nightmare. by the way, traditional, not to speak about that. i think they're handling a as always. we always appreciate your time. that's it for "all in" this wednesday night. you can watch velshi here. alex wagner tonight starts right now. good evening, my friend. >> hi, ali. i'm down at washington, d.c., the seat of action as it were and we have a lot to report tonight. >> i i'll be there. i'll be follow you tomorrow. >> see you tomorrow. and thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. do you remember jacob chancely? you probably remember him better as the qanon shaman. he was the gentleman the ran around on january 6th with the fur and face paint. when he eventually struck a deal

with the government he pleaded guilty to just one count. it is a count from a statute titled tampering with a witness, victim, or an inform want. and then there is this guy. remember him? he's stewart rhodes, the founder of the far right group, the oath keepers. the government tried nine oath keepers with seditious conspiracy and six of them were found guilty of it. but all nine were found guilty of at least one other charge, the same charge brought against the qanon shaman, and by the way hundreds of other january 6th defendants. it's actually one of the most common charges brought against january 6th insurrectionists of all. and the statute is effectively titled tampering with a witness, victim, or inform want. but the qanon shaman and all those hundreds of january 6th defendants, they weren't actually being accused of witness tampering. they were charged with a particular section of the

statute, corruptly obstructing an official proceeding, basically getting in the way of congress as it setout to certify the 2020 election by staging insurrection. all of this is relevant because today the three federal statutes listed in that target letter special counsel jack smith sent to former president trump, those statutes were described to nbc news by two attorneys with direct knowledge of the document. "the wall street journal," rolling stone, a bunch of places essentially have the same reporting. and that is one of the statutes mr. smith has informed donald trump may be indicted on has to do with tampering with a witness. just like the qanon shaman, and just like stewart rhodes of the oath keepers. now, we have all the descriptions. we all have descriptions of the federal statutes in play, but we

do not know what particular sections of each statute the doj is looking at. so that means this tampering with a witness charge, that could be exactly what it sounds like, witness tampering. it could be a charge about how trump's legal team allegedly tried to influence the testimony of witnesses like former white house aide cassidy hutchinson, but it could also be the same obstruction of an official proceeding section that the doj has used over and over again to prosecute january 6th defendants, the qanon guy, and stewart rhodes, the head of the coach keepers. or it could be both. we don't know a lot. but what we do know is this. the other two statutes were described to nbc news as conspiracy to defraud the united states and the deprivation of rights. conspiracy to defraud the united states certainly sounds like it could be referring to trump's fake elector plot, but, again we are a little short on specifics here. and for the potential

deprivation of rights charge, whose rights were deprived, and how serious is a charge like that? luckily for both of our sakes, we are about to get some expert legal help unpacking all of this and in just a second. now, unlike the general public president trump's legal team actually knows the specifics here as far as the exact statutes jack smith might charge mr. trump with. and that has reportedly led team trump to believe the counsel will prosecute a bigger case against trump than they were previously expecting. so, again, all eyes are on special counsel jack smith. today mr. smith's motorcade was spotted leaving his office at 11:35 a.m. it was again spotted at 1:10 p.m. between that coming and going a grand jury was meeting. the jury broke for the day at

half past noon. we have no idea what that grand jury is working on. the grand jury of special counsel jack smith's 2020 investigation have been meeting on tuesdays and thursdays. this is something you know when you watch this stuff carefully. what was special counsel smith doing at the courthouse on wednesday? well, could be a grand jury, could be a different case. if the past is prologue jack smith enjoys multitasking. more than a month after he indicted trump in the documents case we learned the grand jury in florida is still working. it is still investigating. it is still potentially mulling over more indictments in that mar-a-lago documents case. we know trump's codefendant in that case, his aide, walt nauta, we know nauta didn't get a target letter until five days after trump got his. nbc news has reached out to a number of trump allies involved in trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election, and so far we

have confirmation that rudy giuliani and lynnwood and mitchell and, scott perry and john eastman, so far we have confirmation that all of those people have not received target letters. again, so far. other individuals like jeffrey clark, who trump tried to appoint as the acting attorney general on january 2021 to help trump overturn the results of the election, mr. clark's spokesman declined to comment. and tonight there's a particular focus on people like jeffrey clark and john eastman and rudy giuliani, the lawyers in the trump bunch. and part of a rant on his social media platform, truth social, trump claimed tonight that lawyers and the legal system itself are under siege. he called that siege a gift from crooked joe biden, merrick garland, and deranged prosecutor jack smith. now, who knows what trump meant by that, but if i were a lawyer,

if i were a lawyer who had helped trump try to overturn the 2020 election, i might be keeping an eye on my mailbox. joining us now is barbara mcquade. barb, we're waiting for your shot. and also with us is the great lisa ruben. >> here i am. >> thank you, lisa ruben for saving my hide. let me first start with the notion that jack smith who's very busy and apparently can juggle a lot was at the courthouse today on a wednesday, which is not traditionally when grand juries meet, what does this signal to you? are we making a mountain out of a molehill or is there something to be inferred from that? >> it's hard to say. and i know that's an answer deeply unsatisfying to you and our viewers. one, jack smith went to hear from a witness in a grand jury that we didn't understand to be meeting today, and it's unclear

whether that grand jury would have been for the election interference side of the investigation or the records investigation. the other possibility is that jack smith could have attended a sealed hearing having to do with some evidentiary issue in one of those two investigations and felt it was important to be there in person. obviously time will tell why jack smith was there, but i think it was significant he was at the courthouse. he obviously can do the bulk of his work from the special counsel's office where he can interface with the various lawyers from his team. there's no reason for him to come to the courthouse unless there's a particular proceeding to observe. >> i think we now have barbara mcquade from the eastern district of michigan and of course our hometown hero. we were just talking about the fact he's back in the courthouse doing what exactly we're not sure, but nothing else. you know, the work continues. the witnesses continue to get --

testify in front of these grand juries. there is some suggestion there may be superseding indictments. i mean, my question to you is is there any risk of prolonging the time line here if these investigations continue and a presidential election is very much on the horizon? >> yes, i think one of the things that prosecutors have to be mindful of is not to boil the ocean. even in a case without an election at stake, there is a risk that as prosecutors supercede an indictments, they're pushing off an inevitable date for the trial. there's also a concern if the case is too complicated, it becomes too massive for a jury to understand or to try in a reasonable period of time. so sometimes prosecutors will forego certain charges. i've seen that in public corruption where you could have

charged dozens and dozens of schemes. to make this case simple and focused and the jury can grasp and can resolve in a reasonable period of time. >> to follow on that, there's three charges that have been floated in a broad sense in this target later from jack smith to donald trump. and i'd love to get your thoughts on the one that seems most mysterious to me, the deprivation of rights charge. what do you think that could be, barb? and what do you think that that -- what does that signal in terms of trump's potential wrongdoing and liability? >> i think that's one surprising all of us. the other two have been sticking around for a long time, but this is a charge that has been used historically when people have been deprived of their right to vote. the statute is one that was passed post-civil war and targeted ku klux klan members who were depriving people of their right to vote. so it could be a theory that by

trying to subvert the election donald trump and others were subverting the rights of voters to have their votes counted. i think there's some other theories it might be framing mike pence as the victim or members of congress as the victim and that by sicking the crowd on them that was on effort to subvert their rights to exercise the duties they had. but i think a better bet might be it was framing the voters as the victims here. >> lisa, that seems both kind of old thymy and novel at the same time, the deprivation of the rights being not a specific person but just the american public writ large. is that risky territory for it special counsel in terms of the novelty? >> you know, alex, it may be somewhere in between. earlier tonight, i took a look at how others like barb and me focused on this investigation for some time have looked into the deprivation of rights as a theory that could be advanced in the january 6th investigation. and indeed a number of folks

including dona perry who have been on this show and others wrote that a section could be used where the theory is not that every american voter was interfered with but that voters in battleground states where the fake electors were advanced, their rights would have been interfered with by convincing mike pence to disregard the legitimate right of folks in those 5-7 states. >> interesting. the conspiracy to defraud the u.s. seems fairly straightforward in terms of what that portends and what that actually means, barb, but what about tampering with the witness? we spent some time at the top of the show talking about how tampering with a witness may not mean tampering with a witness, sort of singular, but it's the umbrella for the potential obstruction of an official

proceeding charge. what do you think this might mean, barb? >> my guess is the target letter identifies the statutes of investigation without describing a whole lot of detail. and so the statute is 18 united states code section 1512, and as you mention there's an awful lot of stuff packed into that statute, and the title of it is tampering with a witness. so it could be that maybe donald trump or others suggested to a witness they not tell the truth or something like that, but it strikes me as far more likely it is instead 1212c, that is an obstruction of an official proceeding. so an agreement to do something to disrupt that joint session of congress on january 6th, which has been used again and again on many of the january 6th defendants seems a much more likely strategy here. my guess is there will be things in that indictment that may not be publicly known.

>> you, me, and everyone else in america. inciting an insurrection which was cited in the january 6th report, which was talked about in the model prosecution memo which we talked about on the show earlier this week or last week week, that is not in there. i think a lot of americans incensed about what they saw on january 6th are hoping to see a strong charge like the word insurrection in this charging document. what is your assessment of the fact that is not apparently in the -- the target letter that jack smith sent to donald trump? >> alex, earlier you were talking about novel charges. insurrection probably qualifies as a novel charge, not one that's used all that often. and my guess is to barb's point earlier about not boiling the ocean, the special department's office is trying to come up with a stream lined theory of the case base on statutes they've used again and again where there

is a history and not some novelty so they can say with a straight face this is not that complicated of a case. they have a small group of defendants i would guess and a fairly small number of charges and ones they've used before again and again with success, so they can sort of eliminate as many unknown as possible as they're going forward with this case knowing that this defendant is going to be hellbent on delaying and obfuscating as much as he can for as long as he can up until the november 24 election and perhaps beyond. >> yeah, i mean to talk about the sort of judiciousness with which the special counsel's office has approached this barb, it's noted thin three charges we heard about in this target letter, none of them seem to suggest that the feds would have to prove that trump knew he was lying when he claimed the election was stolen, which, at this hour seems to be his entire defense. i didn't know the election was stolen, therefore, i wasn't lying, therefore it wasn't criminal.

i mean, do you see a work around here in the charges that mr. spligt's office has chosen, barb? >> you know, when it comes to conspiracy to defraud the united states, i think you're going to have to show he knew that the charges was the false claim the election was stolen. i don't know they're going to be able to work around that. with obstruction of an official proceeding i don't think you have to know you actually lost the election there. anything you do to obstruct that proceeding is sufficient, and maybe even the civil rights claim, the deprivation of rights, it's enough that you tried to subvert the process. and so maybe that is the work around, that if they fail to prove donald trump actually knew he lost the election, there may be a way for a jury to reach a verdict of guilty on those other two counts without even finding that's the case. it happens all the tame in obstruction of justice charges. a person might say but i'm innocent so i told the person to lie for me. the fact you're innocent is great, but the part you told

them to lie for you is still a crime. so it may be this is a strategic call by jack smith to avoid having to prove that trump actually knew he had lost the election. >> lisa, i know i'm going to ask you the impossible but i'm going to dait anyway. we know there were three weeks between when trump received a target letter for the mar-a-lago documents case and when doj actually charged him, actually indicted him. and one wonders whether you think we're looking at a similar time frame here given the fact fani willis seems to be waiting in the wings in fewer than three weeks to announce her own potential indictments of the former president. >> you know, alex, it's impossible to say. i do acknowledge i think we're probably working on a little bit shorter of time frame here. ironically the person who brought in the wrap up witness last time, lawyer stanley woodward who was with taylor

budwhich miami, does that suggest we're at the end, not necessarily but we're certainly getting to it, and that may be when we know the end is really near. >> the end is really near and yet it keeps going on, doesn't it? barbara mcquade, and our great msnbc legal analyst, lisa rubin, ladies thank you there your time and thoughts this evening. when we come back, news of a looming federal indictment for the leader of their party has landed among republicans down here in washington. that news has landed with a thud. we're going to get reaction from senator elizabeth warren and my msnbc colleague jen psaki. stick around. y msnbc colleague jen psaki. stick around (man) mm, hey, honey. looks like my to-do list grew. "paint the bathroom, give baxter a bath,

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we've got one hope. a bomb. 4... 3... 2...1... they just fired a starting gun. news of a possible third criminal indictment for donald trump has not exactly prompted a lot of soul-searching among republicans here in washington. instead it has been more like wagon circling. house speaker kevin mccarthy suggested yesterday that the government is targeting trump to take him out of the 2024 presidential race. and georgia congresswoman marjorie taylor greene had some choice words calling the news

absolute bull, that's a euphemism, and saying the charges were ridiculous. trump has not been charged over january 6th. but in the senate that bastion of level headedness and deliberation the reaction to possible indictment has been met with either silence or criticism of the potential indicters rather than the indicted. >> i've said every week out a here that i'm not going to comment on the various candidates for the presidency. >> i think another indictment of president trump is even more divisive for the country. >> donald trump said repeatedly protest peacefully, protest peacefully. the idea they're going to indict him for contributing to violence on january 6th i think is ridiculous. >> join me now is senator elizabeth warren from the great state of massachusetts. senator warren, thank you so much for joining me in person here in washington, d.c. >> good to be here. >> i want to hear about the scuttlebutt in the senate now

that we have news of a potential third indictment. republicans criticize the department of justice or say nothing. do you get the sense in the hallways this is actually affecting them? there may be some sense of chagrin. >> they've got nothing to say. >> the play book it does not talk about the substance of the allegation but to talk about either the leakers or the government body or the institution but not really address the substance. do you think that is a strategy they can pursue for the entirety of let's say for example the election? >> yes, i do think it's a strategy they can pursue the entire time. they have so much practice at it, and they are so good at it. they just have constructed an alternative reality where it's not about what really happened on january 6th. what they experienced, what we experienced, it's really about,

nope, we all have read now the same story and we're all going to stick to that story and just answer consistent with the story. >> i know at the risk of sounding nigh eve about this, i'm old enough to remember the 2020 race, previous races in american history where members of the same party could disagree with each other when they could in fact level criticism at one another. do we have the amazing sound from when you were running for president and michael bloomberg entered the race? this is an champ of what can happen sometimes. >> i'm very proud of the fact about two weeks ago we were awarded, we were voted the most -- the best place to work, second best place in america. if that doesn't say something about our employees and how happy they are, i don't know what does. >> senator warren, you've been critical of mayor bloomberg on this issue. >> yes, i have. and i hope you heard what his

defense was. i've been nice to some women. that just doesn't cut it. the mayor has to stand on his record, and what we need to know is exactly what's lurking out there. he has gotten some number of women, dozens, who knows, to sign nondisclosure agreements both for sexual harassment and for gender discrimination in the workplace. so, mr. mayor, are you willing to release all of those women from those nondisclosure agreements so we can hear their side of the story? >> i remember being in the pressroom for that debate. my jaw was on the ground, but, you know, it was a substantive -- it was a super substantive, really important exchange. what you brought up is something that the democratic electorate at least really was interested in and needed to hear. how is it that can only happen it seems like on the democratic side of the aisle?

there's no internal questioning in the republican party at this point. >> i think there is a difference here. and that is on the democratic side, i'm not going to say we're perfect by any stretch. but there really is a disciplining effect not just from the leaders but the people. we say things wrong and when you do the fact check it's not that way, but the answer immediately comes from the people who follow us to say you've got that wrong. and so things that aren't true don't get the same kind of long, long life-span. we don't go out and by repeating it enough we will make it true. remember the old spoon benders? we will bend reality to our will, that for all our faults i do believe that what democrats trying to do is deal with the real world, trying to help people really and trying to hold

themselves to a standard of let's at least keep trying to get it right and talking about the things that will affect that reality and what we can do. >> it increasingly feels like on a host of issues that holds true, that democrats are intent on solving actual real world problems, and republicans are intent on standing on sort of ideology and creating sort of witness tests. and the example i point you to is senator tommy tuberville, right? here he is effectively blocking nominations in the military out of a sort of ideological fight about abortion provisions and payment for abortions in the u.s. military. the idea is that the u.s. military must change its policy on women's reproductive freedom in order for the military to staff up. >> that's right. remember what this is. the department of defense has said that if a number of the active duty military who has been stationed in a place

where -- that cannot get access or their immediate family cannot get access to reproductive rights, reproductive services that they need, then the military will say you can take time and go to another place and we will help pay for travel. that's it, all you're doing. when you get there, you will pay for it yourself and we heard today in the senate armed services committee testimony about 40 perts of the women who are serving the military right now live -- i'm sorry, not live -- have been stationed in states that have very limited access to abortion services and to certain other services they may need for example in the aftermath of a miscarriage. so this is the policy the department of defense has put in, an inclusive and important

policy and senator tuberville doesn't like it. okay, i understand it. there are lots of policies i don't like, but his response has been now for months to stop the promotion and assignment of the top officers in the military, all of whom have to be approved by the senate in order to take their posts. the consequence is we now have more than 250 people who are are blocked. we will soon, if this keeps up, have no head of the joint chiefs of staff. we don't have the commander of the seventh fleet, of the fifth fleet, cyber command, the u.s. marines for the first time in its history has no permanent person in charge. and you can go all the way through. these are people who have served their country honorably. and what former defense

secretaries as well as our current defense secretary on the former both democratic have said this is undermining national security. this is undercutting military readiness, and what the officers themselves say it's not just about us, it's all those mid-level ranks and junior ranks partly who look at this and say political football, i don't want to stay around this. >> wow. >> so this costs us, and it costs us every day it goes on. >> well, and it's a republican holding up the u.s. military, affecting its readiness on an issue that, by the way is absolutely terrible politics for republicans in terms of their extreme stance on reproductive freedoms. >> yes. and yet where are those republicans? who's speaking out and saying he's got to put a stop to this? and now tie it back to democracy. we voted in the senate armed

services committee, we just put together the military budget. i sit on this committee, i'm the head of the personnel subcommittee on this. so the republicans introduced an amendment to change that particular policy on access to reproductive health care, and it lost. this is, we had the vote in the committee and it lost. the majority says, no, we ratify the policy, the policy is what we here in the senate want to see. not good enough for senator tuberville to back off and say i may not like it but this is how it works in a dem ocrace. >> and you can apply that lesson and that position to a number of issues that the republicans have had to deal with including the 2020 election. it is fundamentally

anti-democratic. >> yep. >> senator warren, i live in new york city but i like coming to washington, d.c. because it means a chance to sit down and chat with you about many things. unfortunately, we are out of time for this segment, but thank you so much for your time and patience up on capitol hill. we're deeply appreciative. >> so good to see you, alex. still to come this evening, what happens when you spend the better part of three years telling your party not to trust the voting system? turns out not the best outcome for a party that wants to win the election using the american voting system. plus alexandria ocasio-cortez weighs in on house republicans defense of donald trump. that is next. se republicans defense of donald trump. that is next

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. we are not here today, unfortunately, because the facts have brought us here. we are here today because donald trump is exerting an influence campaign. in congress when he's no longer president of the united states. >> that was congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez today blasting republicans for weaponizing congress to go after the biden family while working overtime to shield former president trump from both actual and potential federal criminal charges. in fact, after trump announced yesterday he'd received a target letter from special counsel regarding that 2020 election interference, trump called

speaker mccarthy and republican conference chair elise stefanik to rally support for him among rank and file republicans. today speaker mccarthy said the call was not a strategy session but simply a call because he speaks to trump on a regular basis. mccarthy also told reporters he doesn't think prosecutors can criminally charge trump because the former president did nothing wrong. it is unclear if speaker mccarthy remembers saying trump bears responsibility for what happened on january 6th. joining me now jen psaki, white house press secretary and host of inside with jen psaki. such a delight to see you. >> welcome to washington, alex. >> thank you, my friend. i've got to ask there's so many reasons tuesday be alarmed by what is happening in the republican party. on a scale of 1 to 10 how much does it concern you trump seems to be calling in favors to republicans in congress and they seem to thus far be doing his

bidding. >> and they want to please him, they want to call him, they want to be on his good side. it's deeply concerning to state the obvious. and i think if you look at the hearing today as evidence of this, right, they are so wrapped around an axle how they're talking about the potential indictment of donald trump, which is worth repeating around not just an insurrection on our capitol that they all work in every day but also an effort to overturn the will of the american people they all represent. that is what is happening right now or potentially happening or could happen soon. at the same time they are bending themselves over backwards to try to come up with a whistle-blower who is viable to try to go after joe biden to kind of mince things together and make it all confusing. that's concerning in part because it's very political and politicized but also because they're in charge of the house of representatives, and they should be doing the work of the american people. >> and then also it sort of does

not foreclose the possibility that whatever happens in these federal criminal indictments there's going to be comeuppance if you will on the part of house republicans who are going to effectively truly weaponize the federal government to go after what they perceive as their group of enemies which is merrick garland, joe biden, and jack smith. do you think it's a conclusion all those folks are going to see impeachment proceedings or some extreme alarmist reaction to whatever happens in criminal trials. >> and let's not forget, it's been a long week but a lot has happened. but earlier this week there was an eye popping story in "the new york times" about what trump intends to do as president, right? which is to take control of all independent agencies of government essentially coalesce control under his own power. that means self- -- pardoning himself if needed. it also means being able to bend the will of agencies that have a huge impact on the economy, go after political enemies. he's basically announcing this is what i want to do as

president, and people in the party are saying we're with you and we want to do that now. >> a-plus, let's go. >> exactly. >> i think not to be alarmist in my own stand but people wonder how democracy ends when people who are potentially guilty of multiple federal crimes of subverting democracy have a party that is complicit in their future plans to further erode democracy and our american democratic institutions. that's how american democracy ends. it's like literally being foretold in public and no one in the republican party seems willing to stop it. >> that's exactly right. and they're fearful of their own republican future. if you were sitting here with kevin mccarthy and i don't know him well i will admit, i don't think he would say if he were not on camera that donald trump had nothing to do with january 6th or with overturning the will of the american people. he would not say that because that's not what he has said previously. many of them would not say that,

and that's not what they say privately. that tells you a lot about why they're doing this. >> that may be even the worst part of it all. jen, please hang with me here in washington. >> i live here. >> because up next the republican party push to get voters back to the poll early and gets a great big shove from donald trump. just one of the many challenges of having a twice indicted front-runner who can't help himself or apparently his own party. stay with us. himself or apparently his own party. stay with us

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you might think that if you were the target of the special counsel's investigation into your efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, you might think that you would be careful about what you said in public on the subject of, say, i don't know, election fraud. but if you did that, then you would not be donald trump. last night donald trump appeared on fox news at a town hall with sean hannity. mr. hannity was trying to get the former president to signal to his supporters despite everything trump has done since 2020 to undermine public faith in american elections that voting early or voting by mail is actually okay. >> do you now encourage and embrace early and voting -- voting by mail and legal ballot harvesting? >> i do, but i also have to say something else because the one thing a lot of -- they also

create phony ballots, and that's a real problem. that's my opinion. they create a lot of phony ballots. >> has your mind shifted? >> has your mind shifted? please, one more time, has your mind shifted? hannity there just trying to get trump back on track and off the third rail. it did not go well. >> will you encourage your voters based on the system we have to go along with the system of early voting and voting by mail? >> i will. >> i think if you don't it's a big mistake. >> i will, but those ballots get lost also. they send them in and all of a sudden they're gone. the answer is i will because you would like it. but you know what, can i be honest? >> i've got to take a break. >> but, sean, a lot of things happen to those ballots also. >> i've got to take a break. this guy is not helping out. trump cannot help himself. and while that exchange seems bad for trump considering he was doubling and tripling down on

election fraud conspiracies in public on television hours after revealing he's officially the target of another jack smith investigation, as bad as it was for trump, it is also a republican party nightmare. this, after all, this the hangover from the 2020 election, the one where republicans lost faith in voting in general and absentee and early voting in particular. and that reality is clashing with his other reality, the republican party needs people to vote, a lot by many means in order to win in 2024. so at the national level the rnc recently unironically unveiled a new campaign to encourage republicans to bank your vote, which encourages voting by absentee and mail-in ballots. at a state level republican general glen youngkin has unveiled a secure your vote initiative. and the republican party of ohio is launching a campaign to say it's okay to vote that way. again, both of these initiatives are meant to convince

republicans that mail-in and absentee ballots are okay. so the republican party has begun to realize the whole ballot fraud idea was electoral suicide, that apparently its head, donald trump, has not. we will have much more on that when my friend and colleague jen psaki returns to join me at this table. coming up next. join me at this table. coming up next now, i literally have the ability to take a shirt off and go out in the sun where i would have never done that before. try golo. it works.

sleepovers just aren't what they used to be. a house full of screens? basically no hiccups? you guys have no idea how good you've got it. how old are you? like, 80? back in my day, it was scary stories and flashlights. we don't get scared. oh, really? mom can see your search history. that's what i thought. introducing the next generation 10g network. only from xfinity. i know there's about dupuytren's contracture. i thought i couldn't get treatment yet? well, people may think that their contracture has to be severe to be treated, but it doesn't. if you can't lay your hand flat on the table,

talk to a hand specialist. but what if i don't want surgery? well, then you should find a hand specialist certified to offer nonsurgical treatments. what's the next step? visit findahandspecialist.com today to get started. if as expected special counsel jack smith indicts donald trump in the next few days, it would be his third indictment so far this year, and

we are only halfway through 2023, and thus far trump's strategy here appears to be blame the other party. on truth social trump announced today democratic prosecutors waited years, years to bring charges so they could interfere with the 2024 presidential election. for the record special counsel jack smith has been working on this case for a little over eight months. back with us to decipher what this all means is my friend and colleague jen psaki. jen, i mean what is the appropriate democratic response to this line of attack? >> can i just say first when you were reading that reminded me of what vladimir putin did at the beginning before the war in ukraine started which was to project and say the ukrainians are attacking us, as if you say it, it will make it true. i think the democrats there's a bit of a split view on this. if you look at the party committees the dnc is not talking about the specifics of the investigations.

the dccc is. the white house is not. >> does that reflect -- does that reflect a different political reality at like the congressional level versus the national level, do you think? >> the congressional level you're just much more into what's in your district and fighting hand to hand combat in some ways, verbal combat of course i mean. i think this will change once the election gets closer. now, just remember how joe biden ran for president in 2020. the heart of the nation, the soul of the nation. there's a way to harden the contrast with trump without talking about the specifics of the investigations. and he's going to have to do that. and i'm certain he will do that, which is there's one presidential candidate, one president who's going to stand up for democracy, who's going to stand up and protect the classified secrets of our country. there's one president going to stand up for the values and rule of law. that's me. that's the contrast right there, and you can harden it and do it more, but i expect they will do it, and he's not going to talk

about the specifics of the case because he's an institutionalist, and that is what tradition has been for a long time for a reason. >> i guess i wonder if that more of a complicated needle to thread to say i am a person that stands for institutional integrity and yet these institutions are operating completely independent of me. is that the complicating factor here because he can't look like he's involved in this, he isn't involved in it, but he also wants to say this sort of responsive protection of democracy is the work of my administration. >> that is true, but remember a lot of what trump has done was in the light of day. a lot of what he's still saying is acknowledging things he did in the light of day. and president biden can draw the contrast by calling out the values and talking about what he stands for versus what trump stands for. remember that's how democrats did better than expected in part in the mid-term elections is standing up for democracy against the ones who denied it.

>> okay, well, no one going to confuse the two candidates that's for sure. jen psaki, it is such a delight seeing you anywhere. >> i'll come visit you in new york. >> we'll do that. host of "inside with jen psaki" which aof course airs sundays at noon on nbc, it is appointment television. that is our show for this evening. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is coming up next. president trump did call me yesterday. we talk on a regular basis, and i called him back. wasn't any different than the time before. >> no, there was no strategy session of a possible indictment. i think the strategy sessions happen in the democrats department of justice where they go after anybody who's running against the president, it seems as though. and if you go up in the polls you're more likely to get indicted. >> that's house speaker kevin mccarthy sounding like, well, a donald trump social