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tv   Andrea Mitchell Reports  MSNBC  July 28, 2023 9:00am-10:01am PDT

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that wraps up the hour for me. i will see you tomorrow night on "nbc nightly news." you can always reach me on twitter and instagram. watch highlights from today's show online. thank you for the privilege of your time. andrea mitchell picks up with more news right now. right now on "andrea mitchell reports," new charges filed against former president donald trump in the classified documents case. we still await a separate likely indictment from special counsel jack smith on the former president's alleged attempts to steal the 2020 election. trump striking back today. >> people make up lies about me. i did nothing wrong. the pentagon and state department monitoring a dicey situation.
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we will have a live report from courtney kube coming up. bidenomics. the president in maine touting his economic agenda as fears of a recession begin to ease, according to some economists. we will talk to the director of the national economic council coming up. ♪♪ good day, everyone. i'm andrea mitchell in washington. a surprise development from the special counsel late thursday adding three new charges against former president donald trump in the classified documents case and naming a new defendant facing charges. special counsel jack smith issued the superseding indictment charging the former president with one additional count of willful retention of national defense information and two additional counts of obstruction, bringing the total number of charges to 40.
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the willful retention charge focusing on that top secret iran battle plan memo that trump heard -- we audio showing off during a july 2021 meeting in bedminster. n bedminster >> trump said there was no document, claiming he was just showing off newspaper and magazine stories. the indictment indicates that he returned that document to the national archives six months later. the only document he is charged with taking and then returning. mar-a-lago security video is key to the obstruction charges. that's where the third defendant comes in. he is the property manager, carlos de oliveira. de oliveira told a security employee that, quote, trump wanted the security footage deleted.
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prosecutors say they do not oppose trump and walt nauta waving the new charges. >> these people, these are thugs. jack smith is deranged. he is a prosecutor who has been overturned unanimously in the supreme court. vicious tactics. they went after two fine employees yesterday, fine people. i don't think they think the tapes were changed. these were my tapes we gave to them. >> joining me now is garrett haake, covering the trump campaign, of course, former fbi general counsel andrew weissmann, former u.s. attorney, harry litman and former district attorney of manhattan catherine christian. you don't get rid of surveillance tapes if you didn't do anything wrong. what is the most damning of the new charges? >> i think that the additional
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count of illegal retention of national defense information, count 32, is in some ways the most important in that the bedminster tape that we all knew about and that you referenced, andrea, is now not just described in the indictment, but in this new superseing indictment, that is the actual charge, meaning that the government now has a tape recording of the former president admitting the fact he had this document and that it was classified. he says, it is secret and that he could have declassified it if he was still the president but cannot. every prosecutor would love to have a tape recording of the defendant on tape admitting to the crime. that is what the government now has with this new superseding indictment. it's not just other crimes evidence, background evidence, it's actually the -- it's
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forming a separate count. then, of course, as you noted, there's an objection charge. you don't need to obstruct if you didn't do anything wrong. that is also something that amplifies the case. this is the second form of obstruction that is charged in this new superseding indictment. >> garrett, the indictment doesn't say whether the security footage was deleted or wasn't. it tells a story. they seem to have a lot of evidence. >> they do seem to have collected a lot of evidence from other witnesses and text messages that play a prominent part in the story they tell which starts in early june when the fbi showed up at mar-a-lago to collect the classified documents. agents noticed cameras and notified trump's attorneys that they were going to send a subpoena for that footage, after trump finds out there's a conversation between trump and other people. there are conversations about a
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security room to discuss whether they could delete it and the boss wants it. we know at least some of the security footage survived. it figures in the fbi affidavit that led to a search warrant for a second time. it's that footage of nauta going back and forth that plays a prominent part in why he was charged in this case. the effort to delete this video as a failure, it appears in the most important way. >> what do we know about the employee number four? >> this is another employee who is an i.t. worker at mar-a-lago who does appear -- i'm not a lawyer, it appears like is cooperating or in their testimony giving substantial evidence to justice department about these conversations. de oliveira is quoted as saying, keep this between us, the boss wants this. employee number four, whose name
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escapes me, as we learn all the new characters, says i don't know if i have the right to do this or we should do this. turned over -- he is quoted in this indictment, which means they were explicit in what they told the department of justice. >> these people, walt nauta and de oliveira, they are employees. they are existence -- for employee number four to stand up and say, i'm not going to do this, is significant. let's listen to all of what donald trump said from the audiotape that we have showing off the top secret iran battle plan in bedminster.
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>> harry, what does this tell you? how incriminaing is it? >> this is stuff we already knew from the first indictment, andrea. it shows clearly he knows there are rules here, he is breaking them. i think the separate piece, superseding sounds like it's a little bit of an add-on, we have a whole conspiracy to obstruct justice and it's about -- i would say it's the most mob-like behavior that i have ever seen from the trump organization. as soon as it happens, you have de oliveira going to employee number four saying, can we get rid of this? the next day, as soon as they find out that there is a -- they received a draft subpoena that says we're going to want the security footage, a 25-minute
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conversation ensues between trump and de oliveira. after it's over, there's discussions about, will de oliveira stay local? at the end, trump has a few moments where he says, i will get you a lawyer. this is sort of out of the sopranos. as you started by saying, there's no plausible explanation for this except people who are guilty and know they are guilty. as laid out in really lurid detail, it is mob behavior that's obviously designed to cover up criminal conduct. >> harry, we had this audiotape before. you could argue, as the former president did, that he is just shuffling papers, it wasn't what it sounded like it was, which is a classified document. do they in the intervening
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weeks, since they didn't charge this initially, does it seem as though they have some confirming witness to the authenticity? one of the staffers in the room, one of the meadows people who was in the room on the book, saying i saw it and this is what it was? >> it's great question. if i could talk out of school, the eminent andrew weissmann and others were discussing this at length. it's a little bit -- it's a little bit unclear. my surmise is that the people who were there helping the mark meadows ghost writing book were brought in and shown the document and said, i think that's the one. before it was carefully hedged as to even the existence of the document. they are now alleging it as a separate count. i think it's clear they have firmed up the case and it seems to me the way they have done it is with those people who were there at bedminster. we know the document was returned from mar-a-lago in the
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first january shipment. that's why they have charged it along with all the others as being retained unlawfully. >> in florida, in that jurisdiction. does the superseding indictment make this messier? you are adding another defendant. there's a delay while they get a lawyer, presumably somebody from trump world. then they have to go through all of their pre-trial arguments. doesn't this put in jeopardy even that may target, which was already right in the middle of the primary season? >> it doesn't make it easier. it makes it better. i think the headline is the boss wanted the server deleted. that wasn't in the first indictment. that is in this indictment. it also -- the importance of that 32nd count where the iran plan of attack is charged, it rebuts the false statement that donald trump made about how he was just waving around news articles and magazines that were
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highly confidential and secret. i have to say something to rebut about jack smith. jack smith's first job was in the manhattan d.a.'s office. he was assigned to my bureau. he was a rookie a.d.a. i plucked him literally and had him try a case with me. why? i saw in him that he was thoughtful, that he was smart, that he was ethical and he was determined. two decades later, i still see that. i haven't seen him in years. there's no personal relationship. i remember him as a rookie. i wanted to rebut the comments that the former president made about him. i think it's a better indictment. i think the trial will probably not happen in may of next year. that's okay. there's more evidence, there's better evidence. >> garrett haake, harry, thanks to all of you. andrew, we will come back to you
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if you will hang around. after the new charges involving national security secrets, what's the impact on america's intelligence information? "andrea mitchell reports" is back in 60 seconds. don't go away. don't go away. hi, i'm john and i'm from dallas, texas. my wife's name is joy. we've been married 45 years. i'm taking a two-year business course. i've been studying a lot. i've been producing and directing for over 50 years. it's a very detailed thing and the pressure's all on me. i noticed i really wasn't quite as sharp as i was. my boss told me about prevagen and i started taking it. i feel sharper. my memory's a lot better. it just works. prevagen. at stores everywhere without a prescription. tv: try tide power pods with 85% more tide in every pod. who needs that much more tide? (crashing sounds) everyone's gonna need more tide.
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it's a mess out there. that's why there's 85% more tide in every power pod. -see? -baby: ah. the new charges against donald trump are renewing concerns about national security and who had access to the classified documents that the former president was refusing to hand over and in one instance was showing off? joining me now is the top democrat on the house intelligence committee, congressman jim himes of connecticut. what do you make of the new charges that have been added to the mar-a-lago allegations? >> they are not surprising. of course, at the core they show the president allegedly engaged in a coverup, which is interesting because that in and
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of itself is a very serious crime. i'm not a prosecutor, but it shows evidence that the president recognizes that what he did was wrong. his defense -- he has had a variety. but one of the defenses is, i declassified the documents, there's nothing wrong. when you talk about erasing security cameras and that thing, it's clear you know something was wrong. >> talk about the man who fuelled the lock her up chants server, who is doing more against jack smith now and the whole sort of lack of reality of all of this. >> it's the ultimate exercise in projection. right? the republicans take the ma majority and they set up a weaponization committee. this is after a four year presidency in which every day president trump encouraged the
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fbi to investigate his political opponents, in which he was impeached because he held aid to ukraine, a country that was soon to be attacked by russia. he said to president zelenskyy, unless you give me dirt on joe biden, you are not getting aid. i could talk all day about this, the daily abuses of federal authority of the trump administration. of course, guess what? the weaponization subcommittee, the fever dreams of jim jordan and the maga extremists, not one shred of evidence. >> we have the hunter biden case. i want to ask you about that. the prosecutor says the investigation into the business dealings, which presumably include china and possible involvement, strongly denied by the white house, of the president and the former vice president of the united states, so using the name, the biden name to make money, basically
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conflict of interest. he is a private citizen. i don't know if there's a legal issue here. they are using that as a predicate for an impeachment inquiry. >> right. let me say something that you never heard a republican member of congress say in the four years of the trump administration. if hunter biden broke the law, he should be prosecuted. it's clear that he broke the law with respect to taxes and possibly the ownership of a handgun. he should be held accountable for that. if he traded on his father's influence, he should be held accountable for that. i am emphasizing this because you never, ever heard a republican say the same thing about donald trump or his family. to the question about impeachment, there's today zero evidence -- zero evidence that joe biden, the president of the united states, knew about what his son was doing. if -- if he did know about it, if he participated in that, then that's a very different conversation. if the president of the united states committed the kind of offenses that in the republican fever dreams they are saying he
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committed without any evidence, i will be in front of the camera saying the president should be held accountable. there's at this point zero -- zero evidence that joe bide season guilty of anything. what the republicans are doing is they are very, very angry that their guy got impeached twice. they are casting about for a way of visiting retribution on the democrats. >> i want to play what the speaker of the house said. they control the judiciary committee, which can start an inquiry. let's watch. >> i said impeachment inquiry. there's a big difference. let me explain it. maybe not everybody understands. what impeachment inquiry does when you vote on the floor, it gives you the apex of power of congress. there's still an investigation of the bidens. the only way you will be able to get information that way is to have the strength to be able to get the documents you need.
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>> you know as well as i that once you start an inquiry, you have a vote, unfailingly, in the case of nixon that prompted him to resign before he was convicted in the senate. you can't stop that train once it gets started. >> look, i generally come down on the side of, let's let the truth out. in other words, if there is the possibility of evidence of wrongdoing of any president, let's let the truth out. that is something you never heard a republican member of congress say in the trump administration. let's let the truth out. why am i confident we should let the truth out? every single conspiracy theory, whether it's the president helped his son in ukraine, turns out not to be true, when they say we have a witness that's going to show that joe biden got leniency for his son, that trump appointed prosecutor says it's not true. it's not true.
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it is not true. fine, let's get the facts. it shuts down the conspiracy theories of people like jim jordan. what you saw kevin mccarthy doing is a balancing act. he can't alienate the maga extremists. instead of saying there's no evidence the president commit committed a crime, he is saying we are doing an inquiry. >> jim himes, thank you very much. appreciate you being with us. president biden landing in maine this hour to tout his economic plan. the director of the national council of economics joins me next right here on "andrea mitchell reports." you are watching msnbc. mitchell" you are watching msnbc ays are coming. from august 7th to the 13th. now is the time to partner with our experts. get started today with verizon business. it's your business. it's your verizon. from big cities, to small towns,
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it's the mobile made free event-happening now. get started for just $49.99 a month. plus, ask how to get one free line of unlimited mobile. comcast business, powering possibilities. president biden travels to maine this hour. he is going to continue touting his economic agenda or bidenomics, as the white house is embracing it. the gdp numbers yesterday topping expectations at 2.4%. the federal reserve fighting inflation by hiking the interest rate this week again to the highest level in more than 20 years. the central bank saying it is no longer expecting a recession, but hinting at raised interest rates, rate hikes to come. joining me is the top economic advisor to president obama. she's a former top treasury official. it's good to have you on the
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program. thank you very much for being with us. i want to ask you about what your read is on the fed's actions, the rate hikes that could be coming down the pike, and whether you are afraid that might tip us over now that for the first time more economists are saying we may avoid the recession and have that long sought after and very rare soft landing. >> the data we have gotten yesterday and today is very consistent with a story that growth is up and inflation is down. if you look at inflation, it's down to 3%. it's the lowest it has been since march of 2021. growth was reported yesterday to be 2.4%, also beating expectations. so that combination, i think, is very encouraging. >> do you think that the fed is
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outdated in still trying to achieve a 2% inflation rate, given productivity and other factors? should they settle for what they've got? the wage numbers are high, but job growth is important, and you want to avoid a recession. >> you know, i think -- i don't want to second guess. that's an independent institution. what i can say is we have now seen unemployment below 4% for the longest stretch in 50 years at a time when inflation has come down very significantly to 3% today. that means that americans are seeing greater job opportunities. we're seeing more americans going back into the labor force. so participation has increased a great deal.
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it's at a 20-year high, which is also very positive. you can see that in consumer sentiment, which is also the best we have seen it in two years. so generally, i think you see a picture where we are growing the economy, bringing costs down for americans. that's what the president really has been emphasizing. and i think we are pleased to see that. american consumers seem to be pleased to see it as well. >> larry summers, who had top jobs in the previous administrations, a former treasury secretary to bill clinton, is again criticizing president biden's economic agenda, specifically what he calls manufacturing centered economic nationalism. he is talking about trade policy and antitrust policy and the like. let me play some of what he just said. >> i am profoundly concerned by the doctrine of manufacturing
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centered economic nationalism that is increasingly being put forth as a general principal. >> he is questioning whether that policy will lead it higher incomes in standards of living. your response? >> i don't know what doctrine he is referring to. i know that the president has an investing in america agenda. he is up in maine to celebrate that today. when we saw the growth figures yesterday, we saw the highest investment private sector investment in factory construction in 40 years. we know that the emphasis on infrastructure, where the u.s. had lagged for a long period of time, that's roads, bridges, ports, clean drinking water, high speed internet access, is
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an area that boosts productive across the board, and we are making big strides there, that americans can see in their everyday lives. we also know that it's really important to see a transition to clean energy and the incentives that the president passed in his historic legislation are leading to investments in clean energy, clean car technology all over the country. those are not only good for jobs, but they are also vital in terms of the future orientation of our manufacturing sector. >> do you have any concerns about some of the complaints from china about our sanctions, lifting some sanctions? they are upset about chips and other things, as their economy slows, which would affect global growth as well, potentially. >> we have been very focused on
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making sure that we continue to embrace the benefits that we get. we have a huge amount of investment in american manufacturing that is actually coming from our foreign partners. so we maintain a very open economy. we did learn during the pandemic that supply chain disruptions led to shortages and price spikes for american consumers. so the president has been very focussed on making sure we have more resilient supply chains and still have businesses. as a result, we are seeing inflation coming down. that kind of supply chain resilience means diversification. it doesn't mean de-coupling. it just means a more resilient economy with lower inflation over time for the american consumer and worker. >> it's a pleasure. i think this is the first time i have had the privilege of
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interviewing you. thanks for joining us today. >> thank you very much. rule of law, world powers urging a return to order after an attempted coup on the president of niger. a live report on the security situation there from courtney kube coming up next. this is "andrea mitchell reports." you are watching msnbc. reports. you are watching msnbc but my old internet, was not letting me run the show. so, we switched to verizon business internet. they have business grade internet, nationwide. (vo) make the switch. it's your business. it's your verizon. have fun, sis! ( ♪♪ ) ( ♪♪ ) can't stop adding stuff to your cart? get the bank of america customized cash rewards card, choose the online shopping category and earn 3% cash back. permission to dig in? granted. breyers carbsmart is so rich, so creamy, it tastes totally off-limits. but with only 4 grams of net carbs in every delicious serving,
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turmoil in niger in africa where the president of the
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country is in question -- his power is in question after an attempted military coup. today, a general appeared on state television claiming to be the president of a transitional council that tried to seize power. joining me now is courtney kube in the capital. the only u.s. correspondent on the ground in the country. the state department is saying this is a fluid situation and they are not calling it a coup. they say he is still the president. the u.n. ambassador spoke with him thursday. tell us what you know. >> reporter: that's right. if the u.s. were to declare this a military coup, as you well know, there would be a -- an immediate legal determination that would trigger a law that would make a lot of the aid that we are here to cover, that we were initially here to cover before the coup happened, it would make a lot of that have to cease and almost immediately.
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that's military support and training. that's critical right now for this area. niger is the last man standing in this region, in the fight against what is a growing threat from terror groups, that including affiliates of al qaeda and of the islamic state or i.s.i.s., who have been able to gain territory in and around west africa and coastal west africa. if the u.s. were to declare this a coup, that would have real security implications. as you mentioned, the head of the presidential guard services, they are the ones who two or three days ago began to hold the current president, the democratically elected president, in his residence. the head of that elite and well equipped unit is declaring himself the president. the u.s. still not recognizing him as any kind of leader here.
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>> i referenced the u.n. ambassador. she said they reiterated that the united states condemns any effort to seize power by force. courtney, this is happening as this country -- as you have been reporting so valiantly all week -- faces a humanitarian crisis. describe what you have seen, the people you have talked to. >> reporter: yeah, that's right. i don't think that americans can fully understand just how dire the humanitarian situation really is here. number one, malaria. we saw how usaid is on the front lines trying to stop the spread of malaria here. roughly one in three citizens will be affected by malaria this
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year. in addition to that, essentially the entire country lives below the poverty line. it's one of the poorest countries in the world. when you look at that and poor access to health care, very little electricity, when you look at all of that combined, it makes it a very vulnerable population to outside terror networks. when you have any instability like a government being overthrown and the potential for some military coup, all of that just makes it a more dangerous situation for the people here in niger. >> as you have been reporting -- let me reaffirm that contrary to what anybody might see online from russia, which is propaganda from the wagner group, as well as the putin kremlin, this is the one country or one country in africa which has not welcomed in the wagner group, the mercenaries who had been ripping off mali and other countries in africa for their wealth, mineral wealth, their gold, diamonds, to the -- richard engel reported
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billions of dollars being ripped off by the dictators welcoming in them as private security forces to hold down the people and enslave the labor force. niger has not done that. that's why u.s. security is trying to help them prop up their democracy. >> reporter: that's right. exactly. the wagner group has not been present here. there's a concern that already we have heard vladimir putin say the russians would be able to help restore security to this nation if necessary. the concern would be that would be with a mercenary group like wagner. then by extension, they might try to exploit the iranian -- the extensive uranium mining facilities here if they were to come in. >> there's a throwback to the cold war, geopolitical superpower struggle over the african countries. thanks to you. stay safe, my friend. your reporting is amazing. thank you.
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what's next? special counsel jack smith's investigation into 2020 and the election interference and january 6, it's far from finished. what do we know? what his team might have in store next. you are watching "andrea mitchell reports." this is msnbc. ming. from august 7th to the 13th. now is the time to partner with our experts. get started today with verizon business. it's your business. it's your verizon. so i didn't think i needed swiffer, until, i saw how easily it picked up my hair every time i dried it! only takes a minute. look at that! the heavy duty cloths are extra thick, for amazing trap & lock. even for his hair. wow. and for dust, i love my heavy duty duster. the fluffy fibers trap dust on contact, up high and all around without having to lift a thing. i'm so hooked. you'll love swiffer. or your money back!
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election could happen any day now after attorneys for the former president met with the special counsel thursday to discuss that possibility. trump denied his lawyers were notified in that meeting of a coming indictment. joining me now is justice and intelligence correspondent ken dilanian and back with us andrew weissmann. ken, in the classified documents case, the indictment came four days after donald trump's attorneys met with the prosecutors. can we use that as a template for the expected 2020 indictment? >> there are no hard and fast rules. i think that's a reasonable supposition, particularly because the last domino has fallen into place, that meeting between donald trump's lawyers and the special counsel's office, a source directly familiar with that meeting told us it was a final pitch by donald trump's lawyers arguing against his indictment in this case. this source did not think it changed any minds. all signs are pointing to this indictment being imminent.
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we don't think anything is happening today. we expect the grand to meet tuesday. we will be watching and waiting. the significance of this case is just enormous. as important as the classified documents case is -- you and i both cover the intelligence community. we know how serious this is about classified documents. the allegations about trying to delay and subvert the lawful transfer of power goes to the heart of our democracy. that's what we expect this case to be about. >> and andrew, from your experience, first of all, does the grand jury have to meet? could they have handed it up and been sealed and we could get it as early as monday? or would they meet on tuesday in the regular schedule and have something happen then? >> in theory, it is true, andrea, the grand jury could have met and voted and it is under seal. i don't think that's terribly likely if you are hearing an
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appeal from defense counsel. it would be poor form not to hear them out and then make a decision. so i do think the first realistic date that we could be expecting an indictment would be tuesday. one thing i would add to ken's note is that it is possible, as in the documents case, that the defense will ask to be heard by main justice, people outside of the special counsel's office, to say under the special counsel regs that jack smith has so abused his discretion under those regulations that he should be told to stop with this indictment. they don't have to take that step. i don't think there will be any merit to that. that's one thing that we could still learn. it would be done in very short order. there's no reason that would delay, for instance, any plan to indict on tuesday.
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all of that sort of procedure could happen even today. >> could jack smith have been holding up the 2020 indictment until after issuing the superseding one that we just got last night on the classified documents, even though they are not related cases? >> he could have. i don't think he would have. we think about the press and sequencing. i don't think that's how jack smith and prosecutors think. i think if that had been ready, that he would have had no problem bringing both at the same time. it is conceivable that you are right, that that's a possibility. i just don't think that's how he would have proceeded. >> andrew and ken, thanks to both of you. we have had a long and hard week. let's hope for a quiet weekend. thank you. vacation days, congress is out for six weeks now and leaving a very long to do list behind. what that means for critical
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it's vacation time for congress. house republican leaders have now started their august recess early forcing congress to push back plans to pass an appropriations bill to fund the agriculture and food and drug administration and other spending bills. that conference committee with the senate, which by the way is also now on recess, to work out
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major differences on the critical defense authorization bill just passed by the senate with an overwhelming majority. house majority leader steve scalise announcing thursday there would be no votes today. so now the house is on a six-week break and will not return until september. that's going to set off a scramble to fund the government before a september 30th dead lean. joining me now is nbc capitol hill correspondent ryan nobles and jonathan alter, the awe. >> usually longer than usual in the even years. the defense authorization bill is a huge mess, although the senate leaders seem to think they can get the house to defer them because they had 87 votes, i think, to pass it. you also have alabama senator tuberville's hold, you don't have a navy secretary about to
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be confirmed. you don't have a marine commandant, and by next month you're not going to have a chairman of the joint chiefs, and this goes all the way down. this is not just a minor thing. people can't move, kids can't start their new schools. families can't vacate their positions and be replaced by the nominees. it's a whole chain of command and readiness issue. >> and andrea, i can confirm that is a ghost town up here on capitol hill, and i'm wearing sneakers today. that tells you there really isn't any work being done. you're absolutely right. you have really painted the picture of all the work that needs to be done that won't be done in the halls of this building over the next six weeks, and the simple reason they decided to go home early is because they were in a position where they didn't have anything else left to do because there are so many areas of disagreement that the two sides need to work out before they can pass anything meaningful when it comes to appropriations, and then also with that national defense authorization act.
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now, i will say that yesterday before everyone left town, we did see the senate majority leader chuck schumer make a rare walk down through the rotunda into the house speaker kevin mccarthy's office where they did meet briefly and shoe marry came -- schumer came out of that meeting feeling optimistic they were going to be able to get some agreement passed before the deadline. kevin mccarthy said the last thing republicans want is to shut down the government. they're giving us a reason for optimism. you're right, andrea, as we await for them to return and really begin these deliberations in earnest. >> jonathan, you've covered a lot of american presidents and a lot of congresses. the average american does not get six weeks vacation. europeans get four-month vacations, you know, on average, but this is not an american
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tradition. >> no, and you can understand a big recess if it were an election year and they needed to go home and campaign, but it's not an election year, so they really should be taking care of the people's business. one of the interesting wrinkles to this is that for all the problems that senator tuberville is presenting, the senate has actually been functioning quite well by historical standards. they completed their appropriations work. it's the house that is totally dysfunctional, and they'll only have about 12 days in september to get it together before the government closes on october 1st so despite the optimism, i think there's a pretty good chance there will be another government shutdown. that's several over the last 30 years, the longest being in 2018, 35 days at the end of 2018, beginning of 2019. we saw one of that duration, andrea, some of the provisions
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from the debt ceiling deal that we all remember from earlier this year would kick in, and you'd have an automatic 1% cut across the board, discretionary spending, which would be about a $17 billion automatic cut at the end of the year if they can't come to terms. >> and ryan, the senate did pass that bipartisan defense bill yesterday, 87 votes. they side stepped the toughest issue of abortion access for service members, which was also, you know, a tuberville issue. is this setting up a clash with the house? >> it certainly is, especially when you take into account that one of the members of the conference committee when they reconvene in september to hash out the differences between the house and senate bill will be marjorie taylor greene, the fire brand conservative trump aligned congresswoman from georgia who has been insistent that she will not support a package that
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doesn't include these very conservative provisions like the one that you're talking about in terms of service members having travel benefits if they are stationed in a state where abortion access is limited. so just the fact that she's going to be a part of these deliberations means that it could be difficult, especially when you consider that the version of the nda that the senate passed last night is so remarkably different than the one that the he or she passed, not just in terms of the amount of money that the senate would prefer to appropriate but also some of the specific provisions within that legislation. so yes, this is certainly going to be a showdown and one that will be difficult to get oaf the finish line. the house foreign affairs chairman told me after the house passed their version of the bill he thought they'd be able to find some sort of common ground. we're not going to know for sure until the two sides get into a room and begun the negotiations. >> ryan nobles and jonathan alter, thank you both. have a good weekend if you can get some time off, and to all of
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you, thanks for being with us. you have a good, safe weekend. stay indoors if you can in air-conditioning. drink, watch for signs of heat stroke. it is very, very dangerous. and that does it for us for this edition of "andrea mitchell reports." remember, follow the show online, on fake and on twitter @mitch@mitchellreports,s jansing reports" starts right now. good afternoon, i'm chris jansing live at msnbc headquarters in new york city. devastating new details and a scrupulous time line. today the new charges against donald trump bring to mind an axiom from watergate, if the crime doesn't get you, the cover-up will. the superseding indictment in the special counsel's documents case alleges a cover-up scheme involving trump and his co-defendants to avoid turning over video that had been subpoenaed by prosecutors. it's a story of las