helping tenants like jamari brown find her forever home. >> you have to push for better conditions. and that right there is going to do it for me today. "deadline white house" starts right now. hi there, everyone. it's 4:00 in the east. facts are a stubborn little thing for those who sought to frame the search of mar-a-lago as somehow political or unfair to donald trump. it turns out there were always tapes, lots of them and the tapes themselves told a damning story. the more relearn in trump's elaborate conspiracy to keep them and hide them, the worse things look for the ex-president and those who spun those stories on his behalf.

unredacted statements add fresh detail for the legitimate basis of the fbi's suspicions. this latest release fills in some of the remaining blanks, particularly having to do with a key video that is referred to in the indictment. the newly available information suggests that people at the justice department suspected something was very much up after watching surveillance footage of trump's former valet, witness number five, moving boxes in and out of a storage area at the time he was being interviewed by the fbi. here's how authorities knew they were being lied to. on may 24th the footage shows him leaving with what the affidavit describes at an anterroom leaving with three boxes. and four days after the

interview, witness number five, quote, is observed exiting the anteroom doorway with approximately 50 bankers boxes. if it all strikes you as suspects, moving boxes, missing boxes, basic problems with the math of what goes in and what comes out, you and the department of justice have something in common. so they pursue their subpoena and the rest now is history. this morning after much delay, witness five, now a co-defendant in the case, pleaded not guilty in a federal court, just like his boss, donald trump, has done. now the race is on to see if justice can be served with the 2024 election inching closer by the minute. it's where we begin today with some of our most favorite reporters, friends and experts. politico national correspondent betsy is here, plus former justice department prosecutor and senior member robert mueller investigation counsel investigation, andrew weisman is back with you.

joining us from top national security official brendan is here and michael steele is back, former chairman of the rnc. let me start with you, brendan and andrew weisman. take me through -- andrew, you go first. take me through what this reveals to you we didn't know before the section was unredacted. >> well, the thing that it makes really clear is why the government got a search warrant. to the extent that there was any question at the time and certainly lots of people asked, you know, why did they proceed this way, although we had strong indications that they tried everything else, this makes it abundantly clear, the orchestrated obstruction is laid out clearly with the former president and walt nada basically trying to procure a false statement from mr. corcoran, the former

president's then lawyer and actually still a current lawyer for him where he falsely certified that everything had been returned. it turns out behind the scenes the way that was orchestrated was that they were removing boxes and taking classified information out of them and then returning some of those boxes so that mr. corcoran could say, oh, everything's been turned over but mr. corcoran didn't know about this whole orchestrated scheme. so i think that's sort of the key thing. the other thing which i think is sort of a little bit inside baseball is i think for people who are looking at this, if you read the newly sort of partially or further unredacted search warrant application, you really get to see the government at its best. it is setting forth not only what they know but it's also making it clear to the court what they don't know and also where there is so-called

exculpatory or brady information. if you want to know what good government practice is, that's what it is. in other words, you don't just set out all of the proof that supports your position, you also make sure that the court knows what you don't know, which is they talked about exactly what they could see, for instance, and what they could not see. they also set out information that the former president asked them to make sure the court would know, which is the former president's claim that he declassified everything. in other words, you really try and make sure that the judge understands the good and the bad and it was really, i thought, very heartening to see that that is exactly how -- what the government should be doing and it's what they did do. >> andrew, let me go back to search warrants for dummies and ask you a less easy question. this sounds like a math problem.

it's clear more boxes went out than went in. i remember "the new york times" thinking that walt was lying to him. why did he lie when his behavior that was under criminal scrutiny was on tape? >> i used to say this when i was prosecuting people when they were charged with committing a crime and it was unbelievably stupid because they were going to get caught if the government did its homework and i used to tell the jury, you know what the defendant is not accused of? he's not accused of being smart and thinking that he could get away with it. lots of people commit crimes in ways that have them getting caught. bank robbers go into banks, even though there's surveillance and people have cameras and take videos of them. here donald trump, for instance,

has spent a lifetime, as we've talked about repeatedly with no accountability. so he just think there will be no repercussions and so far he's been right. walt was being told what he's to do by his boss, his former boss. he was hoping he didn't get caught. well, he did. the case against him is so clear because you have the statements that he made to the government saying that he really knew nothing about these boxes and it clear he knew everything about these boxes. so, i mean, the one thing that seems absolutely clear is that he is not thinking about this from a normal criminal perspective, he is thinking about, you know, is it possible he gets a pardon, is it possible that in the future his livelihood is going to depend upon his allegiance to the former president.

if you're only thinking this from a criminal perspective of could you go to jail, any good defense lawyer is going to read him the riot act about the fact that in any normal case he would be convicted. the last count that is about his lying to the fbi just yells like a rock pressure. it's very hard. when you're a prosecutor, one of the things you do is you think about how will this be defended. what would a defense lawyer do here and it's very hard to see any kind of claim with respect to that count and how he's not going to be convicted of it. >> i think of mike flynn pleading guilty lying to fbi. and he would have had evidence that would have been in the government's possession. what is the profile of a walt who had to have been aware of

sort of the contours of the investigation before the general public was, had to have been aware of where the security cameras were. the text are in the indictment of trump asking him this and that and moving things around. >> well, i think it shows the importance of when someone is charged with providing false statements or obstruction. it's not just the underlying criminal charge, it's what it means for the investigation. and in circumstances like this, why would someone lie? why would someone risk criminal exposure for the reasons that you said knowing that there could be videotapes or other information. why would they lie? and if you're an investigator, if you're deciding should i take this historic step to, for example, obtain a search warrant? not just the surveillance information, when you have an aide, someone who you believe is aware and has knowledge of the

relevant events, when they are willing to lie to you, willing to risk imprisonment, it forces you to change your posture. it's not something that you can now in this instance rely on cooperation or someone's good will to obtain the information that you need. >> does it give you -- i mean, it seems like we first learn about the surveillance footage in the first disclosure of the application for a search warrant, which i think was released under orders from the same judge. you have a smart thread about what's new and what -- you've keyed in on some of the same things that andrew has. but take me through what you learned from this newly unredacted material. >> there's two pieces. i think the big takeaway is the

clear justification to search the former president's residence. but one piece is it really undermines this expected defense that these documents were dee classified. one of the paragraphs that are now their dee classified. what it says is when the former president's attorney returned 38 documents in response to the subpoena, they never said that the documents were were declassified. i think the government made that representation. i think it's not that that statement wasn't made but when it wasn't made. if there was ever a time to disclose that these documents are declassified, it was on june 3rd in response to that subpoena. the former president was aware that there's a criminal

investigation and the department of justice and fbi were asking for the classified documents. that is exactly the time when if you believe these documents are declassified, that's when you would tell them that, hey, this isn't that big a deal, these documents have been declassified. we'll give them to you and you can tone down the temperature. i think it's very telling and you're probably going to hear that from witnesses and from the department of justice in their case. the second piece is i think it's really important to juxtapose this search warrant from the conduct of former vice president pence and his staff and president biden and his staff when it came to the classified documents. in those instances you had within 24 hours staff escalating when they identified classified information internally and externally bringing in the fbi and department of justice.

here the justification is not just hiding these boxes from the department of justice and the fbi but actually hiding them from the former president's own attorneys. >> let me come back to your second-to-last point about his, you know, they were declassified. i believe around this time he does the hannity interview at mar-a-lago where he has this bizarre thing, i can declassify them by thinking them so. there are some of your points that you're explaining that may have been explained to the attorney. do you see the carnage of trump endangering himself legally? >> we're trying to get statements of what are the potential defenses and as andrew just noted, in some instances we just haven't seen what a defense could be. i think the declassification is

something we've seen from the beginning. the search warrant talks about former staffers making those types of defenses on television and, again, i'd submit if there was ever a time to disclose to the department of justice and to the u.s. government that these documents were classified, it was on june 3rd before there had been a search warrant, before anyone was charged, that's exactly the moment when you would want to deescalate. >> betsy, there are moments like a kaleidoscope shaking, how impotent trump's typical tv defenses are in this instance. when he was impeached twice, there were ridiculous things that his people went out and said and it had an impact of getting enough senate republicans not to convict him. this is totally different. this is so far a system that is in a chamber mostly sealed from

his inane statements and there is not in this moment a defense on the record that hasn't been knocked down publicly. >> it's striking from thenewly revealed portion of the affidavit that's been revealed. the affidavit of course shows walt removed about 50 bankers boxes and put back in 25 to 30 boxes. that's an issue. the other thing that the affidavit makes clear of course or at least highlights is how striking it is that there was tension in the same window of time between the justice department and fbi agents about whether or not to actually execute a search warrant at mar-a-lago. what we know is that as of june 3rd when d.o.j. officials, fbi officials spoke to trump's team at mar-a-lago, one of trump's lawyers of course said you guys have everything as far as i know. we also know that the fbi

obtained these videos that are so important in early july, but it wasn't of course until a month after they got these videos showing them taking out lots of boxes and putting in only half as many boxes, it wasn't until about a month after they got that video footage that the search warrant was actually executed. trump and his allies have been arguing for the last year and change that the fbi is full of trump haters, that it's lots of partisans, it the deep state going after him, but in fact we know based on congressional closed door interviews that a top fbi agent at the time, head of the congressional committee, there was friction about whether or not to execute a search warrant. a former fbi official said the fbi pushed back against d.o.j. attorneys who thought voluntary cooperation is not enough, playing nice is not enough, the fbi said, wait, let's try to

think about it, maybe this will be upsetting. and that was a source of tension within federal law enforcement. it was folks on the fbi side saying maybe we should pump the brakes. and in fact, according to this testimony, one of the officials suggested just having surveillance of mar-a-lago and a big van came up that seems to being driving up with boxes, then they would execute a search warrant. it's really striking the extent to which despite having all this video footage there was still pushback within the fbi against the justice department officials who wanted to go ahead and execute that search warrant. and of course we can only think about what might have happened if that view expressed by some folks in the fbi had been the prevailing one. this all could have gone very differently. >> andrew weisman, do you want to respond to that? >> i agree with that. but folks remember that, one, it

is not unusual to have disagreements between investigators and agents and frankly within agents to agents or prosecutors to prosecutors. what is unusual here is that it is usually the case that the fbi is more aggressive than the lawyers, not vice versa in the way this happened. i think one of the possible reasons for that is the fbi had been so brunt and so attacked and this was something that had never, ever been done. i do think both within the leadership of the fbi as well as the leadership of main justice that people realized because of the national security implications here that there was no other choice. and i do think that the additional unredacted parts of the affidavit make it really clear why i think if any of us were there, you would not be

happy about doing this but you would feel compelled to do it because of the security of the nation. michael steele, what is abundantly clear to me and i think i've accurately framed my read as search warrant for dummies, so i'll cop to that, trump was given a million chances. he's a cat with 99 lives. they looked at him and they're like we don't want to go but we got it on tape. we still don't want to go. but man, it's human intelligence. they did everything to not go get the stuff. and at the end of the day he was so corrupt, he was so obstructive and it was all on tape. i mean, this is the most restrained investigation into classified documents and on the other side of the break, i'll let brendan and andrew disagree with me if they think i'm wrong. this is the most restrained effort to retrieve state secrets we will probably ever know about in our lifetime.

>> i agree a hundred thousand percent. and the thing that animates that strained approach or restrained approach is the fact that you're dealing with a former president and this idea of what's -- you know, this is unprecedented. and the problem, nicole, is that we always put the burden of what's unprecedented on those who are actually required to do their job. it's not unprecedented that the fbi or the department of justice or any law enforcement agent or any attorney general or anybody else around the country in this space would respond the way they would respond if it wasn't a president, right? you take secret documents, guess who's going to knock on your door, right? and there's not going to be gnashing of teeth and writing memos inside of any agency to pick your behind up and bring you in not just for questioning

but for booking and processing, right? but the problem we seem to forget is the president isn't part of what the fbi did or how the justice department responds. the unprecedented part is a president did it. it is the action of the individual that is unprecedented. the process in responding to that action is what is the rule of law. it is what should have happened. what makes it different is that we check ourselves and we hesitate because you know damn well you otherwise wouldn't and because trump is a former president and not just some carnival backer from new york, right, who happens to have his name on buildings, we slow the roll on this process, which creates the kind of instability around the narrative that you see play out. >> well, i want to pick up on

this because that is where two systems of justice are created. he's completed completely differently. i would argue he still is a carnival barker with his name on a couple of buildings. when we come back, i'll give andrew and brandon to chance to tell me if i'm wrong. and with each discovery of new information in the mar-a-lago case, they look absolutely ridiculous, and what it says about the republican party today. plus, we have to deal with ron desantis defending his bizarre and wild video. you've seen the video and you've watched him try and connect with people on the campaign trail. it won't surprise you that the "times" is reporting today that his campaign is struggling. we'll tackle all those questions about his electability coming up

later in the broadcast. also later in the program, jack smith has turned his focus to a battleground state out west and the efforts to overturn the election there. all those stories and more when "deadline white house" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere today.

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>> we're into like dictator third world stuff. >> america is under attack. >> we have got to change our federal government. the way our federal government has gone, it's like what we thought about the gestapo. >> the secret police we've seen in totalitarian regimes. >> if you're associated with donald trump, you better cross all your is and dot all-your ts because they're coming for you with the full force of the federal government. >> michael steele, i think our viewers know i don't amplify that stuff without a purpose, but i think people should know the projection that's taking place. this couldn't be further from the truth. sean hannity says if you're associated with donald trump you better cross your is or dot your ts. if you're associated with donald trump, you probably got a pardon already. the opposite is true and yet they are poisoning the minds of a big chunk of americans with

this rhetoric. >> they are. and that's part of the process of deconstructing the administrative state. it's not just upending the processes with inside of institutions. it's also reframing the narrative around those institutions, about those institutions and most especially about the individual who is the champion who is going to do the deconstruction and that's donald trump. so all of these folks in the clips that you showed are projecting what they would do, how they would behave in a trump-led era. we've seen a glimpse of some of that with putting children in cages and the approach to not just immigrants and migrants but with respect to its own citizens and how they are considered other. and that helps to create that image that there's someone else out there that we need to be afraid of, we need to be

concerned about who are supports these institutions. and that's what this upcoming election is going to be about. you're going to hear a lot more of that rhetoric framed and reframed in a way that tells america that we've now become less than our full potential because of these others. you see it in the transgendered conversation, you see it with the crt conversation. you see it in a number of areas where the narrative is being set up. the frustration i have, nicole, as i'm sure you and a lot of other folks have, is we are aren't pushing back. we can't count on the leadership inside the gop to push back on it because that are perpetuating it. so the onus is on the american people at the end of the day to decide whether or not this is where they want to go and how they're going to set the future. right? now we see with the gen-zs and

they're like i'm not about that and they're trying to change the game. until they grab control of these levers of power, economy, politics, et cetera, it's going to be on us who are in the position to actually move the needle here. but the narrative has taken over and you hear it every night and more and more people are believing it. >> you know, brandon, i don't know that there are two worlds more distant than the sort of rank and file career d.o.j. workforce and the political universe, but those are the things being said by republicans and maybe more importantly not being condemned by republican leaders that know better. i mean, mitch mcconnell knows none of that is true about the department of justice, they're not the gestapo. what is the reality of the

political climate and being described that way when the truth is so distant from those recriminations from right-wing actors? >> well, in terms of the investigators, in terms of prosecutors and investigators, i think they're effectively able to wall off that noise. i think sort of it the macro effect in terms of undermining our faith in the institution that is so troubling and concerning. but i also think it's important to actually link some of the clips that you just played in your initial question or statement in terms of the restraint of the search warrant because it's important to understand this search warrant was not about the former president. it was not about trying to obtain criminal charges on the former president, nor was it about trying to obtain evidence of criminal charges on walt madou. it was about the documents. the prosecutors here, the

investigators here, their focus was what do they need to do to make sure they have secured and obtained all of the classified documents. i've been in these conversations many times before. that is the focus. should we obtain cooperation? do we need to send a subpoena? do we need to obtain a search warrant? that happens all the time and what we're seeing or what we saw with this affidavit is that the prosecutors, investigators, had no choice. this was the only way that they could ensure that they obtained the documents, not that they obtained criminal charges. and i do think it's important to separate those two because we're ten months advanced but at the time i don't believe the conversation was about criminal charges against the former president. >> yeah. i want to press you on this as well, andrew, and you too, betsy. i have to sneak in a quick break. we'll all be right back. break. we'll all be right back.

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i think the chiefs of staff have made similar comments, i think the national security advisers have had to deal with his carelessness with classified documents. i think this concept that brandon just articulated seems to be maybe lost on trump's public defenders but very much something that his once insiders, now ardent critics pop like bill barr and chris christie seem acutely aware of. >> so i think that this is a poster child for restraint. there's just no question to your comment from the last segment that there are two systems of justice. i spent most of my career

prosecuting rich, white, powerful people and there's no question those people get disproportionate justice. this is not like a shocker. and donald trump falls into all of those categories. and when you layer in the fact that you have somebody who is a political figure, you have a very cautious but i think in some ways warranted caution by the justice department. you know, you don't normally have a search warrant that's approved by the attorney general of the united states and merrick garland has said publicly that he made the personal decision do that. that is a sign of the fact that they recognized how significant this step was. i completely agree with brandon that this was something that they were required to do for our national security, and i agree that this is something that they were thinking of through that national security lens, not through a criminal lens, even though that's where we ended up.

and to your clips of let's say my former defendant paul manafort and others saying this is essentially just a political witch hunt, this is what my question would be to those people. is there any prosecution of a political figure that is ever warranted or is this something you're going to say with respect to any prosecution, no matter how warranted? and to me the question that is a legitimate question so that we don't become a banana republic is is the proof there? is there proof beyond a reasonable doubt from everything we can see? and is it a crime that is routinely prosecuted? in other words, it's not sort of a select type of prosecution. and here this really goes to the point that all of you have been making, which is donald trump is being treated with kid gloves to this day. this is something that anyone else would have been prosecuted for and, in fact, it's not

something which is a hypothetical. there are scores of people who have gone to jail for doing far less. and so you can have people give adjectives and adverse and say this is a witch hunt but if you actually look at the data, it is absolutely clear that the rule of law required no less than what the justice department is doing right now. >> betsy, i want to come back to your point about, you know, math. i read the story three times when it posted and this is so dumb. i can't believe i have to cover this. this is so dumb. this is a crime that a smart criminal or someone who wanted to get away with it could have covered up. i mean, the whole fact that they were doing all this on tape, is there any piece of this that looks manufactured in your view, that looks like waving the red flag? is it careless? is it reckless?

is it brazen? i know he calls and extorts the day after mueller testifies. but the fact that this happens on tape and that it's his valet he sends into to lie, do they act like they're trying not to get caught committing crimes or do they act in your view like they want to? >> what we can say for sure is that this was not a sophisticated effort to squirrel away classified, sensitive national security secrets. this was not something that was handled in a particularly thoughtful or strategic manner. and what we also know of course is that the fact that there was a security system in place at mar-a-lago was not a secret. this is the former president's own facility. he and his people were responsible for putting the systems together to keep it

safe, for creating these surveillance camera videos. this was an in-house project. this wasn't spying. it is whatever the opposite of spying is. the fact that you have these voluminous videos showing them taking about 50 banker boxes out of this storage room, then returning 30 or fewer boxes, not all of which were even bankers boxes, it's all on video. and then later on you have trump's lawyers telling the fbi all the boxes that have all the documents are only in this one storage room, they're not anywhere else, despite the fact that there was video clearing showing the boxes had been put somewhere else. it's not particularly strategic, not particularly sophisticated and it shouldn't surprise anyone that the result was all this was that the justice department and fbi did what they did and ended up executing this search warrant.

the only thing that's surprising, i guess, is that it took them so long. >> a perfect place to hit pause today. thank you all for spending more time with us than you we had asked you to do. you're all very generous. michael steele is sticking around a little bit longer. next up for us, every move the governor of florida makes either from the trail or from the state capitol underscores just about everything republican's concern about him and his campaign and electability. we'll talk to members of that party with just what is going on with the desantis campaign. that's next. mpaign that's next.

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florida governor ron desantis, whose campaign is described by the "new york times" today as struggling to find its footing is finding out the hard way that his current strategy of trying to outtrump trump is failing dramatically. quote, desantis's argument is electability, but he is undermining the argument by running to trump's right, alien nating chicago suburban voters. it point out how desantis has been plagued by unforced errors

including that homophobic video from his presidential campaign, which was widely condemned from both sides of the political aisle. it attacks donald trump for his support of the lgbtq community, which is ridiculous enough on its face and touts his record of discriminating rights and showed videos of stripped, oiled up men in the video. he calls the video fair game. watch. >> you know, i think identifying donald trump as really being a pioneer in injecting gender ideology into the mainstream where he was having men compete against women in his beauty pageants, i think that's totally fair game because he's now campaigning saying the opposite. >> joining our conversation, political strategist matt dowd

and michael steele is here with us. i don't know what to say, matt dowd, so i'm going to give you the floor. >> you know, as i watch this and i think we've eluded to this conversation, with what ron desantis is trying to do, the devolution of the republican party, he's trying to prove that he hates those people more than donald trump hates those people. and i want to hurt those people and it every group of voters, every group of people in america that republican primary voters are afraid of. there was an interesting -- this goes to something about the republican primary electorate today versus the democratic primary electorate today and i have my criticisms of both, but the republican, they ask this question of mention. they said, a or b. a, do you feel threatened, do you see the world as a dangerous place and do you have see many. bad people in the world?

so that's a. b, do you see the world as mostly good people where we have to figure out a way to connect and respect everyone? 75% of trump voters see the world through the lens of threats and fear and 75% of biden voters the world through a place of opportunity and hope. that is the distinguishing characteristic that we're dealing with, and that's what i think ron desantis is doing. he's making a classic error, where he runs one campaign in the primary, and then he think it is he wins the primary, which i think is unlikely, he's going to try to run a completely different campaign, if he can, in the general election. 99 times out of 100, that never works. >> but michael steele, he's making another problem for himself, as well. i mean, only vladamir putin showcases naked from the waist

up men in his propaganda. there's home homo erotic, almost fetish, there's something weird about ron desantis that this video speaks for ron desantis in ron desantis' mind. >> yeah, i think it does. but i think what images like that are meant to do is to push out and promote a stereotype. the sexualized nature of homosexuality, of transgenderism, that these people are hyper sexual. and that feeds into the narrative about "grooming your children." and coming after them. and so when you put those two together, it puts for a lot of particularly white suburban women back on their heels. i don't want my kids in an environment which they could be groomed. and i just saw some video

earlier this week of a town hall in which a woman stood up and talked about her children being exposed to sexualized behavior. well, okay, have you been to your son's room lately and looked at the posters on his wall or read, you know, what he's writing in class? so the reality is, that's what they are trying to promote is this sense of fear around the sexualized behavior. you strip away the humanity of the individual and show a naked body all oiled up. >> i mean, it's back to something, it's the dehumanization of the other, which we talked about. i have to deal with either half of it, we have to sneak in a break first. but this ad was an attack against trump. so we'll deal with that on the other side of the break. other side of the break.

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matt dowd and michael steele are back. matt dowd, on a political strategic level, this campaign ad seems stupid, too. it's a video they put out, it's an attack on donald trump, whose own record is not really particularly good, but the politics of it seemed inverted. 71% of all americans support marriage equality. i mean, what is the read here in terms of trying to advantage

himself over donald trump on the issue? >> well, i think they're trying to find republicans, i'll put most republicans in one pile right now, which includes mike pence and nikki haley and asa hutchinson and definitely chris christie in another pile. asa hutchinson and chris christie decided they're running against donald trump, they're running to replace him and make a full-scale argument against him, which is the natural thing to do if you're running in a primary. the others are trying to criticize donald trump but still love the trump voters. i think it's a ham handed ad. i think the issue he's trying to focus on probably plays well in the republican primary. this is the difficulty we saw unfold in 2022, which is why republicans ended up doing poorly in the elections, because they had a series of proi prima where the most hateful trump

person won and could not turn around and appeal to people in the general election that. is ron desantis' problem. i don't think he has much window of opportunity to beat donald trump, especially with 80% of the gop voters loving him. but he's damaging himself in the general election. >> yeah. so it turns out he's not very good at the politics. we'll keep watching this. thank you both very much for spending some time with us. up next for us, zeroing in on another battleground state but switching back to the legal front in jack smith's january 6th investigation. much more news on that to tell you about. to tell you about. ing 4 hours or more - can be overwhelming. so, ask your doctor about botox®. botox® prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine before they even start. it's the #1 prescribed branded chronic migraine treatment. so far, more than 5 million botox® treatments have been given to over eight hundred and fifty thousand

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at some point, did one of them make a comment that they didn't have evidence, but they had a lot of theorys? >> that was mr. giuliani.

>> what exactly did he say in >> my recollection, he said, we've got lots of theorys, we just don't have the evidence. i don't know if that was a gaffe, maybe he didn't think through what he said. but both myself and the three in my group and my counsel, both remembered that specifically and afterwards, kind of laughed about it. hi, again, everyone. it was one of the most revealing moments of the january 6th select hearings last summer about the truth or the lack thereof behind the ex-president's attempted coup plot rational, affirming what we heard from people like bill barr, that there was never any factual basis to the ex-president's claims of vote fraud in the 2020 election. that was former arizona house speaker rusty bowers, a star witness in last year's

congressional hearings. now we are learning he was a witness for special counsel jack smith, as well. last night, he revealed that he has spoke within the fbi in the probe into efforts to overturn the 2020 election. he describes a four-hour interview with investigators that took place about three months ago. when he spoke before the january 6th select committee, he recounted a conversation between himself, rudy giuliani and dth kth. that call was of particular interest to federal investigators. >> we went over that briefly. we went over the next call. he called me twice. [ inaudible ] >> the question about what his interview with the fbi signaled about the direction of the special counsel's investigation, here's what he had to say. >> i think it's broad, because there's a lot of informationable

attorneys that worked with them, about mr. giuliani that made the calls and visited us, and other members of his team, who they were, what was discussed in those meetings or in that meeting. and so i presume that all of them are involved. how that shakes out as threshold evidence, i don't know. i just dabble with a paint brush. >> he went on to mention by name trump attorneys john eastman and boris epstein. but bowers' revelations made clear is that jack smith is not solely focusing on one area or one state where trump tried to overturn his election defeat. he's looking at this as a coordinated multistate effort. it comes on the week that

georgia's top election official, brad raffensperger, spoke with prosecutors and fake electors testified before the grand jury last month. piecing together more of the puzzle pieces of jack smith's probe into donald trump's attempted coup is where we begin the hour with some of our most favorite reporters and friends. tim is back and katie is here. also joining us, former republican congressman david jolly, and former u.s. attorney, now law professor at the university of michigan, barbara mcquaid. tim, rusty bowers was this witness that was, i think, so quietly compelling. and he had the most low-key way of articulating the complete absence of any evidence of all and revealing that he was being asked to do something that they

knew there was no proof of fraud. if jack smith has been able to piece together places where the committee was not able to see, how does rusty bowers fit into what we understand jack smith's probe into the multistate conspiracy look like? >> so rusty bowers is not a whole, he's -- i think he said on cnn, he told the fbi the same thing, that he's always said, that he told the select committee and he told america in that nationally televised hearing. he was the speaker of the arizona house, a republican speaker. and he received two direct communications from the president asking him to do something that had no basis in fact or law. and speaker bowers reiterated that to the president, told him you're asking me to do something that is against my oath. giuliani admitted to him that they had no evidence to support

any alternate slate of electors beyond the biden slate that had already been certified. so he's an important witness because of those direct communications with the president. the special counsel is building a wall of -- and evidence of intent. the president was told repeatedly, there is no basis for these fake electors. yet nonetheless, continues to directly solicit their submission. that looks more and more like an attempt to interrupt, impede an official proceeding. i'm not surprised that jack smith and his team have gone to rusty bowers. but to be clear that part of the story has been evident. he's just trying to get it on the record in front of his garage. >> it's interesting to put this on the timeline. we are learning about this now, but this happened before rudy giuliani's voluntary interview. so why do you -- he told kaitlan collins this was about three

months ago. if rusty bowers was in three months ago and brad raffensperger was in three weeks ago and rudy giuliani met with prosecutors, what do you think rudy giuliani's current state of exposure is? >> rudy giuliani ex-pocher from the beginning. he was directly soliciting the submission of these fake electors and continuing to make these public statements with no basis in fact or law. that's why he's -- his license to practice law has been removed. i don't know if he's continuing to stick to that when he goes in front of the grand jury. he did stick to that when he testified before the select committee. or whether or not he has changed his tune and worked out a deal with the special counsel where he will add mitt that he had awareness that there was no basis of fact in law and continued nonetheless to perpetuate the fake elector scheme and ultimately aided and

abetted the attempt to obstruct the official proceeding. that is the missing piece, but there's no question, just based on the record we know that he has exposure as a potential co-conspirator. >> so rudy has exposure. we know what a lot of these state actors said, some of them had voice messages that were played? the pub rick hearings. we also know that pence has gone in, and there's been very little reading out from what pence and meadows said. what is your sense of how far along jack smith is, if he's post pence, post meadows, and again, rudy has asked for an interview, do we think he's close on trump? >> i think he's getting closer and closer to the leader of the conspiracy. those people that you just named are very, very proximate to the

main causal actor here, the former president. and that suggests that jack smith is getting closer to concluding the fact gathering portion of this investigation. he has an open grand jury. he's continuing to put witnesses before the grand jury. he wants to look under every possible rock for information. but you don't get to witnesses like mark meadows and mike pence until you're close to the end. the typical pattern is that you work up the chain of culpability over the course of an investigation. when you talk to those witnesses, you want to be as thoroughly as possible and know what other people have said. so giuliani, meadows, pence, it suggests he's getting close to the end of the fact gathering. there will have to be a lot of assessment what that evidence means. it doesn't mean an indictment is imminent, but the fact finding is winding down.

>> when you see the witnesses from the fake elector's plot, what crimes does that suggest to be in focus? is that the obstruction of the official proceeding or the conspiracy to defraud? what crimes would you be looking at? >> yes, yes, and then ,001, a false statement. it's a crime to lie under oath or submit some sort of false statement on an official record. these fake electors, which purport to be certified and official, that's the key. they indicate that they are official, that they are certified. when in effect, they are contrary to the slates of electors which were, in fact, certified for joe biden. that makes them lies. that makes them false statements. that's why they're fake electors. and that generates 18 us c-section 1001, a very common federal criminal charge of lying.

obstruction of an official proceeding, absolutely. submission of them is part of a plan to prevent the certification of the election, as the select committee recommended, that would be evidence that fits that law. and conspiracy, the 371 offense, to defraud the united states to interfere with the lawful function of government. that also could be a charge. so there are -- there is a menu of potential charges here, that if this evidence pans out, might be demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt, and you might see an indictment from the special counsel. >> i mean, david jolly, there was no part of this that trump was more public about than tweeting at local officials, it was the height of covid. i remember him inviting them to the oval. this was his part of it. he was in his own view, i think playing a salesman. but there was really no -- i don't want to say there was no part of it, because he was very

enthusiastic about traveling to the capitol as the violence was happened. but he was very into every aspect of the fake elector's plot. >> he was. and that came after the president -- former president had been briefed by data experts saying you will not be able to turn around these votes. there is not enough fraud out there and the gaps are too wide. you will not be able to turn around the votes. that's when he embarked on this pressure campaign, this bullying campaign, if you will. and look, i do think it's fascinating, this notion of the potential charge defrauding the united states, defrauding the people of the united states. it has more gravity politically than interrupting the proceeding of the senate. i think the lying for conspiracy to interrupt a senate conspiracy is much shorter for prosecutors than to have the evidence to prove the former president sought to defraud the people of the united states.

that could be a political earthquake before the next election, nicolle. i know we talk about this routinely. the president's behavior was out in the open. certainly he must be culpable. but if there are charges brought by jack smith that donald trump sought to defraud the people of the united states, and those charms are brought just before the next election, it's a political earthquake, the likes of which this country hasn't seen. >> katie, to that point, i know that before and since jack smith has arrived, there's been so much speculation that these cases are too novel. there have now been tons of people charged with obstructing an official proceeding. they've been tried and sentenced and found guilty or pleaded. what is sort of the changing atmosphere around the crimes being scrutinized by jack smith around january 6th on this sort of prong of his two missions? >> so i don't know that the sticking point is going to be whether or not this is too novel

a charge. i think it's going to be strength of the evidence, particularly because this is something that has first amendment issues and other issue where is the defense could make some sort of compelling case that donald trump was somehow within his constitutional rights. for example, to speak at the rally. so they're going to want extremely strong evidence here. he, for example, unlike these other people who have been charged, he wasn't in the building that day. he didn't go down to the capitol. he didn't charge inside. he didn't batter his way in. so they're going to have to have extremely strong evidence. i don't think it's the novelty factor that is something that will be heavily discussed. it's going to be the evidence. you know, something that tim was saying earlier, we don't know. it's true, jack smith, the special counsel, was brought in to look at donald trump and his behavior. but even before jack smith got there, the u.s. attorney's office in washington was looking at all of donald trump's lawyers, the people giving him counsel, trying to figure out whether or not they had any criminal exposure. so if jack smith, in the course

of his investigation, has followed those threads and found that evidence, he's not restricted from bringing charges against other people. so there is a good reason for him to go back and go over territory that the u.s. attorney's office had begun to look at, and take out of this evidence. part of it is to see whether or not there could be people charged in this larger plot to overturn the election, and whether or not those people give him the really strong, very clear evidence he needs. basically somebody to be before jury and say this was the plot and my role in it, and it was directed by donald trump, can he get that level of evidence from this group of people, who has been coming in, in these later days of the evidence gathering. >> so tim, if he has access to mark meadows, if he has access to mike pence, who you didn't, if he's getting more answers than fifth, fifth, fifth, fifth from eastman and rudy, which we

don't know, does he have that kind of evidence that katie is talking about? >> yeah, i think he likely does, nicolle. jack smith is focused of the playing offense and defense. he's anticipating defenses. one of which may be -- i was told that this was okay. i was told that there was evidence of voter fraud and that this was a viable path. that's why people that tell him the truth, like rusty bowers, are so important because they rebut that. it wouldn't be reasonable for president trump, in the face of the consistent feedback from bill barr, from his open campaign lawyers, from rusty bowers, brad -- he's anticipating in building in a rebuttal of a possible defense, including reliance on counsel or advice from others.

>> you know, barbara, there is such -- so many layers of evidence that the committee developed, not just in the public hearings where they almost had montages created, where trump's campaign manager, did you know you lost? yes. did you tell trump your lost? yes. from bill barr, did you believe these things? no, i told him it was bs. so general milley who was talking to trump about foreign policy and trump is referring to what the next guy is going to have to go. there are so many proof points that trump knew he lost and he was functioning in private as someone who knew he had been defeated. he had complaints like, i can't believe this guy beat me to one of his press aides. what in your view are sort of the sort of connective things that jack smith would have been able to sort of further all that evidence based on who he has had access to now? >> one of the challenges for

jack smith is synthesizing all of this. he has great access to evidence. all of the things that tim and his team put together last summer so beautifully, that is an incredible gift. he has access to people with subpoena power that the committee lacked. sometimes the evidence can be so overwhelming, you have to figure out what you have to leave behind, what ends up on the cutting room floor. i remember when i went to the u.s. assistant attorney school. you get a trial practice course. one thing i was told is, the government rarely loses cases because the jury didn't believe their evidence. the government, when it loses cases, usually loses because the jury didn't understand its case. with so many threads here and so much potential evidence, the challenge for jack smith might be how to streamline and tell the story in a way that is understandable. sometimes in complex cases, i have taken photos of all the witnesses so the jury can see who they are in the end.

present it in chapters where we talk about the fake electors chapter, now the eastman memo chapter. so all of this may take some time, even after jake smith completes his fact-finding work. >> barbara, what do you think it says about where he is, that rusty bowers and brad rath list berger was in about ten days ago, that rudy giuliani has voluntarily gone in? >> i agree we're close to the end because of the high-up people they talked to, mike pence, mark meadows. those are the witnesses you save to the end so you have the benefit of all the documents that you can get your hands on to confront them with that information. but from my own experience, when people asked me when i would be done with an investigation, i said i don't know, because as long as there's one more witness hanging out there, you might ask them who else might we be talking to and they might give you ten more names.

then you realize you're done or it's diminishing returns. but you can't charge the case and then a year later a witness comes in, perry mason style and says, it was all me, i'm the one that did it. so that's a little of what they need to do now is to neutralize any potential defense witness. >> no one is going anywhere today. when we all come back, more on how team trump's efforts to up do joe biden's win in arizona is now central to potential criminal case against the ex-president. plus, questions are swirling about the legitimacy of the supreme court in the wake of a series of decisions impacting almost all aspects of american life. a friend of the program mark elias will join us to talk about the court. and very holding a narrow edge in north carolina in the last few elections, republicans are looking to pass voting restrictions. we'll talk about that in the battle for voting rights ahead of what could be a very conten

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i did finally get what they considered proof, and it was a couple of letters from legal professors. it was a term paper from one of my colleagues on this, this, umm, theory of law. it was several things that were entertaining. a bunch of tear sheets for ballots were in the ballot entries and exits of the ballots

in their 200 ballot lots that came into election officials. there was no names, nothing else, and so i turned squarely on my cheek, i say it's the proof. and that's all the proof i ever got. >> my guests are back with us. tim, he's diplomatic and a politician. he got didally squat. we don't hear a ton about eastman. where do you suspect he is in terms of jack smith's probe? >> i think all of the lawyers who were architects of this probe was their target or potential co-conspirators in this probe. he's asking a lot of questions

about the lawyers, communications with the lawyers. there are two separate but related things lacking in what those lawyers were saying. there is the lack of any factual foundation for an assertion there was election fraud. as rusty bowers said last night, he asked for it. he was given didally squat, to use your squat. even if there was evidence of election fraud, there needs to be a legal pathway where that election fraud could make a difference. that typically is the court where is people bring cases, they challenge elections and put forth evidence. that happened 62 times. they were all rejected but for one procedural victory in pennsylvania which had no impact. after the courts ruled, there is no procedural mechanism. there was no mechanism to uncover that. so the problem with the whole

edifice, with the multipart plan, it lacks factual foundation, or a valid legal path to any outcome other than the one that legitimate occurred, the certification of joe biden in the election. and president trump's knowledge of both, lack of factual foundation and lack of viable legal theory, make his intent and awareness, when he takes the actions that he does, potentially criminal. >> well, and we know from greg jacob's testimony, tim, that'sman knew that the plot was unconstitutional and illegal, that it would be struck down 9-0 by the supreme court. if it seems that lawyers that have already -- that didn't plead the fifth, that did cooperate with the congressional probe, have already offered that insight into their intent to lie, and their knowing lies that were told to the state actors. >> there is a disturbing trend

with all of this, that there seems to be an assumption that republican legislators, or republican judges, would somehow help. that didn't happen, right? president trump's focus is on republican legislators, republican secretaries of state, republicans in states that -- where the election, he thought he had a chance to flip the result. he also had confidence that potentially a supreme court or other courts could be there to back him up. but he didn't count on a lot of principled republicans, rusty bowers first among them, who were not going to put party over the constitution, who were not going to go along with this plot because of that lack of factual foundation or viable legal argument. again, he seems to -- or they, the conspiracy seems to count on assistance from republican legislators or judges. that's scary. the belief in the first place that those folks could have gone along with this absent that

legal basis is frightening. >> you know, david jolly, just listening to tim's analysis, they didn't find the corrupt actors in the state, but they did in the house republican -- in congress. they had 128 house republicans to sign on to the texas lawsuit. so they found the actors in the house and a few in the senate, but they did not, to tim's point, they did not find them out in the state legislators, absent -- we don't know what they would have had, they had nothing. >> yeah. that's a great point, nicolle. this someone of those moments where the privileges that are afforded house members is really protecting a lot of this from blowing wide open. you're right, some of his greatest allies in this process were those on capitol hill. and then in limited cases, we know of meetings that members of the house had with the president and his team. we know lindsey graham's phone

calls to state officials. really all of that is largely protected for listens that could be debated. what i find fascinating is outside of that group with a small handful of all tra maga house must bes that are going to die on the hill that is donald trump. consider everyone around him, his senior leadership, his family, no one is out there defending donald trump in this moment. it's an intriguing thing. they're all cooperating, and i think we're going to find out that many of them might be giving the prosecutor the goods on the president. but nobody is actually out there defending donald trump. yet there is this disconnect. people closest to him, who got to see what he did day in and day out around the big lie and this alleged conspiracy, those are the ones who are not publicly defending him. but the big lie is still baked into republican party politics right now. i suppose you can suggest it's the power of donald trump's hold

over the republican party and republican electorate. but there is a disconnect. you're seeing it fray at the tops but staying as strong as ever in the base. the big lie is a truth in republican politics and sustaining donald trump in this current presidential run. >> katie, you had some of the earliest and still most important reporting about what trump's own appointees at doj were told to do. they were told by trump to declare the election fraudulent and let my "r" members in congress do the rest. the republican members have always been a black box. it's not clear that doj is going to touch that black box either. >> correct. and the justice department can't really go there, so you're right, this is an interesting situation that they touched upon, where you have republican

politicians understanding that their voters have decided to believe that donald trump won the election against all evidence, and they want to ride that waive and momentum. so it behooves them, it helps them to further it and to protect it. so while that might help them in the near term, certainly, it could help them as they go into this election season. what is so interesting is our institutions, whether it's the justice department, the courts, whether it's state legislatures, really do depend on people believe it is truth and believing the common truth. so by doing all that they can to continue to break that down in order for a short-term gain, they may never be held account able in a way that would be visible to the public. what they are going to do is erode the institutions themselves and get us to a point where elections are not adjudicated by voters but by the court of public opinion. i don't know that will work out for one party or another forever. so we're going in unknown

territory in american politics. >> liz cheney was never impressed with her republican colleagues, in particular kevin mccarthy. how eager was the committee to learn more than it was able to learn or what threads would you have hoped that jack smith would have pulled? >> yeah. i think miss cheney's great line was, you know, donald trump will pass, but your dishonor will remain, talking about her republican -- >> a stain forever. >> it's forever. look, we wanted to talk to them. we wanted to get inside of the discussions of the freedom caucus and the republicans orchestrating objections on the floor. we wrote letters to colleagues of my clients, the members of the committee asking them to come in and they refused. then we subpoenaed five of them, and they defied the subpoenas. it is difficult for congress to investigate itself. jack smith has a little bit more

potential tooling because it's a criminal grand jury investigation. there is a speech and debate protection, though, that members of congress can sometimes fall back upon. mike pence tried to assert this to prevent going into the january 6th grand jury and the judge overruled it because he's also an executive. so it is hard to penetrate the internal discussions of the members of congress. we wanted to go there. we do have some text messages and testimony from others about conversations with members of congress. but we weren't able to get any firsthand accounts from those members who themselves were right in the center, right at the end, in the middle of figuring out how to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. >> and many of them, either the sort of irony of it all is many of them were elected on the same ballots that they are now insisting were fraudulent.

none of it made any sense. thouk all so much for spending so much time with us. david things around. coming up next for us, a united states supreme court that, according to opinion polls, is in takedanger of losi public trust. we'll talk about what is next. w. (pensive music) (footsteps crunching) (pensive music) (birds tweeting)

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after last year's unprecedented decision to overturn nearly 50 years of law, if striking down the abortion protections in roe v. wade, it would be difficult to imagine a more precedent busting single term from the supreme court. but this year, the court's conservative supermajority may have accomplished that. the court has struck down affirmative action programs in college admissions, it killed joe biden's student loan program. it dealt a major blow to lbgtq rights by creating an exception to anti-discrimination laws, and it eviscerated the clean water act. while chief justice john roberts expressed concern over the public's dismal opinion of the supreme court, the court's reputation is a conservative chief justice' own fault. ice' ot

>> joining us now, attorney and founder of the site democracy docket, marcus elias. what is interesting to me is anyone who can read a poll can see that the supreme court is less popular than people who identify themselves as republicans. so while john roberts likes to turn his firehose of critique on the media or the left, he doesn't even have the full backing of all the people who identify themselves as republicans or conservatives. >> that's right. and, you know, what i found disturbing about the chief justice's critique, which by the way, i as a lawyer lament the fact that the supreme court has dismal ratings. but what i found distressing about his critique is that he blamed it on the dissents.

he said the problem is, people who are dissenting from these opinions are questioning the legitimacy of the scope of the court's jurisdiction, when he is taking no responsibility as the majority for convincing the public that they are right. so if the supreme court has dismal approval ratings, you know, that's not the fault of the dissent, that's the fault of the majority's inability to articulate and convince the american public that it's shown feely to the constitution. >> that's an amazing point. it's not as if the justices in the minority defend their comments. a lot of conservatives keyed in on sotomayor's comment about the stench. she's articulating that super conservative legislatures are manufacturing legislation for the sole purpose of having it arrive at the supreme court to be ruled on by these six

justices. it takes two to tango. they take what cases they want, and no attempt, they will dane to explain why they choose the cases they choose and why they rule the way they do. just as you said, they critique the justices in the minority and the dissent. >> yeah. i mean, there's no better example of this than the case out of colorado involving gay rights and the, you know, this somewhat manufactured controversy about a website designer. the supreme court only takes 50 cases a year. they didn't have to take a case that appears at least to have been made up or manufactured in some respect. you know, the person who claims that they didn't want to have to make websites for gay couples doesn't appear that really any gay couples wanted their services. the one she cited appears to have been terribly not true.

so why is the supreme court insisting on hearing these cases? they want the outcome they want. my point is, the chief justice can't then turn around and say the problem here is that the supreme court is suffering from a lack of public confidence, because the people dissenting from those rulings are dissenting. >> it's such an amazing articulation of what is the true primer for the court? they do use all of their platforms and the opportunities they do have to speak out to bash the press, to bash their critics, and to criticize barely obliquely the justices appointed by democratic presidents. i have to sneak in a quick break. but i want to bring in david in on this on the other side. we'll be right back. his on the . we'll be right back.

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when i finally could hear for the first time, i started crying. i could hear everything. call 1-800-miracle and schedule your free hearing evaluation today. we're bark with my guests. david, abc has some new polling on the supreme court that asks, does the supreme court rule on the basis of the law or on partisan political views? political views, 53% of all respondents. on the law, just 33%. 14% said they didn't know. again, the justices themselves speak out loudly and they sound very irritated when they do so about their -- the approval ratings are plunging. i don't know that there's an institution in american life whose approval ratings have plunged this far this quickly. but this is now settling in and

calcifying the public's disapproval of the supreme court. how do you think it plays in the presidential election in 2024? >> well, i think it depends on whether or not democrats are ready to act boldly. i think the american people have now caught on that -- on the conservative republican side, we're now four decades into a very layered and complex strategy where lower level lawyers have been working to mature certain cases in question that ultimately arrive at republican appointed conservative justices of the supreme court. and we're seeing that. and we realize now the behavior of the supreme court justices are because largely they have been beneficiaries of this decade long strategy. a well financed, deeply complex strategy. and finally, conservatives and republicans have been victorious in what they have tried to reach for so many years. the result is cases that roll

back fundamental rights and shake people's questions about is the supreme court expanding rights or opening up or closing society? so the question politically is, what are democrats willing to do about this? i think you have to go bold. put in front of the american people the democrats going to d this? put into the question to the american people the legitimacy of the court. if you believe -- that donald trump is promising retribution if he is to be president again, the recent decisions that rolled back voting rights and local rights, that democracy is in peril, it is not a hard case to make to the american people to legislatively reform the makeup of the court. there's historical precedence for it. the constitution doesn't say it has to be nine people, and politically as you point out, nicole, this is the court's weakest moment. this is the time the american people would be open to that question, do we expand the

court? and i would finally say to democrats, you also don't have any other choice. if you don't take a bold action like that you're 20 years from being able to reshape the court given the current anyone of the justices. voting rights, civil rights, equal protections, everything you can legislate around. also put in front of the american people the question of fundamentally reforming the makeup of the supreme court. >> mark elias, you get the last word on this. >> look, my basic point is this -- the majority of the supreme court has the authority to rule as it does, but it is not the job of the dissent to make them look reasonable. it is not justice sotomayor or justice kagan or justice jackson's role in the process to make sure in their dissents the majority, that is doing damage to the fabric of america and american democracy, that they look reasonable. so i think the chief needs to take stock of where the supreme

court stands, and rather than looking to his left, he needs to look to his right. >> mark elias and david jolly, a conversation that is very much to be continued. thank you so much both. quick break for us. we will be right back. don't go anywhere. tourists taking photos that are analyzed by ai. so researchers can help life underwater flourish. to a child, this is what conflict looks like. children in ukraine are caught in the crossfire of war, forced to flee their homes. a steady stream of refugees has been coming across all day. it's basically cold. lacking clean water and sanitation. exposed to injury, hunger. exhausted and shell shocked from what they've been through. every dollar you give can help

bring a meal, a blanket, or simply hope to a child living in conflict. please call or go online to givenowtosave.org today with your gift of $10 a month, that's just $0.33 a day. we cannot forget the children in places like syria, born in refugee camps, playing in refugee camps, thinking of the camps as home. please call or go online to givenowtosave.org today. with your gift of $10 a month, your gift can help children like ara in afghanistan, where nearly 20 years of conflict have forced the people into extreme poverty weakened and unable to hold herself up, ara was brought to a save the children's center, where she was diagnosed and treated for severe malnutrition. every dollar helps. please call or go online to givenowtosave.org today. with your gift of $10 a month, just $0.33

a day. and thanks to special government grants that are available now, every dollar you give can multiply up to ten times the impact. and when you use your credit card, you'll receive this special save the children tote bag to show you won't forget the children who are living their lives in conflict. every war is a war against children. please give now. you founded your kayak company because you love the ocean-

not spreadsheets. you need to hire. i need indeed. indeed you do. indeed instant match instantly delivers quality candidates matching your job description. visit indeed.com/hire finally for us, an update from overseas, russia's war on ukraine. russian missiles struck lviv,

killing at least five and destroying dozens of homes. the strike comes a day after ukrainian forces launched an overnight strike on a russian occupied city deep beyond russian lines. you can see the video of that blast here. meanwhile, news breaking of a high strikes and secretive effort to end the war. nbc news can report exclusively that a group of former u.s. senior national security officials have held talks with top russian officials, including foreign minister sergey lavrov discussing key sticking points between rush and ukraine in order to lay the ground work for negotiations to end the war. for today, that does it for us. thank you so much for letting substance abuse your homes during these executive order anywhere times. we are grateful. "the beat" with ari melber starts of a short break. don't go anywhere. a short break. don't go anywhere.

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welcome to "the beat." i'm ari melber. let's get right to it. as special counsel jack smith pushes for this december trial for donald trump, arraigned just over a month ago with his aide and codefendant walt nauta who you see right there also facing this indictment on conspiracy, lying and withholding classified documents. that once obscure valet and body man is back in the news. everyone saw him that day at trump's arraignment. these are shots where he's around trump or in the background. he didn't plead that day or the next week or the week after that. he did not enter his plea because there's a florida law in that district that you have local council. a florida lawyer had been beset by wariness of