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tv   Alex Wagner Tonight  MSNBC  June 14, 2023 9:00pm-10:01pm PDT

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the report written before the children were found, says the aircraft crashed nose first into the jungle floor. these photos showing where investigators believe the children were sitting. in the back, avoiding the worst of the impact. the report says they only presumed the youngest sibling, now one-year-old may have been seated with her mother. the family says their mother died at the scene for days later. that report also noting the sister was involved in an earlier crash in 2021, due to loss of engine power that was repaired and in the air again this past march. incredibly, rescuers say the children had no serious injuries from the plane crash. tonight the siblings are still hospitalized and slowly getting stronger. nbc news. >> we are thinking of these children, their recovery. they are colombia's little
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miracles. the story, i cannot get enough of it. it is extraordinary. and on that note, i was you all a very good night. from all of our colleagues across the networks of nbc news, thanks for staying up late with us. i'll see you at the end of tomorrow. tomorrow who >> it was november 12 of 2020 and was a lot going on at the time. it had been less than a week since the networks had called the 2020 presidential election for joe biden. donald trump was just beginning his campaign to deny that result and to try to overturn it. just a few days prior to trump 's lawyer, rudy giuliani, gave his in some vince for seasons landscaping press conference to contest the election results. we all remember that. trump had decided to deny president elect biden access to classified daily briefing as was the custom in presidential transitions. which, in retrospect seems a bit ironic.
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just one day later, senator lindsey graham would make a phone call to the georgia secretary of state, asking raffensperger if he had the power to throw out mail-in ballots from certain counties. so, a whole lot of wild things were happening on and around november 12th of 2020. and in the middle of all of that, on that day, that senate made an incredibly consequential decision that went virtually unnoticed at the time. >> some nomination in the judiciary, eileen mercedes cannon to the florida for the united states district judge for the southern district of florida. >> are there any senators in the chamber wishing to change their vote? when the nays are 21, the nomination is confirmed. >> that was the moment the senate voted to confirm a young assistant u.s. attorney named aileen cannon, to a lifetime appointment on the federal judiciary.
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12 democrats voted with republicans to approve her nomination, including senator diane feinstein, who was the top democrat on the judiciary committee at that time. during his presidency, trump appointed 231 judges to the federal bench. which was an impressive number. one of the most successful parts of the entire trump administration was his reshaping of the federal judiciary. it was in many ways the reason so many conservatives held their noses in support of trump, the promises he made on the promises he kept about filling the courts with conservative judges. so, aileen cannon was a part of that broader trump success story at the courts. but if you are a democrat, and even if you are a republican, there were reasons to oppose a judge cannon's appointments. reasons that went beyond ideology. just 38 years old, aileen cannon had very little experience for someone nominated to be a federal judge. very little. she had never held a judgeship before, she had worked as an
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assistant u.s. attorney in florida for a few years, but only four of the cases she worked on during that time went all the way to a jury verdict. and she had been the lead prosecutor on just two of those cases, both of them about firearms. the rest of miss cannons resume was similarly sparse. as a new york times reports today, a senate questionnaire asked for every publish writing she had produced. she listed 20 items. of those, 17 were pieces she had written in the summer of 2002 as a college intern at the miami herald spanish language sister publication, harold. now, typically when judicial candidates were asked for work they have published they cite law review articles or opinion this is about jurist prudence and legal theory. for example, the senate today confirmed a biden nominee dale oh to a federal judgeship in the southern district of new york.
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his senate questioner included published writing like voting rights legislation after shelby county, mechanics and standards in section two denial claims. and silent at sentencing, wavered doctrine and the right to present mitigating evidence. by contrast, aileen cannon offered old newspaper articles she wrote with titles like flamenco, an explosion of energy and passion. and winners in the library quest competition. and, tomatoes may reduce tumors. so, it was an unusual set of writings for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench. the new york times also reports that the questionnaire also asked her to provide all reports, memorandums, and policy statements sheet written for any organization, all testimony are official statements on public or legal policy she had ever delivered to any public body, and all of her speeches, talks, panel discussions, lectures, or question and answer sessions. aileen cannon's response to that section? none.
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despite all of this, she was confirmed on november 12th 2020 and her short time on the bench has not added much in the way of experience. according to the times, just for criminal cases that have come before her as a judge have ever gone to trial. and all of them were rushing cases like a felon who was charged with illegally possessing a gun. those four cases amount to just 14 days of trial experience in total. you have probably heard by now that aileen cannon is the judge who has been randomly selected to oversee the doj's indictment of the former president. and so far, there's been a lot of focus on any perceived bias towards the president who appointed her. she is a lifelong conservative and a member of the federalist society, and of course, during the early stages of this investigation she made a consequential ruling against doj investigators and in favor of trump and his defense team, that prohibited the government from reviewing any of the documents obtained in its court
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authorized search of mar-a-lago, and essentially delayed the investigation for three months before it was overturned by the very conservative circuit court of appeals. so, a lot of folks who have been concerned about bias. looking at this reporting from the new york times, the articles on flamenco dancing and tomato based cancer cures, the fact that judge cannon has been on the federal bench for just two years, and has overseen it just for trials in her lifetime, not one of them having to do with national security matters, perhaps that is the stuff we should be focused on. as this judge oversees one of the most consequential, complex criminal cases in american history. joining me now are -- neil cotulla, forming acting solicitor with the department of justice and barbara mcquade, former u.s. attorney for the eastern district of michigan. both are msnbc legal analyst. barb, let me first talk to you about judge cannon's cv and
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whether or not -- i found it alarming in its lack of breadth and depth on these issues that she will be confronting presumably, overseeing this case. how did you understand this reporting? what is your assessment of it? >> yeah. her credentials certainly are much thinner than most people who are applying to be federal judges. 38 is quite young. not to say that a person that is 38 is incapable of doing such an important job, it's just that they haven't had the kinds of experience that you might like to see in a judge. someone who's been to trial, who's seen a verdicts, seen cases go haywire, all of the crazy things that can happen in the courtroom. to be able to withstand the things that lawyers try, sometimes lawyers try to push, to bully you, to snow you, and lawyers who have been around around for a while are better suited to judgeships that have had that experience. but she's not the youngest in
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the nation's history, the apa deemed her to be qualified, though not highly qualified and my guess is it had a lot to do with just her lack of experience. so here she is two years in about to hand out one at the most significant cases in the history that the country. >> yeah. neil, can we talk about the case and not what makes it different from most cases, and what the thorniest aspects of this are? are they the questions of executive privilege, are they the classification of national security implications, is it just the actual defendant and who he is? what do you think about this case is trickiest on its face? >> yeah. there isn't any executive privilege issue. donald trump sees executive privilege in anything, but back then the reality based world that you and i live, there is no executive privilege claim in this case. i do think that the classified information privileges are important. classified information issues are going to be difficult and take some time. and it is there where you really want experience. the fact that she's had for prior criminal trials is one
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they, but to really have no prior experience with classified information is i think a real problem, because anyone who's worked and handle classified information, you know a couple of things. you know there's such an expenses set of rules for prophylactic reasons, because bad guys, foreign enemies, terrorist, others are trying to get access to intelligence information so it's got to be protected in certain ways. but also, you come to appreciate how that information was generated. the so-called sources and methods that generated. you can see a document that is classified, it almost looks like a new york times article. it doesn't look that different. you might have read much of it in the new york times. but the way that it's put and presented may reveal a source, may reveal a method, and jeopardize lives in the fields if that's document comes out or falls into the wrong hands. and so that's why you have such a robust set of rules.
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and here, in this criminal trial, trump will try presumably a great man strategy, that's the strategy of saying look, there is a classified document i mishandled, you have to show it in open court. and our intelligence community is always worried about that, because that itself discloses sources and methods, so so there is a long compromise in dialogue between the justice department and the intelligence community in any sort of criminal trial. and one thing that happens sometimes is that you substitute under the classified information procedures act a sensitive document for something that looks like -- that is less sensitive or that redacts the information that you for in under. those are things that you really want someone from experience to handle, but unfortunately it looks like at this point that's not what we have. >> you're gonna dig into a lot of the ins and outs of the classified documents and how to those make their way into a trial setting. but beyond what you are saying neil, which is well taken, there are other areas where i
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think some folks think it's sort of been settled. like for example, the crime fraud exception that trump's lawyers have said wait a second no, no, we are going to go to judge cannon on this. can we talk a little bit more about the pretrial notions that might take up quite a bit of the calendar as far as this case coming to trial? one of the things, like i just said, is this notion that the doj can use the audiotapes recorded by trump's lawyer after they pierce the attorney client privilege using a mechanism known as the crime fraud exception. that -- can aileen cannon rule again on that and effectively take evan corcoran's audiotapes out of submission as a piece of evidence? >> yes. so, i imagine that donald trump will file all kinds of motions and that will as you say occupy a lot of time. but one of them, i imagine that they will try to relitigate is the crime fraud exception. now, judge howell, the chief
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judge in the district of columbia ruled that the crime fraud exception applied and that she can pierce the attorney client privilege and allow evan corcoran to testify at the grand jury. i think there's an argument to be made that the law of the case is that that is crime brought, and every judge who handles this case should except that ruling. but i imagine an argument he made, that now we're talking about a disability at trial which is a different from a disability at the grand jury. i imagine that trump and his lawyers will file the motion to try to get a different ruling on that to exclude the evidence. i imagine they will also try to suppress the evidence obtained in the search. they will probably make an argument for selective prosecution and that the case should be dismissed on that basis. there are rumors that they we're going to file a motion to dismiss on the basis of prosecutorial misconduct. so i think there will be lots of motions, and most of them i think will lack merit but if judge can and should rule in
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donald trump's favor, the justice department can appeal those decisions pretrial, but it's going to result in lengthy delays, which is something the justice department doesn't want and absolutely will be donald trump's bottom line game plan. >> neil, can we talk about something that barba just mentioned, the prosecutorial defense claim, right before this indictment was released, the trump defensively was talking a lot about comments made by -- investigator jay brought to the lawyer for walt nauta, robert goodman. can you talk about what you've heard in terms of that claim, and whether it's something for the doj to be worried about? whether it's something that judge cannon can viably give credence to? >> yeah. every bad criminal defendant tries to make that kind of arguments about prosecutorial misconduct. it's going nowhere, it's going nowhere fast. in order to show prosecutorial misconduct like this, you'd have to show some sort of actual malice on the part of the prosecutor, which just is not at all within the realm of
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possibility. but, i entirely agree with barb. that's exactly the type of motion trump will file. he will file a motion to try and relitigate the attorney-client crime fraud exception, even though our nation's second highest court at the d.c. circuit, has already ruled on that and said that the evidence here show that trump was trying to use his lawyer in order to further a crime. that's why this really great privilege has been pierced. and to me zooming out, the big picture here is that everything that we've seen, every time trump opens his mouth, the case against him get stronger. every time one of his lawyers opens one of their mouths, it's clear that his defenses and these motions don't have any substance to them. and that's why i think the trajectory of thinking on this indictment is so interesting. i mean, ever since the
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mar-a-lago rate, i came on your show and every other show saying look, this is a really big deal. this is going to lead to an indictment, and that was dismissed by many people. but in the weeks since the indictment, it hasn't been a full week, i think we've seen a remarkable consolation of people coming forth and saying this indictment is really damning to donald trump. bill barr, his former attorney general, secretary of state mike pompeo, it's trump's former chief of staff mick mulvaney, it's trump's former national security adviser john bolton. it's like trump's entire captain has come out and read the indictment and said, whoa, wait a minute. this is damning. so given all of that, people i know are worried about what trump's advantages are in a particular jurisdiction, but the problem is the facts that the facts are so aligned against him. >> i hear that. i just can't help but pay attention to articles that respective legal mind such as andrew weissmann and roger
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goodman pen today in the atlantic suggesting that judge aileen cannon could actually be a significant concern here in terms of this case actually making it to trial. because the nil rightfully points out this case is a very strong case at the doj is making. it's very straightforward and it is very simple, there are off-ramps for her. they suggest that the doj may have in its back pocket, a potential indictment in bedminster, which is where some of the recordings trump made where he acknowledged that he had classified documents in his possession and that you can declassified them post presidency. do you think bedminster exists as a sort of fail safe for the doj, or is that a paranoid fantastical thinking? >> you know, it's an interesting theory. there are certainly allegations that it was a bedminster in new jersey, that he disclosed to unauthorized people about classified information. so, it could be a basis for a charge.
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but it seems like the indictment in florida is a very solid one. it's got evidence -- 31 counts of espionage act violations, as well as six other counts against donald trump, and so i think they're going full speed on that one. i don't know about this back pocket new jersey. maybe it does, maybe it doesn't exist. i think people are rightfully concerned about aileen cannon in part because of her inexperience. she's young, but whenever you get a judge, there's always a risk they've not dealt with this kind of case as well. many judges have only been civil lawyers and never dealt with criminal whatsoever, let alone classified information. but i think the thing that has people most spooked is her ruling in the search warrant matter. the ruling was really lawless. i don't know if that was a lack of experience that we were seeing, or if she was simply swayed by the right-wing talking points. but she completely ignored the legal standard to impose one of her own. and so i think that's what causes people to be worried
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that she might be biased in favor of donald trump. but they have appellate remedies that they can use if necessary. and if she has a ruling that is too off kilter, i think we might see a motion by the justice department to recuse. not before then, but she does file something that seems really out at the box. >> when you look at her body of experience and you look at that ruling on the search warrant, the fact that the 11th circuit came to the rescue is an interesting testament to how bias may be put aside and ultimately trump and his experience. but we shall see how this unfolds. near kathy a and barbara mcquade, thanks for your time tonight. >> thank you. >> we have a lot more to get to this evening. republicans are finding themselves in quite a pickle about how to respond to donald trump's federal indictment. our very own steve kornacki joins me right here at the desk to break it all down. he may even wear a jacket. but i, what challenges lie ahead for prosecutors who had
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>> back in august of last year when the fbi executed that search warrant at mar-a-lago, investigators found 102 documents with classified markings. at the time, we got a few details about those documents, mostly that they seemed pretty important and pretty secret. but now that the doj's indictment has been made public, well, we have a much fuller picture. according to the indictment, the fbi recovered 17 top secret, 54 secret, and 31 confidential documents from trump's office, and from an unguarded storage room. and now under the espionage act, the doj is charging trump of the willful retention of 31 of those documents, and that
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includes a top secret document dated may 6th, 2019, concerning white house intelligence briefing related to foreign countries, including military activities and planning. the top secret document, dated june 20th of 2020, concerning nuclear capabilities of a foreign country. a top secret undated document concerning military attacks by a foreign country. an undated document concerning military contingency planning of the united states, and a secret document dated december of 2019 concerning foreign country support of terrorist attacks against u.s. interests. that list goes on. the indictment also accuses trump of disseminating classified information on that least two occasions, but it very conspicuously does not charge him for it. the first instance in that dissemination allegation took place in july of 2021 at trump 's golf club in bedminster, new jersey, where trump allegedly
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showed and described to four people a plan to attack iran, none of whom possessed a security clearance. the second instance was an august or september of 2021, also at bedminster, where trump showed a representative of its political action committee, who again did not possess a security clearance, showed him a classified map related to a military operation. according to investigators, trump told this person he should not be showing him the map, but he did it anyway. now, we don't know if the prosecutors will eventually charge trump with dissemination of classified information, they certainly have that option. but we do know that the bulk of evidence the doj has amassed here relies on some very secret, very confidential documents. and that raises a very important question, how do prosecutors convince the jury of trump's guilt when the charges are based on top secret information that the jury might not be allowed to see? joining us now is david aaron, former federal prosecutor and intelligence attorney with the u.s. department of justice, and a former manhattan assistant district attorney. his experience includes
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investigating and litigating cases involving, wait for it, espionage act violations. david, it's great to see you. there is no better person to be talking to about this. and i will say, i have found it a little confusing to really understand, okay, of this stuff is all very secret, and boy, does it sound secret, how do you actually use it in a trial? what is the process by which the doj can actually show this stuff in a meaningful way? >> the great question. it's an important question. in a case like this, the classified information has to be shown to the jury. the jury has to look at it and decide for itself whether the information qualifies as national defense information. the government can say it's classified, but only the jury can say that it's national defense information. it's a question of fact. so, unlike other cases where you might deal to summarize
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classified information substitute something that's less sensitive, this actually has been shown to the jury. that means it also asked me provide it to the defense. if the government wants to protect this information disclosure, they also need to afford the defendant's due process rights. so, there are procedures that are available to the government to allow that to happen, to provide a fair trial while protecting the information. >> so -- [laughter] what are those -- without getting too granular, does the district heavily redact -- how do you do that? how does a jury get access to determine whether it's ndi? >> well, it can be redacted. anything you redact, the jury would not feel to take into consideration. so, there is procedures that the government will ask for before trial. this will all get worked out before trial, under the classification procedures act, which provides a framework by those decisions for the judge. now, there's a procedure that is likely to be used here, because summaries and substitutions won't work, and it's called the silent witness rule. and that is a way to show that evidence to the jury and let defendants see it, let the defendant ask questions about it, but in a way that disguises it or uses coated references. >> oh so instead of saying iran, you'd say ireland.
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>> you'd say country a. we don't want to give any miss apprehensions. you might use country a instead of a specific country, person a instead of a specific person, and the jury would have a key. are you might show these documents that are referred to any indictment to the jury, and you would put them up on the screen, like an irregular case. and your witnesses might say to the jury, if you look at page two, line five, and describe what's going on there without revealing any of that classified. >> oh, that is tricky. >> the critical thing is the defense has to use that same code to do affective cross-examination, or it's not a fair trial. >> right because the defense needs access to these documents in a meaningful way. i would assume, i mean, we read a litany, a selection of some of their documents and they're sort of vague but specific descriptions of what is in these secret and top secret documents. i would assume the doj made -- it was a very conscious effort and a very specific effort to
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call from the 137 documents, i think, am i making that up? i can't remember the number. the number of documents being charged is 31, that's not all the documents. they cherry-picked. can you talk about why they didn't take all the documents he retained unlawfully, and instead picked these 31, what the metric was? >> sure, i don't know exactly what metric they plied in this case. but i've handled cases involving very large amounts of classified information. i have to choose what you're gonna use to prosecute. one thing you want to do is give yourself a manageable case, a case that can be tried in a reasonable amount of time. and if you assign one count to each document, then you have, you know, a manageable number of counts. and if there's any problem with evidence or other issues with one count, you can dismiss that one, or lose on that one, and the other ones survived. and what comes to these specific documents that you're choosing, if you have a lot to
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choose from, you are going to be talking to the intelligence community about which ones will the intelligence community allow the prosecutors to use? >> right. >> and the prosecutors want to use the most sensitive ones possible that are very straightforward and easy for the jury to understand. the intelligence community really wants to hold those back and not risk them. so, the two sides kind of go back and forth, they settle on what some people refer to as the goldilocks documents. they are sensitive enough -- >> they are not too hot, they are not too cold, they're just right. >> exactly they're just right. they're serious enough to convey to the jury how they relate to national security, why they're disclosure could cause harm, but they're not so super super secret that the intelligence community just won't allow them out. >> so, the suggestion here is there's even more secret paper out there that trump may have retained down in mar-a-lago. we just don't know about it because in tells communities like, no, doj, not on our watch. >> it's certainly a possibility. >> what of this article from
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andrew weissmann and ryan goodman that suggests the dissemination claim, which is in the indictment, that the doj is not charging on a potential dissemination, because they're keeping effectively a card in their back pocket. do you think -- what we have in the indictment, the evidence that is cited, is strong enough or dissemination case? >> it's hard to say. there is not enough detail given about that as there is about other parts of the indictment. and there is no way to tell looking at the indictment how easy it would be to prove the dissemination or disclosure of those two items of potential national defense information. so, i don't know why those weren't charged in new jersey. they may be. they probably could not be charged in florida, because no aspect of those particular alleged crimes occurred in florida. so there would not be venue. >> well, maybe this traveling circus will end up in new jersey sometime. david aaron, it's so enlightening and so valuable to chat with you. thanks for your time today. >> thank you so much. >> coming up later in the show,
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america sweetheart, steve kornacki, helps us make sense about what's happening inside the republican party. but first, trump's campaign and his pledge to, quote, totally obliterated the deep state. it's all pretty confusing once you've heard with the deep state is up to. that's next.
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choice, we're not going to have our country anymore, i will totally obliterate the deep state. we will obliterate the deep state. and we know who they are. i know exactly who they are. >> obliterating the deep state. that's what criminal defendant and former president of the united states, donald trump, had to say last night, a few hours after his first court appearance, where he was indicted for mishandling classified documents, including national security secrets. trump's war against the federal bureaucracy, the deep state, has gone on for over six years now, a battle against a alleged shadow network of agitators within the u.s. government and intelligence community who have aligned to attack him. >> we've got to remember, as we've seen in recent years, our opponents have shattered every principle of justice, ransacked every institution, abused every power, unleashed every weapon of the deep state. >> either the deep state destroys america, or we destroy
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the deep state. that's the way it's got to be. >> with you at my side we will totally obliterated the deep state. >> with you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. >> either we have a deep state, or we have a democracy. we're going to have one or the other. and we're right at the tipping point. >> but the thing is, well, yeah, there might be a of former government employees linked to subversive activity. this is what they've been up to. take a look at the gentleman in these photos, the one with the yellow circle around as head. he was spot in the halls of the capital, inside the rotunda inside congressional offices all of the building. he's a former national security agency employee. and today, a judge sentenced him to two weeks in prison for storming the u.s. capital on january 6th. the nsa employee did so with associates whom authorities described as members of the white nationalist america first movement. if you remember, their leader
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it's internet personality nick fuentes, who is known for promoting white supremacy and antisemitism. he's also the person donald trump had with dinner with at mar-a-lago last fall, and also kanye west was there. and earlier this week, two marines that worked in intelligence gathering pleaded guilty to their involvement in the january 6th insurrection. they were on active duty when they stormed the capitol. according to the court record, they travel to d. c. from their base at quantico, they entered the capital minutes after it was breached, and they joined in chance of stop the steal and four more years. so, deep state and that january 6th right pushing the big lie, demanding four more years of donald trump. these are not isolated examples. there are at least 100 others, potential members of these deep state who have worked in intelligence or served in the military or work in federal law
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enforcement, only to be arrested and charged for their involvement in attacking the capitol on january 6th. over the next several months, you will hear trump and his allies claim that the justice department's been weaponized, and the deep state government officials are going after him and other conservatives. and when that happens, check the court records. coming up, our own steve kornacki ditches the big board and joins me right here to discuss the republican high wire act around the indictment of donald trump. that's next. stay with us.
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go before the 2024 election, 500 candidates in the republican field, almost. despite the bevy of choices here, the leader of the pack remains the twice impeached and now the federally indicted one term president, donald trump. now, since that indictment was unsealed last week, most republicans are either standing by or avoiding the topics altogether, even in districts where that calculus is risky. of the 18 republicans representing house districts that president biden won in 2020, just one of those republicans has criticize trump. congressman don bacon from nebraska is the lone republican of that group to say it's obvious what the president did was wrong, there's no way to defend that. and i just think the emperor has no clothes. others, like congressman nick lalota of new york and mike garcia of california have called the indictment politically motivated, wreaking of political retaliation and a continuation of eight years of bad behavior from the far left. again, these are republicans representing districts that
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voted for president biden in 2020, swing districts, swing districts that republicans represent in a narrowly republican controlled congress. so, okay, that position may get them through the gop primary, where 81% of the primary believes the charges were politically driven, that, according to a reuters ipsos poll that was conducted after trump was indicted. but then after that is the general election, and there's no better person to talk to about all of these dynamics that america's sweetheart, steve kornacki, msnbc national political correspondent, who occasionally attends this show in a jacket, deeply appreciated. >> it's my sign of respect for you, alex. >> thank you, god bless, and i have nothing but admiration respect for you, buddy. now that we've gotten that out of the way. if you are a new york republican, right, first of all, a lot more republicans went to the house in 2020 then did in 2018, which was kind of a route for republicans. but if you are a new york republican in this moment, what is your calculation as far as
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the trump indictment and how and what to say about it? >> yeah, it's really tricky, i think, for republicans in new york. because it's interesting, if you look back, and folks who watched the election coverage last november remember, democrats came very close to holding on to the house. and really, you could say new york was the lone reason. i mean, there were others out there, but you could have found 218 seats for democrats, with a couple missed opportunities in new york state. and they are these republicans who won districts that biden had won, and biden had won comfortably. we're talking eight, ten, 12 point margins in some of these districts. and i think what you saw happen in new york that help these republicans, and you saw it in some other places, california is another example, you mentioned mike garcia, he's sort of from the far fringes of los angeles county, republican who got reelected, these are places where local issues, local concerns, i think about crime in the nearby cities, about quality of life issues, those issues that republicans thought were going to resonate
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a lot more nationally didn't really take nationally, but they took a new york, they took in parts of california, and they took in a couple other pockets of the country. and they really propelled those republicans. so, it's interesting when you look at these republican incumbents moving ahead to 2024, republicans need them to hold the seat if they're gonna hold a house. is the trump factor the thing that is going to drive those districts, or is it still going to be something on that local crime, quality of life level? >> yeah if you guys could bring up the full screen, the representatives, the 18 republican representatives who are elected in districts that biden won. i mean, the lion's share of them are from new york and california. and i just wonder, you know, let's talk about mike garcia. he's out there with pretty strong words against democrats, right. and does that surprise you. i understand the calculation of i'm not going to say anything. i'm gonna -- or, i'm gonna say something critical of president trump, because this is, after all, a district biden won. but to go out and really tag the far left as a problem here,
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does -- what's the political calculation there? >> garcia is such an interesting case here. to understand his story, it's this. in 2020, when joe biden was winning his district, easily, okay, again, this is a district contained within los angeles county, but it's sort of the far reaches of los angeles county, you are away from downtown l. a., okay, almost like long island is to new york, his district is to the city of los angeles. big biden district in 2020, he won by 333 votes in 2020. as the second closest house race in the country. democrats were very, very bullish on taking that seat in 2022. they put up the same candidate. but when you talk about this quality of life issues that voters in sort of the far reaches of l. a. county felt were related to l. a., he won
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by double digits. >> wow. >> in 2022. in fact, he was the 218th seat that we called that officially gave republicans control of the house. so, it's a really interesting dynamic where if you're looking at 2020, and you're showing some of his rhetoric right now, biden, trump rhetoric right now, you're saying that's a guy who should be in trouble. >> yeah. >> but he's also a guy who in 2022, as its party was not having a great year in the midterms, actually improved his performance, basically, by double digits. >> this is all very confounding. and at one point, there's, like, a story that these sort of, you know, congressional races tell us about the larger concerns in the republican party as it, as it pertains to trump and his indictment and how the candidates are dealing with it, which is a very incoherent on articulated strategy thus far, right. you have chris christie, was the clearest line of attack against trump. he has the easiest road to hoe. but in terms of the way mike pence, and to some degree, ron desantis, are managing it, mike pence is both and, and ron desantis is practicing a strategy of avoidance. what lessons do you see from
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that 2022 election as its map on two 2024? >> well, i mean, yeah, you saw in 2022 in almost every case when republican electors were faced with a choice between trump aligned candidates in primaries, and then non-trump endorsed, not trump aligned, they want the trump aligned route. and you look at the polling right now. there is one that came out today, quinnipiac put out a poll today about the 2024 race, and trump was ahead by 40 points and use over 50% in the polls. and they just taken a poll three weeks ago before the indictment, and was ahead by 31 points. so, it's essentially unchanged. no sign in the polling average, no sign in this particular quinnipiac poll, of any slippage of trump support among republicans. and you see christie is a different case here, because he's kind of got nothing to lose here -- >> right. >> he's trying this new strategy. but for a republican like desantis, you can see those gears turning strategically
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that have some echoes of 2016, when he had these republicans saying, jeez, our base seems to like, him i don't want to be the guy who takes the first swing, maybe somebody else will, maybe somebody will take him down. >> and we see what happened, steve. >> you wonder if that's gonna happen all over again. >> democrats are being advised by the dnc not to talk about this. the white house is staying mom on the topic, both political reasons and legal reasons. i mean, we understand it's complicated for republicans. do you feel it's equally complicated for democrats, especially in swing districts? >> i think for democrats right now, look, just all the news coverage is about this. so, you know, it would almost hurt them to be sort of throwing themselves right there into the fray front and center, because it would only feed trump's idea that this is somehow, you know, a partisan attack on him. if you're a democrat, i think you sit back at this point, strategically, your best move is to just sit back and let this play out. but i would expect democrats in the 2024 campaign to be making this a major issue, to making this something they're reminding folks of frequently. and that quinnipiac poll, they
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did match trump versus biden 24. it was biden 48%, trump 44. three weeks ago, it was 46, 44. so, that could be a statistical blip. if there's movement, that's the movement we're talking about. >> oh, steve, come back always please. you don't have to wear a jacket next time. it's great to see you, buddy. >> great to see you, alex. >> we have one more story for you tonight. illinois governor j. b. pritzker is banning the bans, the book bans. we'll tell you all about it, right after the break. to get lost in investment research. get help with j.p morgan personal advisors. hey, david! ready to get started? work with advisors who create a plan with you, and help you find the right investments. so great getting to know you, let's take a look at your new investment plan. ok, great! this should have you moving in the right direction. thanks jen. get ongoing advice; and manage your investments in the chase mobile app. if we want a more viable
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>> that was illinois governor j. b. pritzker this week, announcing a brand new strategy for fighting against the recent wave of book bans across the u.s.. the governor signed a state law that forbids illinois public libraries, including public school libraries, from banning books. libraries will be required to adopt the american library association's library bill of rights, that commits to not banning material because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval, or instituting their own policy prohibiting banning books at the risk of losing crucial state funds. and although protecting libraries from censorship should not be a partisan issue here, let me note that the bill was passed by the democratic-led state legislature, with zero yes votes from republicans. the new law in illinois is a rare counter point to the headlines that you've seen across the country about attempts by conservative groups to remove books they consider on suitable for children from
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taxpayer funded public schools and libraries, books which are largely by the lgbtq community and people of color. and although illinois has passed the first law of its, kind it may not be the last state to do so. the new jersey legislature, which is also led by democrats, is considering a similar bill. that's the show for tonight, so you can tomorrow, and it's time for the last word with lawrence o'donnell. good evening, lawrence. >> good evening, alex. we have a last word fan favorite joining us tonight at the end of the hour, dr. lance dodes, he's a former professor of psychiatry at harvard medical school. and early on in the trump presidency, i think was maybe within two months, three months, he and a group of other psychiatrists had seen enough, and they felt they had a duty to warn america. that eventually became the book titled the dangerous case of donald trump. and i think the first time it came out it was in the title, it said, you know, 19 psychiatrists made the case. it's now up to 37. >> [laughter] >> they kept reissuing the book
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