making murder out of my -- nothing else has changed. . on eamon, four seasons of accountability for trump. we're going to dive into his trial packed calendar and take a look at all the cases we're all waiting for including fani willis's investigation in georgia. plus, fighting back. texas women are opening up about the harsh dangerous restrictions on that state. and john roberts won't fix the supreme court's epic crisis. and republicans in congress, they're giving him cover.

let's get started. donald trump has escaped accountability almost his entire life, but this year everything is changing. welcome to the summer of accountability, and actually while we're at it, welcome to the fall, to the winter, to the spring 2024, all of them about accountability as well. there's litigation, civil trials, criminal trials. everywhere you look for donald trump, there is a legal challenge. the latest calendar entry, may 20th, 2024. that is the day judge aileen cannon announced for the trial for the documents case for donald trump. we want to give you a quick recap of what they are. there's the trump organization civil fraud trial scheduled for october 2nd. the lawsuit brought by leticia

james claiming trump come kmited defraud only to get richer. two months later. e. jean carroll's second civil defamation suit will go to trial on january 15th, 2024. that same trial is going on january 29, accusing trump of a pyramid scheme. on march 25th he'll go on trial over falsifying records over the hush money case involving stormy daniels. wait. there's more. there are two more. jack smith's probe is into overturning the 2020 election and, of course, fanny will's fraud investigation down in georgia. trump has never been more legally vulnerable, and guess what? it shows. >> if you do something bad to us, we're going to do things to

you that have never been done before. now, trump shared that deranged video on his failed social media site this week. trump can run while hurling mafia-like threats, but the truth is there's nowhere for him to hide because even if he waves his right to testify in these trials, repeating his decision in that first e. jean carroll trial, even then his own words in that video deposition came back to haunt him. and while it's obvious this news isn't good for trump himself, it's also terrible for the republican party. the classified documents trial will start at the tail end of the gop primary calendar and he could already be by that point the republican nominee. by then the potential nominee will have been twice impeached, at least twice indicted, possibly more, and could face more fines and penalties as the focus of the civil and criminal

trials, and we know how trump feels about like candidates like that. >> we could very well have a sitting president under felony indictment and ultimately a criminal trial. >> if she were to win this election, it would create an unprecedented constitutional crisis. >> we have an all-star panel with us. lisa rubin, msnbc legal analyst, alicia grier and author of the book "black ethnics" and tim hay think. it's good to have all three of you with us. lisa, i'll start with you. what's the most dangerous trial? at least there are some in the pipeline, but the one wes know about definitively. >> there's no question it's the records case that's pending in

the southern district of florida. however, the two outstanding that you showed, the election interference and then fulton county, georgia, district attorney fawny willis's investigation, they're both serious in terms of time served and consequences. you look at it in terms of f what trump tried to do and how narrowly he almost got away with it. >> what about the trials going on at the same time? he has demonstrated he's able to spin everything to his advantage and certainly he can fund-raise off the back of these, but can it politically work for him as well? >> i think so, ayman. he'll be the victim and hero of

the story we talk about. he'll get a lot of free press. the money that he's raising from these individuals from the republican party cobbling their moneys, he's a master at getting free press and he'll go around the country as a snake oilman does. now they're trying to prevent me again, and then he'll start turning on people in his own party, essentially lumping them with democrats. and he knows his primary voters are very strong voters. he's intimidated people within his own party. so he's a hero at once storming through the country, protecting them, taking away other people's civil liberties on their behalf, and he's also the victim, which is why he needs their money and time and attention and vote. >> tim, as the former lead

investigator, what was your reaction to the target letter that smith sent to trump this weekend and how much was matched up to what you and your colleagues were able to dig up and find? >> we sent him a subpoena and asked him -- actually tried to compel him to come in and tell us his story which he ignored. jack smith is giving him an opportunity to provide information that would bear upon a prosecutorial position, not surprisingly his response to us, which was silence. jack smith is getting the same. the offenses are identified in the target letter, very familiar to us. we looked at the entire federal criminal code and recommended the justice department evaluate the justice department proceeding, 1512, conspiracy to defraud the united states, the false statement claim that corresponds to the fake electors, and we actually

identified aiding and comfort and insurrection. we did not identify the 241 deprivation of civil rights, although, i think there are a lot of statutes that were included that fit the core conduct. the key ayman is there a numbe of statutes that may apply not just to the president/former president, but conspiracy of others. the only mistress left here is who will be charged in the conspiracy and what will the counts be and how much detailed information will the indictment contain. >> lisa, we also learned this week the federal grand jury in the election interference case heard testimony from former white house aid will russell who was with trump on january 6th. you treated out earlier this week you actually talked to sources about his testimony. talk about what you heard and why might his testimony be

compelling? >> ayman, i want to make sure i'm clear about what it was that folks said to us. it wasn't so much about his grand jury testimony as it was about the lack of testimony either formal or informal that he gave to the january 6th committee, which as you know and tim knows well was extraordinarily thorough in covering the full landscape of folks involved in election interference effort folks involved in extremist movements. they covered the range. will russell was not only among those witnesses, but he wasn't a name that really came up at all. he's not mentioned in the report. at least in my review of the transcripts so far, he's not an entity where you would expect him to come up among people whose job functions were similar to his. so what it is he has to say to the grand jury, i think largely depends on what other folks who didn't come before the committee might say. that's a group of people that

includes mark meadows, dan scavino, and additional testimony that was protected from the community because of privilege issues, people like eric hirschman, pat cipollone. they gave more to the grand jury than they did to the january 6th committee, and those folks might have a sense of what will russell overheard and/or what the president said to him that bears on his knowledge or intent. >> chrischristina, let me talk the politics for a moment. i'm one of those who believes the republican parts is donald trump. donald trump is the republican party. many say there are many candidates still running and they make up, if you look at all of their support, you get the sense the republican party wants someone other than donald trump, but they can't make up who they want it to be. how stressed must they be and will it be the center of at

least five trials by then and have been indicted by at least twice, or do they not care? >> i think they're quite worried. ayman, here's the deal though. fortune favors the bull. have yet to see a republican candidate who comes out and bodily says this man cannot be our nominee and here are all the reasons why. they can run through the list of indictments and list all the reasons why by may 2024, i don't know if he'll be politically damaged, but what does it mean for the party and for our country. we haven't seen any candidates thus far who have the courage to come out against donald trump because they're so afraid of his primary voters and they're so afraid because they know donald trump will turn on them either attacking some weaknesses that they may have had politically in the past or making up lies,

which we know he is more than comfortable to do. so until the republican party can organize themselves and we can have a candidate or candidates, plural, who come together before they get to the stage, before they, you know, start really campaigning on a granular level, if they come out and start boldly saying it, then they will say. that until then, it will continue to be the party of donald trump. he will lead all the conversations, policy and otherwise because members of his party are, quite frankly, afraid of him. >> tim, i've got to get your reaction to this, speaking of spineless republicans. you've got former vice president mike pence saying while he found trump's words on january 6th to be reckless, he's not convince they were criminal. mike pence continues to defy every meaningful word about integrity, about principle, about moral character.

he continues to shock every time i hear him speak about this. >> a reckless candidate himself will be criminal. i think what the select committee found was beyond recklessness but purposeful. those are different standards in the criminal law. i think there's ample evidence that president trump and others had the intent to destruct the process. he spoke to an angry mob he knew was armed. at least some of the people in that crowd was armed. but the whole course of dealing beyond the speech itself to the multi-part plan to disrupt the joint session, that's more than reckless. that's intentional. that's the crucial question for jack smith. panel, please stick around, i've got a lot more to discuss afterward. we're going to take a focus on georgia where a fourth

indictment might soon await donald trump. don't go anywhere. n await donald trump don't go anywhere.

it is almost time. fawny willis has been investigating donald trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election in georgia. she indicated they would begin a remote period during the first three weeks of august. it's set to begin over a week from now. it's the likeliest time in which willis will or might announce charges of interference with the election to the public. the georgia supreme court denied trump's bid to disqualify willis from the case and toss ott the grand jury report that granted pressing charges. how significant is this time frame and the first three weeks of august, what potentially if anything could we hear from

fawny willis? >> i think we're all waiting for her to announce she's indicted the case. the grand juries that were sworn in earlier this month, they spire on september 1st, so the combination on that date and the letter she sent explaining the center of her staff will be home, will lead us to see if there's going to be an indictment in fulton county in the first couple of weeks in august. the bounds of that are somewhat up in the air, but increasingly there's a lot of chatter about fani willis bringing racketeering charges and adding dharjs that go along with it. >> of course, everybody remembers when he was being indicted down in miami. fulton county, the sheriff's office, sent people down there to look at security posturing around the courthouse and that

may be their way of preparing for that event yalt. christina, did trump's legal team ever have a shot of disqualifying willis from the investigation or was this some kind of delay tactic or forward fundamental fund-raising ploy? >> i defer to lisa and tim. trump and his lawyers do like theatrics, they like to lead in a court of public opinion especially if they can't lead in actual physical courts is. they're trying to lead. we've got willis in georgia, tish james in new york, al george in the district of manhattan. he's essentially trying to make the case these people can't be fair. they're african americans. they, of course, don't like me, so i was never going to get a shot. the facts are the facts though. we know that this former

president not only has cases spanning from florida to georgia to new york, but these are really serious claims, and so whether or not he will be indicted doesn't seem to matter to his base, though, ayman. many people don't know what indictment means. many don't care. and as long as they think he's going to give them tax breaks or build his wall or continue to take away rights and freedoms of people of color and women of color across the country, they're fine with it. so this is political theater for them. >> tim, based on your work with the january 6th committee and what we know from news reports, what do you think is the possibility that we'll see another trump indictment in this georgia case specifically? >> i think it's almost a certainty, ayman, that there will be an indictment very early in the spring of 2021. they were already assembling a

team, a capable team in my limited experience with them gathering the facts surrounding the attempts to essentially undercut the georgia election, and georgia is a really stark example of a pattern we saw happen all over the country. exhaustive research, federal government, federal government, and doj, evaluations of elections fraud and zero evidence being produced. nonetheless, the president and his enablers putting pressures on the officials including the secretary of state in that very famous phone call essentially telling them without foundation factually or legally that he ought to send this alternate fake set of trump electors, getting republicans to generate those fake electors. so i think the case, the fact about georgia specifically are so compelling that i think they constitute criminal offenses

that fani willis and her team will charge not just against people in georgia but the people in washington like the former president and others who essentially encouraged and facilitated the fraud. and, again, to be clear, it's a similar pattern we saw in michigan, that we saw in arizona, that we saw in pennsylvania, nevada, all the states. there was pressure on the republican leadership to do things that they just couldn't do. and thankfully there were a lot of principled republicans that stood up and said no. >> lisa, let me switch gears and ask you about mark meadows. "the washington post" reports in a text message that has been obtained by federal prosecutors, meadows joked about the baseless claim that large numbers of votes were fraudulently cast in the names of dead people. this text was sent days before meadows joined that infamous phone call between trump and

brad. talk about how this evidence might impact fani willis's investigation and why it might be significant. >> first of all, let me say that wasn't obtained just by the federal prosecutors but the january 6th committee. it ee publicly available. i tweeted it out and invite your viewers to go see for it themselves. it's significant because it shows that mark meadows participated on that call talking about the dead voters that the former president trump then made on the call with raft lis berger. he never said, no, that's not true, we never found that number of deceased people voting. we only found a handful of them. if i'm fani willis, that phone call coupled with the text message between mark meadows and eric hirschman could be evidence

of mark meadows's inten and his knowledge that claimed by the president by him and with his help were, in fact, false and mark meadows knew they were false the fall time. lisa rubin, christina greer, tim hay if i, thank you for your time. ahead, texas is backing the republican abortion ban that's putting women's lives in danger, but first richard lui. historic damages were billing after a russian missile strike. zelenskyy said there would be retaliation. wildfires rage in greece for a sixth day forcing nearly 26,000 people to evacuate from the island of rhodes. more wildfires breaking out today as temperatures reach 110

degrees. and a search continues for a 9-month-old baby swept away in floods last week. the infant's 2-year-old sister and mother have already been confirmed dead. it's led to an outpouring of posts on social media. more ayman with ayman mohyeldin after this break. yman with ayma after this break

children in texas anymore. i was very clear that my health didn't really matter, but my daughter's health didn't really matter. >> i'm so sorry i couldn't help her. she had no mercy. there was no mercy there for her. >> that powerful harrowing testimony was delivered during a two-day hearing this week on the legal challenge to texas's abortion ban. one of the plaintiff's in the case even vomited on the stand

while talking about her baby's fatal birth defect which also put her own life at risk as she was forced to continue carrying her unborn child. catiano is one of two women suing texas talking about scenarios that would be considered medical emergencies and would allow for a legal abortion under the state's har harsh restrictions. republican-backed ban went into effect in the state outlawing all abortions except to save the life of a pregnant person, but the procedure was already limited following the passage of sb-8 in 2021, and that banned abortions at six weeks of pregnancy. so the vagueness of this current exception, saving the life of a pregnant person, has left doctors afraid, scared to perform even medically necessary

abortions to save the life of a mother because the consequences of violating that law, including losing your medical license and facing up to 99 years in prison. and while this lawsuit is focused just on the texas ban, several states are facing similar crises. about half of the country has now banned abortion or severely limited the procedure, leaving women and doctors with few options. joining mu know is regina davis moss, president and ceo of in our own vierks reproductive justice organization and wendy good al mcdonald, a board certified ob-gyn based in chicago. it's good to have both of you with us. dr. good all mcdonald, i'd like to start with you. a witness who testified was pregnant with twins. one of the twins had a fatal condition called acrane ya, and the longer she carried the

fetus, the more it put the other twin at risk and we see clearly abortions are a necessary part of reproductive health care, how common are these types of complications, and as we are now well over a year into roe being overturned, what have you seen in your practice? >> so these kinds of complications are extremely common. the unfortunate truth when it comes to pregnancy is it can be just as beautiful as it can be harmful. one of the other plaintiffs in this case had a pregnancy that the service began to open and she was going to inevitably lose the baby, but she was not allowed and the doctors were not allowed to do anything to intervene which put her health at risk. it made her go into sepsis, which is an infection which infected her entire body and including her uterus and may not only have put her life in jeopardy but may have impacted her reproduction in the future.

in nigh state we're able to treat abortion as health care. it is life-saving. it can affect not only the life of the mother but in this case of the twins, this child that was to live and go forward. so it's really an unfortunate scenario taking place in texas. >> can i follow up on it quickly? what do lawmakers need to understand how urgent this issue is? i mean talk to us through, you know, the importance to have clarifications about exceptions so that abortions can be made when they need to save the life of the woman. >> so the challenge with a lot of these cases is that the legislation makes it seem as though the dealt or harm to mom has to be impending in your face, but we know as health care professionals, there are things that can happen in the coming days or weeks without intervention, so what i think needs to come for this

clarification is not only do these exceptions need to take place for high-risk pregnancies, it need to be understood they need to take these actions, but there could be inevitable harms. we're putting the life of mom and baby at further risk. >> regina, you had 19 republican attorneys general asking the biden administration to withdraw a proposed change to medical privacy laws that would ban doctors and nurses from reporting suspected abortions to law enforcement. in other words, they want the ability to continue prosecuting abortions even when it is outside of their jurisdiction. your reaction on how concerning this is. it is safe to say women no longer have a right to privacy in this country or at least in those states in expanding in this country. >> yeah. i mean what we're seeing here is just another example of what we call reproductive oppression,

which is the regulation of a person's capacity to get pregnant as a strategy to control not only people but communities and entire populations, and so when we see things like attacks on health care records and the privacy, you know, those things are meant to protect people, and doctors don't have to disclose that. so we're venturing into things that are meant to protect us, and, next, they're not protecting us. i would say to the lawmakers, you're abandoning your citizens when they're dealing with life-threatening pregnancies. this is a time we really need you. we need to hold our elected officials accountable. i'd also ad this is the experience of everyday women. we saw the heartbreaking testimonies, but that's happening all the time. that's why we have to continue to fight for bodily autonomy. >> it's not just the laws banning abortions harming women, but they don't allow for proper

time off after women experience the loss of their newborns. i mean in texas there was a woman who was denied maternity leave after delivering a stillborn baby which added injury to an already incredibly devastating tragedy. she had to use all of her vacation and sick time, receive short-term disability coverage in order to take the time she needed to recover from this, and in this reality, what needs to change about these parental and maternity leave policies across the country? >> we know we need pa rental leave and it needs to be paid. people need to care for their children, but they also need not worry about having to make a living wage and to be able to take care of and be attentive and fully present for their child. but i'd also add that, you know, we're not -- you know, when we look at these things, we're thinking about -- we're forgetting that these are people. we ought to focus on statistics,

but this is real trauma, and the reason that people seek an abortion, it's always urgent, but most of all it's private. and so what we really want to make sure is that we're supported people in this time when they've decided that right now this is just too much for me. >> as i was saying earlier, i think one of the things that's happening more and more, unfortunately the privacy of women in this country is constantly being oppressed. regina davis moss, dr. wendy good all mcdonald, thank you very much for your time and insights. >> coming up, the senate judiciary addresses the supreme court's growing ethical lapses, but will it go anywhere. g ethic but will it go anywhere.

roberts is dominating the term, congress is finally taking action. the democrats tightened disclosed and ordered them to adopt an ethics code, but that's as far as the code will go. the democrats have made it clear they will not support this legislation and it has no chance of passing in the gop controlled house, but some on the right are finally conceding that the justices have exhibited poor

decision-making and that roberts should take steps to address those issues. the fact that this legislation has even advanced this far shows how much the court's image has fallen in the eyes of the public and the americans become more aware of the intimate ties of conservative justices and partisan donors. "the washington post" detailed the dogged public relations campaign that conservative actionty vifrt leonard leo helped coordinate to defend and help celebrate clarence thomas. joining me now mark joseph sterns, senior writer. thanks for making time for us again some of why does it appear that only democrats care about these supreme court ethical issues? why does chief justice roberts, a man who claims to care about the legitimacy of the court not see them as a grave threat to his institution? >> you know t chief justice

always wants to be calling the shots for the entire judiciary and the court. remember, he's not the chief justice of the supreme court. he's the chief justice of the united states as he likes to remind people. he sits at the head of the entire branch. and any time he smells even a whiff of interference from congress, he gets his hackles up. he does not want to even create the perception that another branch could be intruding into the judiciary's prerogative, of course, all the while gleefully striking down laws passed by congress and enforced by the president. but to him, the supreme court and him must remain a bastian protected from all headwinds and i think he lumps ethics right in there with everything else. he views it as the very premise that they can strike down laws. he says if we're going to start acting ethically, we're going to write our own code and congress

sure as hell ain't going to make us do it. >> what can you tell me about "the washington post" about a campaign for clarence thomas apparently organized by leonard leo, an activist. he essentially guards their reputations once on the bench. if anybody needs that defended, corrected, rehabilitated, it's clarence thomas. >> yeah, so leonard leo, who is still as we speak the co-chair of the federalists society fronts a massive multi-billion dollar dark money network that he puts into action in various ways, and one of the chief modes of operation over the last few years has been to try to launder and bolster clarence thomas's reputation. the "post" reporting tells us a lot of new stuff, but some we already knew. it's no surprise he was one of several republican donors to

fund that ridiculous piece of propaganda created ee kwa that actually aired on pbs to the shame of that channel forever, i think, and tried to show clarence and ginni thomas who stand for the constitution. he's got the federalists society, a bunch of yore nations that were supporting trump's judicial nominees that runnades against joe biden's judicial nominees and they're taking money from this bucket as well, which is another reason it's no surprise they're vociferously looking at shining a light. >> speaking of ethics, i want to ask you about this reporting. you've got harlan crow eventually using his yacht trips with clarence thomas to reduce his tax bill. walk us through that. how did that happen? >> so harlan crow has claimed

that he has a company that is a profit-seeking enterprise that he uses to repair and refurbish his yacht, and by doing so, he is able to deduct a very large amount of money from his taxes based on the amount of money that business ostensibly uses each year. what propublica has turned up is it's all a lie. he services his yacht and his yacht alone. this is not a profit-seeking businessing it's not a business expense, but he's exploiting the tax code for his own purposes. the supreme court just literally took up a case that's designed to roll back the 16th amend. that's the one that allows for an income tax when you see clarence thomas hanging out with billionaire tax cheets, you sort of have to wonder if there might

be some overlap between the goals of himself and his friends and his personal life and the jurisprudential goals that he claims are rooted solely in the constitution. >> it's a very important point. it's great that you flagged it for us. but i do want to get your final thoughts on this news out of texas. mclennan county justice of the peace, diane hensley, filing a lawsuit after a state agency warned her about refusing to marry gay couples. she argued the supreme court's recent decision, the one with imaginary gay people at it should be able to discriminate against queer americans. this has opened a pandora's box with how they can now discriminate against lgbtq americans. >> right. what justice sonia sotomayor said. it only took a few weeks for

this texas judge to step four and say i don't want to be helping same-sex marriage couples and i now have a first amendment right to do so. it's not the last case we'll see of individuals who play some role in public life who simply don't want to interact with same-sex couples on an equal basis, and they'll use this decision as a shield to try to protect themselves against all legal ramifications when what they're engaging in is the most odious form of bigotry that for years our supreme court found to be incredibly on nuksous to the constitution and equal protection clause. >> incredibly. they knew this was eventually going to happen. always a pleasure to see you. ahead, alabama republicans refuse to obey a court order to make their congressional maps more fair. are we surprised. onal maps more fair. are we surprised

we have an important update to a story we brought you last month. the plan to redraw the map in georgia to give voters more power. the legislators' response to that, not unless we have to. the gop-dominate alabama legislature passed a map late this week that disregarded a lower court's directive, one reinforced in june by the

supreme court, that it should include two districts with a black voting age majority or something quick close to it when it redraws its lines. as ""politico"" reported, they came up with one that is narrowly majority district and one with just under 40%. in response chris england, a member of the redistricting committee said, alabama does what alabama does. ultimately what we are hoping for at some point is the federal court does what it always does to alabama, forces us to the right thing. courts always have to come in and save us from ourselves. the fight over weather alabama's new congressional map complies with the voting rights act of 1965 now shifts back to federal courts. republicans have to submit this

plan to the same three-judge panel that struck it down in previous districts. ja after the breaking, a preview of the documentary series "rainn wilson and the geography of bliss." don't go anywhere. geography of bliss. don't go anywhere.

some quick programming notes for you before we go. the fifa women's world cup continues this week, broadcasting live from australia and new zealand. this upcoming wednesday the national team takes on the

netherlands live on peacock and telemundo. don't miss supporting team usa as they look to qualify for the knockout stages. kickoff is at 8:30 p.m. eastern time. don't go anywhere. catch the first episode of rainn wilson and the geoff of bliss, the five-part documentary series following rainn wilson exploring some of the happiest places on earth while unpacking the science of happiness along the way. first on rainn's journey, iceland. >> you started as a standup comic and then kind of almost as a joke ran as mayor and served as four years of this world capital. were you playing a character when you were running for mayor or just in the beginning in. >> in the beginning. >> rainn wilson and the geoff of bliss airs next at 10:00 p.m. eastern on msnbc. it's streaming on peacock as

well. thank you for making time for us. you can catch "ayman" on saturdays at 9:00 and sundays at 10:00. have a good night. 10:00. have a good night. i think one more indictment against the former president will only contribute to that sense among the american people, and as i said, i'd rather that these issues and the judgment about his conduct on january 6th be left to the american people and the upcoming primaries and i'll leave it at that. >> i heard tim scott yesterday say, well,ite note really the president's fault. well, the president invited them there. he incited them by telling them the election had been stolen, and then he requested that they march up to the