house. these are baby steps, but they're steps in the right direction. >> and we should note again that donald trump whose birthday is today has vowed he is staying in this race no matter what, no matter how many indictments or even potential convictions may come. charlie sykes, thank you very much for joining us this morning. >> thank you. >> it is indeed a historic morning as we deal with the aftermath of the first time ever that a former president of the united states has been arraigned on federal charges. thank you so much for getting up "way too early" with us on this wednesday morning. "morning joe" starts right now. this is the most important government job on the planet. we're about to turn over the conservative movement to a person that has no ideas of any substance on the important issues, the nuclear codes of the united states to an erratic individual. what was the damage? was this stolen and sold to the iranians, sold to the saudis, given over to the russians, that allegation is not made in that

indictment. no one has made that allegation. at the end of the day, you have to weigh the damage of the indictment versus the damage of the allegations. it's just not even a fair way. >> senator marco rubio's evolution on donald trump's access to and handling of classified documents. >> yeah, i agree, it's not even a close call. you weigh whether you believe as the 11th circuit said that the foundational principle of this country, that no man is above the law, and you balance that against whatever marco was saying we should balance it against. and, you know, willie, i just -- you will notice -- you will notice of all of the noise out there, of all of the ground noise, nobody is saying he's innocent. nobody is saying he did not commit the crimes that will put him in jail for over a hundred

years, if convicted on all things. >> i can't think of one person who has said this man did not do it. >> so what they say is what about hillary? i mean -- >> but they had a long time to do that. >> we have a smart lawyer here. >> should we do the intros? >> i'm just a simple country lawyer. i don't know the way you do things sequentially or whatever, but i will tell you this, willie. it's so fascinating. >> we've got a great group. >> do we really? >> yeah. >> what's so fascinating is they don't say he's innocent. >> no. >> they all basically say, he's guilty, but what about hillary, right? >> yep. >> two tiers of justice, right? first of all, yes, the obama administration under james comey twice closed the case. that's obama.

what about donald trump? what about donald trump's justice department? it's not like they weren't talking about it. they were talking about convicting or bringing charges against hillary, a special counsel against hillary in 2016 while he was running he talked about it. said after he got elected, nah, 2017, he brought it up again. they came to the conclusion, no, can't. in 2018, brought it up again, there's not a case there. time and time again they looked into it. it wasn't like donald trump said, oh, you know what, i'm going to be cool now that i'm in the white house, he raged on in 2017. he raged on in 2018. they looked at it. his legal counsel said, there's nothing there. so when these people say two tiers of justice, and you're going after donald trump, they need to turn the mirror back on themselves because it was the trump doj that said no charges

should be brought against hillary for the same reason that comey said is at the end. comey's impact words, no reasonable prosecutor would ever bring charges with the facts of this case. >> and the three-year justice department investigation into hillary clinton's e-mail server which included in 2019 found quote, no deliberate mishandling of classified information, nothing systemic. >> was she subpoenaed? did she scurry away with her server running into the woods with it? was she subpoenaed? >> she testified. she actually met with the fbi, she gave information. and to your point, the president, this is president trump, asked barr to look into this. can't even just say this is comey. this is comey and barr, so if you know that if there was anything there that led to this sort of intentional, she would have been charged. >> and by the way, there was also another attorney general at the time, a fellow named jeff

sessions from alabama who wasn't going to cut hillary clinton -- >> he was fascinated with hillary. >> any slack, and they concluded. they concluded, the ig, there was evidence -- if anything there was evidence of a conscious effort to avoid sending classified information by writing around the most sensitive material. this is what the inspector general said as then fbi director james comey put it, no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. and looking back at our investigation in the mishandling and removing of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. this is against hillary. then trump's people came in. sessions was the attorney general. trump raged, indict her, bring a special counsel. >> lock her up. >> lock her up. >> they were told again, no, there's nothing there, mr. president. there's nothing there.

he talked to his white house counsel, don mcghan. there's not a crime there. why do i bring all of this up? because there's a big, big, giant white shark, great white, a legal great white circling donald trump, and now the entire republican party, and if this is all they have, they're going to need a bigger boat because this is not going to do it. >> here's the additional thing. i ask everyone around the table, at the peak of the right wing anti-hillary crusade around the e-mails, right, can anybody here specify, remember, what it was that the most dramatic piece of classified material that she was supposed to have mishandled was, nobody can, because it was all about volume. >> they were trying to figure out, wait, what was that stamp for? they couldn't even figure out. they get the classified markings wrong. >> and so you had trump always

talking about the volume, there's 30,000 e-mails we can't account for. there was never anything in the fever swamps, they never said anything like, hillary, she shared with somebody the american plan for invasion of iran. or nuclear secrets. even in their most crazy conspiracy theory minds, what's detailed in this indictment, and so, you know, if you put the whole hillary clinton aside, of course the republican arguments about it are ridiculous, and i would say consistent, when he was impeached the first time, they said the same thing. no one defended him in the first impeachment, no one defended him in the second impeachment, everybody just plays the game of deflection. >> they know he's guilty as charged, why are we starting the show this way? first of all --

>> 24 hours, all we've heard about. >> i'm a linear type of guy. but this actually blows up. this blows up every argument that little marco and everybody else puts out there. >> a lot of tv hosts. >> blows it out of the water because when they say unequal application of justice, they're attacking donald trump and his doj, and jeff sessions and barr. >> the reason speaker mccarthy when asked again yesterday jumps from what do you make of the indictment to hillary clinton bleached her e-mail server back in the day is because the step in between there would be to defend what donald trump did, and it's indefensible. it's just indefensible, so when you see those photographs, when you see all the charges that are made in that document, there's no way to go out and say, i think there's a way out of this for him. marco rubio, by the way, who's now shrugging at all of this, what are you going to do, it wasn't so bad. he's the ranking member of the

intelligence committee, and he said it. he's the leading republican on intelligence, does he really believe this isn't a big deal, and if he does, we ought to look into that. >> we got problems. we got real problems. people who are supposed to be protecting america's secrets, when they say they don't give a damn about america's secrets, that they care about a failed reality tv host and a cult leader more than they actually care about security, and george conway, this is a crazy thing. marco rubio, when he was running the intel department, i mean, when he was running the intel committee, the senate intel committee, he and the other republicans who were in the majority said donald trump's 2016 campaign caused a direct counter intelligence threat to the national security, a grave threat to the national security of the united states of america. now, marco is going, what? i see nothing. i mean, he's a clown now.

he's turned himself into a clown. from donald trump saying we can't trust him with nuclear codes, that's 2016, little marco. to saying donald trump caused a grave counter intelligence threat to america's national security, to now, what, see no evil, hear no evil, do no evil. >> it's absolutely ridiculous, and it makes no sense in particular because this unequal justice argument aligns the fact that trump wasn't charged with simply having these materials. he wasn't charged with taking them out of the white house. he was charged with doing all of the things, you know, leaving apart the differences between the kind of information that was in hillary's e-mails and the kind of information that was in trump's boxes. they simply -- trump engaged in obstruction in a way that hillary did not. and it's just a huge difference, and among many others, and the

fact that rubio can say these things shows that he is completely unprincipled and shameless and getting worse. >> and you add the speaker of the house to that, and again, you said hillary didn't do it. you know who else said hillary didn't do it, barr. let's see, don mcgahn, trump's white house legal counsel. jeff sessions, trump's first attorney general. the trump, the trump state department. again, i was very disappointed in the trump administration and now apparently so, too, are a lot of trumpers for the unequal application of the law. here's on the "daily news," hoard, conceal, obstruction, lie. that just about sums it up, and the official paper of record for "morning joe,". >> just for the record, unlike our counter parts, we covered

hillary clinton. "arraign on his parade." >> not bad. >> today is donald trump's 77th birthday. >> rappy birthday. taking the rap. >> and you're right, we were very critical, just ask our progressive followers every day on twitter. we were very critical of hillary clinton during that time for things she should have done, things we didn't think she did do. i guess, though, again, this is all, willie, it's all one way, right? we report on both sides. they report some of the more extreme people report on, you know, what serves them well. they're for law and order, unless it has to do with donald trump. >> blind loyalty to donald trump has led republicans to do wild things, and now that being a place where leading republicans, the speaker of the house are saying, eh, what are you going to do, nuclear secrets, stick him in a shower at your beach club, it happens.

what are you going to do? >> hey, you can lock the bathroom door, and as mika explained to poor dumb kevin, yeah, you lock it from the inside. >> so maybe you're sitting in there and reading them? >> i'll tell you the other thing about the fact that none of them will defend him, there's a realtime futures market about what they expect to happen in this case, the thing they are all afraid of, what are you afraid of, what are the ads going to be, you can't defend him not just because it's indefensible, you don't want to defend him because you think there's a good chance he's going to get convicted and you don't want to be on record defending the behavior of someone likely to be convicted. >> this is why i know people say, what's he thinking, did he not sleep. this is actually why i'm bringing all of this up because there's such a weakness in their argument, not just legally but also politically, i think you're going to see more and more

people peel off. >> doing the nikki haley move. >> tim scott now peeled off. >> we'll get to that. >> because at the end of the day, they know. this is their opening sort of flurry, right. what about hillary, what about hillary, boom, what about boom. at some point they're going to get tired of getting punched in the face, and they're going to have to go, no mas, nuclear secrets, bad thing. that's where they're going to end up. and i think you may see one or two peel away every day or two. >> what we saw yesterday was a lot of vintage donald trump where he went into his indictment in federal court in miami and he had the 37 counts read to him. he was slumped over, you know, hunching his shoulders, folding his arms, grim faced. he was released without bond. they did not take away his passport. there's no travel restrictions. he was told not to have contact

with witnesses in the case, and of course his codefendant, mr. nauta was with him after, working with him as he went to a cuban restaurant, and people there sang him happy birthday. i guess there's some sort of connection, he feels, he says, with the cuban community. not so sure about that. but continuing to desensitize the american public on the truth, he then spoke in the evening and kind of admitted, again, to what he did. take a look. >> whatever documents a president decides to take with him, he has the right to do so. it's an absolute right. this is the law. i hadn't had a chance to go through all the boxes. it's a long tedious job. takes a long time. the other picture that was so vile, you remember that one, it was angry and corrupt, was the photo staged by the fbi. and those that raided mar-a-lago. they were putting documents all over the floor.

>> oh, my lord, so now he's framed andrew weissmann. i know you want to talk about this. also, if you could talk about e. jean carroll and why that's important as well because she also was holding him accountable. >> also, how he admitted crimes. again. >> you're charged with illegal possession, and you give a speech where you say this is why i possessed them. that is actually a confession, not a defense. >> can that be used in court? >> absolutely. those statements are admissible. everything that is coming out of his mouth is admissible under the rules of evidence. >> do you think someone has told him that? >> i do. >> his counsel dejour has definitely told him. that's the penalty. you may be doing this for political reasons, but it's going to hurt you in terms of the court. two things happened yesterday outside of miami, which was so interesting, one, jack smith is

continuing his case in d.c., which electors were going into the grand jury, i thought that was fascinating. shows tenacity and speed. >> they had down. >> you have jack smith in miami, but his team is going forward on the january 6th case, and then lewis kaplan, very respected judge who oversaw the civil case by e. jean carroll made a really good important ruling which has allowed her to bring an amended civil case, which basically said, you have continued to defame me because, again, donald trump continued to speak after the verdict in the civil case and basically saying i need more punitive damages. you know what punitive damages are for, they're there to deter someone from continuing to defame her. >> so that could cost him. >> a fortune. >> so the first verdict -- >> a millionaire, you know. >> exactly. >> that's amazing.

>> george conway, as you listen again to that speech, and that's about as much as we're going to play from last night because he made a speech full of lies is a confession, and we heard him do that at the cnn town hall, where he said i took what i took, and his only defense was it was legal under the presidential records act, which we detailed a thousand times on the show is untrue, and he knows that. it's not what the presidential records act says, so if you're on his legal team, sorry for that hypothetical for you, where do you go with this case? what's the defense of this? >> i don't know. i would love to be his lawyer, actually. i would like to say, hey, you know, hire me. i'd ask for a $5 million retainer, and the first thing i would tell him to do is say plead out, and then he'd fire me and i'd keep my $5 million. but i don't know what -- there is no defense. they have not articulated a defense, and he is incriminating himself almost every day. every time he opens his mouth,

and he's only just digging himself a bigger and bigger hole. on the e. jean carroll thing, it's very interesting. that case is probably going to go to another trial in the fall, and another thing that's interesting about it is that remember the case that was tried was the sexual assault case but also it was a second defamation case. yeah, it is a second defamation case of the defamation from 2022, and she got $3 million in damages for that defamation. the defamation in this other case isn't just what happened at the town hall a few weeks ago, but it's the original defamation in 2019 when he was president. he had the bully pulpit, and nobody knew anything about jean carroll until, you know, he started lying about her. and so the damages from that case should be much much greater, not even including the punitives that she will be entitled to for the fact that

he's continuing to lie about her. the damages should be much greater in that case, and it's also going to be another distraction for him in the fall when he probably is still going to be looking for counsel who can represent him in florida. >> right. you know, george, you were joking about the doing a plea deal for him, but any respectful attorney, i mean, any -- >> oh, absolutely. >> any attorney that looked at the evidence would sit him down, anybody -- >> correct. >> would sit him down and say, listen, i know you think the judge is going to do your bidding just like you thought the supreme court justices were going to do your bidding, they're not at the end of the day. she doesn't want to be humiliated again, you're going to face justice here, and if they get you even on one count, you're in prison for the rest of

your life, for the rest of your life. let me talk to the prosecutor. let's figure out a plea deal here. i know it's not perfect. i know you may have to back down, but you have one other choice, and that is going to jail for the rest of your life. i can strike that deal now. i can't do it six months from now. i can do it now, though. any lawyer that i know that has half a brain would have that conversation with the client. >> yeah, and it's not that hard. well, it is a hard conversation to have with donald trump, but the fact of the matter is all you have to do is look at what does the government need to prove to go 37 for 37 on this indictment. it is that he had the documents. well, there is no -- he knew he had the documents. check. and he was asked for the documents back by the government. check. he didn't give the documents back when he was asked for them, and they had to come to seize them. check. and then he was moving them around to hide them. check. and he lied. he caused people to lie to the government. >> and there's one more, he knew

the process. >> which of these facts is he going to dispute, and the answer is he can't dispute any of them. >> that's correct. >> and the problem is, they've got him on tape. they've got them talking to his aides, everything, they have him. so that's why i say he really needs to plea if he wants to stay out of jail for the rest of his life. >> and you a country lawyer, and non-country lawyer can check my logic on this. but i think he would have the prosecutor here, a plea guilty would be trump pleading guilty and he could no longer be president of the united states. that would be a political compromise, except for the far left. many people want to see trump in an orange jump suit. accountability is important. many people in the country would accept a plea deal that involved trump pleading guilty to some felony charges. it would keep him out of prison

and the white house forever. i think there would be a broad consensus in the democratic part of the country, that's a deal that people would live with. there would be some let down, he's not going to jail but is never going to be back in the white house again, that would be a broadly accepted deal by most of the country. >> that's happened before with public officials, right, where they plea and say here's the deal, you do the deal, you can't be in elected office again. >> it's the latter that's unusual. >> right. >> so there's no question that the right legal move is to plead if you want to avoid jail time. i mean, unless something strange happens, he's getting convicted. this is an incredibly strong case. if you want to avoid jail, there's precedent for if he pleads, he can get a deal like general petraeus had, he avoided jail. the part about staying out of office is one which is more unusual. look, he could throw that. if he's trying to say, i will do

this. >> is that the deal? >> exactly. >> and jonathan lemire, you should weigh in on this too. one thing trump and his legal team is counting on is judge cannon, they believe she'll be friendly to him, kicks the can down the road until after the election. i think that's the one thing, it's a hell of a legal strategy, but they're counting on the judge being favorable to them. >> she's the real wild card here, and there's no doubt she delivered a lot of favorable rulings early in the process, during the early stages of the investigation, of course as we have been noting on the show, she was rather humiliated. is she going to take those bullets again for him. some in the trump circle i talked to think she will, they hope she will. at minimum, they hope there are procedural moves that can be done to delay the start of the trial to push it beyond the election, that trump could win, be president, and cannot be charged and pardon, all the

things they're trying to sort out. certainly no one i have talked to in the trump world is talking about a plea deal right now. that's not their strategy, he's going to fight. of course it remains the last card they could play if they do come to their senses about the facts of the case that's just been outlined by lawyers on the show. right now, that's not their instinct, and certainly we don't need to play it, but it was more whataboutism, and bluster from trump at his speech in bedminster, new jersey, after the arraignment, and now it will be the ripple effects throughout the rest of the party, 2024 candidates, lawmakers alike, very few so far unwilling to stand up to him. >> all the bluster, all the whataboutism, that doesn't keep you out of jail, right? >> nope. >> and right now i would say to my client, andrew, and i would say to anyone that i care for. right now you have one thing going for you, you've got a crazy judge, right, who humiliated herself before the 11th circuit, and maybe the

feds. maybe the feds are thinking it may take them a year and a half to put you in jail for life instead of six months. this is your only window. the second she makes her first ruling, and she goes with jack smith instead of you, people will understand that this runaway judge is not going to be humiliated again by the 11th circuit, and you lose all negotiating power. i know he won't do this. i'm just saying, with 99.9%, 99.9% of defendants who found themselves in this position, it's a deal they'd jump on in a second. >> absolutely. the thing that she, that judge cannon has to worry about is if she repeats what she did during the investigation and she issues another crazy ruling, this is the risk to her, she gets taken off the case by the circuit. so in the conversation with donald trump, it's like, look, if you're counting on another

crazy ruling from her, you're going to lose her. the government's going to appeal, and the risk is, they say, you know what, it's going to be sent back to a different judge. >> wow. >> go ahead, sorry. >> if i could just follow up on this, and then i would love to hear what you have to say. >> i have a question. >> normally, andrew, explain, this would not happen, but first of all, this is the most high profile case they've ever had, first of all, and secondly, as we have said here before, the language in that 11th circuit, again, a very conservative federalist society infused circuit, but also, again, as i've said, knowing people i know there are no nonsense, be very scared of them. right? they may be conservative, but they follow the rule of law, and they're really tough about that. they accused her of undermining the foundational bases of our

republic. they accused her of creating a special exception that would lay waste to the american belief that no man is above the law. it was -- they accused her of doing violence to the most basic notions of separation of powers. this was language that was not only intended to humiliate. this was language that says don't ever -- >> on the record. >> think about doing this again. >> true. in this case. this isn't i'm like going to criticize you for another case, by the way, humiliating enough. that's in this very case. that's what they said, and i thought to your point, saying that her ruling saying that because he's the former president he's entitled to extra weight, i mean, they just went, you know, absolutely bonkers on saying that is not the rule of law. that's not what happens in this country. >> so the point is they wouldn't

normally take a judge off a case for an errant ruling here and there, she's been so wide of the mark and seemed to be so embarrassingly in the tank of trump that if there's another ruling like that, this would be well within the realm of possibility of them saying, okay, enough. >> to remove her. >> we're not going to give her a third strike. you're off the case. >> that makes sense to me. this is my non-lawyer question to the assembled lawyers, there are rulings, judges make rulings. there are rulings and some of the rulings are about the pace of the case, how when trump's lawyers do what jonathan just suggested, which i think we all understand is they're going to try to delay this as much as possible, try to get it past election day, and in trump's mind, he wins the election, and he can make the whole thing go away. are the kinds of rulings where she could not be making substantiative rulings but really just about procedural rulings about the pace of the case, could she make those kinds of rulings, coming to his

assistance, his aid, tacitly, and those are not really overturnable because they're really about kind of the way -- the pace of the case and the kind of delay tactics she accepts, is that a concern? >> yeah, the concern is that she does this dance where she does the sort of delay, but i'm going to try and do it, couch it in language that's not reversible, but there are going to be motions the defense makes in front of her about prosecutorial misconduct, about striking evidence, and it's going to be hard for her to hue to that line. i mean, she's going to be asked to do things where there's a really good chance she's going to repeat the kind of nonsense they did the first time. that, i think, is the government's best chance of removing her from the case. still ahead on "morning joe," there's a lot, we're going to look at the latest reactions from republicans on capitol hill following donald trump's arraignment yesterday in federal court, including house speaker

kevin mccarthy's continued whataboutism. plus, what 2024 white house hopeful nikki haley is now saying about a possible pardon for the former president. also ahead, russia increases its missile and aerial strikes as ukraine makes limited gains in an early counter offensive. we'll have the very latest on the fighting overseas. you're watching "morning joe." we will be right back. s. you're watching "morning joe." we will be right back.

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speaker mccarthy, do the documents belong to trump? >> which documents are you talking about? >> the classified documents. >> i can't tell you, but if they're classified, they should

be given back. i don't believe the classified documents that president biden has back to the senate, they don't belong to him either. and i don't believe hillary clinton when she had the server and bought the new software to bleach it all had the right to do that either. >> you know, extraordinarily, i don't like to say that about anybody that was extraordinarily stupid stuff to say on all counts. he knows that. this is a guy, again, he sees classified documents. i said he was third in line. i guess he's second in line, isn't he, willie? he's second in line, and he's saying that he knows, first of all, the difference between biden and mike pence. they called up said we have some documents, come get them, and donald trump who lied time and time again. >> was subpoenaed, hid them, made it clear, he understood what the process was to declassify documents, lied about that. continues to say what he did, and what was in there was

quite damning and dangerous for the united states of america. >> and, alex, can you put up those quotes again about hillary clinton and what was said about hillary clinton because if he's angry at anybody, he should be angry at james comey, which was be weird because james comey gave the election basically to donald trump ten days beforehand. but it was donald trump's doj that decided not to prosecute hillary clinton. >> interesting. >> as well. they concluded there was no evidence. this is about the hillary clinton indictment, but they concluded there's no evidence of e-mails intentionally deleted by former secretary clinton's lawyers to conceal classified information on former secretary clinton's server. that's the ig of the state

department. if anything, was it state or justice? >> justice. i'm sorry, even better. if anything, there was quote evidence of a conscious effort to avoid sending classified information by writing around the most sensitive material. horowitz concluded. so what the inspector general of the justice department said after the obama justice department decided not to prosecute, and the trump justice department decided not to prosecute is that unlike donald trump, who threw stuff in toilets, nuclear secrets here, bathrooms, in ballrooms, right by where they're playing poker and everything else, they said, unlike that, hillary clinton went out of her way not to discuss any classified information on the e-mails. >> but none of that matters to a certain group of people.

it's mad libs. it's bleached server, hillary, chappaqua, all the words you hear. >> and the truth will win out eventually. >> it will. and how many times have we heard in the last few years that republicans privately, and we hear it, are tired of donald trump, they would love some opportunity to walk away from him. here's a chance. if january 6th didn't do it for you, maybe taking nuclear secrets and war plans to your beach club would be an opportunity, and unfortunately for most republicans, they haven't taken that chance. joining us now with more reaction from the house, congressional reporter for the hill, mychael schnell, good to see you this morning. speaker mccarthy set the tone there. what documents, playing glib, pretending he doesn't know what reporters are talking about and going right to hillary. is that sort of the consensus view, at least publicly up on the hill? >> the short answer when we're talking about house republicans is yes. we have seen this argument from mccarthy trickle down to rank

and file members, close allies of former president trump. the majority of them saying that this is a weaponization of the department of justice. also calling on, pointing to hillary clinton probes, pointing to the classified documents case that president biden is currently the subject of. of course, though, as you guys have noted there are significant differences between those two cases, specifically the obstruction portion. kevin mccarthy has said this is weaponization of the doj and he's vowing to hold the department accountable. he said last week that he's spoken with congressman jim jordan and james comer. they are top chairmen of the house judiciary committee and house oversight committee about ways to hold this weaponization accountable. i think it's very likely that we will see action against the doj, against perhaps jack smith in the coming weeks. but there's one interesting dynamic when you talk about congressional reaction to this indictment on capitol hill from republicans, house republicans have largely been defending the

former president, running to his side but that's not the case among the top republicans in the senate. we saw yesterday mitch mcconnell, senate minority leader, would not comment on the indictment. he said he's not going to comment on the presidential candidates in the republican primary, and we saw two of his top deputies essentially say that these are serious allegations and it's not looking good for the former president. in some house republicans standing firmly by kevin mccarthy, but interestingly enough, breaking with senate gop in terms of not defending president trump. >> so there's also republicans in the house and also television hosts with their fog horns going on and on and on, not just about hillary clinton, and not doing the proper follow up and talking about what we've talked about here that there was follow up in the trump white house to hillary clinton. >> and they decided not to prosecute. >> yeah, and they decided not to prosecute. but now the other sort of look at the bird, look at the bird is the biden crime family, so what

is the investigation there? what is the there there on that? >> yeah, the biden crime family investigation, that has been a significant priority of republicans on the house oversight committee and they had a pretty significant development last week on thursday,which was the day that former president trump announced that he had been indicted. members of the oversight committee gained access to an fc 23 document, they said alleged a bribery scream that president biden was involved with. house republicans had been, a, pushing for access to this document, and then once the chairman and ranking member of the panel received access, they further pushed for all members of the committee to receive access, and when that happened on thursday, members went to the sensitive facility in the capitol to view sensitive documentation. hours later, former president trump announced that he had been indicted and we very quickly saw

a number of those oversight republicans and even others note that the day that they say that they proved that president biden was involved in a bribery scheme, these are still unconfirmed allegations in the fd 2023 document, they are information that has been retained from a source, they said the same day we exposed this and received access to this was the same day that the doj indicted former president trump. so, again, another way that republicans are sort of saying that this is a weaponized doj in an institution that is politicized against republicans. >> congressional reporter the hill, mychael schnell. >> it's all misinformation, all lying, all smoke and mirrors. george conway, last night, i just saw this, again, i try not to talk about other networks, but when fox news has a headline that says "want to be dictator speaks to the white house after having his political rival

arrested," from oliver darcy and other people that sent that to me, when that happens, you see exactly why the propaganda that they're pushing nonstop is having an impact on people whose world views, of course the only want-to-be dictator that ever tried to have their opponent arrested was donald trump two weeks before the election when he was yelling at barr, telling him to arrest joe biden and joe biden's family. but, again, that's what's so bizarre about this no chyrons like that went up there, but you go through a process, where, again, nuclear secrets. they can't defend donald trump. you can't defend him, so they put up garbage like this. >> yeah, i mean, you would think that fox news would have 787 1/2 million reasons not to do something like put that chyron up. >> or another 2 billion reasons coming up.

>> exactly. that's true. they're not out of the woods yet on that. it's an amazing thing. it shows you sort of the feedback loop that we have between the public, segment of the public that absolutely refuses to engage in any linear thought, and refuses to engage with facts. will not, you know, you could hand these people a copy of the indictment and tell them, hey, it's a good read, it is not very long. they would say, it's garbage, without reading it. i think speaker mccarthy were basically trashing the indictment before they had read a single word of it, and that's what fox news is catering to there. we just throw up these words, we throw up the word salad, we just, you know, refer to our enemies as our enemies and call people communists and socialists, the way trump and marxist, the way trump is doing more and more, and just skip the

idea that we have to learn about, i don't know, we live in an alternative reality, an alternative universe, and it's just too much. >> do you know what happens when you're in politics, do you live in alternative reality, you lose in 2017, you lose in 2018, you lose in 2019, you lose in 2020, you lose in 2021, you lose in 2022, you lose in 2023, and wait for it, you lose in 2024. that's the thing. >> that's his get out of jail free card. >> this is all self-defeating. this is what i will never understand, willie, it is so self-defeating. this idea that you're going to punish doj, members of the republican party and the house are going to punish the doj for protecting america's nuclear secrets, that's a bad look. and you know what, i think there's about 13 or 14 republicans who won in biden districts that are not going to

go back and try to win reelection in those biden districts by saying, yes, i punished the doj for protecting america's nuclear secrets. >> this is so to the public, to the voting public, this is so clear, unlike some of the other cases that donald trump is mired in, maybe even a manhattan indictment, you don't understand the details of. here are pictures in the bathrooms of mar-a-lago, documents of classified documents that are illegal for anyone even the president of the united states to take home with them. that's it. . >> by the way, with manhattan, we were all saying, is this all you got. we said it there. but here, nuclear secrets. toilets. >> come on. >> it speaks for itself. >> you don't have to be andrew weissmann to understand this is very bad, and this is very illegal, and it carries jail time. >> was he going to flush them i'm serious. >> andrew, before we let you go, you have been here for 72 hours, wheeling you around to different sets. >> get the iv.

>> where does this go now? donald trump has been arraigned. here we are, we know who the judge is, it's judge cannon, what do the next few months look like? >> all eyes should be on the january 6th case. i think that's, you know, people are going to be looking at fani willis in georgia january 6th case, and jack smith's jackson case. fani willis's self-imposed deadline of sometime in august that she will make a decision, i wouldn't be surprised if jack smith is operating under a similar deadline, hence the reason we saw, you know, incredible tenacity yesterday where he is in court in miami and his people are also in the grand jury in d.c. so that to me suggests he's walking and chewing gum and doing his job. i think that's sort of the key thing to look at, and then honestly, judge cannon is the wild card. the one point to continue on the hillary point, every time i hear

hillary, i ask myself, why are you not saying the same thing about mike pence. this is the department of justice that dismissed and said we are not going forward on mike pence. is that weaponization. >> thank you. >> and when they're saying she should have been prosecuted, are they saying mike pence should have been prosecuted? the reason they're not doing it with either of them is because there was no intent. there's no obstruction. that's no criminal. every time you hear hillary, ask yourself, why are they not saying mike pence. >> and where we began, they talked about possibly indicting hillary in the trump administration, a special counsel. time and time again they came back and said, no, no case. nope, can't do it. no, nothing there. and so, again, it's just, yeah. >> andrew weissmann. >> this table is awesome because there's so much logic and so many kind of clear, an attempt to do rational thinking that goes from here to there.

this is divorced from the actual reality. how i know andrew's not in politics, if you're saying this, you would have to say this, yes, that's 100% correct, and the political context. >> irrelevant. >> but i would recommend, i mean, i would suggest, mika, if you look at the election results since 2017, and i'm dead serious, people catastrophize, they say this is horrible, can you believe what happened in charlotte, america is not the same. then we're going to hell. how many times do i hear we're going to hell in a hand basket, and suddenly after charlotte, you see lines of women, mainly, standing in the rain for thundershowers not moving. to send a point in the virginia assembly. to send point in the virginia governor's race in 2018, the same thing, 2019. you have southern governors, democrats in louisiana and kentucky, that are elected in the reddest of red states because people are sending a strong message about all the

things happening with donald trump in 2020 the same, 2021. look at kansas, kentucky, wisconsin. >> kansas. >> i'm telling you. this, too, this too, i think fast are than even those things, willie, going to sink in, because again, americans maybe, you know, they're not following e. jean carroll, the manhattan thing, but you have somebody who starts screwing with america's nuclear secrets and war plans against iran, start screwing with the most sensitive secrets and being reckless about it. 0.1%. i think we're getting into the 5% there. >> this is easy to understand. it's right in front of your eyes. the margins are so thin on these. is there an independent voter watching this play out and go i tilt towards donald trump on stealing nuclear secrets. >> andrew and george, thank you

both very much for being on this morning. we appreciate it. coming up on "morning joe" a republican senator and trump ally is threatening to block justice department nominees in retaliation for the former president's federal indictment. plus, mike pence addresses the allegations against his former running mate. we'll show you what he had to say moments after trump's arraignment. that's all straight ahead on "morning joe." t. that's all straight ahead on "morning joe." [ tires screeching ] jordana, easy on the gas. i gotta wrap this commercial, i think i'm late on my payment. it's okay, the general gives you a break. yeah, we let you pick your own due date. good to know, because this next scene might take a while. for a great low rate, go with the general. nexium 24hr prevents heartburn acid before it begins. get all-day and all-night heartburn acid prevention with just one pill a day. choose acid prevention.

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and once-in-a-lifetime. of the hour. an update now on the war in ukraine. russian forces launched cruise missiles towards the port city of odesa overnight damaging homes, a warehouse and several small businesses. searchers have been looking for possible survivors under the rubble. russia also struck an area of

southern ukraine yesterday that was retaken by ukrainian forces earlier in the week. a spokesman for ukraine says one of the town's was reduced to ruins. "the new york times" reports ukraine has made progress in at least two different locations throughout southern ukraine in recent days, but has yet to totally breach the russian defense. reuters is reporting that it has independently verified ukraine's capture of another town in the donestk region. president biden met with nato secretary general at the white house yesterday. it comes as nato is holding the largest air deployment exercise in its history in germany. the drills began on monday and will run until june 23rd. the two leaders discussed the war in europe and finland's admission into the alliance. >> and a front page of the new york times, core mick mccarthy

passed away, the writer who wrote "all the pretty horses," "the road," and so many other classics. >> "no country for old men." but, you know, i mean, "the road" i remember being moved by it. incredible write snore a combination of a singular voice, enormous figure in america, in modern american literature and all of his work hangs together, this dark, stark, almost apoc limitic vision, anchored to this profound moral sense and the morality in that shines through with all these dark visions in his pieces is what made him something more than just a great wordsmith. >> certainly right. >> still ahead, much more to cover on the federal indictment of former president donald trump

including an important point about the classified documents in the case that eviscerates the argument that trump is being signaled out for conduct others have engaged in before him. "morning joe" coming right back. . with more confidence. freestyle libre 2. try it for free at freestylelibre.us we see you. athletes. investment bankers. doctors. business leaders. we see your ambition. your desire to succeed. which is why we are investing in your future. ...empowering the next generation to reach

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for engaging in the kind of behavior that president trump is accused of here. >> not exactly. >> why is he lying? i thought he was a very kind of measureded, religious, good -- >> you're being sarcastic now. >> all these statements are bifurcated. they'll tell the truth. >> serious matter. >> tell the truth. because they can come back and say later, when it really goes sideways on them, i said this was very serious. and then they play to the cheap seats where they lie and say this is what exactly hillary clinton did in 2016. we can read again how it didn't happen and how there weren't two systems of justice and you had hillary clinton not only exonerated by the obama administration and james comey, but also exonerated, de facto exoneration by the trump administration because donald

trump in '2017 pushing for a special counsel and they came back to him and said there's nothing here. 2018, pushing for a special counsel, came back, there's nothing here. mr. president you've got nothing. he realized hillary, as we've seen from horowitz's investigation, that hillary didn't do anything remotely like the guy stealing nuclear secretings is doing. >> what you see there is the enduring power that donald trump has over the republican nominating electorate. everyone has tried to take him down and they understand they see trump saying those things, the way trump has done this, the deep state is out to get me. there are two standards of justice. i'm innocent. the democrats and communists and marxists go free and i get persecuted. they see it has worked for him. he continues to be the frontrunner of the republican

nomination contest by a long, long way and he's built a foundation of real power in the republican base playing that song. mike pence sitting at 6% or 8% or 10% of the republican nomination polls, you make a lame, half-hearted effort to go and attach yourself while distancing yourself from trump on one hand, attached yourself to his -- and it doesn't work because you can't do that on the one hand and other thing and really be potent in the republican party. you see all these people recognizing that they want to have it both ways for their own politics. they also, if you're mike pence, somehow figure out how do i get into that -- >> it's like governor haley saying, what she said, the right thing to say, if you actually care about national security. then the next day, well, yes, i would pardon him. but again, with that, you can

make the argument, that's what gerald ford did. that's why he -- >> for the country. >> for me, i can deal with that. running in, you know, a republican primary, okay, say it's a crime. say you should be convicted. if you want to play to the cheap seats talking about pardon, that's at least got precedent. it's not a lie saying he's doing the same thing hillary clinton and joe biden and mike pence are doing. >> nikki haley said in a radio interview, after a long answer, i'm inclined to pardon, but after critical of what donald trump is alleged to have done. >> what's happening is unfortunate. i think the justice department has handled this whole thing terribly. you can't have one standard for hillary clinton and joe biden and another standard for republicans like donald trump. we're seeing that again and seeing that again with the biden bribery recordings that have come to light. i mean, the country should never

stand for that and we should speak up and we have to be loud about that. and having said that, if the claims in the indictment are true, if they're true, then trump was incredibly reckless with our national security and that's not okay. so now if you've got the question of a pardon, i mean, that's a very different question. i'm not going to presume president trump's guilt. we all need to let this trial play out. we need to see exactly what happened. when you look at a pardon, the issue is less about guilt and more about what's good for the country. i think it would be terrible for the country to have a former president in prison for years because of a documents case. that's something you see in a third world country. i saw that at the united nations. i would be inclined in favor of a pardon. >> here, you have again, half of it, pretty tough, pretty to the point. >> slipped in there. >> the other half reminds me of what arrow stotle to socrates,

you're just making -- up. >> joe! >> half of what she said is a lie. the other half, she has the other half. when it goes sideways and even more evidence comes out, well, i was, i was, i was saying this was a dangerous thing. >> drop a little i'm inclined to pardon, biden bribery reporting. >> hillary bleaching -- >> jonathan lemire -- >> he wants to quote aristotle. >> that's the translation in fairness. >> not in the original greek. >> but you sort through it, you can. >> but that is, jonathan lemire, the pattern, the on-ed page of the "wall street journal" says this is a misguided prosecution. it makes all those disclaimers. they shouldn't have done it and worry about the consequences downstream. it's "the wall street journal."

look at what's in the indictment. extraordinary moment at the end suggest that party not nominate donald trump. they've gone to that place and say if republicans nominate mr. trump again, they won't own the libs. the libs will own them. so "the wall street journal" page breaking with donald trump in its own way. >> note worthy all the same. we are seeing the idea of electability become front and center for some republicans. senator thune said, has been a trump critic at times, doesn't believe trump could win and would have a disastrous effect down ballot and could cost them the house and straight. in terms nikki haley, yes, it's wishy-washy, a bit of a flip flop, but it's illustrating sort of in real time what all these republican candidates are grappling with. a couple i spoke to, meeting senior republicans in the wake of the arraignment say, like this is some ways how you have to approach it. you're waiting for the indictments to come in and take out trump for you.

we've seen so many republicans outside of chris christie to take him on directly. if you take him on too hard you're risking turning off the voters. there is a sense, though the support for trump is still wide and hardest core base still with him, some of the other trump supporters for them, their support is a little softer this time around. they can be persuaded to go somewhere else. but they have such affection and loyalty to trump the person they don't want you to be too hard on him. they want, the republicans tell me, the voters want to see the competitors, treat him kindly, with respect, even as they then try to move him off the stage. maybe what we're seeing interest -- from haley is to win over voters open to another candidate but don't want to see donald trump trashed while that is being done. >> as chris christie said -- >> oh, my god. >> several weeks ago after the manhattan d.a. indicted indictment no indictment is

good. everybody else says indictment -- it's going to be good, poll numbers are going to go -- no. even donald trump said to politico, it's not good. my poll numbers may have gone up but nobody wants to be indicted. it is, one at a time, one at a time, as andrew said earlier, you get georgia coming up. jack smith is working on january 6th. >> yeah. >> i would never underestimate the tenacity of a guy who sends a picture that looks like he's a prosecutor from andor, and could you send us something that doesn't look like you're a prosecutor from a remote planet in star wars and his office said no. that's the only picture you get. but going to the exhaustion of trump voters ability the man, they wanted to defend him, but about the man, i read i'm not sure in the "times" or may have been in -- may have been in the "post," but a woman from oklahoma, drove to miami, to defend donald trump. and a reporter stuck a

microphone in her face, and why are you here? she said, well, you know, we really -- we don't like the way he conducts himself, and we don't like how he's rude and we don't like how he comports himself and we don't like this, that, and the other, but we think it's unfair the way they're going after him. that was interesting. you drive from oklahoma to tell the reporter this guy is basically a jerk and you want him out of your life politically, but it's unfair the way you're treating him. >> it's unfair and what about it, winning. there is a battle playing out in the court of public opinion and that's his sweet spot. >> that is a sweet 31.5% of the american electorate. >> tell that to leaders in congress. tell that to folks on fox news. into from the reddest districts. >> misinformation flows easily,

coursing through the veins of this country. >> i would ask a swing republican district in nebraska, this is what you're going to see in swing districts. he said. it's bad. what this guy did is wrong. you will hear that from republicans in pennsylvania if they want to win and michigan and wisconsin if they want to win and georgia. no. if you're in the reddest of red districts, gerrymandered districts you say stupid things. i should know. i was in one. but -- >> don't want to review the tape on that one. >> but we don't -- we're not going to see people in swing districts giving this guy a pass. >> you are going to see this thing that nikki haley tape is nelg a lot of ways. you know, that reference to the supposed biden bribery tapes that have come to light. it's a thing at the national level and the republican presidential fight for that party's nomination, you're going

to -- she's throwing that finger where is the red meat. there is a conversation happening on the right, chuck grassley goes on the senate floor the other day and starts talking about having reviewed these fbi files -- >> i know! >> there's recordings. and you heard haley say, these recordings have come to light. what's come to light is an allegation made by a confidential informant who alleges a guy allegedly bribed joe biden, allegedly has 17 recordings of him talking to hunter biden. there is no tape. the tapes have not been transcribed. the tapes are not hidden in a document. there's a bunch of -- i mean even grassley says allegedly, allegedly, allegedly. but as you know, in fbi files there are -- maybe there are the tapes. if there are we should hear them. but they have not -- tapes have not come to light. >> they prefer they don't. >> grassley has given up the gig going, we don't care if he's guilty or to the. >> talking about how, maybe you will recall whenever it was before the 2022 midterms, the

irs is not going to be raiding with ar-15, small business, shooting small business owners. chuck grassley lost credibility but that's the dog whistle, she says i still got to appeal to that part of the party that will drive this process. >> when chuck grassley is asked, he says, i'm not a legal expert. i don't want to speak about things i don't understand. don bacon of nebraska, a republican who won in a swing district, won by 5,000 vote, a place it could go either way. toss up district. here's what he had to say, republican from nebraska, about the trump indictment. >> i think it's obvious what the president did was wrong, and we just got to be honest. i mean, to have thousands of secrets in your house, showing them to people that were not read in, and then giving back some of it, but saying you gave back all of it and lying about it, there's no way to defend

that. i think the upper has no close. and if we need to have republicans say that. after the primary, i guarantee you the other party is going to be saying this and will cost us the november election. i don't see it as a sham indictment. what he did, i think, assuming all the allegations are true here, i don't think he can deny it. i think i stand on the truth and i still think republicans will win in the long run. people are fearful of the base, fearful of, you know, president trump attacking them, but in the end, if you stand on the truth you're going to win in the end. >> difference between a swing district and a safely red district where you can say it's about the bribery biden recordings. u.s. senator and nbc news political analyst claire mccaskill, former u.s. attorney joyce vance and lecturer in law at columbia law school, caroline polisi, a criminal defense attorney. i'll start with you and get your

reaction to the reaction from the republicans on capitol hill with don bacon, congressman in that swing district in nebraska, republican, an outlier in the house. >> yeah. it's not surprising. i watched lindsey graham over the weekend stain himself on national television trying to equate what hillary clinton did and what donald trump did, and he so knows better. you all have covered this very well this morning about the differences between the cases. i think it's time we realize that donald trump is not running for president. he's running for pardon. i think it's time we realize that the republicans are afraid of him and the base that supports him no matter what, i think it's also time to realize that the people of this country do not want this election to be about donald trump's behavior. and that's what's going to hurt him as much as these very serious factually based charges. he cannot talk about the

economy. he cannot talk about trade or foreign policy or health care costs or abortion or guns, because all he can talk about is oh, poor me, i'm a victim. people don't want to hear that for the next 18 months. they don't want to hear that. so the republicans are not only handcuffed to a chronic liar and a fraudster and somebody who has no respect for the rule of law, they're handcuffed to a guy who will not campaign for president on the issues that people want to hear about. the republicans are in trouble with this guy. and i don't know how they get away interest it. >> they're in big trouble and that's why you're starting to see some try to scatter any way they can. we're in the opening stages of this little routine. joyce vance, it's like, kind of threw down the smoke bombs, gone up and trying to scurry off stage but we can see them. the smoke will clear soon and pretty soon, this what about

hilarly, it melts in the light of day for all the reasons we said. not only did the obama justice department not press charges, but the trump justice department did not press charges, a fellow alabamian and bob barr, decided not to do it. >> bill barr. >> bill barr. >> same thing. >> what about the judge? >> we can talk about the judge. but how much do you think she can slow.

>> notions of fairness and america's legal system. the idea that no man is above the law and doing violence to separation of powers. i mean that's about as a rebuke as i've ever seen any district, any circuit court give a judge. >> it was stinging and two of the three judges on the panel were recent trump appointees which tells you this was not a

politically animated revenge decision. this was a pure legal decision. she was out of bounds in the law, not just once, but twice. there were two opinions in this mar-a-lago case telling her stand down, you have this wrong. here's what's looks like in the 11th circuit. on the rare occasions where the court has recused judges, i've been involved in a couple of them, they've done it not because they've said this is a bad judge with terrible bias. they said this is a judge who has made previous decisions in this case that are so far outside of what we would expect to see by someone who is applying the rule of law, that we think that they would have trouble walking it back. we just don't think that they can come back from where they were in the interest of justice and fairness, we'll ask the chief judge of the district to reassign the case. it's a sober sort of experience and joe, your question, your initial question, is the reason this is so important. jujsz have enormous amounts of

control over cases. they set the schedule. yes, they play a role in pretrial motions. once the jury is in the box and double jeopardy is attached, then the judge is making decisions on what evidence can come into true. if the defendant is acquitted there's no do-over for prosecutors. that's the one shot they get. in an important case like this, maybe the most important case, right, that our criminal justice system has ever seen, it's critical that everything be gotten right in advance of trial so the public can have confidence in the outcome, whatever it is. >> caroline polisi, in terms of what's in the indictment, what are the chances of there is more evidence to back it up, a lot more, and to those who say, and actually have a few trump supporting friends watching right now, who say there's really no difference, biden did this and hillary did this and they're really going after him, to that you say what? what is different about this

case? >> it's completely apples to oranges. >> how so? >> it's a false equivalent in that -- we talked about this before, the obstruction is the sort of bread and butter of this case. jack smith and his prosecutors, interestingly, i think, went about drafting this indictment and charging this indictment very specifically in that the 31 documents which are the bases of the unlawful retention charges are not the documents that trump turned over voluntarily when national archives asked for them, not the ones he kept, not even the one hess turned over when subpoena was issued. they were the ones that, you know, the fbi retrieved after the search warrant, the lawful search warrant, not a raid, took place in mar-a-lago. so that is a signal loud and clear that it is the obstruction of -- it's not simply the retention of keeping these

documents, it's, in fact, the obstruction of telling the government, playing fast and loose with the government, tricking his attorneys, all of these types of obstruction that is the real -- >> obstruction that included not only lying to the doj and the fbi, but lying to his own lawyer. >> right. >> scheming. having a conspiracy to lie to his own attorney. >> absolutely. and if i'm the defense, i am thanking my lucky stars that jack smith and his prosecutors sort of played it safe and took this case in the southern district of florida and not up in d.c. because they have the opportunity to challenge judge howell's decision to pierce that attorney-client privilege because if you read the indictment, there are, you know, direct transcripts of the voice memos that evan corcoran took during this time when he was saying, you know, this is a little fishy. i think perhaps there may be something afoot. the indictment makes it clear this was unwitting by corcoran and christina bobb, the one that

signed the false atas station. the indictment makes it clear this was obstructive conduct. if they can get that knocked out that's a huge win for the defense. >> it's going to be hard to get that knocked out only because the judge's instinct was right. and the instinct was, hey, i think trump is using this attorney-client privilege thing to commit a crime. and the indictment lays out how explicitly that actually happened. that's -- this is one of those things, overturns it, the 11th circuit, hey, we reverse it. >> the prosecution would have an expedited appeal process, typically, you know, appeals, you know, you have to do after the case is finish the but in this instance they would say it's so necessary for their case and judge howell's opinion is sort of the law the case would be quite difficult, but i think it's pretty clear that defense will try.

>> given the volume of evidence we've seen with much more to come at trial, obviously, if you were dealing with a rationale defendant, if you were representing the person at this point, would you say we have to make a deal before this goes to trial? >> oh, there's no opportunity -- i don't think the government would allow him the opportunity to make a deal. i mean, he could plead guilty to everything in the indictment, but -- and that potentially could impact his sentence and the admission of guilt. there's no deal in the sense that government would, you know, change the charges or anything like that. i would advise trump to, you know, keep your friends close but keep walt nauta closer in that the government doesn't need -- >> how does he deal with walt nauta? i saw nauta by his side as he went to the cuban restaurant. is he going to keep him like in a bedroom next to him? how does he -- how does he -- >> they're not supposed to communicate? >> they're not supposed to communicate about the case. >> paying for his attorneys. >> the trump pac is paying for

his attorneys. >> is that allowed? >> it's absolutely allowed. >> it is now. >> however the ethical rules -- >> it's really stretched. >> it's -- i mean it's interesting. so the ethical rules mean that the attorney has to keep mr. nauta's interests front and foremost, but we've seen how this plays out, take cas i did hutchins, when she was using a trump appointed attorney, she felt as though she was being coerced. >> you know trump pretty well. what do you think the likelihood that donald trump, who is still using nauta, is like, hey, we can talk about the box scores, we can talk about -- but we can't talk about the case. >> it wouldn't be right. it wouldn't be right. judge said we can't talk about the case. walt, shhhh. >> might as well tell him not to eat kentucky fried chicken. it's not going to take. >> very hard.

>> yeah. trump's worried about that. come on. why do you make that claim. >> it seems to me there should be a more of a line of separation and that judge wouldn't -- wouldn't the judge have the ability to require that? >> absolutely. to require that they not discuss the case. however, they will have, in all likelihood a joint defense agreement, the attorneys -- they're co-defendants in this case, right. unless, again, unless nauta decides with his attorney or maybe he leaves and gets a different attorney, things could go, you know -- >> listen, we don't know how this is going to go. >> that seems really -- >> this -- i say kid, this guy, i mean he's totally going to be hung out to dry here. >> yeah. >> and his lawyer, you talk about -- you talk about ethics and the spotlight on his lawyer who is being paid by people who are loyal to donald trump, you know, his interest rates and

donald trump's interests, could not be greater, the difference. apart all the more. so this is going to be -- it's going to be interesting to see if at some point, whether his attorney gets real, whether he has members of the family that say listen, you know, this guy is not the most loyal guy and you could go to jail. like for a hundred years. you're part of a conspiracy to conceal nuclear ets. there are people who are actually living in russia now because they revealed too many secrets. >> you know what trump does. he loves to gather information on people that can hurt them. and hold it over them. >> whatever he has over him is not worth 100 years in prison, willie. >> ask michael cohen how the loyalty goes. is it a two-way street or do you end up in jail. >> weisselberg.

>> is there some chance i ask again, including joyce, is there some chance that nauta flips at some point. >> joyce, jump in. their interests could not be more diverged than they are right now. >> absolutely. walt nauta looks like the person that you're going to for cooperation and in a case like this. there's some suggestion in the indictment it's not clear, but some of the other workers at mar-a-lago may have provide information the government has in its complaint. it's nauta who is involved in conversations with trump. he has something awfully powerful to offer prosecutors. there's been some reporting that efforts were made to cooperate him prior to indictment, and that for whatever reason, he didn't take advantage of that at that point in time. look, let's not make light of the potential defense here. the indictment is very strong. the facts in the indictment are very strong. there's some legal issues that trump defense team will

challenge in this early pretrial stage. maybe nauta wants to see how those come out. or maybe, as y'all have suggested, there's an issue here with the legal representation. we remember cassidy hutchinson saying that as long as she was represented by the lawyers trump was paying for, she felt like she was being told to, perhaps, coerce her testimony. nauta may find himself in a similar situation. he's not of independent means. he would have to summon the gumption or go to the court and ask for appointment of new counsel. he probably would qualify for a federal defender. that would mean a full-on break with trump. at some point that decision calculus may suggest he should cooperate. one last thing that i'll say in terms of plea deals, doj has a strong track record here in cases involving high-ranking officials and pleas. and part of the reason that

former officials like david petraeus, when he stepped down from the cia, got a plea deal, it was a misdemeanor plea deal with no jail time. it was because the government did not want to have to run the risk of exposing its classified secrets at trial. that sort of a deal will be available to donald trump or at least his lawyer can go in and argue for it. maybe his obstruction means that the deal that's good, is not available to him, but now to have to be thinking in the back of his mind how far does trump's loyalty to me go. when might he try to save his own soul and leave me hanging. that is something his lawyer should be discussing with him. that's what's in his self-interest here. >> would trump do that, willie? >> at the end of sixth sense. >> every day. >> let's get the view from inside the courthouse, join us from miami, nbc news justice and intelligence correspondent ken

dilanian, inside the courthouse during yesterday's arraignment. ken, good morning. give us a little color, if you can, what was it like inside that courtroom? >> good morning, willie. i was actually in the overflow room. the legal process was fairly rude meanttry. it was a brief hearing. we're left with the human drama. just to hear a federal magistrate announce the case as the united states of america versus donald j. trump, and walt nauta, and refer to the defendant, the chief defendant as the former president, and to see these shadowy special counsel figures who only remained in the background, stand up in court and introduce themselves and to see mr. trump having failed to secure new legal counsel, come with his old lawyers, interesting to see the special counsel himself, jack smith sitting in the gallery, at times laughing, you know, smiling, with the people around him, and other times staring

intently at donald trump, when the moment came for the plea, the lawyers did all the talking and todd blanche, mr. trump's lawyer said we most certainly enter a he plea of not guilty. before this happened they were processed by the federal marshals and trump fingerprinted digitally, no mugshot. they used a separate photo. it's kind of a scandal that this -- there's such a lack of transparency behind this process. no cameras allowed in federal court for reasons that should be clear to no one. and not only that, normally devices, electronic devices are allowed in the courthouse but because a few reporters took pictures of courtrooms, they decided like a few hours before the hearing to ban all electronics. so we all had to go in hours before and sit around in a room and wait for the 45 minute hearing to unfold. but trump, his demeanor throughout the hearing, was stoney. you know, arms crossed.

he appeared frustrated. didn't say anything. didn't consult really with his lawyers. you know, wearing his trademark blue suit and red tie. different from what we saw later when he made that campaign stop, essentially in a cuban landmark restaurant in miami. >> trump got a pretty generous courtroom stretch there, i have to say. that's far more flattering than the one we saw in new york. claire, we have been talking this morning could there be a deal cut and could trump plead guilty and agree to not run for president. that seems unlikely. feel free to weigh in on that. how would you read on how the other republicans are reacting to what we've seen over the last handful of days, particularly yesterday, the house mostly coming to his defense, the defendant trying to walk away from it, and seems like the gop candidates not sure what to do just now. >> well, first, on a plea of

guilty, that's not going to happen. this is a man who said he never had to ask god for forgiveness for anything. he's never going to admit he did anything wrong. has anybody been paying attention? this is not a man who's capable of that. his strategy is simple, stall and then try to get elected and get a pardon. plan b, the strategy is simple, go to trial and hope you can seat one juror or more, that will ignore the facts and evidence and listen to what he's saying which has nothing to do with the facts in evidence, he can find one loyalist and get him on that jury and hang the jury. so there's not a conviction. that's what i think his strategy is. let's stall, get elected and pardon or another republican to pardon him if he doesn't get the nomination, which i think is unlikely. and, you know, what, all the republicans are doing is very expected. it depends entirely, as joe has said a number of times and you

have said this morning, depends on their districts. it depends on if they have to have something other than bright red votes. if you're running state wide, if you are in the states that matter for a president to win, you are going to be very careful. if you are in a pennsylvania or an arizona or a nevada or a ohio, or any of the states where, you know -- michigan, where there's going to be a really heated contest that is electoral votes you're going to be careful about trying to pretend that somehow what donald trump did full of lies and obstruction, a stunning display of lies and obstruction, has anything to do with what hillary, pence or joe biden did around issues of government materials. i want to ask about cameras in the courtroom, you know, do you sense that there is any appetite at doj to try to challenge the ability of the american people to watch what's going on real

time? it is so wrong that in this day and age, americans can't see the most important trial in probably, you know, ever in the history of this country? do you sense that anybody is going to push the court to really examine why in the world cameras are not allowed so the american people can watch what's going on? >> unfortunately not. you know, there were -- we have a media coalition that was represented by some very good lawyers that filed a motion, the doj didn't join it, to try to make that happen and it was roundly rejected. you know, it's a club, right. the federal judiciary and those who practice in those courts, are very used to this system. it's the way it's always been. they probably forgotten the reasons for it. but you're right, in this day and age, it's unconscionable that this extremely important trial is -- has such a lack of transparency. it's hard to get documents in

the federal system. it's hard to get evidence once it's entered in. even though it's a matter of public record it's difficult for reporters to get access to it. the pacer computer system on which federal court documents are published on the internet is terrible and it's expensive and hard for the public to use. yeah, public service announcement for people who care about transparency in the court, you know, call your congressman and ask them why it has to be like this. because i don't think it does. >> ken, let me ask you about the dynamic in that courtroom yesterday because the special counsel, jack smith, and former president trump. was there interaction between the two of them? did they look at each other? anything you could have gleaned from the 47 minutes in the courtroom? >> so i'll be perfectly honest with you, willie. i was in the overflow room watching a pretty lousy video feed. so it was hard to -- i was looking at a bearded figure that we all thought was jack smith, but i had to confirm it once we left with people who were in the

courtroom. but i've heard multiple accounts from our colleagues who were in the courtroom that jack smith pretty much stared trump down most of the hearing once it began. wkds see him laughing before the hearing began with people next to him, but once it began, we're told he was staring intensely at mr. trump, who after all, has hurled some really horrific insults, you know, jack smith's way, questioning his manhood and calling him deranged. you know, he's a human being and there's no doubt that he's quite aware of that. he has a security detail 24/7 because of the kinds of threats that are made against anyone who would dare to prosecute donald trump. >> yep. he does. nbc's ken dilanian, thank you very much. i know a lot of people who have security because of donald trump. >> i wouldn't want to be stared down by that guy. he looks like coach beard from "ted lasso." >> that guy does not just stare you down, i would be

intimidated. i can imagine trump kind of like -- >> caroline polisi, what will you be watching in the days to come? >> i'll absolutely be watching to see if the judge -- >> nauta. >> and whether or not the defense team adds, you know, bulks up with more local counsel. always good to have somebody that is familiar with the rules and regulations of the court. and then, you know, we've seen a lot of former trump attorneys go on television talk about potential prosecutorial misconduct. >> they're doing it all the time and his attorneys have some sort of -- >> yeah. >> presentation outside the courthouse which was, i don't even know the words to describe it, but was full of lies and it was -- it was carried live on a lot of cable news networks. it was full of lies. >> yeah. i think they will be, again, playing this case out in the court of public opinion, trying to get -- i mean, you know, the

judge clearly, they've asked for a speedy trial. typically it's the defendant that wants a speedy trial. i think they will try to kick this down the road to play it out as long as possible. >> caroline has a side hustle, makeup artist to the stars. >> i do. >> right? >> to the elementary school stars, is that fair to say? >> that's true. >> productions of aladdin. >> you did so good. i saw that picture. >> appreciate it. >> caroline polisi and joyce vance, thank you both very much for being on this morning. we appreciate it. coming up on "morning joe," the latest on donald trump's scramble to find a qualified florida lawyer willing to join his defense team. plus, we'll be joined by nbc's vaughn hillyard who caught up with a spokesperson for the former president's 2024 campaign following trump's bedminster speech last night. also this morning, sir paul

mccartney says a new beatle song will be released this year due to artificial intelligence. >> oh, no. >> what we know about that straight ahead on "morning joe." 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. pick up dad from airport? ohhhhhh. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ in america, we value our freedoms. and ceos, they're free to negotiate their salaries and bonuses as they see fit. president biden just wants us to have those very same freedoms. the freedom to make a good living and have a good life. that's why he's lowering insulin prices, fighting for the child care tax credit and delivering more clean, renewable, american-made energy...

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- who goes to the reservoir?! - kayak. search one and done. ♪♪ welcome back to "morning joe." 15 before the top of the hour. on pages 13 and 14 of the indictment against donald trump, the federal indictment, the doj and the office of special counsel jack smith detail an instance they say happened in december of 2021 when trump aide walt nauta opened the door of a storage room at mar-a-lago to find classified documents strewn across the floor. the doj says nauta texted this image to another trump employee, redacted from this picture, is the classified information found on at least one of the documents

here marked with a five eyes designation. >> unbelievable. >> meaning the information is so sensitive, that it can only be shared with the intel agencies in australia, canada, the uk, and new zealand, and here it is on the floor of a storage room inside of a florida country club. it's so open to access that one of trump's workers could take a picture of it and text it to someone else who works there. >> which they did. >> which they did. >> joining us now, democratic congresswoman elissa slot kin of michigan, a former cia analyst, she is also a candidate for u.s. senate. very good to have you on the show this morning. your reaction to what's found in this indictment? >> well, look, i think it's been -- there's been lots of talk about it but it had extremely sensitive information. any time you have top secret

information, five eyes information you were speaking about, it indicates what's contained in there is not only sensitive information about, you know, war plans or our nuclear architecture or a whole bunch of other sensitive things, but an indication of how we collected that information. the sources and methods that got us that information. that could be a human being who is very close to someone, a senior leader that can be a wire tap, that can be secret satellite imagery. once that information gets out in the public, the people who are being talked about in that piece of intelligence, can somehow know, well, i know who gave them that. we can see people killed. you can see people ostracized. people have to be removed from the countries they're living in. so it's a very sensitive issue, not just on what was in the papers, but how we collected it. >> congresswoman, good morning. it's good to have you on. given your background in the cia and department of defense, i'm curious what you think some of the reaction from republicans,

including from senator marco rubio, who could if you win your race to become a senator, could become your colleague in the senate, he's the ranking republican on the intelligence committee, and his reaction has been to say what was the damage? was this stolen and sold to the iranian, sold to the saudis, given to the russians, suggesting maybe he took this stuff with him, maybe it was sitting in boxes in a path room at his beach club, but what was really the damage? what was the reaction. >> my reaction f you had the ranking member of that committee ten years ago saying something like that, i would have fallen over, right. anyone who is trained to handle classified information, knows how carefully we manage it and the implications here is that it doesn't matter if you take classified home. it doesn't matter if you keep it on your kitchen table. what matters is who you leak it to and the damage that its done. that's not -- that is a slippery slope for anyone who has a clearance. that means someone, you know,

random staffer like the guy in cape cod can take it home and use it as they see fit, put it on the internet. if it doesn't cause damage -- first of all, that's not true. it's not legal to take classified home. secondly, to hear someone who is in a position of authority, who oversees the intelligence community, saying that, it shows how deeply politics has penetrated even the national security fields which should be relatively apolitical. >> congresswoman, good morning. jonathan lemire. you started to go down the path where i wanted to take you here. donald trump has been charged with crimes of how he handled these classified documents. the u.s. government, shouldn't the intelligence agencies, be revisiting the whole process of classification, what's classified, what's not, are bet job of keeping these secrets safe? >> well, look, i think there are hundreds of thousands of people that have security clearances and do their job every day and

meticulously do their job, and there's a burn bag where we have a process for handling this. for the average person they handle it fine. what we have seen is a combination of people at the low end of the spectrum putting out information to make themselves look cool in front of their friends, that needs to be policed up and that access to information needs to be looked at, and then we have people using it for political reasons, and then there's a huge group of people in the middle doing their job just fine. when i became a member of congress, you get a clearance. i remember saying, all we did was sign a piece of paper that says we have security clearance, and where is the security officials teaching members of congress how to handle this information, and that could be policed up among political

people. >> congresswoman of michigan, also former cia analyst knows what he's talking about here. thank you for your time this morning here. we appreciate it. >> thank you. ohio's republican senator says he plans to put a procedural hold on every vote for the nominees because a grand jury indicted donald trump for 37 federal crimes. that move could leave several positions open for the time being. senator vance said he would be used to attack biden's opponents. it can dramatically slow down consideration of nominees that would otherwise have been considered really not

controversial. vance's office said the senator will not hold up nominees for the u.s. marshal's service. claire, this is nakedly political but has real implications for the confirmation of judges sitting open right now, these seats. >> yeah, there's a story that needs to be told here about these folks holding up nominations. i think the football coach tried to hold up all the military nominations, putting our country at risk. this is a good example. holding up u.s. attorney appointments, all that does is help the drug dealers. all that does is help the human traffickers and all that does is help the hardened criminal gangs on the state lines across this country. it doesn't do anything for donald trump. the irresponsibility of this is just astounding.

we don't have u.s. attorneys in missouri, no appointments because josh hawley said i won't approve of anybody. for great states where you have people like j.d. vance and others like him are nuts. this is a big deal. it's a problem. >> claire, as you point out, once again, you have idiots that think they are trying to own the libs where not only are they hurting themselves, but in this case hurting americans, this whole deal about we are going to try and cripple the doj and defund the fbi. drug dealers cheer and celebrate, and drug gangs celebrate, and terrorists organizations just absolutely -- international terrorists

organizations absolutely thrilled. these republicans that are trying to cripple america's law enforcement, they are not owning the libs but hurting themselves and their district and hurting americans. >> yeah, it is -- for a party that pretends they are all about supporting the police. they don't support the police when they are being attacked by trump's insurrectionist mob at the capitol, and they say defund the most premiere law enforcement organization in the world. it's phoney. they are phoney about wanting to be fiscal conservatives and also about supporting the police. much more coming up on the federal indictment of donald trump, including why trump had

such a tough time finding a florida attorney to join his defense team yesterday. and then the impacts on down ballot races in 2024. "morning joe" will be right back. power e*trade's easy-to-use tools, like dynamic charting and risk-reward analysis help make trading feel effortless. and its customizable scans with social sentiment help you find and unlock opportunities in the market. e*trade from morgan stanley. with powerful, easy-to-use tools, power e*trade makes complex trading easier. react to fast-moving markets with dynamic charting and a futures ladder that lets you place, flatten, or reverse orders so you won't miss an opportunity. e*trade from morgan stanley

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republicans claim that you got off -- you did the same thing and got off scot-free. why did your friend, jim comey, let you off so easy? >> that's a good question. i can't figure that one out. you know, i do think it's odd -- let's just say, to the point of

being absurd, how that is their only response. they refuse to read the indictment. they refuse to engage with the facts. there's nothing new about that, and what they refuse to admit is, you know, this is on a track about him, not about anybody else no matter how much they try to confuse people and how much they try to, you know, raise extraneous issues, and it's going to be fascinating, i guess, in a bizarre and sad way, to watch them spin themselves up. if you watched any of the news programs this weekend, i mean, their efforts to defend this man are truly beyond anything that i ever thought possible in our country. i mean, it is so profoundly disturbing how this could have been the break, this could have been the opportunity to say, you know, thank you so much for everything you have done for us. we really appreciate it, you

know. this is kind of serious, and so we're not going to continue to defend you. no, they are all in again. that's what the psychology of this is so hard for me to fully grasp. >> we talked a lot about hillary clinton this morning and that was the former secretary of state on monday night sharing her thoughts on republicans who continue to defend donald trump, that this could be the opportunity for them to break away and they just don't seem to be taking it. >> but you know, the thing is, we talked and for people who have not seen what we said so far, it's pretty straightforward, willie. you have all these republicans blabbing and trying to throw up smoke screens, and none of them are saying what donald trump did was right or nothing donald trump was legal, and none of them are defending anything

trump did. a lot of them are saying what he did was bad, but what about hillary? i think that's the most telling thing. nobody is defending him, because what he did was laid out an indictment, and it shows that he mishandled and stole nuclear secrets and stole some of the most important secrets and just threw them all over his place. it's fascinating, again, it's more of a thing when they are trying to own the libs, and comey said no rational prosecutor would bring charges against hillary clinton, and the justice department said hillary bent over backwards in the emails, if you look at them, to not reveal anything. and he said there's no evidence from all of the evidence he looked at that they were doing anything other than what hillary

clinton said she was doing there. you could say that's the obama situation and that's comey that turned the election over to trump two days beforehand, and let's say they are all biassed. well, was jeff sessions, donald trump's first attorney general biassed? >> all the opportunity in the world -- >> donald trump promised to indict her to bring a special counsel and indict her throughout 2016. >> he had four years to do it. >> he brought it back up in 2017, and jeff sessions, don mcgahn, and you got nothing here. you have got no indictment. she did nothing to be indicted over. bill barr. same thing. bill barr didn't bring any indictment against hillary clinton. they didn't talk about a special counsel because, again, they

came to the same conclusion that comey came to, that there was nothing but -- again, if you are going to say there's a two-tiered justice system, you are actually attacking donald trump's doj who actually had four years to do something, to do anything, and they didn't. they dependant because don mcgahn went to him and said you got nothing here, and others. >> all the locker up chants, and his own justice department concluded a three-year review with what hillary clinton did with her -- they have to jump to hillary clinton hoping it resinates with some of their

base, and she had the server and it's the name of an app and she didn't bleach anything, and bill barr said a couple days ago, if the evidence holds up, donald trump is toast. that's bill barr's word, his former attorney general. this is a very difficult if not impossible set of facts to defend if you are a defender, so you have to jump past the evidence and go back to hillary clinton as a distraction. >> mike pence or somebody else, joe biden must have committed a crime. look, it's the same thing. well, it's not the same thing. >> it's not even close. it is a constant attempt to distract, as we always say. >> and equalize the actions of these people. >> there's no defense in what donald trump did, and this is what they are talking about in

talking about biden or pence, and pence didn't obstruct, and biden didn't obstruct, and he said we have documents, come and get them. you have people like barr saying this. and jonathan, barr said this indictment is really bad. if he is charged on one count that could constitute a life sentence in prison, and he has, what, 37 counts? >> yeah, 37. >> you have mccarthy that defended trump through the impeachment and others and they are saying this is terrible stuff. >> donald trump plead not guilty to 37 counts that he lied and schemed to hold on to classified

documents that risked disclosure of defense secrets after leaving the white house. no mugshot was taken. no cameras were allowed inside. trump did not speak during the hearing, keeping his arms tightly folded as he sat next to his attorneys, chris kise and todd blanche. blanche and kise told the judge they would serve as attorneys through the duration of the trial and any possible appeal. trump's personal aide, walt nauta, and his attorney, did not enter a plea. trump and nauta were released on their own recognizance without

bond, and the magistrate did not take their passports or put any travel restrictions on the pair, and he did ordered trump and nauta not to communicate with each other about the case. no future court dates were set. judge goodman now turns the case over to its assigned judge, and that's judge aileen cannon, and she will determine the remainor of the schedule. >> let's bring in former cia attorney, and charlie, i want to go to you and talk about the political noise that is out

there. there does seem to be a break in it, and you start to see red rover, red rover, send nikki haley over, and scott said, hey, this is really serious. if true, these charges are extremely serious. i understand that's an awfully low bar for us to celebrate, but that's what you have got when you have people like marco rubio who know so much better being as reckless as he is. and even this argument, but hillary, but hillary, and at some point it will stop holding water when they figure out that william barr and jeff sessions agreed with comey that hillary clinton didn't do anything worth indicting. >> well, they have been riding that horse for, what, seven

years now? >> yeah. >> it may have a little bit more of a life span here, but they do seem they are locked into denialism and what aboutism, but i think it's worthwhile paying close attention to the tentative slow and somewhat timid vibe shift where you do have more people coming out where it's not just bill barr or asa hutchison or chris christie saying they would not support a felon in the white house, and even dan crenshaw. facts ought to matter, shouldn't they? we all understand what the political dynamics are, and we have been talking about this for year. the details in this indictment is so compelling and the evidence so damning and the

conduct so egregious and embarrassing that it's increasingly hard to defend it. as you pointed out, nobody is defending donald trump's conduct and saying he didn't do it, but a lot of what is happening now, quite frankly, is quite dangerous. the attacks on the judicial system and the rule of law and the violent rhetoric, and the actual attempts in congress to retaliate against the department of justice and the intelligence agencies, and conservatives used to understand that ideas have consequences, and these ideas can have very dangerous consequences going forward. >> chuck, the same words, egregious and embarrassing could be applied to judge cannon's previous rulings on this case that she was called out for. my question is, she will be

under scrutiny, and there are guardrails that she stays within the lines of the law, but can she drag this out as long as she wants? are there any guardrails to the timeline here, and how long could she drag this out? >> mika, good question. there are guardrails. there's the speedy trial act and the notion of a speedy trial found both in the constitution and in statute, but -- but judge cannon really controls her courtroom, as all federal judges control their courtrooms, and if she's slow in ruling on motions or rules incorrectly, and we have seen her do that in the past and the government feels it needs to take an appeal pretrial on one of her rulings, all that can slow this down. i heard people say this could happen in months and jack smith asked for a speedy trial, and of course he should, and a

government's case never gets better with delay, but judge cannon will control the timing of this case. if she makes poor rulings, and we have seen some of those from her in the past, it can slow things down further. no judge wants to get overturned by a court of appeals, and judges care about their reputation, or at least ought to in their community, and hopefully we will see, and we will know soon enough how she manages this case in her docket. >> we were talking to andrew weissman earlier on the show, and before we get to the trial there will be action, it appears, on the january 6th case. jack smith is busy working that as well. two months from now, the d.a. in fulton county, georgia, promised to make a decision on that. as you watch this summer play

out, what should we be expecting? what are you expecting? >> willie, good question. this ties into what mika just asked, if you see, say, another indictment in georgia and perhaps another indictment in d.c. related to the events of january 6th rblgs then you have four trains on four parallel tracks trying to get to the station at the same time, that could introduce further delay. i think the january 6th investigation is among the most serious crimes, cases, that i can imagine, trying to thwart the peaceful transfer of power in a democracy. as bad as the indictment returned in florida is, as serious as that conduct is, willie, trying to overturn a fair and free election is extraordinary serious and dangerous. yeah, there can be other cases and other trains on other tracks and all that could mean additional delay. mr. trump and his attorneys can only be in one place at a time.

>> we spent a lot of time this morning speaking about republicans reacting to the indictment and arraignment of donald trump. let's talk a minute about the democrats. i have new reporting today about president biden. we know he took office vowing to be independent from any department, and not only has he been silenced on the trump case, and lawmakers are mindful of meddling with the doj because of the impending charges on hunter biden as well. so charlie, some applaud this and say that's as good idea and we should be above the fray. but some say this is an important national moment, a former president being charged and the current president should

speak about it. secondly, they feel like they are giving up a political weapon here. that's a pretty good argument as one democrat put it to me, hey, vote for our guy, the other guy is going to jail. and if the same principles apply, don't talk about investigations. well, there might be charges about election interference and january 6th, and can they not talk about that either. what do you think? >> well, look, i understand why joe biden himself does not want to speak himself about this, but to tell everybody else to stand down seems, i don't know, a little naive. we have asymmetric politics in the country, and if it was the other way around there's zero chance the republicans would decide to stay silent on this. this is a political issue and a legal issue as well. i -- again, i don't think joe biden should necessarily speak about it, but he has all sorts

of surrogates and other people out there that ought to underline the seriousness of this. it's not irrelevant that donald trump is the leading republican candidate for president. it is not irrelevant. it's not something people shouldn't talk about. this is a man that wants to be elected president of the united states next year. this will be the dominant issue in next year's presidential race. so for democrats to engage in some sort of unilateral disarmament may seem virtuous and prudent to them but strikes me as a not looking at the reality. >> vonn, what was it like last night? >> reporter: last night there were a couple 100 folks in

attendance there, and after the hush-money payment case, he flew to mar-a-lago, and then last night he delivered a speech and the contents were a little different, and when you talk about the legal defense that trump and his legal team -- it's important to note that last night there was no denial of the underlying facts of the case. there was no denial of the fact that he had documents stored, more than 100 classified documents after he had told his lawyers that all the relevant documents had been turned over to the fbi and archives. there was no denial that he had misled his lawyers. there was no denial of the

obstruction. he said he would defer to chuck on the nuances of the case that played out and the efforts of his legal team to use this as justification for having the documents at mar-a-lago, and he made the case in which you can hear from part of the bite you hear from the speech that he had the privilege to determine what documents he took to mar-a-lago. >> whatever documents a president decides to take with him, he has the right to do so. it's an absolute right. this is the law. i hadn't had a chance to go through all the boxes. it's a long and tedious job and takes a long time. >> reporter: there was no denial from donald trump that the documents he had were classified. there was no denial that human intelligence sources were put at risk as part of these records. there's no denial that u.s.

capabilities were outlined in these records. for donald trump, instead, he turned the back half of his speech of taking his ire out on donald trump, and he said when he gets back in the white house he would go after joe biden and his family, and the crowd chanted lock him up, and you can call that irony. there's context under the political guys, it was seven months ago that donald trump announced his candidacy and he has his greatest lead to date over his republican rivals. we are just a little over 7 1/2 months away now from when iowans will go and caucus. >> chuck rosenberg, let's put his question to you, and as you

listen to donald trump again saying i took what i took, and erroneously saying he has the protection under the presidential records act to do that. does that sound like evidence to you? >> no, it's completely wrong, first of all, willie. look, there are a lot of words being spilled about what happened. let me try and simplify it a bit. the difference in this case, and as you compare it to all the others, the difference with what mr. trump did compared to clinton, pence, biden and others, is the obstruction of justice. if it was really just a function of not having enough time to go through your boxes and sort things out and return the appropriate documents, fine. why would you lie to your lawyer and why would you ask your lawyer to mislead the fbi? prosecutors always have to prove intent. if it's just an accident or mistake, willie, it's not a crime. but if things are done

intentionally, and this separates the trump case from the biden and pence case, and obstruction goes a long way to help prosecutors prove intent. it's consciousness of guilt. you are covering something up. if he told the department of justice, hey i have boxes here and they are in the bedroom and all over this place, i would love for you to come done and take a look and sort through it, and we are going to help you in every way possible, there's no criminal case, willie. everybody, i think, understands that. by the way, even if there was a criminal case against hillary clinton, and i don't believe there is, but even if there was, none of that would exonerate what mr. trump did. none of that exonerates the obstruction of justice here. his arguments are, in a word, nonsensical. >> chuck rosenburg, thank you

very much. there's a new piece called "the self-destructive donald trump." it says if mr. trump is the gop nominee, it's unlikely to defeat joe biden. he wouldn't be able to deliver the conservative policy victories of what republicans want because he couldn't control himself, and he would be preoccupied in grievances in what he retribution. if republicans nominate mr. trump again, they won't own the libs as the saying goes, the libs will own them.

to that point, the number two said it, john thune is voicing concern about trump's impact on down ballot races heading into 2024. here's what he said yesterday. >> if you look at the record in '18, 20, and '22, when he's the issue, we lose. the people who decide national elections are the middle of the electorate. it's the soccer moms, and it's the suburban voters, and it's the younger voters, and i just think that we have got to have a candidate that can appeal to those. i think that a lot of the drama and the chaos that seems to be happening on an ongoing basis

makes it harder to win those types of voters. the long-term affect, and it's where those of us that care about the down ballot races and want to get the majority back in the senate, and as you recruit candidates they are going to look at the political environment and say am i going to be running against the tide or with the tide and there's a big difference based on who you nominate. >> charlie, you look at what "the wall street journal" said, one of the most powerful voices for conservatives consistently through the years saying you are not going to own the libs, you are going to own yourself if you renominate this guy, it will be a nightmare. there's john thune, the number two republican in the senate has reason to be concerned, because trump stopped them from being in the majority in '18, '20, and '22. >> if you renominate donald trump you get the chaos and the

drama and the retribution and the grievances of donald trump, and not about anything else republicans want to talk about. it won't be a referendum on the biden administration. john thune is saying out loud what a lot of republicans are saying quietly, but the party seems to be unable to break with donald trump. they just can't quit him. despite the fact that what john thune just said is clearly obvious, and what "the wall street journal" editorial board is saying, if he does win you won't get what you want because he can't control himself, and we have known this for year. everything that played out now is manifesting everything we have known from donald trump from the beginning and yet republicans refuse to take that off-ramp. it's interesting john thune is speaking out and it's interesting "the wall street journal" that took an odd stand

on the original indictment is now coming around to saying, look, all of this is a result of donald trump's self-destructive behavior. the question for republicans is do you want to go down in flames with this guy who is burning himself down. >> to add to the "wall street journal"'s point here, as we close the block, a lot of people who worked for trump the last time, they have attorneys now and attorneys' fees and they have had to defend themselves. who wants to be on that side again? nobody. and next on "morning joe," kevin mccarthy tries to play coy. that new reporting is straight ahead. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back.

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speaker mccarthy, do the documents belong to trump? >> which documents? i have not seen the documents, and i don't believe the classified documents that president biden has back to the senate don't belong to him either, and i don't believe hillary clinton when she had the server and bought the software to bleach it all had the right to do that either. >> extraordinary dumb, and that's stupid to say on all accounts and he knows that. this is a guy, again, he sees classified documents. i said he's third in line -- i guess he's second in line, huh, willie? >> yeah. >> he's second in line and he says he knows the difference between biden and mike pence.

they called up and said we have documents, come and get them. and donald trump who lied time and time again. >> was subpoenaed. hid them. made it clear he understood what the process was to declassify a document and lied about that, and continues to say what he did, and what was in there was quite damning and dangerous to the united states of america. >> alex, can you put up those quotes again from mike about hillary clinton and what was said about hillary clinton, because if he is hungry at anybody, he can be angry at james comey, which would be weird, because james comey gave the election basically to hillary -- i mean, gave the election to donald trump ten days beforehand. it was donald trump's doj that decided not to prosecute hillary clinton as well. they concluded there was no

evidence. this is about the hillary clinton indictment, but they concluded there's no evidence of emails intentionally deleted by clinton's lawyers, and if anything -- was it the state of justice -- >> justice. >> yeah, even better. if anything, there was evidence of a conscience effort to avoid sending classified information by writing around the most sensitive material. after the obama justice department decided not to prosecute, and the trump justice department decided not to prosecute is because unlike

donald trump with nuclear secrets near toilets and near where they are playing poker, and unlike that, hillary clinton went out of her way not to discuss any classified information on the emails. >> none of that matters to a certain group of people, it's bleached server, hillary -- >> the truth will win out. >> it will eventually. >> how many times have we heard in the last few years, republicans privately, and we hear it, are tired of donald trump and would love an opportunity to walk away from him. here's a chance. if january 6th didn't do it for you, maybe if taking nuclear secrets and war plans to your beach club will do it. michael, good to see you this

morning. speaker mccarthy set the tone there, pretending what documents? is that the consensus view on the hill? >> the short answer when we are talking about house republicans is yes. we have seen this argument from mccarthy trickle down to close allies of former president trump. they said this is a weaponization of the department of justice and pointing to hillary clinton probes and pointing to the classified documents case that president biden is currently the subject of, and as you have noted there are significant differences between the two cases, the obstruction portion specifically. kevin mccarthy said this is the weaponization of the doj and willing to hold the department accountable. last week he said he spoke with congressman jim jordan about

ways to hold this weaponization accountable. i think it's very likely that we will see some action against the doj, against perhaps jack smith in the coming weeks. there's one interesting dynamic when you talk about congressional reaction to this indictment on capitol hill from republicans, house republicans have largely been defending the former president running to his side, but that's not the case among the top republicans in the senate. we saw mitch mcconnell, the minority leader would not comment on the indictment and would not comment on the presidential candidates and the republican primary, and we heard two of his top deputies say these are serious allegations and it's not looking good for the former president. some house republicans are standing with mccarthy. >> there are television hosts with their fog horns going on

and on and on not with just hillary clinton and doing the proper follow-up, not talking about what we talked about here, there was follow-up and decided not to prosecute, but now the other sort of look at the bird, look at the bird, it's the biden crime family. what is the investigation there? what is the there there on that? >> yeah, the biden crime family investigation, that has been a significant priority of republicans on the oversight committee, and on thursday, which was the day former president announced he had been indicted, and the oversight committee gained access to a document that they say alleged a bribery scream that president biden was involved with, and the republicans had been pushing for

access to the document, and then they further pushed for all members of the committee to receive access, and when that happened on thursday, members went to the sensitive facility in the capitol to view sensitive documentation, and hours later former president trump announced he had been indicted, and we very quickly saw a number of the oversight republicans and even others note the day they say they proved that president biden was involved in a bribery scream, these are still, i will note, unconfirmed allegations in the document, and it's just information that has been retained from a source. they said the same day we exposed this and received access to this was the same day the doj indicted former president trump, and that's it again. coming up, one of our next

guests represented the u.s. government in federal court numerous times. former acting solicitor general joins the conversation straight ahead on "morning joe."

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♪ ♪ i tend to support president trump. i don't think this trial goes to trial before the election and there are too many issues for this to go to trial and if a jury believes this is unfair, you have to do two things as a prosecutor. you have to prove the letter of the law and then prove this is the right thing to do.

>> george conway last night, i just saw this, again, and i try not to talk about other networks, but when fox news has a headline that says want-to-be dictator speaks at the white house after having his rival arrested, when that happens you see -- you see exactly why the propaganda they are pushing nonstop is having an impact on people. the only want-to-be dictator that tried to have their opponent arrested was donald trump two weeks before the election when he was yelling at barr, telling him to arrest joe biden and joe biden's family. again, that's what is so bizarre about this. you go through a process, again, nuclear secrets. they can't defend donald trump.

they can't defend him, so they put up garbage like this. >> yeah, you would think fox news would have 787 and a half millions not to do that, not to put that chyron up. it's just an amazing thing. it shows you the feedback loop that we have between a public segment that absolutely refused to engage in any linear thought and refused to engage with fact and you can hand these people a copy of the indictment, and tell them it's a good read and not long, and they would say it's garbage without reading it. the congressman, and i think it's speaker mccarthy, you know, were trashing the indictment before reading a single word of

it, and that's what fox news is catering to there, and we throw up the words, we throw up the word salad, and we call people communist and socialists and marxis, and skip the idea that we have to learn about -- we live in an alternative reality, and it's just -- it's just too much. >> coming up, we will check in with cnbc with some business before the bell. dom chu has the headlines on wall street when "morning joe" comes right back.

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ukraine. russian forces launched cruise missiles towards the port of odesa overnight damaging homes, a warehouse and several small

businesses. searchers have been looking for possible survivors. russia struck an area of southern ukraine that was retaken by ukrainian forces earlier in the week. a spokesman for ukraine says one of the towns was reduced to ruins. "the new york times" reports ukraine has made progress in at least two different locations throughout southern ukraine in recent days, but has yet to totally breach the russian defense. reuters is reporting that it has independently verified ukraine's capture of another town. president biden met with nato's secretary general. it comes as nato is holding the largest air deployment exercise in its history in germany. the drills began monday and will run until june 23rd. the two leaders discussed the war in europe and finland's admission into the alliance.

>> front major of the "new york times," corbin mccarthy passed a way, the prominent writer who wrote "all the pretty horses." >> "no country for old men." >> "the road" i was moved by it, incredible writing. >> a singular voice, an enormous figure in american literature. all his work like hangs together this dark, stark, almost apocalyptic vision anchored to this profound moral sense. the morality that shines through these dark visions is what made him more than just a great

wordssmith. coming up, many elected republicans would prefer not to talk about the trump indictment, especially those in districts won by president biden. what it says about the political landscape for 2024 when "morning joe" comes right back.

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this is the most important government job on the planet. we're about to turn over the conservative movement to a person who has no ideas of any substance, the nuclear codes of the united states to an erratic individual. was this stolen to the saudis, given over to the russians?

that allegation has not been made in the indictment. you have to weigh the indictment versus the allegations. it's not fair. >> senator marco rubio's evolution on donald trump's access to and handling of classified documents. welcome to the fourth hour of "morning joe." former president trump pleaded not guilty in federal court yesterday to 37 felony counts over his handling of classified documents that risked disclosure of defense secrets after leaving the white house. nbc news senior capitol hill correspondent garrett haake was in the courtroom. >> reporter: a turning point in u.s. history. former president trump departing the courthouse has a federal criminal defendant after pleading not guilty to a 37-count felony indictment, accused by the special counsel

of mishandling classified documents and obstructing efforts to retrieve them. the defiant former president rallying supporters overnight, accusing the justice department, without evidence, of persecuting him. >> today we witnessed the most evil abuse of power in the history of our country. this is called election interference. >> reporter: president biden has not commented on the case. mr. trump is facing an election interference investigation in georgia for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. he's denied any wrongdoing. he also targeted jack smith. >> the prosecutor in the case is a thug. i've named him deranged jack smith. >> reporter: the special counsel in the courtroom watching from

the audience. days after delivering rare public remarks defending the fbi and the rule of law. >> we have one set of laws in this country and they apply to everyone. >> reporter: during his arraignment the president sat stone faced with his arms crossed, next to walt nauta, his personal body man. none of his family was with him. attorney todd blanche entered a plea of not guilty. nauta's arraignment has been delayed for two weeks while he works to hire counsel. when the hearing was over, mr. trump left without making eyes with the prosecutor or the special counsel. the motorcade headed to little havana. >> food for everyone.

>> reporter: the former president with walt nauta close by greeting supporters, singing happy birthday to mr. trump who turned 77 today. >> there's no way he paid the bill for that food. i'm calling tomorrow. >> food for everyone, but an indictment for just one. >> who paid the bill? >> you think he paid the bill? >> somebody did. >> somebody paid. >> i hope somebody did. >> joining us now is mark zade, and former acting solicitor general. mark, this is your area of expertise. we talked about the indictment with you. you believe what most people believe which is very serious charges with serious consequences if convicted for donald trump. what is your sense post-arraignment of where this

case goes from here? >> well, it's going to be an interesting roller coaster that's for sure. what we're going to see in the near future is trump pull together a legal team and they'll have to decide who among them is going to ask for security clearance in order to see the classified documents and litigate the pretrial motions under the classified information procedures act. i don't think any of these attorneys at the moment have clearances. that process could be a matter of weeks if they get interim clearances, which means there's nothing in their background. there could be nothing malicious. they could be married to a foreigner or have family overseas. the whole process could take months unless the federal government exercises. we'll see education of judge cannon by the prosecutors under

seepa because that judge and that district court and 11th circuit doesn't have a lot of experience with classified information and espionage act cases. both sides will be educated in the next few weeks or months. >> neil, we've been talking about the stupidity breaking out on the hill among some republicans who want to talk about what about hillary? we've been through it exhaustively this morning about how you had the inspector general at the justice department basically clearing hillary clinton. of course, you had that happen in 2016 and this is what the spector general said, they concluded there were no evidence that emails were deleted by

secretary clinton. if anything, the inspector general says, there was evidence of a conscious effort to avoid sending classified information. he concluded -- then fbi director james comey said no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. the removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges. why are we talking about 2016, 2017, 2018? that's all republicans want to talk about. nuclear secrets have been stolen, mishandled. obstruction of justice has happened here. i just want us really briefly for our friends on the west coast waking up to do the same thing. let's talk about it. the justice department under

obama in 2016 said no reasonable prosecutor would bring the case. in 2017 donald trump angry after promising to lock her up pushing for a special counsel. everybody said, no, there's nothing there. there is no crime there. you can't bring anything. his counsel, his white house counsel, don mcgahn said, nothing there. you can't do it. he had jeff sessions there. sessions didn't do it. barr didn't do it. when they're talking about two systems of justice, they're actually attacking donald trump who had four years to try to indict hillary clinton and his justice department wouldn't do it because there was nothing there. >> that's exactly right. what all of this hillary clinton talk is just classic trumpian misdirection. back then no reasonable prosecutor would have charged hillary clinton. that's right. that was based on the end

inspector general's report. here, by contrast, you have the exact opposite. no reasonable attorney general could look the other way and not prosecute donald trump. i can't imagine any attorney general, at least in my lifetime, who would have said, oh, yeah, this is cool. you can steal classified documents and bring them to your club in florida and then lie about it to the authorities afterwards and retain these documents and make false representations. all of the shenanigans that this 49-page indictment details, not the least of which is paragraph 54, which basically goes through and says trump ordered his attorneys to further the crimes and hide the evidence. so, you know, obviously donald trump is entitled to the presumption of innocence. if his defense is what we've seen thus far, he's going to be convicted. i mean, i haven't heard any defense from anyone on the hill or from donald trump or from

donald trump's lawyers that i think is going to hold up. joe, in court you can't send someone to the witness stand screaming about hillary's emails or joe biden's garage. those are not legal arguments. you can't make up mind declassification powers that don't exist. those defenses might work for trump's base, but not in the court of law. >> and they don't keep you out of jail. one count would be a life sentence for donald trump. >> ari melber is here. >> the reason we're bringing up hillary clinton is because that's all the republicans are talking about. they're not denying the crime. they're not denying that this is serious stuff. they're not denying that donald trump stole nuclear secrets. they're not denying that he stole secret plans in a war with iran. they're not denying any of this.

they're just trying to talk about hillary clinton. let's talk about hillary clinton. >> i think we should. >> trump's administration -- >> let's actually do it. >> and the inspector general in 2018 during trump's administration said nothing here. nothing here. >> i think you guys are making such an important point and it will ricochet in this case and the public discussion of it. their defense is not i didn't do it. their defense is everybody does this. that's not true. not everybody does it at a criminal level with this much obstruction. >> mike pence didn't do it. >> yeah. to your point, joe, it's acceptable to note that there have been times where a document or some material has to be found and accounted for. if you previously legitimately had it and give it back and that's dealt with, that's a different offramp.

that's not this case. it's the opposite. not everybody does this. there's a reason why no judge has ever authorized the search, what they called the raid, the search of a former president's home because no one ever took it to that level. we all follow it so closely and say this was expected. here we are. he's indicted again. let's just remember, that is a decision to go to doj if you're working on that case and say we've tried everything. we need to go in there. why? they have mountains of documents. what do we have yesterday? donald trump arraigned in court on the espionage charges that were the exact same reason they went into the house. they keep proving up the case. that just wasn't the situation in some of these other examples they're trying to do history lessons on. >> that's why you don't hear a defense from republicans because it's in defensible.

they go right to hillary clinton. mark, if the evidence that we've seen -- that's not all the evidence we'll see in this trial. even bill barr said, if half of what's in this indictment is true, he's toast. what is the best hope legally for donald trump? is it that judge cannon is favorable? is it that she pushes the trial past the 2024 and he's elected and not prosecuted? if you're looking at it from his point of view and the point of view from his defense team, what's your best hope here? >> yeah, most of these issues are going to be decided pretrial. there's very few espionage act cases, nonspying for a foreign power, leak investigations or

mishandling that go to trial because it's so damning with the evidence. they usually plead out. the legal strategy here is going to be in conflict typically to what the pr strategy is. meaning what we've seen in the speeches is what we're going to see, donald trump speaking out. as the lawyer, i would say for god's sake don't do that. every time he says something he further damns himself by way of an evidentiary aspect of admission. if he can get this towards the election, past the election, if he could win, this case goes away. his best legal strategy is what we would as lawyers tell him never to do, which is to drag this criminal case out as long as possible. there are a lot of motions his team can bring. most are probably going to fail, but we don't know because of any federal district judge. you never know what they're going to do. you'll see cases go up to the

11th circuit because any decision can be immediately appealed, unlike most criminal decisions along the way by way of process. this is going to be a long haul strategy which would be typically different than what we would see in any other espionage case. >> donald trump was not the only defendant in court yesterday. walt nauta is as well. he was not arraigned because he didn't have counsel that was licensed to be there representing him in florida. on one hand it seems like it could be another stall tactic. let's drag this out while he finds a lawyer. where could things go with him on a second track? should donald trump be worried that walt nauta who is still in his employ, who accompanied him to a cuban restaurant yesterday,

could flip on him? >> trump isn't just worried about this. i think he's terrified of walt nauta flipping on him. they left the compound at doral together, rode to the court together. trump didn't let nauta out of his eyesighteyesight. that's because nauta has the goods on trump. yesterday, yeah, nauta didn't have representation, but donald trump did. nauta had to take his mugshot, but of course donald trump didn't. you know, so if you're nauta you should not expect to receive the same treatment as donald trump. if you're nauta, you have to look around and realize it's going to come down to your future or trump's future and trump is always, always put

himself first. >> you know, ari, this is jack smith's first play. everybody's focusing and obsessing on this, which they should. we're talking about nuclear secrets. on the same day this is going on, he's still moving fast on the january 6th case, which will be tried, which a judge won't be able to slow down. talk about that case. talk about how we've been hearing reports for the past month that they seem to be coming to a close of that case and how donald trump may soon be indicted in washington for an even more -- it's hard to believe -- but a more serious charge and be juggling both of these cases even before georgia goes to a grand jury. >> jack smith in that sense is donald trump's worst nightmare

and has emerged as something different than other prosecutors he facefaced. donald trump knows more of what he did, but jack smith is a close second. >> this is a picture of jack smith shown as a judge, a guy you don't want to cross. >> if jack smith brings january 6th, what will republicans do? blame hillary again? wants the counter to that? >> that's a difficult one. >> it's really difficult. >> jack smith is gathering this information. if donald trump thought he was speaking privately to meadows or pence, he might learn -- wow, as trump said, i thought this stuff was secret. it does for most people.

does this happen in the january 6th context or other government materials? jack smith was given these two cases. it's a two-page referral. page one is all january 6th. that was the focus. that's what garland listed first. everyone off site, the planners, the people who plotted it, that's what jack smith is dealing with. what's combines these cases is they both reflect the fact that donald trump did try to be an autocrat and dictator. quite literally on january 6th disrupting the peaceful transfer of power in this country and then trying to abuse powers he no longer had after january 20th. the only thing they've said that is true is back when you were president you had access to this

stuff. when you were secretary of defense, you were in on meetings about bombings. if you're not secretary of defense anymore and you're walking around with these documents, it's game over. some on the right are playing with a sloppy veteran argument. you used to be commander in chief. what does that get you? nothing. if it didn't get you nothing, we would have the risk of two commanders in chief at the same time. talk about a recipe for real military problems. yes, you used to have this job. now you don't. it took donald trump to test how far this guys. we've never had -- we've had some presidents that weren't great, weren't perfect. but we haven't had, at least in history's knowledge, to try to steal and abuse this much national security stuff. >> it's amazing. >> willie, think about how isolated donald trump is,

getting slowly bit by bit -- he had secretary of state and former cia director pompeo come out. vice president of the united states very direct about it, but hedging some. his ambassador to the united nations. >> chris christie. >> chris christie and his attorney general absolutely eviscerate -- >> says he's toast. >> he's been used to this loyalty that supposedly people will give him and he never gives back. but you look at this case and see the people that are testifying and then turn your attention to january 6th, which everybody said dash the conventional wisdom has been, you know what, they may not bring that. that may be the hardest case to bring. suddenly mark meadows, hard to find. people around trump starting to -- where is meadows?

why does he get this great attorney? all the other people -- you think the january 6th testimony -- everybody in the white house, including his counsel, including his family, said you've got to stop this and donald trump said maybe they deserve it. suddenly i'm thinking january 6th, that's not quite as hard of a case to prove as we've been saying. again, it's going to be him, not against the libs, against everybody inside the white house on that day. >> yes. this is all getting very real for people. when the special counsel knocks on your door and you see the consequences to what you've done, they're not going to rush to his defense. they're not doing that. in fact, in this case they're being publicly critical of him. for anybody, it's so clear to see what happened.

>> they're not denying. >> it will work on some people. some politicians are trying and some networks are trying. your average american is looking at this. they've seen photographs. they've read through the indictment. there's nowhere to hide. >> was his family there last night? >> kevin mccarthy and others aren't trying to defend it. there's nowhere to hide on this. you have to go to hillary clinton because there's nowhere to hide on this case. it's so plain to see. >> then, neil, you go to january 6th and the possibility of that case, that case moving towards the conclusion of investigation. suddenly he's got a new set of challenges, the greatest of which is everybody that was around him on january 6th inside the white house will be testifying against him. >> yeah. the case against trump on january 6th is going to star his entire cabinet all coming out and saying, look, what this guy did was not protect the united

states. trump is going to say, look, you know, i said the word peaceful and so on, but, boy, that pattern of behavior over that day, the fact that records are missing and we don't know what trump did for 181 minutes, all of that is going to be devastating. if you're donald trump, you're facing two incredibly serious threats. joe, as you say, it's some of the most serious charges in the criminal code. things like seditious conspiracy and obstruction of justice and the espionage act on the mar-a-lago side. >> jonathan, during his campaign he had his family with him everywhere. some of them are nowhere to be found. speaking of a potential january 6th situation where he's

charged, the entire cabinet is brought in to testify, who exactly is going to want to serve in the cabinet of trump's next presidency, if it were to happen? >> you made a good point about the trump family. we saw eric trump with his father at doral. most of the others have not been around, and that includes ivanka trump and jared kushner who were top advisers when he was in the white house. mark, i want to get your opinion on this, on january 6th, if charges were to come and a trial. we often say we've never been here before, but that would put us in a place that's hard to imagine, a president of the united states being brought up on causing an insurrection. do you think that jack smith will be able to bring it? we've heard it could be tricky.

do you think it could happen? >> well, it's not as clean a case clearly as a legal matter as the espionage act charges. i represent the case of brian sicknick, the capitol police officer. we're suing donald trump for january 6th. i also represent other officers injured that day, that fateful day. in fact, i represented two of his secretaries of defense and national security adviser. all these people have testified before the january 6th committee against the president of the united states. not necessarily against, but just on what they saw and what they didn't see or what they didn't see him do or saw. it is going to be an incredibly complicated matter. could you imagine two federal prosecutions, as well as now one state prosecution and possibly another one, four all at once?

it's unprecedented. i said on bbc last night, there's a lot of us as legal commentators and so much of what we're saying, who knows what the outcome is going to be? there is nothing in history that has led us to where we are today and it's a sad day, but also a proud day, i think, for the justice system to see a former president of the united states that can be brought up on charges as if he were just like anyone else. i can tell you of the many hundreds, if not thousands of federal employees i represented, if it had been them charged with this, that case would have been over and they would be sitting in jail. >> the sad days were when the alleged conduct occurred, the

pilfering of the documents, the day that the doj had to go in and get documents and the sad day was january 6th. that was the sad day. >> i agree. this is an important day. >> the defendant is presumed innocent, but june 13th is the day of accountability. >> no man above the law. >> not anyone. mark and neil, thank you both very much. ari melber, thank you. we'll be watching "the beat" weeknights at 6:00. coming up on "morning joe," new signs inflation is cooling. cnbc's dom chu will join us with the breaking economic news and what it spells out for the fed's next move. plus, the beetles are set to release a new original song featuring vocals from the late john lennon.

we'll explain how. i don't know if i like this. do you like this, joe? you're a beetles guy. >> we'll see. >> "morning joe" will be right back. >> "morning joe" will be rt back they may be missing vaccination for meningitis b. although uncommon, up to 1 in 5 survivors of meningitis will have long term consequences. now as you're thinking about all the vaccines your teen might need make sure you ask your doctor if your teen is missing meningitis b vaccination. in america, we value our freedoms. and ceos, they're free to negotiate their salaries and bonuses as they see fit. president biden just wants us to have those very same freedoms. the freedom to make a good living and have a good life. that's why he's lowering insulin prices, fighting for the child care tax credit and delivering more clean, renewable, american-made energy... protecting our freedom to thrive.

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♪ i've been looking at the stars tonight ♪ little bit of fog over the golden gate bridge in san francisco. it's 6:31 in the morning, 9:31 on the east coast. the labor department just released the index prices showing inflation has cooled again. let's bring in cnbc's dom chu. walk us through this number. >> reporter: it tells us that wholesale prices, prices paid at the business level, they're falling. a .03% drop in wholesale prices from april to may. that translates into a 1.1% gain

from the same time last year. that analyzed gain, 1.1% is the smallest since december of 2020. if you strip out food and energy, the core producer index was up .02%. it was up 2.8% for the year. headline prices fall. core prices rise modestly. that implies that business level inflation is falling because of lower fuel and lower food costs. what this does also indicate is that we are seeing a good amount of the inflationary pressure in the business supply chain because of the covid bottlenecks, we're seeing signs of easing. meaning cars, car repairs, appliance, durable goods, we

could see notable price improvements for the retail customer on those fronts in the coming months. this all mean for the fed, i mentioned yesterday on the heels of the consumer price index number, a near certainty that the fed would pause or skip an interest rate hike at this meeting today at 2:00 p.m. eastern time. i just checked the future markets maybe 15, 20 minutes ago. what it did price in was a near certainty that the federal reserve would do nothing with interest rates later this afternoon. we're talking about a 93% chance that the fed pauses the rate hike campaign with a 7% chance that the fed raises its benchmark by one quarter of a percentage point. >> at lot of people watching that that they'll hold in place after raising the rates ten times in the last year with the goal of getting inflation under

control. dom, i want to ask you about a headline. bud light losing its title as the top-selling u.s. beer. what's going on there? >> reporter: it's a pretty big deal. it's modelo now the best selling beer. maybe from that failed campaign with trans gender influencer dylan mulvaney. modelo is sold by constellation brands. the mexico brewing company is owned from bud light parent company. it bought it in 2013, but had to give up the u.s. distribution rights to satisfy anti-trust concerns. >> they're still number one is what you're saying? >> reporter: yeah, they own a lot of beer.

>> dom, just expanding this out and we see a lot of these and maybe they're anecdotal. i saw target is facing backlash over their lgbtq clothing line. by the way, you said stock still down because of that. also, we saw starbucks -- the starbucks union was claiming through pride month they were ordered to take down pride displays. any truth to that? is this a growing trend in the corporate world? >> reporter: i haven't seen actual evidence that they did it across the corporate level. i've heard anecdotal reports of those things. what i've heard are the stories, joe, you mentioned. you have seen stories of boycotts or a pullback on campaigns by people to go and

try to get people to stop shopping at those places. it's interesting because it's the first time in a long time where businesses are going to have to make a decision with regard to how they want their future business to look. now, this is an accessibility thing. for the most part businesses want to make their products as accessible as possible to everybody out there. the more stuff you can sell to people, the better off you are. when you run into this cultural campaign, it will put a lot of these brands and companies in a tough spot where they have to make a hard choice about this. it's going to be a big story in the coming weeks and months for sure. >> willie, i don't want to break anybody's heart, but these companies aren't doing this because somebody woke up and said i want to be more sensitive to the lgbtq population. i hope nobody is shocked. it's about money. it's about the bottom line. it's about getting the next

generation of consumers. again, it's like when bp used to run those commercials when they were polluting the gulf coast and they would have some woman walking through a field saying i like dandelions. >> while they were spewing oil into the gulf. >> it's a branding thing. i'm sure there are people who genuinely care in these corporations, but this is all branding. when people are freaked out we're losing america, talk to your 22-year-old. talk to your 24-year-old. that's who these companies trying to appeal to. they don't care what politicians think. they get paid to make money and so they think they can grow their business by making these appeals and people are freaking out like burning things down or

ripping up whatever they're ripping up in target. they're missing the point. these aren't -- these aren't, like, cultural crusaders. these are people who just want to make money. >> yeah, and these are big companies. >> hope that doesn't shock anyone. >> starbucks has denied the accusation that they made people take pride paraphernalia down. cnbc's dom chu, thank you. still ahead keir simmons joins us live from abbey road in london with a plan for a new release from the beetles. >> i don't like it. >> i think i'll just be supporting what the beetles are doing. >> keir, do the walk. >> walk, dude. do it. ignore the traffic. >> we'll be right back. erol can be hard.

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it has been more than 50 years since the beetles broke up. >> that's abbey road. >> soon we'll get to hear a new song. paul mccartney made the announcement, crediting the song to artificial intelligence. joining us from abbey road to explain nbc news international correspondent keir simmons. >> make the walk. >> should i go both ways? >> make the walk. >> reporter: i'm going to walk out here right now. >> oh, my gosh. >> reporter: look at how many people are here. it's amazing, isn't it? all these people more than 50 years later are here to get some of the authenticity of being where the beetles were, right outside that abbey road studio

where they recorded that incredible album. when you think of all the innovation the beetles put in their music, you wonder what they would think of artificial intelligence. paul mccartney says he likes it. john lennon and paul mccartney wrote "with a little help from my friends" with in the 1960s. >> it was a demo john had. we worked on it. we finished it up. it will be released this year. we were able to take john's voice and get it pure through ai. >> reporter: fans are guessing it will be "now and then" a demo track recorded by lennon in 1978 sent to mccartney by yoko ono.

it could bring the band together one last time. ai has the ability to learn what john lennon's voice sounds like, or ringo's drums. in the beetles era, that technology was unthinkable. >> there's a good side to it and a scary side. we'll just have to see where that leads. >> this is so great. >> reporter: ringo starr told me a decade ago -- >> this is a tape player. to try to get a good sound we plugged it in. >> would you like to be still playing with the band? >> oh, yeah. any day. it was the best band. >> reporter: now he can in a way. ai was used to enhance the

beetles music in this documentary "get back" with unseen outtakes of their recording sessions. ai doesn't just enhance songs. it makes new ones like this track by drake and the weeknd, but it's not real. a british music festival has featured a virtual john lennon. how long before the beetles' last performance is no longer their last performance? get back to where you once belonged they sang in the '60s. there will be so many questions, guys. will a beetles ai track really be the beetles?

john lennon is, of course, not here to say what he thinks. does that matter? the multiple ai experts reassure me we're decades away from being able to duplicate the musical prowess of mr. joe scarborough. >> nbc's keir simmons. good job doing the walk there. >> it was an amazing walk. >> you almost got hit by a car and you did it for "morning joe." >> i love it. >> i don't know how i feel about this. i feel music is art and art is the process and the moment. what do you think? >> this was shot like 20 years ago. we've seen -- if you saw "south park" where kyle's dad was singing into a microphone and going through all these processes and come out the other side and it was an amazing

sound. it's not quite like that. a couple years ago i called my engineered and said i used tom and want to change it to john. do we have to come back into the studio? he said, no. we'll get the sound and slide it in there. you can't tell at all. it's not quite so shocking they're going to use john's voice, all the voices from the past, this new track. it doesn't have to sound like it was on a cassette in 1978. it won't be that quality. it will be better quality. we've already been moving that way with pro tools and a lot of the pitch modulations. >> one way of looking at it. >> it's an enhancement of his own voice. i think if paul mccartney is okay with it, the rest of us can be. he's sort of the last word. it raises the question -- i hate

to think about it. when all these guys are gone, could they put out more beetles albums? >> but that's not real. >> that might be exciting for a lot of people, but would it be a beetles album? >> coming up, one of the -- >> i want to say real quick, we do that in movies all the time with green screens. >> what do you mean? >> for instance, you know, we're actually in acapulco, but it looks like 30 rock because of the green screen. >> would you want to bring us back after we're gone as holograms doing the news? >> me. >> nobody wants to watch us for four hours now. >> least of all us. >> i should have just kept going to the break here, of the 18 republicans seeking re-election in house districts, why president biden in 2020 only one

appears to be willing to talk about donald trump's federal indictment. new reporting on the potential political impact of trump's arrest. that's next on "morning joe." ♪♪

i think it's obvious what the president did was wrong, and we just got to be honest. i mean, to have thousands of secrets in your house showing them to people that were not read in, and then giving back some of it, but saying you gave back all of it and lying about it. there's no way to defend that, and i just think we need to have some republicans stand up and say that. come around after the primary, i guarantee you the other party is going to be saying this and i think it will cost us the november election. i don't see it as a sham indictment. what he did, assuming that all the allegations are true here, i don't think he can deny it, and i think we've got to stand on the truth. that's how republicans will win

in the long run. i think people are probably fearful of the base, fearful of, you know, president trump attacking them, but i think in the end, if you stand on the truth, you're going to win in the end. >> that was republican congressman don bacon of nebraska. he's one of the 18 republicans who represent districts that went for biden in 2020. as of this morning, he is the only one of those 18 speaking out against former president trump after his second arrest, this one on federal charges. let's bring in nbc news senior national political reporter, sahil kapur live on capitol hill. his latest reporting is focusing on those 18 republicans in biden-won districts, and how they are responding to trump's second arrest. now, with candidates, sahil, we're seeing a softening. we're seeing a kind of -- they're slowly getting there, at least some of them. anything with these 18

republicans? >> reporter: the presidential candidates challenging former president trump for the nomination are moving -- edging in that direction of being more critical the of him, but among these 18 republicans on the front line of the battle for the house majority, that is not happening. 18 of them, you see them all on the screen there. only don bacon, as you mentioned, you just played that clip has criticized the former president for the damning allegations in that indictment. the other 17 have not gone there. many are silent including the new yorkers like mike molnar roe. others like brian fitzpatrick in pennsylvania say justice must be done fairly without addressing the substance of the trump indictment, and a few of them like the embattled george santos are joining most of the republican party embracing trump claiming he's the real victim here. the dilemma is these 18 republicans need to -- in order for them to win re-election, they need to hold on to former president trump's loyal

republican voters. they could lose a primary if they don't have that, and they need turnout enthusiasm. and they also have to win independents and swing voters. that's are where their conundrum comes in. i spoke to charlie dent who's from a swing district until he retired. described this pretty well, let's show what he had to say. they recognize this trump indictment is extraordinarily problematic. many know if they say too much about trump being a scoundrel or being a huge liability, that will alienate a not significant portion of their base. that's why they're dancing around this issue. this is hard for them to politically navigate. democrats see an opportunity here in the fact that most republicans are standing with trump or skeptical. let's show this that i got from the democratic congressional campaign committee. republicans can no longer claim to be the party of public safety with their recent repeated attacks on the law enforcement agencies that keep our

communities safe. republicans are putting fealty to their party over public safety. now, the republican campaign committee did not comment on the trump indictment, but they did comment on what the democrats said regarding public safety, and you see that statement on the screen from the nrcc spokesman. no republicans will take lectures on law enforcement from the party of defunding the police. trump's legal issues are not going anywhere in a hurry, neither are the politics of this in the race for the house. >> thank you so much, greatly appreciate it. the republicans say that when of course they're for defunding the fbi and also love when cops get their brains bashed in on capitol hill, if they're the people that are bashing it support donald trump. certainly that's what they would have you believe by their refusal to actually criticize those people. donald trump calls them, what, patriots? said it was a beautiful day. some kind of beautiful day, don.

>> perfect. >> final thoughts, jonathan lemire, wrap the 47 hours we've done this morning, a quick brief, 15 seconds to go. >> the house republicans leadership or standing with trump, even calling for investigations into jack smith, the doj and how they're handling this, but it's those republicans in the swing districts that are so representative of the bind the party is in as they head into next year's elections. als the white house and therefore potentially donald trump's fate. >> bacon's right. you got to get out in front of this, guess what you're going to be doing in '24. you're going to be defending these crazy abortion laws like six-week bans. you're going to be defending national bans on abortion in a swing district, and a guy that stole nuclear secrets. good luck with that, guys. >> and insurrections. i don't think they like insurrections. >> not going to work. >> for willie, joe, and me, that

does it for us this morning. we'll see you tomorrow morning. >> what about jonathan? he's a potted plant. >> he's not in the room right now. that does it for us this morning, ana cabrera picks up the coverage in 90 seconds. ♪♪ ♪ this is not just delivery. ♪ this is knowing even superheroes... can use a sidekick. ♪ walgreens. when i first learned about my dupuytren's contracture, my physician referred me to a hand specialist. and i'm glad he did, because when i took the tabletop test, i couldn't lay my hand flat anymore. the first hand specialist i saw only offered surgery. so, i went to a second hand specialist who also offered nonsurgical options - which felt more right for me. so, what i'd say to other people with dupuytren's contracture is this: don't wait —find a hand specialist trained in nonsurgical options, today. i found mine at findahandspecialist.com.

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