you've just nailed it right there, nicolle, even if there are errors -- and i'm not saying there are any errors, but even if there are errors on

appeal that doesn't mean you get an automatic reversal on the verdict. putting aside the "access hollywood" i think there's good reasons that came in even under the federal rules of evidence, and those were reasons argued to the judge, and the judge made a determination. and that would be reviewed with some deference by the appellate court. a question you just raised would it have made any difference? we just had the deposition of donald trump you played earlier in the show showing he thinks it's perfectly fine when you're a star to grab women by the "p" word. and, you know, for better or worse for a million years. so i just -- you know, when you think about appellate issues they have to have mattered to the verdict, and i'm not seeing that with what joe tacopina addressed in his press conference. >> lisa, he also said having him here would have made it a circus or i think he didn't use the word contribute, but would have added to the circus-like

environment. to keep to reality was there a circus like environment in the courtroom? what was that about? >> i don't think it was a circus. andrew, mary, and i i have followed and participated, frankly, in high profile trials before. while there are certainly a constellation of cameras here in downtown manhattan, i wouldn't call this a circus. certainly there was more attention here last week for ed sheeran who was defending against a copyright claim than there was for e. jean carroll who was suing the president of the united states. one thing i want this case, tacopina that's shorthand for the first case e. jean carroll filed having to do with the statements donald trump made while he was still president. those were statements he made in june 2019 after an excerpt of her book was published in "new york" magazine. that case hasn't gone to trial

yet. when this trial went to case for the october 2022 statement that case was still on appeal. it has come back to the same judge, juge lewis kaplan. and now if e. jean carroll wishes, she can proceed to take that case to trial on the question of was donald trump acting within the scope of his employment as president when he denied e. jean carroll's sexual assault claim? or can he be liable for those statements as well? and one could find certainly that the quantum of damages for defamation in that case would be considerably more than the additional damage done to her in october 2022 after -- you know, three plus years after he first denied that he ever met e. jean carroll, that had sexual contact with e. jean carroll, that she was a sick person and a whack job and all of the rest, that case is still outstanding and e. jean carroll is free to pursue it. i'm interesting to see whether

mr. tacopina appeals this verdict. his client has another case with e. jean carroll he still possibly has to grapple with. >> at the time that he made those statements, he had 63 million followers on twitter. i don't know where you find him now on his social truth thing, but i know he doesn't have 63 million followers there, and he was the sitting president of the united states of america. it seems that a jury could find that defaming someone from that perch is more damaging. is that a fair question to have? >> yes, the compensation that can be awarded in a libel suit is very much tied up with the reach and the impact of the defamatory lie. so in every instance the plaintiff has to show that something false was told about them and that it harmed their reputation and then put forth evidence about how that knowing falsity or that lie told with reckless disregard for the truth

damaged them. that is how many people started to think poorly of them who hadn't thought poorly of them before, and so that -- the scope and scale of the remaining suit may well be quite large for all of the reasons that you described, and we could expect that if that suit made its way to court the sorts of evidence, pieces of evidence that would be introduced would parallel the ones that were introduced here. that is they would draw upon the same evidence upon the pattern and practice of behavior towards women but also the same evidence of the pattern and practice and telling known falsehoods to try to convince a jury that that too was a knowing falsity, and because of the very strong parallels, they're essentially identical in their character in the sense that they both were social media statements to the press, public facing statements

that maligned e. jean carroll's reputation for tell the truth, suggested that she herself was a liar. this is a case that e. jean carroll has proven that donald trump lied by calling her a liar. it's sort of a big lie sandwich of a case, but it all rises and falls on the truth of the underlying statement, which is this question of the sexual assault, and because this jury has concluded that there was a sexual assault, it's a much easier to get to a place where the knowing falsity can be shown. >> mary, what are your sort of thoughts and questions as we potentially head down the scenario of the path that lisa outlines? >> so you know, i think that will really be up to e. jean carroll whether she wants to go through another trial. you know, we were talking earlier about the kind of trauma that victims of sexual abuse, and again, it wasn't just e. jean carroll but two other women. the trauma and retraumatizing that getting on the stand puts

them through. i can tell you from my experience prosecuting sexual offenses, i always felt that even when the case ended with a guilty verdict that it really wasn't like there was a winner. what there was was justice for the victim but the victim still had been sexually abused. the victim still had been harmed, and now the victim was retraumatized by having to tell these intimate and personal stories to a bunch of strangers, being covered by the news on a daily basis. and so, you know, it will really i think be up to a very personal decision of e. jean carroll about whether that's something that she wants to go through again and potentially put other witnesses through again, even knowing it could be a bigger verdict. it would be just, you know, another potential way to have more accountability, but i think she's going to probably do some real hard thinking about that. >> lisa, we talk about the things that these women have been through. her friends too who had held

this secret with her and for her and held space for her to keep it a secret and not go to the police. everybody that lived this every day in covering it and bringing these stories to us. the lawyers who i talked about a white knuckle day. i imagine no one had whiter knuckles than e. jean carroll's own legal team, the jury that went through it. i'm constantly struck by the blast radius of the damage done by one man, donald trump, and to hear tacopina come out and casually slur and smear who paid for her defense, i mean, nothing about this was rigged. nothing about this was a witch hunt. nothing about this was anti-trump and the question that he said he cared about the most, this jury did not find trump liable for rape. what is your assessment at the end of this chapter of what it's like for someone like e. jean carroll and her team to go up against donald j. trump. >> reporter: i think, nicolle,

it's both and. yesterday in his rebuttal case, he said e. jean carroll is a person who is allowed to be happy. she can go to parties. she can celebrate with her friends. she can find moments of joy, she can even shop at bergdorf goodman's game. . she can be happy that she got her day in court and she was vindicated by the jury's verdict and yet still have to live with the memories of being sort of almost reassaulted on the stand for days by joe tacopina who just continually portrayed her as a malingerer and a liar and even asked the psychological expert who examined her, did you do any objective testing to ensure that she wasn't lying to you, that she wasn't the con job that my client said she was. i think that's probably a feeling reverberating across e. jean carroll's legal team from roberta kaplan to the first year

associate on her team working on the case. there were probably about two dozen people working on this case, and my guess is that they're all exhausted and exhilarated and sad simultaneously tonight. >> a really powerful way to end this part of the conversation, lisa rubin, andrew weissmann, we're the hotel california of cable news. you can check out but you can never leave. that's it. i know you all joined us for a block, ended up staying for the hour. we're so grateful to have had all of you. thank you. on the eve of the ex-president's reemergence object mainstream news, it's going to be over on cnn on a televised town hall, the same day the jury finds him liable for sexual assault, sexual abuse. one of the only truth tellers in the gop is out with a new ad warning all americans of the dangers of donald trump's imminent return. a very short break for us. don't go anywhere today.

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donald trump is the only president in american history who has refused to guarantee the peaceful transfer of power. rather than accept his defeat, he mobilized a mob to come to washington and march on the capitol. then he watched on television while the mob attacked law enforcement, invaded the capitol, and hunted the vice president. he refused for three hours to tell the mob to leave. there has never been a greater dereliction of duty by any president. trump was warned repeatedly that his plans for january 6th were

illegal. he didn't care, and today he celebrates those who attacked our capitol. donald trump has proven he is unfit for office. donald trump is a risk america can never take again. >> hi again, everybody. it's 5:00 in new york. that is the brand new message people in new hampshire, the first gop primary state will wake up to tomorrow morning. how the current front runner for the gop's 2024 presidential nomination remains a persistent threat to our country, our country's democracy, and our national security voiced by former congresswoman and top trump adversary liz cheney who is fulfilling her promise to do whatever she can, whatever it takes to stop trump from ever getting near the oval office again. cheney's words potentially a road map for special counsel jack smith who we know is deep into his twin investigations

into mar-a-lago as well as the president's attempt to overturn the 2020 election. as we await any potential charges from smith's probe, today we saw a massive step in holding the ex-president accountable by a jury of his peers. this afternoon a jury found donald trump liable for sexually abusing writer e. jean carroll and defaming her, awarding her $5 million in damages. this was the first among the dozens of claims of sexual misconduct by trump that was tested before a jury. today's ruling a reckoning with behavior by the ex-president that has become -- that we've become all too used to hearing about. trump was first heard discussing assault on women by the broader public when the access hollywood tape broke during the 2016 presidential election cycle. when he won the presidential election after that, it seemed as though the tape had ultimately had little impact. carroll's lawyers use the the

tape to build damning case against are trump. jurors semd the connection between his infamous words, quote, when you're a star they let you do it, and his attack on carroll. trump has denied e. jean carroll's accusations and said he will appeal the ruling. we've heard from a few republicans who are viewing trump differently following the verdict. senator mike rounds of south dakota said he would have a difficult time supporting a presidential candidate found liable for sexual battery. former governor of arkansas, asa hutchinson said this, over 25 years of experience in the courtroom, i have seen firsthand how a cavalier and arrogant contempt for the rule of law can backfire. the jury verdict should be treated with seriousness and is another example of the indefensible behavior of donald trump. accountability for donald trump is where we begin this hour with some of our favorite experts and friends. democratic pollster, president of brilliant corners research, cornell belcher is here, also

joining us kim atkins store, and andrew weissmann is still with us. we have not set him free yet. he's a former justice department prosecutor, andrew i'm going to start with you because you started to sketch this out for us, this sort of long, slow arm of legal accountability. it strikes me that we've never seen it in a void created by a broken political party, right? it usually comes adjacent to it, and the political action's usually really rapid, a corrupt actor in either party historically is sometimes -- the party sticks with him for a little bit. there's a drip, drip, drip of press coverage typically, sometimes opposition from a political opponent. cornell knows this well, and they're eventually like a splinter sort of purged from the body politic. it doesn't happen anymore on the right, right? they didn't walk after access hollywood, they didn't walk after see to it to let mike flynn go, they stuck with him,

they own him, but now the much slower wheels of justice are starting to grind. tell us what we should be expecting in that arena. >> well, add to that that he is currently under indictment for 34 felonies, and he is running for president. what the jury found today, these are no longer accusations that he is denial. they are jury findings, so we have seen actual conclusion of a case involving the united states civil justice system where there was a finding, a unanimous finding by a preponderance with respect to sexual assault by the former president with three women saying that's what he did. you have a unanimous finding by clear and convincing evidence for defamation, and you have a

grand jury that has voted criminally 34 counts and he is urged additional criminal investigation. to your point, what is the political repercussions. the real issue is you can look at is anyone going to take this seriously where our legal system has held people to account, a it has political ramifications, or are you have benjamin netanyahu, you know, under indictment for multiple years for corruption, and he just attacks the criminal justice system there in the same way that i suspect we are going to see from donald trump and the issue is at some point are the republicans going to say enough is enough or are they going to latch onto him and george santos and go down with the ship because i really don't think -- and this is where i'm now stepping outside of my expertise, i don't think that there is enough political will to allow him to win, at least i

hope not. >> so there's a big -- another piece that stands between what he does, what he's found. he's twice impeached, once indicted and liable for sexual assault, and whether the republican party will harbor it again, and it's how he's covered, kim atkins store. to be glib, i don't want say it to be mean, i don't say it for any reason other than that is the fact of him. he's not running for president as a republican front runner. he's not running for president as a guy who vanquished desantis after brian kill mead and other goobers on the right put their hearts into desantis, he is running as a twice impeached once indicted, liable for sexual assault man who dines with the likes of nick fuentes, that is

who he is. do we have the stamina to cover him accurately this time, kim? >> well, i think so. i think that, a, the media has sort of been on a constant learning curve on how to cover donald trump over the past since 2015. but i also think it's part of the reason why we see liz cheney doing what she is doing. what we have seen over time, it is absolutely true that we knew donald trump was not a good guy, even some of his most staunch supporters supported him despite the fact they didn't think he was a good guy, but he was still their guy, right? we have had since then things like the #metoo movement, we've seen that americans can change their minds when it becomes clear that someone is a bad actor. we saw with the january 6th committee and their hearings that that did move the needle, that that did have an impact on

the people's thought about what donald trump did on january 6th, and i think that's one reason liz cheney is launching these ads to remind people this is the same guy who engaged in anti-democratic activities and fomented a coup. then you add to this the fact that a jury, including people who support him found him liable for sexual abuse and for defamation. add that to the fact that there are these indictments and there are even more potential charges based on his anti-democratic activities around denying the results of an election and trying to overturn the results. i think there is a point where the cumulative effect can serve as a tipping point. do we see people, elect people that they don't like everything that they do, sure. but i don't know that we have ever in our history seen someone who has engaged in this kind of conduct and have been at least to some extent held accountable for it or at least been shown who he really is and still had none of that matter.

i don't know what's going to happen in the election, but i think we are in a completely different space than we were in in 2016. >> cornell, liz cheney out with a scathing ad about him as a coup plotter. his own lawyer said this today, i'm happy donald trump was not branded a rapist. i mean, is it a message for the political arena, the not branded a rapist coup plotter wants your vote again, and will it work? >> well, i think we've got to separate -- there's two things happening here. one is, look, i hope kimberly's right. i think in the primary i think he's going to continue to with -- be the front runner for the republican nomination. i think he's been opening up a larger and larger lead. i don't think that's going to stop. what i do think to the preponderance of evidence, point is that it's even harder for him to get to 46%. and if you look at the

republican party now in a general election, you have someone sitting on top of the republican party as the leader of the republican party who is liable for sexual assault. and underneath him you have republicans at the state legislative level as well as congressional level who are trying -- trying their hardest still to roll back the reproductive rights and freedoms of women. so what i do think is you will have that gender gap we saw in the 2020 election. i do think you will see that grow into a gulf, a deeper and wider gulf, particularly in the suburbs and if you are a mainstream republican like mitch mcconnell who thinks he's got a pretty good shot of winning back the senate, they've got to turn on him at some point. because, look, chris christie is right. he's done nothing but lose since 2016, and he is going to

absolutely drive a larger gender gap in a lot of these battleground states, particularly in the suburbs with better educated fascinating pi sound. let me play that for you, cornell. >> donald trump's done nothing but lose since he won the election in 2016, we lost the house in 2018, the senate and the white house in 2020. we under performed in 2022 and lost more governorships and another senate seat. donald trump cannot win, and he's on a vanity exercise to try to make himself feel better. that's not going to make the country any better. >> so i listen to that and i thought of marco rubio. people who think that chris christie's got no role in the race, forget that marco rubio was a front runner status until he met chris christie on the

debate stage. chris christie may or may not be electable in the republican party, i don't know anymore, but he can do great harm to his primary opponents. and to see him take after trump in every news cycle is going to at a minimum going to be fascinating, cornell. >> well, you know, one of my mentors once said to me, cornell you're being too rational about politics. >> there's no place for rationality in politics. >> for reason in politics. look, i think the ideal that -- and we saw it in the -- i love the liz cheney ad. the problem is i love the liz cheney ad. that's the problem with it. i'm a democrat and i love the liz cheney ad. the battle front that they're opening up with donald trump in terms of him being a bad actor and not a good person. i think it's baked in, i think we've seen all the negatives and they've digested all the negatives of donald trump, and they still want more.

they need to open up a new avenue of attack on donald trump and perhaps chris christie's right, perhaps the ideal that republicans cannot win with him has more traction than he is a bad actor. >> and on that bad actor side, this is jamie raskin, andrews weissman talking about what he's facing in terms of criminal exposure. >> four members of the proud boys were just convicted of seditious conspiracy this week, and in their defense, they all pointed the finger at the former president. is it conceivable that special counsel jack smith could be considering seditious conspiracy charges against trump? >> absolutely. i mean, that's not a defense. i mean, if you're accused of conspiracy to overthrow the government or put down the government of the united states, which is what seditious conspiracy means. it's not a defense to say somebody else told me to do it or somebody else was involved in the conspiracy. trump could very much have been part of the proud boys or the

oath keepers conspiracy, or he might have been involved in an overlapping concentric ring conspiracy with those conspiracies. >> so many conspiracies, andrew, do you think that's a case that jack smith is building? >> so let me first say i don't think we should set the bar at seditious conspiracy so that if there is an indictment for something less, we say, oh, gee, that's not serious because let's remember obstruction of congress, that is obstruction of the peaceful transfer of power is such an unbelievable charge that you would be bringing against somebody who was the sitting president. i mean, it is so serious. the addition of seditious conspiracy is that you have to show that there was an intent to have violence. i do think that jack smith is

going to bring charges. i think there's no question that it would include obstruction. i think it's still i would say the jury's out on whether it will go even higher to seditious conspiracy, but knowing jack smith that he is going to be doing everything he can to be trying to connect through the evidence the former president to leading what happened by the proud boys and the oath keepers. and as you saw there are now multiple, multiple, multiple, convictions of leaders of those two domestic terrorist groups who were only there because of the actions of donald trump. so i do think that those are other shoes that are going to drop and is why i say that i think that the judicial system is going to be under heavy attack by donald trump and his allies. >> yeah, i mean, the thing about trump, kim, is that the

obstruction piece is the piece he does in public, and then says damn, right, i obstructed. these people are rigged against me. he did it with muller. damn right i could have fired him. he worked for me. he did it with mar-a-lago. they're mine, that's his quote. they're mine, i declassified them by thinking it. that is what he has said. on the obstruction thing he does it in public and says it's my right to obstruct. it's a witch hunt. same with this one, he essentially obstructs the official proceeding and makes clear he wants to join the efforts to obstruct the official proceeding in public, in full view. no one denies that that's what he wanted. and on the campaign trail, he celebrates those who obstructed the official proceeding. >> yeah, i mean, that's the flip side of what i talked about earlier, how there is just so many more things that have happened, and we've already seen some evidence of candidate fatigue, even among republicans particularly after january 6th, at the same time, one of donald

trump's most biggest political assets is his ability to victimize himself and then use that grievance to gain and solidify his support. we have seen him do that time and time again. we've seen other people do that time and time again. one example that comes to mind is brett kavanaugh, which is somebody who was a pretty reserved jurist for most of his career. it wasn't until he started yelling and screaming and being trumpy at his confirmation hearing that republicans rally around him and ensure that he made it to the bench. that was a very trumpian move. donald trump has created that and he does that with the obstruction, treating -- he's going to use this verdict no doubt as evidence that, you know, people in new york are trying to victimize him and raise money off of it, i'm sure a fund-raising email has already gone out. so he has that ability to turn that around and use it to his political advantage. the question will be whether the damage on the other side is enough to move the needle away

as cornell said to prevent him from getting that 47% that he needs. >> kim, we just got our first statement from e. jean carroll. i want to read it to you. i filed this lawsuit against donald trump to clear my name and get my life back. today the world finally knows the truth. this victory is not just for me but for every woman who has suffered because she was not believed. i would like to express my deep and lasting gratitude to all those who have stood by me from the start, especially my incredible and fearless legal team led by robbie kaplan who never, ever backed down in pursuit of truth and justice. a pretty remarkable full circle moment for her today. >> yeah, and i think it's worth just underscoring the fact that this verdict happened because the law was changed in new york that allowed people who for so long had been bullied or dismissed by more powerful

people into not telling their stories, made it impossible to make a claim at all or especially not before the statute of limitations had passed. the #metoo movement showed us the impact that this bullying and this power has on women. so in this case that is a vindication of that. you know, i'm a former civil litigator, and we don't often talk about civil lawsuits as a way to bring justice, but they are. they can be. when you put that in the hands of jurors to make someone whole and to punish a wrongdoer, that can be an avenue for that, and i think today is a good example of that. >> i want to read for you cornell's statement from her attorney, robbie kaplan. quote, no one is above the law, not even a former president of the united states. we are so thrilled that the jury agreed rendering a unanimous verdict in favor of e. jean carroll in just two and a half hours. for far too long, survivors of sexual assault faced a wall of doubt and intimidation.

we hope and believe today's verdict will be an important step in tearing that wall down. e. jean carroll has neverwared in her strength, courage, and determination to seek justice. donald trump on the other hand failed to even show up in court. had is a victory not only for e. jean carroll but for democracy itself and for all survivors everywhere. you and i have been having this conversation about democracy as a backdrop for everything that threatens it for years now, and to see this put into the moment, obviously, in which this trial took place, it's just a fascinating thing. >> it really is, and look, i'm a little shaky here on this because as a black man, historically i don't know how democracies necessarily treated me that well, but yet i still have faith in democracy. i still have faith that in the end the majority of americans

will do the right thing. in the end, the majority of americans are not what donald trump portrays america to be. we just got to mobilize them and bring them all together one more time to put him down and show the world that democracy still does work. we still can have faith that the majority of americans are good people and will do the right thing. >> i mean, my faith is shaken too by what i've lived through. by the fact that any day i sit down in this chair and put on this mic, this could get white, and i could be covering him shooting at an elementary school. i think everyone's faith is shaken, and i think we were upstairs waiting for the verdict to come in, i said i cannot watch. this is awful. i have a bad feeling, and i think we have to deal with that bad feeling, right? i mean, trump's returning to center stage. you know, trump and the network in which he's going to appear were like batman and the joker,

right? last time trump ran, he needed them. he clearly thinks he still does. what do you think we'd do cornell to restore our faith that we won't go down that road again, we won't make all the millions of tiny mistakes that we made either in underestimating him, in not covering his strength and power within the party, in not covering the impotence of other republican leaders, and not bolstering a choice that may not be perfect but may be our best last shot at saving democracy. >> we've got to have a conversation with american people. i mean, donald trump is not a majority -- donald trump is never going to reach a majority, right? people forget donald trump got -- in 2016, he got less of the vote than mitt romney did. he's a fluke as a president. but because of our electoral system, that fluke can be elected president. a majority of americans are not for donald trump, they'll never be for donald trump. we've got to keep our eye on the

ball, stay focused. they're going to tell you over the next couple of months how old and decrepe, and then there will be third-party candidates who will mysteriously appear and try and get the vote. americans stay woke here, keep your eye on the prize here. this is about defeating authoritarianism and quite frankly corruption. >> and i think, andrew, just to bring it back to where you started, the reason, right, the reason the rule of law is under constant assault, the reason it's been ceded not just by trump but by jim jordan. the first thing jim jordan is launch a committee audaciously called the politicization of the federal government committee. the only people who politicize so egregiously is donald trump

and bill barr. the durham probe is what's been publicly reported by investigative journalists, it appears to be the most broken and corrupt investigation in doj history. even that one found that the only person who may have committed a crime was trump. durham found evidence that trump -- i mean, how confident are you that after four years of being beaten up and delegitimized by trump that the rule of law in america is strong enough to hold him accountable before he becomes president again, if that is where this country decides to go? >> well, you know, there's something that is optimistic about today's verdict, which is unlike a lot of other countries, the american people sit on juries. the determination as to whether somebody is guilty or not guilty, whether someone in a civil case is liable or not liable is made by us. it is made by american people, and we have faith in their

common sense, yes, do juries sometimes get things wrong, yes, the same way a judge might get something wrong. but one way to fight the cynicism and the conspiracy theories is the jury system, and it really is the case. you know, i've been a trial lawyer for a long time. jurors really listen to the evidence that they obey their oaths, and unlike donald trump, they believe in principle that they leave their political views to the side, and they will obey what the judge tells them, you know, 99 times out of 100, that is what they will do. and there obviously are injustices in the system, i'm not in any way saying that we're perfect, but it is reassuring that we have seen the judiciary more often than any other branch stand up to the onslaught of maga republicans and this sort of insidious undermining of

american values by donald trump and his allies. >> indeed, kim, it was a federal judge who first said that more likely than not donald trump and john eastman committed felonies. it has been this gaslight free zone, the words of federal judges when it comes to donald trump's role in the coup. >> yes, it has and judges have been speaking clearly about this. i hope that the faith of the american people in the judicial system and its judges remain strong enough for them to listen to that. of course, you know, saying something that might be clear by a preponderance of the evidence does not necessarily mean there will be a conviction this those cases. we are seeing judges such as in the e. jean carroll case consider the evidence in a way that seems fair and impartial and if they can keep the confidence of the american people, i think that that can go

a very long distance. and kim atkins store, cornell belcher, and andrew weissmann, thank you so much for having this conversation, for keeping it real and starting us off this hour. when we come back democrats taking real steps to unravel the deep financial entanglements involving justices on the united states supreme court. what they now want from billionaire republican mega donor harlan crow after a short break, "deadline white house" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. for me. we strip as a pack. i don't care who sees me strip. josh, you strip? breathe right opens your nose for nasal congestion relief you can feel right away. helping you breathe better day or night, here or there. breathe right. strip on. >> woman: why did we choose safelite? helping you breathe better day or night, here or there. we were loading our suv when... crack! safelite came right to us, and we could see exactly when they'd arrive with a replacement we could trust. that's service the way we want it. >> singers: ♪ safelite repair, safelite replace. ♪

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amid a drip, drip, drip of revelation after revelation

after revelation that justice clarence thomas repeatedly failed to disclose lavish financial gifts from billionaire and right wing activist harlan crow, the senate judiciary committee is pushing crow for a full accounting of the extent of his financial relationship with thomas. in a letter sent last night and according to "the washington post," the senators are, quote, asking crow and three companies associated with him to provide an itemized list of gifts worth more than $415 that he has made to justice thomas, any other justice or any justice's family member as well as a full list of lodging, transportation, real estate transactions, and admission to any private clubs crow may have provided. the letter emphasizes this information will help identify specific shortcomings in the statement on ethics principles and practices as well as current law that legislation needs to address. crow has given hints, however, that he may be as unwilling to

disclose his financial particulars as justice thomas has been. nbc news is reporting this, quote, senate finance committee chairman ron wyden last month asked crow to provide a full account of undisclosed trips, gifts and payments he has made to clarence thomas over the years. an aide to wyden saying the chairman received an obstructive letter from an attorney representing crow monday night which refused to provide answers to wyden's request. in more ominous news for thomas, bloomberg news is reporting that senator sheldon whitehouse is pressing the u.s. court system for information about how its governance body responded to clarence thomas's failure to disclose his wife's income in 2011. a committee of judges concluded that thomas's lapses in reporting ginni thomas's income was not willful misconduct but details about that review and the panel's reasoning were not shared with the public. joining us now the

aforementioned senator sheldon whitehouse, democrat of rhode island, a member of the senate judiciary committee. thank you so much for being here. >> my pleasure. >> we've been covering your efforts to reform isn't a strong enough word it doesn't seem anymore, but try to shine a bright light on the misdeeds and questions of real failures to disclose, but i wonder if you can first address whether senator feinstein's return to the committee allows you to start issuing subpoenas and taking a more forceful posture when it comes to oversight and investigation. >> it restores our majority, which means that if we can get unanimity among democrats on the committee, we're able to move judges who the republicans are not willing to support and also pursue investigative efforts. >> when it comes to the court, is the priority investigating the conduct that's been now reported by multiple news organizations, or is the priority a new code of ethics to

stop? just take me through what your priorities are for the court. >> sure. well, first of all, to understand exactly what took place with respect to all of the donations that have been filtered through to the thomas household, not just from harlan crow but also from leonard leo who is the sort of fixer in the billionaire effort to capture the supreme court. so that's a very significant issue. then we need to understand the judicial process for considering these concerns because the last time this happened on very similar facts, harlan crow, yacht travel, jet travel for thomas, it went down into the financial disclosure committee of the judicial conference and no public report ever emerged and no referral to the attorney general ever e merjd. because we're on that track again with these new revolutions, we also need to look back and see what took

place in the last set of revelations. and finally, this is not the clarence thomas ethics scandal. this is the clarence thomas ethics scandal appendage to a much larger inquiry that needs to be made into a very robust billionaire funded, very secretive effort to capture and control the supreme court, and so there's lots of investigative work that we need to pursue towards the goal, which your last segment expressed so wonderfully, thank god for honest courtrooms but we need honest courtrooms. >> i know this is something you've been working toward and talking about for years. the country seems to have caught up with you. confidence in this court has plunged faster than any civic institution in public life. would you like to see john roberts, i know the answer would be yes as a partner, but i guess a better way to ask the question, can you do anything

meaningful to change the lack of transparency, the lack of ethics and the appearance of impropriety on the court without some buy-in from john roberts? >> i believe there's -- there's several pathways, but i believe one very credible pathway is the one that we deployed when we were persisting at investigating judge, justice scalia's plan to receive free hospitality when it came via personal invitation, even if he had no personal relationship with the donor, and when we persisted in pressing that question to the judicial conference of other judges, the other judges slapped that behavior down very forcefully, clarifying that what had been done was not lawful and should not be done any further, and clarence thomas said, oh, okay, i'll adjust my conduct accordingly.

so there's a track of the judicial conference applying itself to these ethics problems and sending signals to the supreme court that they need to clean up their act, so that would be very important. that's why i sent this recent updated letter to the judicial conference to focus them on those issues. >> i want to ask if we understand this correctly. we in sort of understanding the revelations, and again, without your majority on the committee, we haven't seen -- unless this is coming from journalists and journalism, there's a fundamental lack of transparency in the dark money that you've been talking about for many, many years, which seems to flow back and forth between the special interests and the conservative justices. there's a lack of ethics for the supreme court and the supreme court only. did you not abide by the same ethics rules that govern federal judges, and then there seems to be this third bucket of a lack to abide by their own meager disclosure and ethics laws. is it that third category where

you have questions of potential illegality? >> that third is probably the center of the concentric circles of investigation that are required because that's very immediately in front of us, and i think that the measure that the court says it's following is the same code of ethics and the same disclosure statutes that all the judges have to follow, and when they don't, i think that puts the other judges very on edge. the fundamental problem here is that the supreme court gets to call its own fouls, and they've gotten very sloppy about never calling any foul on themselves or on each other, and they're now operating way out of bounds with where other federal judges know they have to behave. >> as a distraught warriors fan, i think that's a very apt way of describing it. let me ask you this about this

third category. will the judiciary committee with senator feinstein back begin discussions about subpoenas for people like mr. crow or justices thomas or roberts themselves immediately? >> well, we are going to continue the investigative work both on the judiciary committee and in the finance committee where chairman wyden has a very important role even though he was sort of rebuffed by harlan crow's lawyer, there's moring to done in both cases. i think we as people concerned about this court need to do a very fair but also very thorough job of bringing the facts forward before the american people, and i think both committees are going to be working to get the information necessary for us to take the action and perform the oversight we need to do. >> i feel like if the court were interested in understanding why the public's trust in it had plunged as i said so far and so fast and they called you, you could tell them exactly when, why, and how, but if i asked you

to sort of pull back and give a wider picture, it seems that the court relishes issuing opinions, that it loves to underscore fly in the face of 85, 75, you know, super majorities of the american people as they did in the majority opinion and the concurring opinions of dobbs, and they seem disdainful, scornful and angry at any journalism that seems to point to their own lack of ethics and disdain for their own ethics code, is there anything else that i'm missing? is there any other part of that? >> no, i think that's really issue here, and if you want to put a very fine clear example of this forward, it would be justice thomas ruling in the case regarding the january 6th commissions investigative powers, which led to his own wife's emails. the question of whether that was

lawful or not depends on a fact, a simple fact. what did he know about his wife's insurrection activities, and when did he know it? and if there's one thing that tells you how off kilter the supreme court has become, it is that he has never been officially asked that question. >> your work has always been so important on this front, and now it's everybody's focus. thank you for taking the time to talk to us about it. senator sheldon whitehouse. >> measure play. >> thank you so much. when we come back, how the right wing has moved its all out assault on voting rights a little bit under the radar. there's brand new reporting in "the new york times" about how gop efforts to restrict the right to vote may not be quite as visible, but they are very much ongoing and here to stay. the reporter who broke that story will be our guest, along with our friend top democratic voting rights attorney marc elias. don't go anywhere. (cecily) so you got an awesome network...

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sadly, it appears this is all part of their plan. republicans having largely failed in their post-2020 efforts to enact sweeping headline dominating legislation, specifically designed to make it harder to vote, now seems to have settled on a new and improved strategy for voter suppression. it's a little quieter, much more localized, but no less dangerous to the long-term health of our democracy. their new step by step approach

or radical incrementalism as one gop leader described it is designed to be more politically palatable to voters and it's the subject of some fantastic new reporting in "the new york times." quote, propelled by a new coalition of trump allies, republican-led legislatures have continued to pass significant restrictions on access to the ballot, including new limits to voting by mail in ohio, a ban on ballot drop boxes in arkansas, and the shortening of early voting windows in wyoming. behind the efforts is a network of billionaire-backed advocacy groups that have formed a new hub of election advocacy within the republican party rallying state activists, drafting model legislation, and setting priorities. joining us now "new york times" domestic correspondent, nick course nay tee who shares a by line, our friend mike elias is here as well, the founder of the site democracy docket. nick, take us through your reporting. >> so what we found, we wanted to look at what's been happening

within voting rights legislation specifically new laws that are making it harder to vote, and we found that the numbers have actually kept pace with 2021, which is the year when voting rights was a constant headline. efforts to restrict voting in georgia and florida and texas brought protests from major corporations, and at this point in 2021, there had been 16 bills that had been passed that added some kind of new restrictions to vote in # 11 states. this year in 2023, there's actually been 18 bills signed into law in ten states. so this activity is persisting, and what we found is that it's also much more organized behind the scenes. there's been a group of state activists, lawyers, political operatives, big nonprofit organizations backed by conservative mega donors that have been meeting weekly and have been seeking new ways to try and get new legislation

passed. a key convener here iskleta mitchell, the attorney who played a major role in president trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 election results. she's established a list of priorities, such as ending same day voter registration, using student i.d.s as identification to coat. limiting mail voting further, and then also some of them more -- a little bit out there policies such as withdrawing from a multistate voter database known as eric. and what this legislative working group has been doing is meeting weekly, holding calls, and trading ideas on messaging, trading ideas on trying to find these large number of state activists work with experts at these organizations to lobby state lawmakers and get new laws passed in these critical states. >> mark elias, there was no

voter fraud. they're all packaged as election integrity bills. you said something that haunted me since you left our air waves. >>, so first of all, congratulations to nick on some really first rate reporting on this. the remedy is not easy. the remedy boils down to three things. number one, we need for everyone to take this seriously. the fact that it is done more quietly does not mean it's any less serious. that's the reporting you saw in "the new york times." it's as bad for voting and voters and democracy as when corporate america was paying attention in 2021. we need everyone to paying attention and acting like this is the crisis it system number two, we need to be showing up in

courts. my team is litigating against the ohio law that nick reported on. we're litigating against the idaho law targeting college students. we're prepared to sue as far as ron desantis signs the next voter suppression law, we have litigate right now in nearly 20 states trying to protect free and fair elections. so, we need more team to be engaged in the process, in public and in the courts, and then finally, we need to places where democrats control the legislative process. in the 17 states where democrats control legislation, they need to be as aggressive in expanding voting right as republicans are in curtailing it. so those are the three things that we can do. >> what seems to be different, too, is that the sheet's off, right? they didn't even pretend this is about anything other than it's about. mitchell said in her presentation, we don't want college students to roll out of bed and vote. seems what is different, nick,

is it's not veiled in anything other than making it harder to vote. >> yeah, and on those calls that you reviewed, transcripts and recordings, there was even some discussion in a much more specifically and candidly political means. ms. mitchell said at one point, it's not about candidates, it's not about campaigns, it's about electoral systems. she alleges we need find a way to make it so that the republican candidates win. and as i recall, she talked to officials at the national republican congressional committee asking them, you know, why do you think you lost some of these really close races in michigan? was it something like the abortion issue, or was it more the electoral system, which is what she kept referring to. and out of that we've seen policies that are really looking to just try and make it -- took a step back in election making

it easier to vote, harder to achieve. with some of this new legislation, that's almost absent. one big focus is banning franchise voting, and there is no election integrity argument made. some say it could confuse voters but that's not rising to the level of trying to secure elections better montana, trying to rewrite election laws so that just for the senate race to makt harder for senator john tester to win re-election. there was no election integrity justification for that. that was apparently political coming out of the nsc. so there has been behind closed doors i think a little more candid discussion about the political reasons, but we're seeing it in the policy they're trying to achieve.

>> mark, i have been on winning and losing campaigns and i know you have as well. you used to when you lost try to figure out why the voters aren't that into you. now it's about opposing the electorate and making sure voters can't vote the next time around. have you seen anything shift that completely and dramatically in your political career? >> no, nothing like we've seen in recent years, and in fact arguably some of the reporting we've seen this year is the most dramatic ever. you have mitchell saying we need to disenfranchise students. these not saying that these students are not 18 years of age as required by the constitution and guaranteed their right to vote in the constitution. they're not saying they're double voting, not saying they're not lawfully registered. she's simply saying we need to make it harder to vote because if they vote in our democracy, republican candidates won't win, and it's not any more complicated than that.

that's a threat to the integrity of elections, threat to democracy when you say, we are going to disenfranchise a group of voters, fence them out of the process because we don't like who they vote for, and they have been open about it. >> fantastic reporting. always great to see you. thank you both for jumping on the air and spending time with us today. there's more, breaking news that is. two source familiar with the matter tell abc news congressman george santos who became famous for a litany of lies has been charged by the justice department. the exact charges are unknown at this time. andrew weissman is back with us. i feel like this might be the first thing merrick garland will do that kevin mccarthy will be secretly relieved about. >> absolutely. to our last segment about the republicans and when they will actually disassociate

themselves -- well, george santos doesn't have the popular vote and the popular will and power and clout of a donald trump, and yet even with that, the republican house, because they wanted his vote, were not willing to stand up and act based on principle. well, now it looks like my former office, the eastern district of the new york -- that's brooklyn, queens, and long island -- that's a federal office. the reports are now they have brought charges. we know he was under investigation for things -- could be wire fraud, mail fraud, campaign fraud -- a whole litany of things, and reports are he has now been charged. there apparently are three sources reporting that information. i would strongly suspect that, knowing my former office, that they had those conversations with his defense counsel.

so it clearly could be the case that's where the information is coming from, which is fairly typical. so we have to wait and see what those charges rm i agree with you this is something that is sort of good news for kevin mccarthy. but just remember on the political front, it's not necessarily such good news in that there is going to be an election for that seat, and so his very slim majority could get even slimmer. >> exactly. i mean, it cuts both ways for kevin mccarthy. i was only partly serious there. let me just share with all of our viewers what we're able to report. george santos has been charged by doj. he's expected to appear in court in central islip. and he's expected to surrender at the courthouse. that's in line with your analysis that doj has an open line to his defense counsel. >> yeah, absolutely.

that is standard practice. they would have allowed defense counsel to make any and all arguments about why he shouldn't be charged. they would weigh that, consider that, and very often things change, but also in other times the department of justice moves forward, and appeared to be the kiss here. we'll await and see what those charges are and await and see what kevin mccarthy finally may do with somebody who is under indictment. but it would be sort of remarkable if huh a member of congress under indictment and he's allowed the stay in the same way frankly you have a presidential candidate who is under indictment who is running for office. and so what used to be the unthinkable, which is somebody being charged with federal crimes or state crimes that the

aprobe rum of that -- but it does appear to be maybe sort of the death nell for his political career. >> to our broadcast that began with news that a jury had found donald trump liable for sexual assaulting e. jean carroll and exactly two hours later with the breaking news that doj is expected to -- or has charged george santos, republican member of congress, an important vote to kevin mccarthy, even after some of the revelations of his penchant for lying became public, andrew weissman, we have needed you for every block of the last two hours. thank you and i'm sorry and let's do it again tomorrow, my friend. >> my pleasure. >> and our thanks to all of you for letting us into your homes during this extraordinary day of breaking news. we really do appreciate it. "the beat" with ari melber starts right now. hi, ari. passing the baton. >> thanks for the baton. we have been watching your great breaking coverage on these important stories. good to see you