guardrails around this. they want to see potentially in the form of voluntary guidelines from the sector itself, but absent that, rules of the road govern, ai going forward. there are national security implications. i'm told one of the things the president is most interested in is the economic implications. the president has talked in the past quite a bit about automation and its impact on especially middle-class jobs that are being eliminated by technology, and this is a sector that is on steroids, top concern for the president. >> mike memoli, thank you very much. go to nopa, a greek restaurant, get some san francisco sourdough. >> reporter: news i can use. >> that does it for me today. "deadline: white house" starts right now. hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in the east. this afternoon, a monumentally crucial date to add to all of

our calendars. yes ought to use a pencil, not a pen. it's monday, august 14th, it's a little less than two months from right now, and that is the day that judge aileen cannon has set for the trial of donald j. trump in the case having to do with classified documents, the legally and dangerously -- illegally and dangerously kept by him at a mar-a-lago. relatively speaking, that's soon, perhaps surprising given judge cannon's history of rulings considering to be favor to believe the disgraced ex-president who apointed her. but things get murky. the date august 14th is subject to delay, maybe delay after delay. in addition to what one would normally expect, illegal tactics, on one side to drag things out, there is another complicating factor, and that is complexities having to do with the classified material itself and something called the classified information procedures act. as we said, we're using pencils

at this point, not pens. our experts will explain all of it in greater detail. one has started to on this broadcast. but when we think of it, considerable delays would mean something beyond the legal implications, right, as we hurtle toward the 2024 presidential election season. even in the unlikely instance there were no delay, the two-week trial in august would mean that trump would appear in a republican primary debate while he is standing trial. fast forward a little bit, the new york attorney general's civil fraud lawsuit is set to go on trial in october. the iowa caucuses will reportedly land somewhere in january, and that's the same month as the e. jean carroll to civil defamation suit and the federal class action lawsuit alleging a pyramid scheme. the stormy daniels hush money case goes in front of a jury in march in the middle of campaign season, since they hit full swing in this country. from there, every minute the

classified documents trial gets delayed further, the american people inch closer to the 2024 election itself and the possibility, the potential for a second trump term if he's the nominee. at this point, we are less certain about the actual date than we are about how donald trump will conduct himself if he is cross-examined. those loud bangs you heard last night might have been his legal team slamming their heads and fists on their desks or against a wall as they listened to trump's interview with fox news' bret baier. not only did trump admit to things he shouldn't on television, he seemed to thrash about, unsure of what to say and in search of acceptable answers. watch. >> but according to the indictment, you were here in bedminster on july 21st, 2021, after you are longer president recorded as saying you had a document detailing a plan of attack on another country prepared by the u.s. military for you when you were president, the iran attack plan. you remember that. you're -- >> i had lots of paper.

i had copies of newspaper articles. i had copies of magazines. >> you're quoted on a recording saying that the document was secret, adding you could have declassiied it while you were president but, quote, now i can't. this is still secret, highly confidential. the indictment cites the recording and the testimony from people in the room saying you showed it to people there that day. you say on tape -- >> it's the opposite. >> -- you can't declassify. so what happened? >> when i said that i couldn't declassify it now, that's because i wasn't president. >> no one's gone to jail for hoarding newspaper clippings. in the indictment brought by jack smith, prosecutors say and allege that the particular exchange was recorded, it's on tape, trump's own words quoted in the indictment. so do you believe the team of federal prosecutors bound by truth using trump's own words, blah, blah, blah, or that guy,

the ex-president who told some 30,000 lies over the course of his presidency? a trial date with a giant question mark around it and a defendant who can't seem to stop talking on tv is where we start with some of our favorite reporters and friends. "new york times" washington correspondent glen fresh is back with us. also joining us, former congressman from florida. former top national security official, mary mccord is back, and the former senator, our friend claire mccaskill are with us. david, mary, and claire are all msnbc contributors. glen, take us through what, if any interest, jack smith's team has as they prepare for trial in trump's ongoing statements. is it sort of intelligence as to how he might defend himself? what is it? >> i think it's a lot of things, and some of it could be used in evidence in the obstruction case according to former department

officials that i've spoken to in the last 24 hours. all you have to do is look at the affidavit obtained to search mar-a-lago, and they used in several instances things he said on tv, tweets that he made. i think there are a couple of truth social posts. so, donald trump sort of performing in the public arena as a political player, and we've talked about this many times, is ill serving him as a client. and i think you're absolutely right about his lawyers. how do you defend someone who insists on going into the public sphere and saying things that could potentially later be used against him at trial? trump's larger calculation here is that the legal proceeding will be subsidiary to the political one, that by winning over his base and by powering through this political imperative that he will ultimately be able to overpower

the legal system. that's the only conclusion one can really draw from watching the way he's behaving right now. >> yeah. i wonder, glenn, his former chief of staff described him as scared, beliefless. he's done everything in his power to avoid this, to avoid being indicted criminally. he's sought to -- everything he did that is detailed in the mueller report, the second volume, was to avoid that, criminal exposure to avoid being charged with anything. do you have any intel into how he's faring now, criminally indicted by the federal government he once ran? >> look, it's the way he's dealt with these things in the past, but i think severity of this is considerably greater. in talk with people who have communicated with him over the past week or so, he gets it on some level, and then he doesn't. it's very similar to the way he dealt with everything in the white house. there are moments of clarity

where he understands the gravity, and that's why, you know, he's able to hire a legal team that's made up of some experienced people. but then he sort of rails against -- rails gen his -- who he perceives to be his attackers. but the one coherent strategy he's going to employ is delay. he wants this thing to drag on as long as possible. the point you made about writing all these dates down in pencil is very apt. there's no way he's going to really see the inside of a courtroom in august. but i believe his hope, from talking to people today, is to push these delays past the election. >> yeah. mary mccord, let's talk about dates as that news comes across the wire, social media. i joke that, you know, expedia is exploding with planned vacations being canceled and rebooked and insured.

there are two parts of this, right? jack smith spoke briefly, but he did talk about not just his desire for a speedy trial but the defendant's right to a speedy trial. on the other hand, what glenn is reporting on and has reported on, is trump fairly successfully using legal delays to his benefit. tell me where the rubber meet. s the road there. >> well, the scheduling order that the -- that became public this morning that the judge had signed is a pretty standard scheduling order, because by vir chow of the speedy trial act, which is part of our u.s. code, separate from the speedy trial that's in the constitution, the code says, you know, in the ordinary case you'll be tried within 70 days of your indictment, right. so the judge was kind of looking at the calendar and picking the date that would get within that. there are all kinds of exceptions to that speedy trial act, where the judge can grant exceptions or continuances. the judge in her order

specifically anticipated those. she has a paragraph, paragraph 10, that talks about the potential for continuances that would be adjudged under a standard of the ends of justice would be served by an extension, and she specifically references the need really to have trump's attorneys cleared and to comply with the classified information procedures act, or cipa. those are the procedures by which the government and a defendant d can litigate in front of the trial judge, issues related to the omission of classified information in a public trial and how that can be consistent with preserving national security interests and consistent with respecting a defendant's due process rights, constitutional due process rights. and those proceedings,ly tell you, in my own experience, they take time. we're talking about having to first get counsel clears do that they can even see the discovery, meaning even see the documents

that the government intends to use in its case in chief, classified documents that they will only be able to review in a sensitive, compartmented, information facility, or scif, inside the courthouse, so they can't take them home on the train. they have to go to the courthouse. they'll have a right to see other documents they think might be relevant to their defense, then they'll hash out what the government and the judge, what can be admitted and ways to be admitted that protect national security, using things called substitutions or summaries, so maybe sometimes you don't actually put the actual document in evidence, you put an agreed-upon summary that respects the defendant's rights to make a defense while protecting national security. so i could go on and on about this, and your viewers would be bleary eyed. the point is this will take time. motions take time to litigate. i don't expect this going to trial at august 14th. i laughed out loud seeing the

scheduling order. i do appreciate that the judge is, you know, trying to do this by the book, treat this like any other case, put out a standard scheduling order, but that date won't be able to hold. >> there's something else going on. i don't imagine jack smith and his prosecutors need any legal advice from trump's former allies like bill barr and chris christie, but they keep getting on television and knock do you think his stated defenses and expected defenses. let me show you chris christie's latest smackdown of trump's attempt at a legal defense from this morning on cbs. >> last night he said, the reason he didn't give the documents back was because he's just so very busy. and he didn't have time to respond to a grand jury subpoena because his golf shirts and pants were in the box. does anybody in america believe this? >> apparently so, right?

>> look. i think the problem is going to be for him over time, is that people are just not going to buy it. when you think about how many days of golf he's played since he left office, maybe he could have skipped a couple rounds of golf and gone through the boxes to respond to a subpoena from a grand jury. look, the problem for donald trump in all of this is his own conduct. he's his own worst enemy. none of this would have happened to him or to the country if he had just returned the documents. it appears to me last night, as a former prosecutor, that he admitted obstruction of justice on the air last night to bret baier. i can tell you this, his lawyers this morning are jumping out of whatever window they're near. >> so, mary, again, he's been a candidate for president, but he's a former prosecutor, form er adviser and ally to donald trump. he understood the legal threat that both robert mueller and michael cohen represented to donald trump while he was president because of the power

of the federal government when it is investigating and prosecuting someone. what about his comments that even the defenses that he's trotting out, for ostensibly political purposes, as glenn thrush points out, are not going to wear well, they're nonsensical? >> well, i mean, chris christie of course has his own political reasons for making these statements, but he was a prosecutor, and he can see what any former prosecutor and plenty of people who have been just been following the news can see, which is that donald trump -- you know, he cannot keep his story straight, right. he constantly is putting up different possible defenses. he makes inconsistent statements even in the course of one interview. and he makes admissions all the time. and anything he says that is an admission against his own interests, such as, you know, yeah, i -- all that information was mine, all the other documents and clothing and shoes was mine, that's an admission he

took boxes knowing there were things in them that, you know, at least some were not clothes and shoes, so more classified documents. and so those things are admissible at trial. you said in your opening, you know, all the things he says every day, can those be used? absolutely, they can be used. he can try to take the stand and explain why that was hyperbole or he didn't mean what he said, but that means taking the stand and digging -- you know, digging the grave a little bit deeper. he is really what you would call as a defense attorney i think kind of a nightmare client because he cannot be relied on to sort of not talk about his case, and when he does talk about it, what he says is not really sense cal when it comes to a legal defense, and even if there were some statements he makes that ever could be the basis for a defense, he'll undercut them in the next sentence or the next day when he's on tv or giving a speech. so, i do, you know, feel the littlest bit sorry for those

attorneys. >> oh, i don't. it's so pathological, they think they're going to be different from the lawyers who repped him in mueller and trump-u and impeachment or different from the lawyers who recommended impeachment. thinking you're going to be different is, like, a pathology most people can see entering early adulthood, not those who would represent donald trump. the other thing that is remarkable about this moment is that trump doesn't seem to know what he wants. on the one hand, can't catch me, i can stand trial, i didn't do it, they're mine, it was newspaper clippings. on the other, he's talking about stuffing his pants into his deck. that's not a good look either. why were his pants in with his papers? he sounds like a crazy hoorlder. >> i think we know that donald trump suffers from several different types of vanities.

one is that he can do no wrong, right? he says i didn't do anything wrong. but he says i can do no wrong, like the richard nixon line, when the president does it, it's not illegal. donald trump lives his life that way. he thinks if he does something, it can't possibly be wrong. there's this arrogance, so when he makes off-the-cuff statements, he doesn't see the ultimate jeopardy he's putting himself in. that vanity juxtaposes with his actual strategy, and now donald trump's trial strategy is to win the presidency. and the time line that -- the trial calendar in the southern district of florida now becomes everything because i think as we measure republican voter response to these events with donald trump, i look at it in chapters. the first chapter are all these indictments. and it hasn't moved a needle. it's in fact really strengthened donald trump's hand. what about when he is on trial? i don't know that moves him. what about conviction, post

conviction? i'm of the theory i've shared with you before, there is not a trial until after the republican primary is likely decided, which would be arguably march 19th coming out of florida. we'll have a good idea if it's donald trump, ron desantis, or somebody else. if donald trump indeed has secured the nomination, that makes the question in front of the nation next summer going into the fall one of enormous gravity and of great consequence. do we elevate donald trump or not. >> you know, claire, everyone speaking out of both sides of their mouth on the right, to david's point, republican presidential candidates have rushed all the way to the pardon process, right? they don't probably disagree with david's analysis, and they're already talking about whether or not they would pardon him. i mean, his guilt is so obvious to everyone across the ideological spectrum. we talk about being a divided nation, on the question of trump's criminality, the two

most public beaters of the drum of trump's flagrant criminality, his guilt, not even just probable cause to charge him, but his guilt, are bill barr and chris christie. asa hutchinson is there but not as closely associated. the defenses are ludicrous. here's him telling bret baier he couldn't return state secrets because they were mixed up with his golf shoes. >> why not just hand them over then? >> because i had boxes, i want to go through them and get my personal things out. i don't want to hand that over. i was very busy as you've sort of seen. >> according to the indictment, you tell this aide to move to other locations after telling your lawyers to say you've fully complied with the subpoena when you hadn't. >> before i send boxes over, i have to take my things out. they were interspersed with all sorts of things -- golf shirts,

clothing, pants, shoes. there were many things. [ inaudible question ] not that i know of. but everything was declassified. >> claire, we know from the indictment that walt nauta and michaels spent all day moving his boxes around so he could, in his own gesture, pluck things out when he needed them. he had nothing to do expect pluck things out of these boxes. it's like moving out of college and he's been out for three years. it is a ludicrous thing to say, even if we are wrote processing it, as glenn says, as a political position. >> we're going to lose our minds trying to make sense of what this guy says publicly. we're going to lose our minds, especially those of us who actually have been in a courtroom prosecuting criminals. this is, like, unbelievable. so i've become convinced, listening to this, that he is

doing something that scares me a little. i think he's joust going for a hung jury. i think he has convinced himself, and maybe he has even gone over this with his lawyers, that he only needs one juror to say, i love donald trump, i believe donald trump, i will not find a former president criminally responsible for this. pence did it, biden did it, all the stuff he says, the ridiculous stuff he says, because what happens, if one juror or two jurors refuse to convict in light of all this evidence, all of his admissions, everything that can be used against him, it's an open-and-shut case. in a normal world, he would be pleading guilty, like, frankly, hunter biden. he'd be pleading guilty and probably avoiding a long jail sentence by pleading guilty, but this isn't a normal world.

so he's going to -- first he's going to press the judge for delay, and that's when she'll show her stripe, how often she lets them delay and whether or not she pushes them to get to trial, and secondly, if it's a hung jury, then imagine this question -- do they travel time him again? >> right. >> does the department of justice actually say let's go again, let's go for 12 more jurors, put them in the box? so i think he's just trying for one or two and he's doing that in a way that's going to drive us nuts. but i think that's his strategy. >> we'll put that to mary. that is a question swirling around in legal circles. on the other side of a break, we'll talk about other new reporting in the classified documents case and how the ex-president on a daily basis provides jack smith with this kind of evidence by opening his mouth. and we'll turn to the fallout fru that bombshell reporting that the justice

department waited months for an inquiry into donald trump's role in overturning the 2020 election. could that have an impact on jack smith's other investigations? and one year since the supreme court overturned roe v. wade, our friend and host of "the readout," joy reid, sat down with kamala harris. she'll discuss that interview. i. so, i got this app from experian. it's got everything i need to help my finances.

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mccord, and claire mccaskill. mary, pick up on claire's point, that his legal strategy may be no more than poisoning the well of jurors and going for one juror to result in a hung jury. how does doj prepare for that? >> well, you know, this is a challenge for the department because in any case, including when i was prosecuting, that happens sometimes. you'll have a jury that hangs 11-1 or 10-2, and oftentimes if you do have the opportunity to talk to the jurors thereafter, you will find out that the holdout was not really discussing the evidence in good faith with their other jurors. now, sometimes they were and they had reasonable differences, but it's not unheard of at all for somebody to just sort of be dug in and say i'm not budging, and even potentially to try to get on a jury to hang it. i mean, we have a process called voir dire. it's the process of picking a jury, a process by which the

prosecution and the defense get to ask questions of potential jurors. i think in this case, if we get to trial, those questions will come in the form of written questionnaires before trial followed by potentially additional follow-ups in court. and that's to try to make sure that everyone that's being impaneled can actually be fair and impartial and judge -- you know, assess the evidence and determine whether it meets the obstructions that the judge will give. but it's always a possibility, and it's something that the department of justice has to think about, too, because it could be really harmful to have a hung jury at some point in 2023 shortly before an election. i think for donald trump, in many ways, you know, i see an acquittal as nearly impossible if the government can prove up what's in the indictment. i don't think you'd ever get 12 jurors to agree to acquit. and conviction is a serious possibility, but so is a hung jury. so for donald trump, he's

thinking delay until after the election, and i continue to run on this and fund raise on it and the wep any saipgs of the department of justice is in my favor and something i'm going to use at every rally, or if i go to trial, i've got to somehow get a hung jury out of this. so he's trying to try this right now in the court of public opinion but not doing it using real facts or real law. he's doing it based on whatever he is he wants to say. a hung jury for him before an election, he would fund raise on that, right? he would call it a win even if the vote was 11-1. you know, he would use that in his favor. he would at least try to. >> glenn thrush, the mistake all of us have made for seven years is thinking as he was barking out excuses to bret baier he had a strategy at all when he was talking about his underwear being mixed with the iran attack plan. sometimes he's just blurting out whatever comes to mind. bret baier had real command that

interview in a way that some of the other hosts at fox news don't even try to do. and trump sort of heeled. i don't know if he was taken aback, or i don't know what the dynamic was in the room, but you could almost imagine him in a courtroom with the same inability to put a logical sentence together, blurting out something that could be damaging. what is your sense? jack smith seems to think a couple steps ahead of the rest of us, and he has the benefit of working in secret. what do you think their considerations are about what may or may not become strategy for a hung jury? >> well, i think they're concerned about all these things. i also think they're concerned about intentional process fouls by trump. >> mm. >> getting back to covering the first days of the trump administration, he took all of the norm ls of the presidency, all of the rhythms that white house reporters had in terms of

covering the institution, and flipped them on their head. i remember one day walking in expecting to have a press conference and sean splicer decided to only speak to four or five hand-picked reporters in his office. he reversed that. but he is very much about looking at these institutions that other people have venerated and respected and figuring out ways to deconstruct them to his benefit. so i think you saw this in the courtroom last week where they didn't want to push him too hard in terms of the bond agreement because they don't want to create a situation in which he will intentionally violate something so that he could derive political benefit or cast -- remember, the other strategy he has here is to cast doubt on all of the institutions. you know, we talk about judge cannon and her previous decisions. >> right. >> if she starts making decisions that are not to his benefit, do we really expect him to speak kindly of her in the

future? so, i think one of the concerns they've heard expressed from people in the doj environment is that they don't want to get caught in this cycle of process fouls that trump either intentionally or unintentionally causes. >> you know, that's such an important point, and it brings me back to -- which is admittedly a fixation. bill barr did more to help trump damage the institution of the department of justice than any other human being. and chris christie did more to help trump win than any other republican. he was the first establishment republican to endorse him in the 2016 primary after he dropped out after new hampshire. and david jolly, my question is, why now? i've asked this question every day this week and last. why now do they have pause about the absolute annihilation of the institution in which both men serve, both men get on tv because of the department of

justice, and both men have done more to destroy it than just about anybody else around? >> i'm not sure it's out of conviction other than wanting to see or hear themselves in media. i say that because, you know, bill barr will tell you he'll support donald trump again if he becomes president. chris christie suggested he won't, but is chris christie going to really come out and be an aggressive campaigner for joe biden? we'll see. maybe that's an actual conversion. but i think everybody you've named and all the other leading republicans have gone along with what glenn suggested from the beginning of trumpism, let's denigrate and break down the confidence of american institutions and there are no rules, and it is just a political power project of donald trump. i see real danger in that. nicolle, i think we're looking at next november, a 50/50 election where half of the country is willing to throw out the norms of democracy and the

other half is basically trying to protect it. policies of contrast, ideologies will get decided, but we're talking about protecting the basic tenets of democracy or throwing them in the sea. >> claire, i think this goes back to the general election and the calendar we laid out. this will not be a normal election, and there's something reflexively lazy about conventional political coverage, the idea of calcified basis. trump's base doesn't care about anything. i don't know that that's not true but i definitely know it isn't true. guys standing trials vie lating the espionage act is a shoo-in. i don't know that joe biden's age is determinative from someone else who violated the espionage act. guilty to his former neighbors and allies that we're talking about when and where to pardon him. what do you make of how this legal, constitutional crescendo

is -- you couldn't -- if you'd written it in a screenplay, nobody would have made it. this is insane and implausible. but the legal question will build just as the american presidential campaign cycle build to its own crescendo. >> it is going to be a very different situation, but, listen, i think that interview last night was important not just for its content, which we've talked about, but for context. he didn't mind that this is probably the first time that the fox audience, which is dominated by people who support donald trump, have actually seen him kind of really off his game and seeing someone challenge him with the receipts in a very effective and strong way. i mean, bret baier is the one who looked strong last night, not donald trump. now, the question is, will that move the needle? because this is different. this hasn't happened before. and will the people looking at

that interview see the immorality, the lies, the criminal admissions? or will they just see what donald trump is feeding them and has fed them from day one. i don't know. but i'm with you. i'm not confident that there won't be some erosion of his support, especially if we start getting a pile-on. a lot of this depends frankly on how successful the other candidates are. can they peel enough away from him that one of them emerges? or will it be, as i said before, you know, like all of the seven dwarfs and donald trump still squeaks by, maybe not winning iowa or new hampshire but winning enough of the states that he still ends up with a nomination? then we really have a mess on our hands. we've got somebody who's been criminally indicted in one or

more jurisdictions, pending trial in three or four different places. it is really -- frankly it's astounding. if you took the script to hollywood, they'd say no, no, no it's too fanciful, too much fantasy, it's not real, we couldn't ever make that movie. >> maybe glenn thrush will write it. this is crazy. it is to be continued, david, and claire, on the politics. i think idea that chris christie may or may not make it, that's fine. but it's totally separate from whether or not people damage trump to the point where he can't win again. and i think that is an open question nobody knows the answer to. glenn thrush and mary mccord thanks for starting us off. david and claire stick around a little long we are us. up next, the president's son, hunter biden, reached a plea deal with the justice department today. we'll tell you about it next. like honey sriracha... d s ...this is not your grandpa's crabfest... ...unless grandpa's got flavor.

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travel pass, on. nice iphone. cute couple. trips don't last forever, neither does summer love. so, sadie is moving on. apple music, check! introducing myplan. the first and only unlimited plan to give you exactly what you want, so you only pay for what you need. act now and get iphone 14 pro max on us when you switch. it's your verizon. hunter biden, the son of president joe biden, is expected to plead guilty to two federal misdemeanor tax crimes, a willfully failing to pay his income taxes. it's part of a preliminary hearing with the u.s. attorney in delaware. a third charge, felony possession of a gun by a person who is a user orred a dictator of illegal drugs will be dismissed if certain conditions are met.

it is expected probation for the tax violations. the white house released a statement, "the president and first lady love their son and support him as he continues to rebuild his life. we will have no further comment." it is the culmination of a five year investigation into the president's son. it started while donald trump was in office and continued uninterrupted under president biden, under the same u.s. attorney. it is the first time ever that the justice department has brought charges against the child of a sitting president. joining our conversation is "new york times" washington correspondent and msnbc national security contributor mike schmidt. david jolly and claire mccaskill are still with us. mike, you and your colleagues have done some in-depth reporting both of the life and travails of hunter biden and the way some supreme court decisions impacted what the trump-appointed u.s. attorney was going to charge him with and what would end up in the

preliminary hearing. take us through the legal dynamics first. >> so, there were basically, as you were laying out, there are two main issues here with this investigation. there's the taxes and the gun. and in regards to the gun, there was a recent supreme court decision that raised questions about whether bringing a case on that issue, whether the government can enforce against someone the fact if you lie trying to purchase a gun. there was a case that said that matter may be unconstitutional. and while that cut against the politics of democrats, who are in favor of gun control, it was very favorable to hunter biden, because bringing such a prosecution would have been very difficult and ult my may have been overturned. all that to say that hundred hn, after a lengthy investigation

today, will have two misdemeanor tax charges that he'll plead guilty to and he'll have what's called a diversion agreement in regards to the gun. and in that sense, it's basically if he can remain out of trouble for two years and is sober during that period of time, then there will be no prosecution of that charge. and as part of that, hunter biden will agree never to own a firearm again. so, this is -- you know, politically and sort of -- and in an even larger perspective, republicans and donald trump have always hoped that this investigation was going to take down the first family, that it was going to expose them in a way that showed corruption, and at the end of the day, from the criminal law perspective, this decision coming down from a trump-appointed prosecutor, there was these failure to file tax charges and a diversion

agreement on the gun. >> mike, just because -- you alluded to the attacks coming from the right. there were two prosecutors handpicked by the trump administration left in place. we're heading into the third year of the biden presidency. they were john durham and this prosecutor who brought the case against hunter biden. is that right? >> correct. this u.s. attorney has been held over for 2 1/2 years to finish this investigation. and the investigation has taken a very long time. and while the fruits of it here may appear small, there was lengthy backs and forths that went on between government and hunter biden's lawyers, hunter biden's lawyers met with the justice department to go over the issues that the government thought they had found in his taxes. this is -- this is a very complex matter that ends largely

in a river, and without a really significant indictment about ba reese ma or about profiting from foreign business dealings abroad. and even before this, the republicans were saying that hunter biden was going to get, you know, a favorable deal and they've said the same thing today in the aftermath of this news. and in the coming days, hunter biden will be arraigned and will plead guilty in a federal court in delaware. >> so, david, if you could change out the name hunter biden and replace it with donald trump, and that is one of what donald trump's criminal attorneys wanted him to the with this justice department, to plead guilty, in hopes of it being knocked down to misdemeanors and going with what kevin mccarthy today is maligning a slap on the wrist.

kevin mccarthy is maligning a trump-appointed prosecutor in his smears today. but what has happened is something that was available to donald trump probably b until early last week. >> that's right. and the reason it was available to hunter biden is because of hunter biden's cooperation in the investigation, something else we don't see in donald trump. i think picking up on mike's comments, the developments in the hunter biden case today have a ring of exoneration for the president's son, and in some small way for the president himself because of the untoward attacks that house republicans have made. but as mike pointed out, this is an investigation that's been going on for five years, started under donald trump's attorney general, two trump-appointed u.s. attorneys, and now before a u.s. judge appointed by donald trump. and i think it's critical to recognize everything that has been alleged largely amplified by republicans, from foreign business dealings, to failure to register, to the really ill

liles sit stuff around sex trafficking and prostitution rings. hunter biden today stands with a lot of exoneration. the charges that were brought, understand how tepid even those are. the failure to pay taxes. how are you going to charge somebody who failed to pay taxes when he was of admittedly addicted to illicit drugs? of course he didn't. nicolle, he turned around and paid them back. once he achieved personal recovery, he repaid those taxes. on the gun charges, are you going to charge somebody who while addicted to drugs lied about being addicted? the u.s. attorney had to close out this case, but for republicans who want to draw contrast with donald trump's case or make this about the weaponization, the facts aren't there. republicans need to take the law to the hunter biden probe. they were handed a verdict by a trump-appointed u.s. attorney. it's time for them to move on. >> yeah. i think there's something cynical, too, about how -- i

mean, this has been cartoonish -- about how desperate republicans are to this day to smear someone who was publicly and has written a memoir about battling addiction, something that doesn't pick a political party when it affects a family, that doesn't pick the powerful or the weak. i mean, it is something so many americans are familiar with that the attacks have really never landed. i want to ask all of you about this. we have to sneak in a quick break. we'll be back. 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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we're back with mike schmidt, david jolly, and claire mccaskill. claire, trump's obsession with smearing the bidens is a multiswz and international endeavor. his allies in congress do things too obscure and weird to even land on fox news, but it all has hunter biden as a punch line. and then this background is this cynical bet that nobody views this as a normal family, nobody knows the bidens loss and pain. what do you make to david jolly's point they should take this loss and move on, find another political weapon to wield? >> i don't know what america they live in. and i don't know how they sleep at night. you know, alcoholism and addiction are probably the most pervasive diseases in america.

i don't know of one family that hasn't been touched by the pain of these diseases. and it's particularly painful when you have someone you love unconditionally that is suffering from these diseases. i think joe biden has shown a wonderful role model to the country about unconditional love. what do these jerks in the house want joe biden to do, throw him out? refuse to speak to him, say he doesn't love him publicly? do they not understand this disease and how it works? hunter biden has gone through recovery under the brightest lights imaginable, and recovery is not easy for anybody. i -- he's being held accountable for bad judgments he made, and he should be. but the point is that he now has to stay sober in order to avoid a felony.

and he has been treated as he should under the law. but, everyone, should understand here that this man, this has paid a very high price for his addiction in the public arena. and by the way, everybody needs to back off joe biden about this. he loves his son. back off. it is okay for him to love his son. and there's nothing wrong with it. they have no evidence of any kind of wrongdoing by joe biden, and it infuriates me they're using this heart break against joe biden in this way. it's just not right. >> yeah, i mean, david, i think some of what claire's getting at is there was an effort to smear joe biden for a voice message he left his son that just says i love you, pat, you've got to get some help. the fact we live in a time where that's a political bomb to even be thrown, is such an indictment of this political moment, and that political party. >> right, claire exactly right

as are you. this is indictment and republicans have a hand on it. i think what the nation sees is a bond between a father and his son and that father happens to be the president of the united states. and they see an individual in hunter biden committed himself to the personal journey of recovery staying sober. and in doing so he's found happiness again. they've remarried. he has a son and he's written a book about how to get past addiction and how to recover, and he once opined his biggest concern about the book it seemed to have a fictional end because who gets to marry someone that you fall in love with and have a child and your father happens to be president and you're clean and sober, and his concern was it seemed too simple, and what it reflects is that service and humanitarianism that lives within the biden family, that just like his father, hunter's

son wants to make sure whatever his failure may be he uses it to contribute to what he loves. and republicans go after that. >> david jolly and claire mccaskill, thank you for your insights on this. mike schmidt, thank you for your many months of reporting on the story and joining us today to talk about it. coming up for us next around here the architect of the trump coup plot facing disciplinary proceedings for his crucial role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election. we'll talk about that and the state of jack smith's investigation into the january 6th investigation with others. the next deadline white house starts in a quick moment. don't geanywhere. starts in a qut don't geanywhere ♪ ♪

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i said to him are you out of your f-ing mind. because i only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth from now on, orderly transition. eventually he said orderly transition. i said good job, now i'm going to give you the best free legal advice you'll ever be getting in your life. get a great f-ing criminal defense lawyer. you're going to need it. and i hung up on him. >> hi, again, everyone. it's now 5:00 in the east. remember him? quite astonishing advice he recounted giving from one lawyer to another. that was white house attorney eric hershman speaking about a conversation he had with the architect of trump's attempted

coup plot, former trump lawyer john eastman. eastman was the one who wrote the memo that claimed mike pence could overturn the presidential election by refusing to certify the results and stall slates of fake electors instead in swing states that would then overturn president joe biden's victory. eastman pushed that very theory that he put in writing even though he knew and told others that it violated the electoral count act. well, now he's facing a consequence not from doj just yet but potential disbarment for that effort. today disciplinary hearings began in los angeles where the counsel for the state bar of california is asking a court to revoke john eastman's license to practice law in the state of california. prosecutors allege john eastman made false and misleading statements with his baseless claims of widespread election fraud, including his remarks at the stop the steal rally ahead of the insurrection on the

ellipse. as we heard from the 1/6 committee findings eastman admitted to other lawyers he knew his plan was illegal. he even asked rudy giuliani if he could be considered to receive a presidential pardon from trump. today's hearing marks a step to holding to account insiders and plotters of the attempted coup that resulted in the deadly insurrection on january 6th, it's a position even doj has been hesitant to pursue as we learned in a blockbuster piece of reporting this week in "the washington post." we know from "the post" reporting there was trepidation at the highest levels of the doj about going after trump and his allies for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. reportedly it was out of fear they would appear politically motivated. "the washington post" found this, quote, that more than a year would pass before prosecutors and fbi agents jointly embark on a formal probe of actions directed from the white house to try to steal the election. even then the fbi stopped short of identifying the former

president as a focus of that investigation. in march of 2022 before the fbi even opened its investigation into the former president and his ally's efforts u.s. district court judge david carter issued a ruling that, quote, actions by trump and eastman amounted to a coup in search of a legal theory and that, quote, the illegality of the plan was obvious. "the washington post" reporting continues like this, quote, judge carter who was appointed by president bill clinton took the opportunity to express frustration with the pace of the criminal investigation. he said this, quote, more than a year after the attack on our capitol, the public is still searching for accountability. if the country does not commit to investigating and pursuing accountability for those responsible, the court fears that january 6th will repeat itself. the following month, april 2022, fbi director christopher wray signed off on the opening of a criminal investigation into the fake electors plot. and that is where we start the hour with some of our favorite

experts and friends. the former lead investigator for the january 6th select committee tiff hafe is back, and editor at large for the bulwark charlie sykes. also joining us senior political columnist for the boston globe. you are in this reporting and i just want to share with our viewers sort of in the interest of disclosure and come full circle with all the conversations we've had with you, this. "the post" reports in that fall and winter the house committee pursued its own investigation into january 6th, conducted interviews with top trump administration officials. privately its chief investigator, a former u.s. attorney had alerted prosecutors in the december attorney's office to a few details his team had uncovered about trump's pressure on justice department officials and pence to block election results. that's according to a person familiar with the exchanges.

i also want to read this to you. one person familiar with the department of justice's new interest in the case said it felt as though the department was reacting to the house committee's work as well as heightened media coverage and commentary. quote, only after they were embarrassed did they start looking, the person said. what's your reaction to that? >> yeah, nicolle, it is -- it was clear to us all along that we were getting there first. right, so when we interviewed really important witnesses like jeff rosen and rich donohue, like don jacob and mike shwart who else have you talked to, there was no question we were blazing a trail that had not yet been pursue by justice or anyone else.

i do think that when reporting about those interviews and as our hearings started to present some of what we found, the evidence of possible criminality was plain and did motivate the department of justice to act. i wasn't privy to the internal doj discussions. obviously they were very separate from us in terms of what they were doing and what we were doing. but it was clear to us -- it was clear to us at the time that we were going first or that we were not getting in their way or tripping over each other, quite the contrary. >> so stunning. i mean it is what is obvious, and it has been since our first chance to talk to you, to see it reported out in "the washington post," it's still staggering, and i don't believe alls well that ends well. i mean we will have a presidential election almost certainly when there's any trial before any charges should be

brought against trump. what price do we pay as a country for that? >> it's a good question. whenever consideration of possible reaction political or otherwise enters into decisions made by prosecutors in either direction, it's a problem. right, it would be a big problem if prosecutors said we need to make sure donald trump's never president again so we need to investigate it. similarly big problem if -- and i'm not saying this is true, but if it's true that the decision was, ooh, it might look political for us to do this, therefore we have to stand down, that's also political. either direction it goes, it's a problem. prosecutors should be guided by the facts and the law. that is their lone star, that is the place where they start and where they finish. and this reporting suggests the politics influenced some internal decisions. look, i think it's water under the bridge, nicolle because they've gotten there. they're there, and they're beyond where we were, so i think the department of justice is

vigorously pursuing this, certainly has since our investigation conclude, and i think as i've said on this show before it likely results in an indictment and ultimately accountability. you could argue about the timing of that, but they're getting there. >> well, i'm not going to argue with you about anything, but i think the fact of the timing of that if you look at judge aileen cannon's court date which is sure to slide according to folks like yourself and other former federal prosecutors is that a trial before a presidential election on that case where an indictment has already been unsealed, the president has been arraigned is highly unlikely. so we will probably have to choose a president without what judge carter wrote about. and i remember where i was standing when judge carter issued that. it was a ruling on one of your cases, right, to have access to eastman emphasis documents. he said trump and eastman likely committed felonies. just take me inside what the

influential voices are inside doj which can appear hermetically sealed for people like me. >> i'll draw a contrast with this. between this reticence and the zeal which they pursued what i call the blue collar part of the case and the impact that had on us, so they arrested hundreds of people and brought hundreds of criminal cases right away. so when we started our investigation, we wanted to talk to some of the people inside the crowd, members of the proud boys and the oath keepers or others. and they were very concerned about our contact with those people influencing criminal investigations. again, huge contrast to the deathly silence when we approached the fake electors, the vice president's staff. so they were really focused initially on the blue collar case. they were not focused at all on the white collar case. the foot soldiers were being aggressively pursued.

the organizers, leaders who set it all in motion, who executed that multi-part plan to interrupt the session was not an area of focus. again, the delay -- every day that passes after an event like january 6th without accountability is a problem. it's in the collective interest and in prosecutor's interest to move expeditiously. cases don't get better over time. they get worse. it's not a question it's not a good thing for america or the case. i don't know why the delay was there beyond what i've read in this piece and others, but you're right, nicolle, it has an impact. a delay in and of itself can be disappointing and difficult. >> i want to ask you what you see that -- that i mean i guess vice president pence going before the grand jury and jack smith's 1/6 probe is one piece of evidence we have he's gone beyond where your investigation did, but what else is there? how do you know they've gone

farcter than you were able to get? >> i think there's both new witnesses who we didn't get, pence and mark meadows. and then i think there's additional information from witnesses we did get. pat cipollone, for example, is an institutionalist who felt very strongly he needed to preserve executive privilege, lawyers in the white house need to give advice to their clients without congressional oversight. my understanding is that jack smith has overcome that privilege assertion, and that has resulted in additional information from pat cipollone and others. so, again, there are procedural mechanisms in a criminal investigation that allow those privilege assertions to be quickly adjudicated that we didn't have. the only remedy for us to push through or push back against the privilege assertion was civil litigation, which took longer than we had in existence as a committee. so the special counsel is aggressively pursuing litigation over these privilege assertions and that is resulting in additional information my guess is strongly corroborating the

foundation that we laid there's criminal activity involved here, and that's likely what leads to an indictment. >> and you've said before on this program that the places you couldn't push through to were not places where the witnesses or the evidence were going to help donald trump. they were places where the first-hand accounts would be worse for donald trump. could you elaborate on that knowing now what jack smith has had access to? >> exactly right. look, as an investigator if there's a hole in the brick wall you're trying to build, you go all around the hole to make sure the wall still stands, right? we didn't have mark meadows but we had cassidy hutchinson and ben williamson and pat cipollone and others inside the white house, and they told us what mark meadows said and did. so filling the hole with mark meadows, again, assuming that he is testifying truthfully, and i certainly believe the witnesses before the select committee testified truthfully, it's only going to get stronger. you're going to fill those holes that we had to build around with

direct first-hand evidence, which makes this a stronger case. >> when you see the 39 or 49-page indictment jack smith brought against donald trump in the mar-a-lago case and his -- his lies or almost pithy rachel maddow calls it the neenor neenor factor, donald trump may have known more about the intimate handling of classified documents, and anyone running for president wasn't running for re-election. how do you think trump's own words might be used against him if jack smith pursues the same four crimes you referred to doj? >> yeah, look, the best friend of a prosecutor is an unscrupulous target or criminal defendant who can't stop talking whether it's talking outside of the courtroom or on the witness stand. and that's what we're dealing with here. every time he's interviewed about the specific allegations, it gets worse for him.

there's no question that jack smith similarly will pull out other statements that he has made about the integrity of the election, about secretary clinton's refusal to concede and what a threat to this country that was or how long that was. i am certain there are a lot of prior statements of the president that will bear upon his knowledge and understanding of the process that may very well be germane to a jan 6 indictment. >> do you think it's worth trying to understand what this delay is about? i'm just thinking about the people you started the public hearings with, people like harry dunn and michael fanone, the democracy itself a victim, the capitol is a victim, but there are actual physical victims. there are people who lost loved ones. there are people with physical, mental, and psychological injuries they will contend with for their whole lives. do they deserve an explanation about this one-year delay at the justice department to turning toward the insiders, the

plotters, and the planners who in the words of a federal judge likely committed felonies before they opened a criminal investigation into donald trump? >> yeah, sure. delay as i said is prejudicial, and the more time passes without uncertainty or lack of accountability that has real consequence for the mike fanones and harry dunns and frankly for america. everyone was a victim on january 6th in terms of how difficult it was and how uncertain it leaves us feeling about democracy. i think it's a worthy inquiry. i think the reporting on this is understandable. and again the concept here is that politics and political considerations should not influence a decision either way. to the extent they did influence a decision, i'm not privy to those conversations so i don't know. then that's an issue that is, yes, worth the tension. merrick garland has said repeatedly we're going to be guided by the facts and the law. if he was guided by things

beyond the facts and the law like the seeming political nature of a subpoena or pursuing a particular line of inquiry, then i do think that that's a serious inquiry worthy of consideration. >> and in -- on the other side of the part of your investigation that delved into the willard hotel, one of the most colorful antic dotes or realms carol leonnig and her colleagues take us inside of was a determination at one point not to pursue an investigation into the willard. can you just remind our viewers the importance of what happened at the willard to your investigation? >> absolutely. the willard was sort of a war room on january 6th where there were a lot of lawyers that were working on pressuring state officials, reaching out to members of congress that were orchestrating this plot. we actually did subpoena hotel records from the willard. we wanted to know who paid for the rooms of that war room and

all the other rooms. we wanted to know who was staying where. that was all directly important to us to understand who was involved in this plot. and, again, it was an organized plot, not a spontaneous eruption of emotion, and the money piece of this. right, we kept coming back to our green team, the team focused forensically on following all the money on who was funding all this activity. so subpoenas to businesses like the willard that received lots and lots of money to support this war room and this activity was central. that's prosecutorial 101. right, you want to know where the money is coming from when there's evidence of conspiratorial conduct. so it was central to us. it was important to us. it influenced additional investigative steps and our ultimate findings in report. >> so i want to bring charlie sykes and kim into charlie, it's a snapshot and maybe there are other snapshots

of the fbi's deliberations. but in the snapshot presented in "the washington post" yesterday there is an unwillingness to pursue the information that tim just described as investigative 101. where are we right now in terms of the fact that that delay means it is very, very unlikely. it's possible but it is unlikely that a trial would have been had if trump should be charged for his role on january 6th ahead of americans choosing their next president. >> well, and i think that's the key question. look, i use the word staggering. it was both staggering and frustrating to see the self-deterrence of the justice department. so we learned a couple of things. number one, clearly that report would debunk republican claims that the department of justice had been weaponized to prosecute donald trump but also suggested there was a level of tumidity, a reluctance to move ahead. and it has real world

consequences. we are coming up on 30 months since january 6th. 30 months. as tim laid out there are real consequences to delaying it. but also you look at the calender and we're going into a presidential election year, and i think you're right. jack smith is moving at ramming speed. there's no question about it he's being very, very aggressive. but the calender is not his friend here. and i think it is with every passing day it is more likely we'll not have a trial before the presidential election. that, in fact, donald trump's plan to use his candidacy to in some ways derail this investigation has been more successful than we would like. if, in fact, all of that bluster or all of those threats did make merrick garland and the fbi back off and take a cautious approach, then that strategy worked to obstruct justice once again. and then we have this question, okay, i think the indictment will come down, i think it will be powerful. i think it will be detailed, but we are in a presidential election cycle, so now the

country faces this nightmare scenario of having a presidential contest and perhaps the election of a president of the united states who is either on trial for felonies or has just been convicted of felonies, and that is unfortunate. and i have to say it's deeply frustrating to learn that many of the doubts and questions about merrick garland's aggressiveness in this have now been confirmed. >> kim, there is something i have talked about since i started covering the trump candidacy when there were 16 republicans running against him and his team rolled over all of them, and that is his asymmetry. and he deployed his asymmetry against his justice department. and i said this yesterday bill barr was flagrantly political in his actions by putting his fingers on the cases involving trump allies and influencing decisions inside the department. it is also in my personal opinion equally political to do nothing because of the polit

climate. and it appears, again, from the outside and from "the washington post" reporting that that is what has happened at merrick garland's justice department. >> yeah. what is really -- what is really frustrating to me here is that merrick garland in his confirmation hearings and when he accepted this position said he would conduct investigations without fear or favor. that is how investigations are meant to be carried out, that is how prosecutions are meant to be carried out. and it sounded from this report there was a lot of fear there. there was this fear about the perception of the doj in investigating what americans all saw unfold on january 6th with their own eyes. and what they learned in the subsequent days about what was behind it. there was fear about bringing seditious conspiracy charges against even some of the folks who helped organize it, the oath keepers who are ultimately were

convicted of it. in hindsight that fear sms really unjustified just because it was a rare charge that has been brought before. you have merrick garland worried about how the office would be perceived. that reminded me of james comey. you know, flow matter what his intention of in order to try to avoid the appearance of politicization, it ended up being politicized, and that's what happened. that didn't work in either case. it was not merrick garland's job to make sure this case got to a trial before election, that's not what it's for, but it is the job to investigate and move forward on something this serious with an expedience and the professionalism and without fear of favor just like he vowed to do, and this support suggests that didn't happen. >> no one's going anywhere today. ahead for all of us the twice impeached and now twice indicted liable for sexual abuse and defamation disgraced ex-president is confronted the dramatic fashion with a very

inconvenient truth. an ask to his face on why some of the people he described as the very best people have turned on him publicly. we'll play that exchange for you after a short break. plus our friend and colleague joy reid how democrats led by vice president kamala harris are fighting for reproductive rights in america one year after the dobbs decision. joy will be our guest with a preview of her interview with the vice president. and the right-wing told him to shut up and dribble, but lucky for all of us lebron james did not do that. instead he used his platform to advocate for voting rights and equal justice. now a new movie traces where king james got his tenacity and leadership skills, and the film makers behind it will be our guest later in the hour. "deadline white house" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere today. after a quick break. don't go anywhere today. and save on every perk. sadie is moving to the big city and making moves on her plan, too. apple one, on. now she's got plenty of entertainment

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vice president mike pence is running against you. >> yeah. >> your ambassador of the united nations nikki haley she's running against you. mike pompeo said he's not supporting you. you mention national security advisor bolten he's not supporting you. attorney general bill barr said you shouldn't be president again, calls you a constant narcissist and troubled man. you recently called barr a gutless pig. your second defense secretary is not supporting you, called you irresponsible. this week you called your white house chief of staff john kelly weak and ineffective and born with a very small brain. you called your acting white house chief of staff mick mulvaney a boring loser. you called your secretary of state rex tillerson dumb as a rock, and your defense secretary james mattis the world's most

overrated general. you called kaylee mcenany milktoast. why did you hire all of them in the first place? >> because i hired 10 to 1 that were fantastic. >> joining our conversation former chief of staff miles taylor. he was among the first calls inside the house, literally, of the first trump administration officials to issue warnings about the president at the time he served. miles, what did you think of that? >> i thought it was devastating. i thought it was absolutely devastating. i was glad bret did that. it took a little too long for someone to actually do that, but it's just the tip of the iceberg, and we all know that. in trump's defense i'll say one good thing, which he did bring together a pretty strong together. you have scarborough and others

saying they were reassured. but i'll tell you first-hand as soon as those people got into the administration they all thought donald trump was a fool. we talked it about after oval office meetings, situation room meetings constantly, so much so i felt at the time people needed to know that. i mean it was five years ago i published than anonymous op-ed to say, listen, the president's own lieutenants think he's at best an idiot and at worst totally unfit for the office that he's in. it was true then, it's true now. and even the people you associated as trump's defenders would say these things in private. kellyanne conway portrays herself as a trump defender. i remember after meeting kellyanne conway fuming he was a misogynist bully. and my old boss john kelly once said he thought trump was so crazy he hoped trump chained himself to resolute desk and they had to, quote, carally him away in a straitjacket. these are the people trump put

in the top jobs. in fact, nicolle, the only person i remember not saying something disparaging about donald trump was mike pence. i never heard the vice president say something disparaging. everyone else did, and i won't speak for mike pence but i'll speak for myself and say genuinely he was the most incandescent and stupidly evil man i've ever met in my life. and i've met terrorists on staff visits out to iraq and places like that. he is a dangerous man. it's not important maga people hear this. they're not going to be persuaded by the kelly's. ultimately conservatives hear these testimonials because they are the ones who might be able to be persuaded about who this man actually is. >> do you regret not doing more to get all those people you just quoted to describe trump not just as an idiot but as a threat to u.s. national security which is what he's just been indicted

for being? >> i regret they didn't do more. i think the only thing i could have given, nicolle -- i ended up giving up my job, my relationship and personal life savings to defend against the guy. in 2020 we recruited the ex-officials in history to turn against the president they served. but it was barely enough. i only other thing i could have given was my life. i wish people had turned sooner. the thing i could have done in my case was unmask myself sooner. people were scared to step forward. they were scared about the attacks, the intimidation, and having more care cover could have helped. if i could have done it differently was come out sooner and tell people, look, the water's warm. you've got to turn against this guy. >> there's a direct line between what miles really did -- it's an incredible personal account. and i remember in 2015, 2016

when i said trump was an embarrassment to the country and the republican party, losing friends who have been my friends through my entire republican career which ouz over a decade long. you can debate whether the republicans were always awful. i had worked for them, i had a lot of friendships there and a lot of them are no longer. but what miles describes and saw and wrote about was what the vast majority of your witnesses testified to, and what the committee also developed was evidence of trump trying to tamper with them. even now walt nauta's life may be either destroyed or altered. certainly his military career and not anything he could return to now that he's charged with violating the espionage act. what do you make, and this requires you to play annalist maybe or psychologist, but what you do you make of what that breaking point is? where people tell the truth in a taped deposition? people like cassidy hutchinson didn't just answer your questions, she seemed eager to tell the story that miles sought

to tell years before her. >> yeah, i'm not sure what the breaking point is for them, nicolle. but i'll tell you that the commonality among all of the people that brett behrs question pointed out trump fired they didn't criticize him. they criticized the merits of his continued statements of voter fraud. bill barr, for example, issued this incredibly effusive resignation letter about all the great things that the trump administration had achieved, yet he said, mr. president, the claims of voter fraud that you are saying in public are b.s. mike pence never criticized the president, was similarly a big supporter of the policies, but he said no when it came to whether or not he had the authority. i'd bring brad raffensperger

into this. brad raffensperger testified in front of trump committee he was a big trump supporter, he wanted very much for trump to win, but he didn't. and he told the president on that phone call that is the subject of fani willis' investigation, sir, we have looked into those claims and it's not there. it's then, a pawn being told no, being truthfully misguide in his illegal attempt to circumvent the truth for power he turned. when they say no and get in his way, that's when the pivot occurs. that's the pattern that i hear in that long question, and what we've seen repeat in our investigation and otherwise. >> charlie sykes, you spend as much time thinking about these things and ethese people as i do. what are your thoughts? >> i agree with miles, you're not going to get the maga folks to turn against trump, but i think this is extraordinarily interesting that these voices are coming not from the resistance, not from the

democrats, not from people on msnbc. they're coming from people who were in the room, people who work with donald trump, who saw him up close and personal, who saw him in the raw, saw what kind of a man he was, saw what his presidency was all about. and if you would have gone back to 2017 and gone through this roster of people who have now broken with him, it would be extraordinary. to the -- to the point about saying no to donald trump, i think we need to keep in mind none of those people would be in a trump 2.0. there will be no people who will say no to donald trump. i don't know whether this is going to make a difference, but i -- i do think that on the margins it will when you have people like bill barr, when you have the former secretary of defense mark esper saying that he has been reckless, that he is a narcissist, that he is a petulant child, when you have people who in fact have been intimately involved in the decisions of this administration, all of them now

saying in public or many of them now saying in public what they've been saying in private, you do create that collective moment where maybe others will have the courage to do what miles did and come out and speak in public. if anything is going to break donald trump's hold on the republican party it will be the trusted voices from within his own administration, from within the republican party that say this is awful, this man cannot be trusted, we can never put him back in the oval office again. >> kim, you get the last word. >> yeah, i agree with most of what was just said. i don't know given that donald trump got more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016 that suddenly these revelations from these republicans are going to push away independents or republicans who may be wavering, i think that's such a tiny percent of the electorate. what did happen in 2020 is that others, democrats, young people,

independents, people who had never voted before were so alarmed by donald trump and saw the clear threat that they got out, they voted, they brought their friends, they brought their aunt susan with them to do it, and that is why he was defeated in 2020. and i think seeing what we're seeing only underscores the importance of that, seeing just the threat against the democracy become clearer and clearer every day with each bit of testimony, with each indictment, with each new piece of evidence. look, bill barr, yes, he came out and criticized donald trump in a way that i agreed with, but he also a couple months ago said he'd vote for him. i don't think the republicans are going to save the nation from donald trump. i think that the voters will. >> i think that's right, and i think you're so right. and i think that all sort of builds on dobbs which we're going to talk about next and these sort of people go out because democracy is threatened by trump and all these republicans. miles taylor, thank you so much for your candor today. tim heafy thank you for your

time kimberley atkins stohr, thank you for spending so much of the hour with us. still ahead a sneak peek at my friend and colleague's joy reid's interview with vice president kamala harris. plus the film makers behind the new movie about basketball superstar icon lebron james. all that still ahead for us. don't go anywhere. n james. all that still ahead for us. don't go anywhere. ♪ control is everything to me. ♪ feel significant symptom relief with skyrizi, including less abdominal pain and fewer bowel movements at 4 weeks. skyrizi is the first and only il-23 inhibitor for crohn's that can deliver both clinical remission and endoscopic improvement. the majority of people on skyrizi achieved long lasting remission at 1 year. serious allergic reactions and an increased risk of infections or a lower ability to fight them may occur. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms, had a vaccine or plan to. liver problems may occur in crohn's disease.

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narrator: it's called, “shared leadership.” driven by each community in a groundbreaking setting: california's community schools. where parents and families, students and educators, make decisions as one. creating the school and shaping futures - together. based on the needs of their students... ...steeped in local culture. curriculum from cyber security to gardening. and assisting families with their needs: wellness centers, food pantries, and parental education. california's community schools: reimagining public education. . we will definitely not shut up and dribble.

we'll definitely not do that. i mean too much to society. i mean too much to the youth. i mean too much to see many kids that feel like they don't have -- they don't have a way out, and they need someone to help lead them out of the situation they're in. i think i've defeated the odds, and i want every kid to know that, and i want everybody to know that the youth they can do it as well. i get to sit up here and talk about what's really important and how i can help change kids not only in america but in brazil and england and mexico and all over. so, you know, thank you. >> it was really important at the time, it's really important still today. that was back in 2018, and it was in response to fox news anchor laura engram, calling him out, smearing nba superstar

lebron james for speaking out, speaking about race relations in the country he lives. a response lebron james doubled down and said he'd continue to speak out and make his voice heard here and around the world. since then lebron has kept true to what he pledged to do there. lebron james joined other athletes to found more than a vote. one of those efforts resulted in an additional 10,000 volunteer poll workers in black electoral districts in 11 cities around the country including in battleground states ahead of the 2020 election. that tenacity and perseverance that lebron james has shown on and off the court is highlighted in a new film that shows where it all came from, where lebron came from, and how he learned to fight for what he believes in. "shooter star" now streaming on peacock details one of the origin stories of how one of the

world's greatest basketball players came to be who he is. here's a little clip. >> lebron, how can you be serious? yoo, stop trying to act hard. >> man, stop making me laugh. >> yo, what you doing? >> focus. stop worrying about us. sit down. >> you mad. >> joining our conversation is chris robinson, the director of "shooter stars" and academy award nominee rachel winter, the movie's producer. i did not take recommendations from 11-year-olds, and my son saw the film and meaned the world to him. he's a big basketball fan, and i watched him. i'm so glad to have both of you here. lebron matters so much to the country and to the sport, but

his childhood story matters to every child in the country. >> hi, thank you so much for having us. we're so excited to be here. and i first learned about lebron's story over 13 years ago. lebron and buzz had a book coming out with the same name as our film "shooter stars," and i was so blown away. i'm not a basketball fan, by the way. and i was really blown away by this story of their friendship, their loyalty. so this is just a group of regular friends, and the tenacity, that's the word you use and that's exactly it to play together and stay together. and together with their belief in themselves and the power of their community, they were able to realize their dreams and make -- and achieve their goals. and i just thought that was so incredibly inspiring. and, you know, we talk about

this all the time. what happens when one of your friends just happens to grow up to become superman, and at the end of the day it's just a movie about friendship which i think everyone can relate to. >> yeah, i mean, chris, there's so much we try to cover here about the impact about the isolation of the pandemic on kids. and really it's a story about a superstar -- you know, superstars are just like us, but it's also a story of connection and about them staying connected and holding onto each other and holding each other up. tell me about what you hope people get from the story. >> look, yeah, thank you for having us. and, you know, for me when i read the script it was -- i was very excited because i'm a fan of lebron. my son's a fan of lebron, but when i read the script it was about connection, and it was really about friends, friendship. and, you know, the connection between the guys, everybody's

story was just as important. and in life you don't get to see steps. and you get to see lebron he's a superstar, he's a super hero to many people, but he did not skip step. it's a father-son story. it's a friend story. and i think -- you know, i applaud rachel springhill and universal for making a film about a young black boys achieving their dreams. because to me that's what this is about and what attracted me to it. and i think the response elicits inspiration. and that's why i was so interested in the movie, and i think that's why it's getting the response it's getting. >> yeah, i mean the -- lebron's obviously had one heck of a season. he's always having a moment, so it wouldn't be -- all the basketball fans in my life would cringe if i said he's having a moment. it is -- what you guys create is

a universality around a story of an iconic superstar, and i want to ask both of you how you did that. rachel first. >> oh, gosh, i think we as film makers are drawn to their community. and we're very inspired by that, but over the years it took a very long time to get the movie made. and over the years he really -- lebron has become a face and voice of social justice. and so the fact that over the years we could continue to be inspired by him, it made us want to honor all the things he continue tuesday do with his foundation and really focus on the community, which helped us tell those individual stories. and as the boys honored themselves they in turn honored community that then lifted them up and helped them go to the place they wanted to get to. >> chris, what's amazing about

lebron's story, and we only get to cover a slice of it here. i wish they would detail me during the season, but so far no such luck is he's constantly paying it forward and paying it back. he has his ties, he honors his ties, and what he did around the elections as a matter of -- i mean the right to vote and access to the right to vote is under direct assault by the right. and so by his gesture of just creating more places and making it a little bit easier, i mean that power and that generosity and that influence is at this point really even hard to measure. what is your -- like when people ask you why is lebron lebron, how is lebrlebron, lebron? what's your theory? >> i was able to go to akron and meet his friends and teachers and meet the guy at the diner who knew him, and he is dedicated. and i think when you have a platform like this, there's a lot of different options for you

and, you know, you may be too busy to join in, but i think it's the village that raised him, his mom, his coaches, his friends. the reason they're still friends today is because he's such a true person. and i didn't meet lebron until the premier. he's got a pretty important day job, right? but that -- and i really wanted to, but i think the gift i received there was i met everyone around him. and they told me about him, and it really informed the way i created the film, because everybody's story is just as important, and i think that the reason that he is who -- doing what he's doing and continues to do it is what he learned when he was young, and he continues to do it. he's amazing.

>> it's amazing. it's a wonderful movie. i loved it. my 11-year-old loved it. it's called "shooting stars". you can watch it on peacock. thanks for talking to us. we're really grateful and, congratulations. >> thank you guys. >> thank you so much. when we come back our dear friend joy reid has just seconds ago wrapped up an interview with the vice president kamala harris on the fight to cia reproductive rights in america. it will air tonight on joy's show "the reid out", but we're lucky to get a preview of it. don't go anywhere. ew of it don't go anywhere.

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saturday will mark exactly one year since the conservative supermajority on the supreme court stripped away the nearly 50-year constitutional right to an abortion in america, a gop led full-blown assault on access to health care, a crisis that continues today and every day in our country. but the issue of reproductive rights emerged as the critical driver for voters going into the 2024 campaign season after galvanizing key groups in last year's midterm elections that voted in favor of those rights them week joe biden and the white house are hosting events culminating with a speech wednesday by vice president kamala harris, the administration's leader on this issue.

our friend and colleague joy reid had a chance to interview the vice president for her hour. her interview will air tonight on "the reid out." she asked about her initial reaction when the court overturned roe. >> one of the strengths of our nation is yes, we are a work in progress, and the progress we've had made, one of the attributes has been about the collective fight for the expansion of rights, and this was such a stark restriction of rights that had been recognized. and i immediately knew when that decision came down what it would mean for real people almost immediately in our country who for the most part, many will suffer in silence and are alone and without resources of many types. and i was extremely sad for that reason as well when that decision came down. angry. you know, and extremely sad

about what it would mean for real people. >> you can watch joy's entire interview with vice president kamala harris tonight at 7:00 p.m. on "the reid out". we want to thank you for letting us into your homes during these extraordinary times. we are grateful. "the beat" with ari melber starts of a very short break. don't go anywhere tonight. don't go anywhere tonight. ♪ ♪ [typing] ♪ you were made to act spontaneously. we were made to help plan accordingly. ♪ power e*trade's award-winning trading app makes trading easier. with its customizable options chain, easy-to-use tools and paper trading to help sharpen your skills, you can stay on top of the market from wherever you are.

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