we are continuing to follow

the breaking news of this historic and quite frankly damning indictment released to the public today. laying out the special counsel's case against donald trump and his gross mishandling of classified documents. given that this is the first time such actions are being taken against a former president, the special counsel made sure he came prepared with the receipts. and they could not be any more incriminating. in all, the special counsel is charging trump with 37 counts. 31 of them have to do with trump's willful retention of national defense information. otherwise known as the espionage act. these are charges related to false statements, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding and corruptly concealing documents, as well as scheming to conceal. included in some of the charges is one of trump's closest aides, walt nada, who was also indicted. also today, we heard for the tir time from the man leading the special counsel investigation,

jack smith. >> our laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the united states, and they must be enforced. violations of those laws put our country at risk. adherence to the rule of law is a bedrock principle of the department of justice. and our nation's commitment to the rule of law sets an example for the world. we have one set of laws in this country and they apply to everyone. applying those laws, collecting facts, that's what determines the outcome of an investigation. >> the special counsel spelled out the national security risk posed by the documents trump took with him. quote, the classified documents trump stored in his boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the united states and foreign countries.

united states nuclear programs, potential vulnerabilities of the united states and its allies to military attack, and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack. the unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the united states, foreign relations, the safety of the united states military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods. for all of you out there like myself that did not go to law school, let me be clear about the u.s. code trump is being charged with under the espionage act. it does not matter whether those documents were classified or not. it does not matter whether trump twitched his nose like bewitched and said to himself, they are classified. it only matters that they referred to national defense, which they clearly do. and throughout this indictment, we are learning even more about trump's involvement. every step of the way, and how

careless he was with these documents. counter to trump's lawyers' claims, the indictment points out that trump was personally involved in the process of packing up the boxes when he left the white house. and while trump and his lawyers claim the documents were secure, in a storage room at mar-a-lago, they forgot to mention that for months upon arriving at his florida club, they were actually left out in the open, on the stage of a ballroom in which events and gatherings took place, as well as in a bathroom and a shower. that sure would make some great reading material for anyone needing to use the toilet. in a surprise revelation, we learned that in may of 2021, trump then took some of those documents to his summer residence and his golf club in bedminster, new jersey. that could very well be the boxes we saw here in this video from the independent that we told you about this before, showing trump leaving mar-a-lago for bedminster in may of 2021.

it was at bedminster where the special counsel claims in the indictment that trump showed those very documents to others in two different instances, specifically people with no security clearance. and we further learned of his obstruction attempts through one of his own attorneys' notes. for example, when trump was talking about how to respond to the fbi subpoena for the documents, trump is noted as saying, i don't want anybody looking through my boxes. i really don't. i don't want you looking through my boxes. what happens if we just don't respond at all? or don't play ball with them? wouldn't it be better if we just told them we don't have anything here? look, isn't it better if there are no documents? and then even after one of the attorneys looked through some of the boxes and recovered classified documents, trump told the attorney to take them back to his hotel room and as the attorney noted, made a plucking motion to remove anything really

bad in there. suffice it to say, regardless of how this plays out, trump has cemented himself with yet another first. he is the first president to be twice impeached, the first former president to be charged criminally following his indictment by a manhattan grand jury in march, and as of yesterday, he became the first president in our nation's history to be indicted on federal charges. congrats, donald. i have an amazing panel of guests tonight to discuss this huge historic day. my colleague lawrence o'donnell, host of the last word, alex wagner, host of alex wagner tonight. nick ackerman, former watergate assistant special prosecutor, that could come in handy, charles coleman, former brooklyn prosecutor and msnbc legal analyst, as well as frank figliuzzi, former fbi assistant director for counterintelligence and msnbc national security analyst. all-star panel here today. where to begin?

i mean, where to begin. we have been following through this all day. i know all of you probably felt like i did reading this, like a crime novel and also a comedy at the same time. >> a dark comedy. >> yes, a dark comedy. there are sort of three buckets here. the sloppy handling, having the documents in the loo, in the bathroom and that tacky ballroom, i feel like he should be indicted for the tackiness of the '80s ballroom. >> don't forget about the chandelier in the bathroom. >> listen, that is indictable all on its own from a taste point of view. there's that. then there is the chase for the documents. in which he knows that corcoran, who is attorney one, has to go and look for them, so he tells nada, his valet, hide them, hide them. he does that over days. then there's a line. let's start with the sloppy handling. i'm going to go to you first on this. it seems to me that when you just go through the actual documents that are at issue in the indictment, it feels like

donald trump who didn't pay attention to his presidential daily brief, might have paid more attention than we thought in taking stuff home with them. these are documents mostly from his time as president. >> what he was doing with that sloppy storage is in and of itself an offense. never would have been charged for it. would have completely gotten away with it. and in fact, the authorities really wouldn't know that it was all over the floor in that room if he had just when requested sent it back. in fact, if he just sent it back the third time he was requested to send it back. okay. this is one of those things where it's one of those rare situations where they're basically saying to the bank robber, you know what, if you give the money back, if you would just, you know? and he couldn't bring himself to do that, which is just so deeply pathological. when you say where to begin, i really want to stress to everyone out there, something that jack smith said today,

which was please read these pages. you know, we're saying 49 pages, but look, that's type pages. it's not like even 49 pages of a book. it's double spaced. >> thought the mueller report. >> look at all that dialogue, white space there. it's really easy to read. and on the issue of where to begin, you literally can't randomly just drop it, flip it, oh, it turns out it's on page 37. there's something great, i guarantee you. page 16, something great. speaking of page 16. >> please do. >> there are these lines that jump out. a moment there where donald trump says, isn't that incredible? and he's saying that upon committing a crime. he says, he's showing the classified document to a visitor, who has no right to that, and he says to him, this is secret. look at this. and his next line is, by the way, isn't that incredible? well, yeah. everything about it is

incredible. what you just did is incredible. and that's why we're here tonight. >> joy, i just really want to jump in really quickly about lawrence's first point because it's super point. people need to understand that when we're talking about this indictment and the levels of crimes that have been committed, there was a point where the facts were what they are, and donald trump had not technically done anything illegal. i had been talking for a number of different times about the fact that the contents of the documents themselves, while horrific, would not have been as much of an issue had he returned them initially. however, at the point that he starts to evade law enforcement, number one, you have committed a crime there. and then now, when you add in the sensitive nature of the documents themselves, now that ups the crime that you have committed. so all of this is entirely of his own doing from something that he could have clearly avoided, simply by giving them back. that's such an important point to understand, because not only

did it cross the line of illegality, but it made the offenses that much more severe. >> that's a really good point, and alex, i want to bring you in on this. here's the thing, the comparison is going to be made and is being made with hillary clinton, with mike pence, with the current president when he was vice president, joe biden. but that is the point, right? they incidentally in the locker rooms or whenever they store their papers, had some classified documents. i imagine probably half the senators if you really dug in, you might find something with a "c" on it, but as soon as they were alerted to it, they gave it back. the explanation for why they're not being charged is that. if you go to people who did something similar in terms of not giving them back or shared them, david petraeus, military hero. >> sandy berger. >> national security official. destroyed some documents. and every single person who either disseminated, withheld or didn't return documents, they have all gotten prosecuted today. >> to be clear, they're not

charging dissemination as of now, so this fascinating moment where he's showing the documents around is really proof that he knew the documents were classified, less the notion that he was showing them to people. an important distinction to make in terms of the legal charges. i think what stands out here is your point, joy, over and over again, he lies to his lawyers. he pretends at one point after he's taken all the good stuff out of the storage room, and left stuff for evan corcoran to find, he plays dumb. he's like, so what did you find in there? anything serious? evan? and then has the audacity to say if you do find some bad stuff, just take it out. like he's lying to his own lawyers. the only person he's not lying to is himself. he really cares about the boxes. he's very clear they matter to him. i keep going back to when we talk about the psychology of someone who would do this, the video from the "wall street journal" where trump is showing people around his apartment and he's amassed this collection of

treasures including shaquille o'neal's shoe. and this is his version of shaquille o'neal's shoe, these classified documents are a thing to be treasured, to be waved around. they're mementos, they're leverage, they're scoring political points with his perceived adversaries, but it's a collection of trump's things. whether or not that endangered the men and women who put their lives in harm's way to keep america safe, whether or not it's against the law, whether or not it doesn't even belong to him, that's all beside the point. this is feeding his ego and his personal grievances and he lusts after these objects the same way he did a wwe wrestling belt. i mean, you can draw a parallel between that stuff and this stuff. >> a president, we know for presidents who have narcicisstic personality disorder, you have dealt with one, so there's a narcissism to it, but there is also a sense of entitlement that's on top of it that is nixonian, but on steroids. >> a key point here, what was the motive?

why did he do this? we don't really get much insight in this indictment as to what was behind this. most of the time, donald trump is very mercurial. he does things for money. and the most -- the closest we have come to any motive here is him using these documents basically to try and refute general milley's statements in an article that was written. so the question is, is there more to it? and there could be, because motive is not an element of obstruction. it's not an element of the espionage act. but it's something that the government is likely to put into evidence at trial. >> i will tell you what they say in the indictment, the purpose of the conspiracy, you're right, doesn't say motive but purpose, was for trump to keep classified documents he had taken with him from the white house and to hide and conceal them from the federal jury. >> i think that milley anecdote sheds some light. i'm not a lawyer, but it seems quite clear that it's to settle

grievance, right? you can imagine, these are the two instances we know about that are in the indictment. you can imagine that the scenario has played out before, potentially in other locations with other documents, with other people that have crossed trump's red line. >> for sure. we know that in his own personal safe, it appears that what they pulled out were documents on the french president, macron, and documents relating to roger stone, who he commuted his sentence and then ultimately pardoned him. so the question is, what were those documents doing in his personal safe? what was he using those for? clearly, he was planning to use them for something. i mean, these were not just his hobby of collecting information. >> or they were. i mean, that's what's so wild. >> the beauty of this, and the beauty of the indictment from a legal standpoint is that it doesn't matter. the reason i say that is because as you have already talked about, the actual motive, the actual why in and of itself is irrelevant in terms of

establishing this case beyond a reasonable doubt. you need two things. you need the act and you need the intent. and the act is undebatable. it's not in dispute. we know the documents were there. we have seen the photos. we have been to this terribly decorated bathroom and these boxes are there. so that's not an issue. the only thing that they can contest is the intention behind it, which is why earlier this week when his attorneys met with the doj, they tried to advocate that this be treated as an administrative matter, not criminally, and the beauty of the indictment is that it lays out so wonderfully and in such explicit detail a timeline that chips away at intent in so many different respects. >> let me do just that. i want to get frank figliuzzi in here. the cat and mouse search for the boxes, frank, i feel like is the smoking gun and one of the most entertaining parts of this indictment. i'll read this quickly. so on may 15th, they get a

subpoena saying turn everything in. corcoran goes to trump and says you have to turn everything in. he's like, couldn't we say they're not there, no, you have to turn it in. on june 1st, trump speaks with corcoran and asked whether trump attorney one was coming to mar-a-lago the next day for exactly what purpose. trump attorney one reminds trump trump attorney one was going to review the boxes transported from the white house and remained in storage at mar-a-lago, so trump attorney one could have a custodian of records certify the may 11th subpoena had been fully complied with. june 2nd, the day trump attorney one is scheduled to review those boxes in the storage room, trump speaks with nada, who is his valet, on the phone at 9:28 a.m. for approximately 24 seconds, later that day, between 12:33 p.m. and 12:52 p.m., nada and an employee of the mar-a-lago club moved approximately 30 boxes from trump's residence to the storage room. in some between may 23, 2022, and june 2nd, before trump

attorney one's review of trump's boxes in the storage room, nada at trump's direction moved approximately 64 boxes from the storage room to trump's residence, and brought to the storage room only approximately 30 boxes, neither trump nor nada informed corcoran, trump attorney one, of this information, then nada lies to the fbi, frank. i don't see how it gets any clearer than that. >> yeah, the recitation of facts, the chronology of events you read off is critically important for a couple reasons. first, it goes toward intent. each and every act that you just described is another nail in the coffin, so to speak, to show that trump was in charge. trump was willfully, understandably, he knew he was unlawfully retaining these documents. and it goes toward a counter of everybody out there saying,

look, it's just a bunch of guys who were moving boxes around. who knew? they didn't know what was going on here. this counters that. it's important to tell any one of your neighbors, coworkers, family members, read the facts. would you do this if you thought are you were doing something illegal? and the other thing from a national security perspective, look, every time you mention these things are moved, every body that's looking at these, handling these, eyes on, is another spill. it's another hemorrhage of classified information. and then, really, what makes me cringe is reading in the indictment the hundreds of people that traipse through mar-a-lago during the time period we're talking about. attending weddings, movie premieres, staying at the hotel, all potential people who could have had access to some of these documents. >> you said spill, there was a literal spill at one point and the response was, oh, my, and they took a picture of the

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much more on today's breaking news. the federal indictment of donald trump has been unsealed. wor rr back with our panel, lawrence o'donnell, alex wagner, nick ackerman, charles coleman, and frank figliuzzi. i'm going to come back to you frank just real quick. the actual search comes after not only the subpoena but multiple attempts, which corcoran, the lawyer, seemed to be trying to comply with. and so donald trump was then warned, if you don't turn everything in, there will be action. this is going to the department of justice. so walk us through, because the actual search of mar-a-lago has caused some angst among his supporters, but that was like

the final act in the complete act of obstruction, no? >> yeah, a real important element for people who are trying to say, well, what about pence, what about biden? they had documents. these are apples and oranges. okay. this discussion started back as trump was leaving the white house, pat sip illini was in conversation with the national archives and he told the archives, yeah, yeah, i know we can't keep these documents. they have to go back to you. it started early, and so the opportunities for trump to do the right thing kept happening, and he chose not to. and the search warrant signed by a federal magistrate who found probable cause to believe that evidence of a crime was in that location came only after a visit from jay bratt, head of national security at doj, fbi agents, pretty please, phone calls, discussions, lies about whether they had turned everything over or not. it was an absolute last resort. >> and it was -- the search happens in august. the initial request was in may. we were talking a little bit

about the spill and the oh, no. >> there effectively as i read it, and i know this is kind of a hazy part of this indictment, it appears trump employee two has a picture of the spill. >> right. >> and shows -- takes the phone, shows trump the picture of the spilled boxes. and then trump holding the phone, texts back, oh, no, oh, no. employee two grabs the phone back and says sorry, potus had my phone. as i read it. if that is the case, it makes so much sense that the person most alarmed about this spill was trump because he knows what's in the boxes and the fact that oh, hey, national security secrets shouldn't be scattered about on the floor. >> and lawrence -- please, go. >> give an alternative reading to oh, no, oh, no. first, i don't believe donald trump knows how to text, so it begins with that. but if you look carefully at the lines in front of it, so they're texting back and forth.

nada and employee number two. this document, this indictment attributes oh, no, oh, no, to employee number two. the line says, trump employee number two replied, oh, no, oh, no. and i'm sorry, potus had my phone. i suspect potus had my phone means potus saw the picture. so i now gut it back and say oh, no, oh, no to you. very excitedly. but anyway, the document itself in the structure of this sentence, attributes the oh, no, oh, no to -- >> donald trump. to the reaction. either donald trump -- i think it's more plausible, but the motion is the person who is alarmed about this is donald trump. >> because they have the pressure. >> clearly, there is some amount of concern being expressed to and by employee number two about this stuff. >> and keep in mind, all of those people are witnesses. >> i want to talk about the judge real quick. we had a lot of talk, the anxiety i think we all feel about this, the one thing that's

not clearly in the prosecution's favor is this judge. aileen cannon, who had shown herself to be very friendly to donald trump. can the prosecutors, can the justice department get a different judge? can they object to her presence given the way she behaved in the special master situation? >> no, she's decided an issue on the special master. she was overruled by the 11th circuit. the idea they can use that as a way to say she was biased is not going to do it. >> could this judge try to throw out the damning evidence that comes from donald trump's lawyer which a judge duly allowed, could she say no, you can't have anything coming from the lawyer or whoever it is -- >> she could, but it seems far fetched. there's a ruling now that the crime fraud exception permits that to come forward. if they had a hearing on it, i think what you would find is that mr. corcoran would take the stand and it would turn out that

he was probably the source of the search warrant. because i think he realized at some point that he was being played. that he found out that all of the documents were not in that room when he was looking at them, and he found out that he had somebody sign a declaration saying there had been a reasonable search and that they had looked everywhere, when he knew they hadn't. look at, corcoran is a former assistant u.s. attorney, a reputable lawyer. i could see him being in a situation where he said, boy, i really have myself backed in a corner, and that the only way he could get himself out of that was to call the fbi and say look, here's what happened. and do it in a way that he was kept confidential in terms of that search warrant. >> let's talk about -- go ahead. >> that illustrates the complexity of this entire sphere and universe of what we're talking about dploebally. you have donald trump who is a former united states president, in front of a judge he

appointed, being tried for a crime that none of us would have ever seen a former president having committed. i don't want to get too far down the road, but it also sort of illustrates the complexities of what it would be for jack smith to pick a jury in this case as well. you'll have potential jurors who no doubt at some point likely voted for him. florida is a red state. it went for donald trump twice. and so in order for jack smith or the dod to cherry pick these things, they have to be very selective in terms of which battles they want to fight. because most of them given the complesty of it, they won't be winning battles because you're talking about the former president of the united states of america. there aren't too many points in this process, ie, the process of justice, selecting judges, people who know him, that people are going to be unfamiliar. that's just something you have to live with if you're jack smith. >> but the reality is, everyone involved in the case are trump people. they're his employees.

>> we now have a new and important question for senate confirmation hearings for judicial appointments. we have never had it before. and it is, if the president who appointed you appears as a criminal defendant in your courtroom, will you recuse yourself? and what we know is if you just played that question back, retroactively, through every single senate confirmation of every single judicial appointment in history, they would all say, of course i would recuse myself from that. but because the founders and the senate and everyone involved never anticipated this until we got this guy in the presidency, we now see the dynamics. so she has her own personal ethical obligation to recuse. and it is glaringly obvious, and it's the person who appointed her is now a criminal defendant in front of her. and so she may not do that, she

might not do it, but you know, she was reversed so fast on everything she did by the 11th circuit, and they are sitting there, the 11th circuit is sitting there right now, ready to reverse any stroke of the pen she comes up with. >> don't forget, the 11th circuit was very clear that in terms of that donald trump had to be treated just like any other criminal defendant. and that may have been enough of a slap on the back that maybe she'll take that lesson and she may be the best person as a result of that. i don't know. >> we'll see. >> i feel like her biggest weapon is probably the least controversial one, too, which is just to say this person is a candidate for the presidency. we're going to push this past the campaign season into 2025. i mean, he shouldn't be treated like anybody else, but he is a presidential candidate. if she wants to hide behind that -- >> what do the speedy trial rules say now? because the speedy trial concept applies as a benefit mostly

conceptually to the defendant. >> there's exceptions to that. normally the exceptions that kick in have to do with a complicated case with lots of motions, and they set aside that time because of those motions. >> but jack smith said today he's going to seek a speedy trial. >> i think any ruling on speedy trial, jack smith is ready to go to the circuit. >> in florida, though, and this is the other unique piece about that. they have a rocket docket. the judges down there tend to be far more aggressive in federal court than they are in other parts of the country that don't feature that rocket docket. you're looking at the convergence of a number of different factors that are going to influence the calendar. under normal circumstances, you may see the judges try to put very aggressively a trial date anywhere between 90 days and six months from the point of the indictment. or an arraignment. in a case like this, i do think we'll see that aggression, but we're going to see a ton of legal maneuvers, a lot of different motions. that's going to delay the clock. then to alex's point, if i'm

defending donald trump, which is hard for me to say, but if i'm defending donald trump, i want to get it deep enough to election season where it becomes a problem. >> i want to get frank in for one final note because we haven't talked about walt nada very much. this is the person who when asked by the fbi, are you aware of boxes being brought to his home, his suite? nope. was asked to your knowledge, you're saying those boxes, they just appeared there? he's like, mm. do you know where they were kept, where they were stored? i wish i could tell you. he lied for donald trump. it's hard to understand why anyone does it. in your mind, can you sort of take us behind the scenes speaking to somebody like him who doesn't have trump's money or power. the idea that he would essentially put himself in the same boat with him legally seems stunning to me. >> it is mind boggling and i can only feel for the fbi agents. i have been there myself trying to convince someone to

cooperate. plaining to them, look, this isn't going to go well for you. you're looking at decades potentially in prison. why are you doing this? and so they obviously felt, and he's not cooperating, and so this notion of somebody leaving the navy so that they could go to south florida and continue to serve diet coke to someone in the private sector doesn't make any sense to me. and i feel it's not going to make much sense to him when he starts realizing what he's facing. >> this happened in watergate all the time. >> yeah. >> a whole line of people who did this. >> once they got charged, they then folded. >> no, not many people folded. there was john mitchell, he didn't fold. >> we're going to stop this conversation and do it in a commercial break because there has to be a commercial break. otherwise we can't pay for this. lawrence, alex, nick, charles, and frank, obviously, we could do this for two more hours but we can't do it right now. in the break, though. we'll be right back.

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i had no idea how much i wamy case was worth. ct once-daily trelegy, call the barnes firm to find out what your case could be worth. we will help get you the best result possible. ♪ call one eight hundred, eight million ♪ . you should not be surprised by the sycophantic response from the right to federal charges against donald trump. house speaker kevin mccarthy called it unconscionable for a president to indict the leading candidate opposing him. fact check, he didn't. a federal grand jury of citizens in florida did. trump's 2024 rivals also pathetically stood by him. ron desantis and tim scott

decried the weaponization of the justice department. and nikki haley said we should just move beyond it. long shot contender vivek ramaswami promised to pardon trump. the only ones who didn't fall in line were chris christie and asa hutchinson. both happen to be former prosecutors. the best mike pence could muster, he's deeply troubled, but no one is above the law. pence is right because people not named donald trump regularly get charged with retaining classified documents. literally just last week, a retired air force officer got three years in prison for keeping classified materials at his florida home. sound familiar? also, edward snowden was charged with espionage and reality winner went to jail for veelting the espionage act. iraq war hero david petraeus reached a plea deal for giving highly classified documents to his mistress. president clinton's national security adviser sandy berger also pleaded guilty for taking government materials from an archive. joining me is congresswoman

madeleine dean. i note all that and will add one more thing. donald trump's entire campaign in 2016 was based on him believing that she should be locked up, lock her up. that chant was about classified documents. let me play donald trump calling on russia to find her emails and saying that essentially she is a criminal. here he is. >> russia, if you're listening, i hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. i think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. let's see if that happens. that will be next. >> because time is a sieve, that seems like 100 years ago, but that was his whole campaign. in this indictment, he again references hillary clinton, saying his lawyers ought to simply delete and get rid of the classified documents because in his imagination, that is what

happened for hillary clinton, and of course, it is not. your thoughts. >> well, i'm pleased to be with you, joy, on this friday night as i sit home reading the 49-page indictment. i know all of you, your analysts, your journalists are doing the exact same thing. i just want to pause to say this is a very sad, very significant, and yet not surprising moment in american history. it's not surprising that this former president who has shown such a proclivity for corruption and grift, is now indicted federally. it's an unprecedented moment. i think we're going to have to come up with a new word for unprecedented because of the number of times we have had to use it surrounding this man. this is a man who has spent a lifetime working around grievance and grift. everything he has done is perfect, remember that. everything he has done. i have never heard anybody say that other than a child and

actually even children get that that's not true. and so i feel very sad for our country. we need to go through this. mr. trump needs to be held accountable to the rule of law. but our country is hurting. our democracy is hurting. and we will heave through these different indictments, whether they are state level, whether they're about classified documents that are so incredibly dangerous and damaging in the way that they have been handled by this former president. or about state trials around georgia and attempting to overthrow the fair outcome of a presidential election. because only if we go through that hurt and heaving will be get to healing. so i find this to be a very sad moment in our history. not surprising in the least, significant beyond words, so i thank you for your coverage of it. and those who are over on the

right, who are defending without even knowing what the charges are, are extraordinarily irresponsible and i don't want anybody in any other position to be gloating or celebrating. this is nothing to celebrate. >> indeed. let me play for you, speaking of those on the right, here's kevin mccarthy who is a trump, i would say, apratchic in many ways. here he is responding to the indictment. >> you'll see then that this judgment is wrong by this doj, that they treated president trump differently than they treat others. and it didn't have to be this way. this is going to disrupt this nation because it goes to the core of equal justice for all, which is not being seen today, and we're not going to stand for it. >> jim jordan added to that, there's one standard of justice for republican, and another for democrats. i just -- in the open talked about the number of people who have actually been indicted for the same behavior in terms of classified documents.

andy biggs took it even lower and clay higgins, they took it even lower. biggs' tweet today, we have reached a war phase. eye for an eye. clay higgins last night before the indictment was unsealed, president trump said he has been summoned to appear in a federal courthouse in miami at 3:00 p.m. this is a perimeter probe from the oppressors. hold. our potus, meaning real potus in their words, has this. buckle up. 150k, know your bridges. rock city combat is all. jeff charlotte, the great journalist, he decoded this. he said take this seriously. higgins thinks indictment precedes a bigger attack. stand back and stand by. buckle up means prepare for war. 150k is military scale maps, know your bridges is militia speak to prepare to seize bridges. your thoughts on some of your own colleagues talking like members of a militia rather than members of congress. >> well, how irresponsible of

speaker mccarthy. and how imprecise. this was not a judgment. this was not a judgment. this was an indictment. this was not doj. this is a grand jury. i can't even decipher mr. higgins. i guess the other fellow is trying to help me do that. certainly, we know exactly what is going on here. continued incitement to make people angry, upset, fearful, and violent. it's unbelievably irresponsible. why wouldn't somebody like a speaker mccarthy, last night, when the indictment had not yet been unsealed, say i reserve judgment. i'm certain my former president is innocent of all of this, but why not say i will wait and read the indictment. by the way, just like jack smith, i ask everybody, read this indictment. i'm a former professor. it reads like a narrative. it is very sad and compelling. read this indictment. >> and i will note that, yes, it's 40-something odd pages but

a quick read. lots of white space. madeleine dean, thank you. nbc news presidential historian michael beschloss joins me next. stay with us. i've never been healthier. shingles doesn't care. but shingrix protects. proven over 90% effective, shingrix is a vaccine used to prevent shingles in adults 50 years and older. shingrix does not protect everyone and is not for those with severe allergic reactions to its ingredients or to a previous dose. an increased risk of guillain-barré syndrome was observed after getting shingrix. fainting can also happen. the most common side effects are pain, redness and swelling at the injection site, muscle pain, tiredness, headache, shivering, fever, and upset stomach. ask your doctor or pharmacist about shingrix today. for copd, ask your doctor about breztri. breztri gives you better breathing, symptom improvement, and helps prevent flare-ups.

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feeling sick after reading that indictment and hearing you'll talk about it. this afternoon. there has never been a president who remotely resembled donald trump in being so cavalier and reckless. this is not just documents in the national archives. these are secrets, that if they get out, they can kill americans. they can kill our loved ones. they can kill our families. this is the same week in 1944, d day. which helped the united states and the allies to win world war ii. can you imagine if dwight eisenhower had been reckless about secrets? people would have died. or the nuclear weapon project in tennessee. during world war ii, it allowed us to were in world war ii. but if we had a president like fdr who said, well, i'm just going to leave some sensitive documents in my bathroom next to the twilight, and if somebody happens to go in there and happens to be an agent of a foreign power. and gets to a hostile country, too bad.

we would never have leadership like this, ever before. donald trump is in a category of his own. >> nixon comes the closest. but what he was trying to purloin and keep from himself, was evidence of his own criminality. of his own criminal conduct. the idea with donald trump is that he thought that really high level national security information from multiple agencies. from the department of defense, to the cia, belong to him. because it was briefed to him while he was president. and the arrogance of that, and taking things that belong to the united states and saying it's mine, mine, mine. it is a level of sociopathy that i don't think i've ever read about. and there have been some pretty wild, out there presidents. >> they're sure have. i never thought i'd go on to your show to give an income -- to nixon. but all through the trump years and afterwards, i would have been desperate to have nixon back instead of donald trump. today really made very clear, one of the reasons why. he has contempt for americans.

otherwise he wouldn't have endangered their lives in the way that he did with these classified documents. as contempt for democracy. nixon, again, i never thought i'd be here, as a cheerleader for richard nixon. there is a certain, at least minimum, respect he had four institutions of democracy. as much as he wanted to expand his own power. this was nothing like donald trump. this was a nightmare. everything we've learned today shows us what a nightmare it was. i'm so glad that he's being brought to justice. no president must ever do this ever again. >> nixon famously said, when a president does it, it's not a crime. but your final comments on the fact that this isn't even the worst thing donald trump did that is likely, very likely a crime. january 6th comes to mind. he's already been found liable for sexual abuse of a woman. i could go on. >> this is the guy who tried to take down our democracy. same way that jefferson davis did with the civil war.

the two of them are about on the same par, in the damage that they've tried to cause to america, and trump is still trying to cause. all i'm saying is, remember from that report today what he did. matt combine it with january 6th. election tampering in georgia, the other things we know, this is someone who should never have been president. let's make sure he doesn't become president again. >> indeed, a former commander-in-chief who has taken down a member of the united states military with him, i don't think there's any clearer example of his contempt for the military. contempt for the american people, and for our national security. michael beschloss, always a pleasure. thank you, don't go anywhere everyone. i'll be back in a moment with my msnbc pals. as our special coverage of the indictment of donald trump continues. ur car insurance so you only pay for what you need. check it out, you could save $700 dollars just by switching. ooooh, i'll look into that. let me put a reminder on my phone. save $700 dollars.

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