libraries an cooling centers are options. that can certainly go a long way. in sweltering miami, sam brock, nbc news. >> yet he's still wearing a black long sleeved shirt. good for him. maybe not good for him. that's going to do it for me today. "deadline: white house" starts right now. hi everyone. it is 4:00 in new york. i'm ayman mow mohyeldin. on friday night prosecutors asked federal judge tanya chutkan who is overseeing the case to impose a protective order to prevent trump from publicly releasing evidence that would be handed over to his lawyers in the discovery process. threats made by donald trump in what has become a years' long practice of tlept ning anyone who tries to hold him

accountable. in their motion for a protective order, the justice department says, quote, such a protective order is needed in this case the because the defendant has released statements on social media regarding witnesses, judges, attorneys and other associates in legal matters pending against him. in recent days the defendant has issued multiple posts, either specifically or by implication including the following which the defendant posted just hours ago. "if you go after me, i'm coming after you." the filing including a screen shot of that ominous threat. prosecutors went on to say, quote, if the defendant were to begin issuing public posts using details or, for example, grand jury transcripts obtained in discovery, it could have a harmful, chilling effect on witnesses or adversely affect the fair administration of justice in this case. that request by the special

counsel triggered a battle between team trump and the doj. here is how "the new york times" wrote this. john lauro, one of trump's lawyers, filed paperwork asking the judge to push back the deadline to object to the protective order until thursday. mr. smith's team shot back saying the government needed the order in place to start handing over discovery evidence and accusing mr. lauro of seeking to delay the process. the government stands ready to press send on a discovery production, thomas windom, one of the prosecutors wrote. the defendant is standing in the way. now, the justice department seemingly called team trump for a tactic they're expected to use in any of the criminal charges facing the ex-president. delaying any and all proceedings so a trial can't take place until after the 2024 election. the judge denied trump's request for that delay, and their

response to the proposed protective order is now due within the hour. all of this has been taking place and john lauro has been making the rounds on television, giving a preview of what we can expect as trump's defense. take a listen to what he had to say in response to comments made by mike pence. >> he said the president asked him to violate the constitution. >> no. >> he said the president asked him to violate the cons tukes which is another way of he asked him to break the law. >> he never said -- he never said. no, that's wrong, that's wrong. a technical violation of the constitution is not a violation of criminal law. that's just plain wrong. and to say that is contrary to decades of legal statutes. >> here is what january 6th select committee member jamie raskin had to say specifically about that. >> a technical violation of the constitution is a violation of the constitution. the constitution in six

different places opposes insurrection and makes that a grievous constitutional offense. our constitution is designed to stop people from trying to overthrow elections and trying to overthrow the government. in any event, there's a whole apparatus of criminal law which is in place to enforce this constitutional principle. that's what donald trump is charged with violating. he conspired to defraud the american people out of our right to an honest election by substituting the real legal process we have under federal and state law with counterfeit electors. there are people who are in jail for several years for counterfeiting one vote. if they tried to vote illegally once. he tried to steal the entire election. his lawyer saying that's just a matter of him expressing his first amendment rights. >> joining us andrew weissmann,

also former assistant director for counterintelligence at the fbi frank figliuzzi and washington investigations reporter jackie alemany. andrew, i'll start with you. i'm no lawyer. i'm not going to pretend to be a lawyer. but let's take lauro's comments here for one second. asking someone to violate the constitution sounds to me like you're asking them to break the law. >> well, that certainly is absolutely true. it is a separate issue whether they're violating a criminal law. and so, yes, if you ask somebody to violate the constitution, that is something that is a violation of law by definition because the constitution is one of our laws. whether it violates a criminal law depends on the criminal statutes involved. here, this isn't some technical violation. this isn't some arcane provision

in the constitution. this is, as jamie raskin very eloquently and clearly explained, something that's fundamental, and there is a whole series of criminal laws that have been violated according to the indictment which means there has been probable cause found by the grand jurors that this is what the former president did. obviously it remains to be seen whether it can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. this back and forth with john lauro, that's call it out for what it is. it's not a serious argument. by the way, this is what defense lawyers need to do. part of their job is dealing with the court of public opinion. in terms of a serious legal argument, i would be really surprised if that ever saw the light of day before judge

chutkan. it's not a serious argument. >> let me play a little more of what lauro had to say yesterday and then, jack, i'll get your thoughts on it. listen. >> at what point does he accept the truth that he didn't win? >> well, he believes he won. the biden administration will never be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he didn't. what he's being indicted for ultimately is following legal advice from as esteemed scholar, john eastman, that he could petition his own vice president and ask his vice president to pause the voting on january 6th to give the states one last chance to certify or reaudit. that was the ultimate ask that president trump made in his ellipse speech. that's clearly protected. >> you can see the contours of the legal defense forming here

with perhaps it resting on trump believing he had the right to say what he said. give us the overall view of what the defense strategy seems to be from lauro making the rounds over the weekend on multiple outlets? >> i think you laid it out in simplest terms which is the president at the time when he was president believed he had won the election and continues to believe that. it's actually going to be a central tenet of his claims and platform going into 2024, furthering this argument of his false and unsubstantiated claims of a 2020 election. we previously reported at the post a key part of the case that jack smith needs to make is intent. that's why you saw in the indictment so many examples, example after example of trump conceding to some of his top allies and the people around him

that the claims of election fraud were, quote, unquote crazy or that he conceded that he had lost, telling mike pence at the time that pence was simply, quote, too honest. that's why you see smigs making this argument. it's why you saw the argument being made in previous opinions that were released even before the justice department was looking into this, that at this point now, very well-known opinion by judge carter in california that said that trump and john eastman were most likely guilty of trying to defraud the american people because they both conceded at various times in correspondence and communications from other people that they realized to some extent the legal argument they were making was not as on firm grounding as they would now like to be arguing. >> andrew, just to button up this part of the conversation, even bill barr isn't buying the

advice of the counsel strategy. he said last week it was trump who went looking for lawyers who would basically tell him what he wanted to hear. first of all, give us your assessment of that argument. is that a sound argument to be able to say these are his inner circle advisers saying he had the ability to pressure mike pence, he had thebi reach out to fake electors if he believed he won that election. why do you think john lauro is doubling down on this strategy? frank, i'll come back to you in a second. my apologies. >> with respect to advise of counsel, i think one thing i try to do is separate out the different nature of the schemes charged in the indictment. there are schemes for which there is zero legal advice at

all. nobody said you can use fake electors and defraud electors and then use that to change votes. nobody said it was lawful to threaten the georgia secretary of state with criminal prosecution to try to get him to change the underlying vote tally in georgia. there's a whole series of things that are charged for which there was no lawyer saying anything close to advice of counsel. with respect to the power of the vice president, which is one of the episodes -- just one of the episodes, there is a lawyer who donald trump sought out, but in order to have advice of counsel, you have to show good faith reliance on counsel. that's where i think it's going to be very hard for donald trump to show that as a factual matter. i don't think he will testify. i don't think john eastman will testify in which case it's done, it's over. there's no proof that will be

before the jury. even if you were to have one or both of them testify, there is, as you say, this problem of literally keeping pat cipollone out of the room. that's not how you behave if you're trying to get to a good faith answer as to what the law is. you would have all the relevant people in the room. let's just think about how george bush or barack obama would have handled this situation where lawyers disagreed. you wouldn't go shopping and exclude the people whose advice, including your own white house counsel, were giving you. there's just a lot of factual problems with even the sliver of the allegations for which there is some reason to think there is legal advice that would not constitute advice of counsel. >> frank, thank you for your patience. let me get your thoughts on a few other aspects of the indictment, specifically trump's comments over the last few days. we talked about this many times.

january 6th, even by the fbi's own definition considered a domestic terror attack. we now have the man who incited that attack facing accountability while continuing to spew violent rhetoric against law and order officials in this country including the judge, including jack smith, the prosecutor. a dangerous moment for our country nonetheless. >> this is becoming a security issue. this is now not just a legal discussion but rather a security threat assessment that's going to have to occur in court with this judge and other judges in the future. we have somebody, as you said, who has a track record of inciting violence who is now trying to do it again. we're already seeing the evidence that it's working. even as "rolling stone" reported in an excellent piece recently, there's a site called the donald. that site is where people

gathered -- one of the sites that violent extremists gathered to help plan and execute the violence of january 6th. now what are we seeing on that site again? we're seeing people become very, very extremist and planning and talking about violence against pence, against the prosecutor, against witnesses. it's all coming from and being instigated by trump. there's another thing that will be even more problematic for a judge to deal with, and that's what i'm calling pressure by proxy. people like steve bannon and others in the trump circle who aren't necessarily in this court's jurisdiction who are already out there attacking pence. as discovery occurs, if it ever occurs, and all the evidence goes to the trump team and trump sees who is testifying against him, you're going to see this get worse and worse and eventually come right up to and cross the line with the violence, with the proxy, the

people doing it who the judge can't necessarily influence is where i'm concerned. >> frank, correct me if i'm wrong. the scary thing here -- people take trump's words literally, not just rhetorically. he has posted attacks on his truth social site. i can't imagine that judge chutkan will look kindly on the language being used, not just in terms of intimidating witnesses and perhaps trying to change the outcome of justice but to actually go after the special prosecutor and the judge and other officials. >> yeah. it's funny because we keep hearing free speech, free speech with regard to the allegations against trump. this actually is an entering free speech debate. how far can a defendant go before crossing the line and being held in contempt? how far can a judge go and say you can't do this, i don't want to hear you doing this online. this is going to be fascinating to watch. i don't think based on the track

record of this judge that she's going to have much tolerance for this. and i think eventually trump is going to be -- based on his track record, unable to comply with whatever she sets forth. >> andrew, i know when the news broke last week about the indictment, you were interested in knowing who the judge is. we obviously now know who she is. trump is calling for judge chutkan to recuse herself. what are the chances of that happening? how can it be that they have the audacity to call for the judge in d.c. to recuse himself, but the trump-appointed judge in florida not to recuse herself? >> i'd say the chances are -- if you said slim to none, i think that would overstate the chances. there is no basis whatsoever for judge chutkan to recuse herself. there are no facts at all. this is really just a public

relations issue. many people could view this as more than that involving donald trump's prior attacks on judges of color, of how he deals with women. there's not anything in the record at all -- when you think about the government's being very careful with respect to not seeking to recuse aileen cannon in spite of the fact that she was reversed not once, but twice by the appellate court for really serious errors, and they haven't done that. they're playing by the book. this is simply a way of playing the victim card again to a court of public opinion. there's zero legal basis for her to recuse -- a related thing

that's come up that you alluded to, there's no basis at all for having the case removed to a different venue. i've argued that a million times in court. a little bit of hyperbole. no basis for that either. >> jackie, there's interesting reporting by "the washington post" about the fake electors scheme. i want to read for our viewers just some of it. it reads in part, quote, the smith investigation into the electors does not appear to be over. in recent days federal prosecutors have issued a new raft of subpoenas about the elector scheme in multiple states. who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

>> -- in the indictment which i think was a bit overlooked as it was around 60 page last week and i think a lot of the attention went to some of the buzzier nuggets about the various co-conspirators and some of the new information that jack smith was able to dredge up, was some of the correspondence he highlighted between campaign officials about the language being circulated to the people in battleground states. campaign officials urged one another specifically to keep language that they had modified, that had basically said in pennsylvania in particular that the votes would only count if trump prevailed in litigation.

in these communications, campaign officials said basically, we don't want other states to find out that we have made this modification out of the discomfort that some of these fake electors expressed on a conference call because it would sort of undermine the entire operation taking place. so this allegation that campaign officials did seek to prevent electors from other states learning about this language is a key part of the evidence. >> jackie, andrew, frank, please don't go anywhere. we're just getting started. when we come back, much more on what the election case against the ex-president could look like in court. we'll look at the wide circle of republican witnesses for the

prosecution who could be making an appearance. fulton county district attorney fani willis likely watching all of this court action in washington. she's likely to bring actions against trump for election interference in georgia. we'll have the latest reporting coming from that courthouse just ahead. later on as we watch and wait for any response from trump's legal team, homeland security experts believe he remains a clear and present danger. all those stories and much more when "deadline: white house" continues after this. don't go anywhere. this don't go anywhere. you are just the best. it's probably because of that flea and tick medicine you've been ordering from chewy. we are very proud of you. you never stop surprising us, bailey. right? i'm great. you are great. i wonder if bailey's ever done a book report. be nice to your sister. what flea bit him? pets aren't just pets. they're more. this flea and tick season, trust america's #1 pet pharmacy. chewy. i'm jayson. i'm living with hiv and i'm on cabenuva.

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i have no plans to testify, but, look, we'll always comply with the law.

>> were you interviewed by the special counsel? >> i'm not going to get into any discussions. >> would you appear as a witness if called? >> of course. >> two of the ex- president's closest allies turned critics, his former vice president and attorney general saying over the weekend they would testify against him if called upon by the special counsel. it's clear from his federal indictment that jack smith's unprecedented list of potential witnesses will be so much worse than that for trump with both indictments referencing many of his closest advisers still today, some of whom are deeply involved in his current presidential campaign, including close aide and campaign travel buddy walt nauta who is, as noted, a co-defendant in the documents case in florida. from "the washington post," quote, at least seven current advisers to former president drum took actions mentioned prominently in at least one of the three criminal indictments or have been interviewed. they include his top

presidential campaign adviser as well as a senior communications aid and several campaign staffers. even the chairwoman of the republican national committee could be forced to take the witness stand. we're back with andrew, frank and jackie. andrew, robert mueller's investigation during which you witnessed the challenge for allies having to turn on donald trump. how does a prosecutor for jack smith get testimony from unwilling witnesses at this point? >> i think one thing that's important for people to note is that legally it's very different to come and be interviewed by, let's say, robert mueller's investigations or jack smith's investigators and complying with either a grand jury subpoena or a trial subpoena. what mike pence was saying in the clip he played is, you know, i obviously will comply with the law if i get a trial subpoena,

i'm not going to go into criminal contempt. i'm not going to say i'm disobeying the trial subpoena. one easy way you can get witnesses, you give them trial subpoenas and they're required to come and testify. obviously, if they were to testify falsely, they could also be charged with committing a crime. it appears with mike pence what happened was he was given a grand jury subpoena. he testified in the grand jury, he gave information. it appears from the indictment that he testified truthfully. in other words, he didn't say i don't remember anything or i didn't recall. he seems to have given very specific information. that would be the same thing with respect to mike pence -- the same thing with respect to bill barr. as you mentioned, a host of republicans who were allies of the president clearly gave evidence that formed the basis of this charge, and you will see those people at trial, and

either they will come on their own steam or they will be given trial subpoenas that will require them to be there. >> jackie, to pick up on "the washington post" reporting, it says one trump adviser joked last week, quote, my best friends are lawyers. tell us what's about to unfold for potential campaign staffers who will face the challenge of trump loyalty versus avoiding suspicions from prosecutors. >> my colleagues have a really great piece about all of the conflicts of interest. after all, the judge in florida did order trump and prosecutors to submit a list of people that they didn't want trump speaking to as a part of the case. they came up with a list of about 84 different people, many of whom actually still continue to work with trump. we obviously know walt nauta, but even his senior communications aide, one of his

top presidential campaign advisers. they are all with him day to day. this is something that might prove to be challenging for them not to communicate about, especially as now his legal strategy and his campaign straight gee has essentially become one in the same. the campaign has sort of agreed that it works to trump's benefit at least at this moment in time to try to weaponize these charges, playing into republicans' talking points. i the think this is going to prove to be an issue as we get closer and closer to trial dates as more discovery is released to the team and people are put in uncomfortable positions if trump realizes someone is disclosing information he didn't previously realize. maybe he threatens to cut off some of the money being funneled to lawyers that he's paying for to represent these aides.

if these aides are found to be witnesses in the case, that's going to be a big decision that jack smith is going to make. he's going to have to be fairly selective, in choosing witnesses who are not going to display favoritism to their current boss in some ways and are going to be able to stick strictly to the facts. >> frank, over the weekend trump posted his harshest criticism of mike pence so far calling him, quote, little mike pence and calling him delusional. there are going to be trump allies who are going to dismiss this and just say it's, again, trump being trump. but it's in the context of a special prosecution and an indictment. trump is now publicly threatening by someone who by any fair means is a witness in the election-related case. >> yeah, no question. i also think it will be a totality of the circumstances argument where literally jack

smith's team could put up on the wall as an exhibit for the judge posting after posting after posting, mostly on truth social by trump that all when thrown together was clearly an attempt to witness tamper or intimidate witnesses. i think that's the thread that's going to come together holistically. when you say, if you go after me, i'll go after you, and when later you post that pence failed in his job, and steve bannon is saying pence is a traitor, didn't do his job. all of this is a problem. the issue is whether or not law enforcement can do anything about getting out -- i know the fbi. i know the department of homeland security is monitoring all they can within legal means to see if they can get out in front of an incident happening.

it's likely we're going to see a lot of what is called knock-and-talk activity by the fbi, where they knock on people's doors, mostly predicated on the investigation saying, look, we see you posting this, we see you saying you wish this person was dead, we see you saying you were actually calling for people to arm themselves and take action. what do you mean by that? you're one hair away from being charged with violence or conspiring to commit violence. we're going to see a lot of that. lauchlt is going to go through a stress test and i think we'll be able to get through this. but lone operator, the lone actor that just is missed by law enforcement is what concerns most of my former colleagues. >> i'm sure it does. frank figliuzzi, jackie alemany, thank you. andrew, please stick around. we'll talk to you later in the show. still ahead, the latest out of fulton county, georgia, two more subpoenas have been handed out as part of the da's case

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that wasn't a threat at all. what he was asking for is for raffensperger to get to the truth. he believed that there were in excess of 10,000 votes that were counted illegally. and what he was asking for is the secretary of state to act appropriately and find these votes that were counted -- >> find. >> -- illegally.

hold on one second. that was an aspirational ask. he's entitled to petition even state government. >> all right. so that was the ex-president's lawyer downplaying trump asking georgia's secretary of state to, quote, find votes that did not exist. and potentially hinting at another defense, this time in the other election-related investigation by fulton county district attorney fani willis who we expect at any time to make her charging decision. some developments today on that front, nbc news has learned directly from two more people who say they have received subpoenas, former republican lieutenant governor jeff duncan as well as former state democratic lawmaker bee nguyen who was among the group that witnessed this in 2020. let's bring in "atlanta journal constitution's" greg blue stein. andrew weissmann is still with us. greg, what do you make of these

developments that b. nguyen and jeff duncan have been subpoenaed by the district attorney fani willis in this case? >> well, it's interesting who they're picking to testify before the grand jury because jeff duncan is a republican, but he is notably on a never-trumper route in georgia. he's spoken out repeatedly against donald trump's efforts to overturn the election. the other two are both former democratic state lawmakers who are front and center at these hearings held in georgia in december 2020, these legislative hearings that featured rudy giuliani and other pro trumpers promoting false election lies and conspiracy theories. that gives you an idea of where this grand jury is going right now. >> speaking of john lauro's

defense saying, you know, what trump asked raffensperger was simply aspirational and he had a right to do that. is that, in fact, a glimpse of their defense in the georgia case? >> that is a glimpse. that's one facet of the defense. we've seen throw everything at the wall, hope something sticks, legal strategy from donald trump and his lawyers. just a few hours ago, we saw a legal challenge from trump's team get thrown out by a senior sitting judge here in georgia. i think they'll try to do everything they can to derail this potential prosecution of the former president in georgia. if fani willis goes forward in the next several days, we see they'll take other steps to delay the proceedings. >> andrew, what do you make of lauro's defense that this was an aspirational ask and he wasn't asking him to do anything

criminally wrong by saying find him votes? >> so i don't fault for going on air because this is really a public defense, not a legal court defense, because there are two fundamental problems with what i'll call the aspirational defense, and that is, one, if you are merely asking the secretary of state, then you would have a very different kind of call where you'd say, look, i want to make sure you have not found any fraud. have you? if donald trump had actual evidence of fraud, that was his opportunity to present it, but to this day, he has not. so that is problem number one. problem number two which john stewed studiously avoided with chuck todd is the former president threatened brad

raffensperger who said, there is no fraud at all, said, well, you are playing with fire because we have criminal authority, and if you don't count these votes, you are subjecting yourself to potential criminal indictment. that is the president of the united states with respect to a sitting secretary of state in georgia. that is not an aspirational inquiry. that is a threat to get him to find more votes. so i think this is something that, again, it's something to play for the public, his base, that is not going to be at all successful in a court of law. >> andrew weissmann, greg blue stein, thank you both for spending time with us. greatly appreciate that update, greg. when we come back, ron desantis knows he needs to change the direction in his struggling presidential campaign, so he's finally now acknowledging something that donald trump has been unable to

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>> i look about the election cycles. 2018, we lost the house, lost the senate. 2020 biden becomes -- excuse me. we lost the senate in 2020. biden becomes president and has done a huge amount of damage. >> it is astounding what passes for political bravery in the modern republican party. the bar is so low that we're almost expected to applaud when florida governor ron desantis goes from what you just saw there, refusing to say if the 2020 election was not rigged and that it was free and fair to this in an nbc news exclusive. >> yes or no. did donald trump lose the 2020 election. >> whoever puts their hand on the bible on january 20th every four years is the winner. >> respectfully, you did not clearly answer that question. if you cannot give a yes or no whether or not trump lost -- >> of course -- of course he lost. >> trump lost the 2020 election.

>> of course. joe biden is the president. >> joining our conversation is tim miller, the writer at large for the bulwark and an msnbc political analyst. tim, it's great to see you again. it's official, 1,07 days after the 2020 election, ron desantis has bravely declared donald trump lost the election. it's kind of sad, but in reality he's tried to play it both ways for the past 1,007 days. who does that say more about? ron desantis or the republican party? >> i think it says a lot about both of them. you can go back older than that. during the stop the steal between 2020 and the inauguration, ron desantis was out there floating the possibility that maybe state legislatures could overturn the election. he wasn't as vociferous as trump was or some of the leading

insurrectionists were on the mall that day, but he certainly was in line with that crowd all the way through january 6th. he's changed his tune now. a lot of credit to dasha forgetting it out of him. i will say i was in iowa this past weekend along with her. i watched two speeches. he doesn't mention trump by name at all. he doesn't mention the election fraud. i think -- credit i guess for saying the truth eventually. but i think it speaks to the state of the republican party that he can only answer that question when crafted by nbc news and clearly make the argument you should pick me because the other guy is a loser. you would think that would be a winning argument. i think he feels like he can't make it because the republican party voters don't want to hear it. >> his campaign is in shambles right now. instead of the big lie, desantis

has tried to frame his campaign around a war on wokeism. we all know florida is where wokeism goes to diaz he repeatedly said. then you look at the latest "new york times" post saying candidates were unlikely to win votes by merely focusing on rooting out left wing ideology. when presented with the choice between two hypothetical republican candidates, only 24% of national republican voters opted for a candidate who focuses on defeating radical woke ideology in our schools, media and culture over a candidate who focuses on restoring law and order on our streets and at the border. it's never a good sign when your own voters, when the base of your party are rolling their eyes at your signature issue, the thing you proudly boast about every single stop you've had up until now. >> yeah. i wish they were rolling their eyes a little more. i think that speaks to the fact

that they want somebody that is going to give them a tangible look at what the next president would do, ayman. that's what they're looking for. you do hear at these events, you hear cheers for his war on disney. it's not like the republican they're looking for someone offering a hopeful vision. at least that might offer a potential off-ramp from trump. if you compare him to vivek ramaswamy, vivek, his whole stump speech is all about future, tomorrow, how can we fix problems. desantis is all about litigating these past beefs that he's had and this war on woke and the stuff he's had in florida, it's not aspirational and that's not what republican voters are looking for. and by the way, it's just -- how do you get to the right of trump on woke? rich lowry at the "national review," i'm not always quoting rich lowry but he said trump's out there making fun of the u.s. women's national soccer team and

attacking them. how do you get to the right of this guy for being too woke? you can't get to the right of him on wokeness. i think that shows the kind of rock and a hard place desantis is stuck between. >> listen, you brought up the women's soccer team. we're going to talk about that because after the break i want to get your thoughts on this petty and ridiculous attack from trump, who is supposed to be the cheerleader of this country, even if he is a former president. stay with us. stay wh itus tide is busting laundry's biggest myth... that cold water can't clean. cold water, on those stains? ♪♪ cold water can't clean tough stains? i'd say that myth is busted. (pensive music) t(footsteps crunching)e. (pensive music) (birds tweeting) (pensive music) (broom sweeping) - [narrator] one in five children worldwide are faced with the reality of living without food.

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a heartbreaking and agonizing loss by the u.s. women's soccer team has become culture war fodder for the ex-president. on sunday the dreams of a third consecutive world cup championship were shattered when the women's team lost to sweden in penalty kicks. the deciding shot crossing the goal line by just a millimeter. literally. how did donald trump react to the team's world cup exit? he celebrated their loss on truth social. trump blamed their loss on wokeness and took a shot at team captain megan rapinoe for missing her penalty saying "nice shot megan." rapinoe and the team have been targets of right-wing media for years for taking the knee to protest for racial justice and saying that they would not visit the white house if they won the world cup in 2019, which they did. we're back with tim. tim, it is hard to imagine a more tasteless response to a group of women who both on the field and off the field represent what is best about america. >> yeah, it is a gross response.

and it's also from the people who pretend to care about women's sports. you know, anytime the trans athletes issues come up. but then actually root against our women's -- america's women's athletes, make fun of the wnba. the whole thing is a farce. the interesting political thing for me on this is this supposed america first movement, this presents an opportunity really for democrats to actually be the patriotic party in a campaign against donald trump. he claims to be america first. they claim to be for america. but they seem to hate everything about america. they don't like the u.s. women's national soccer team. they don't like bud light. they don't like disney. they don't like silicon valley. they don't like hollywood. i mean -- what do they like about america? among the things that make the country great. so hopefully as gross as this is it can be the kind of thing that can be used as a political opportunity to continue to further push him to the edge. >> i was going to say it's america first but it's their vision of america that excludes

a lot of people. tim miller, it's always a pleasure. thank you for spending some of your time with us this afternoon. up next we've got some breaking news for you. minutes before that 5:00 p.m. deadline trump's legal team has responded to the special counsel's request for a protective order. we are going to bring that to you just on the other side of this break. don't go anywhere. is break don't go anywhere. when moderate to severe ulcerative colitis takes you off course. put it in check with rinvoq, a once-daily pill. when i wanted to see results fast, rinvoq delivered rapid symptom relief and helped leave bathroom urgency behind. check. when uc tried to slow me down...

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hi again, everyone. it is 5:00 in new york. i'm ayman mohyeldin in for nicolle wallace. the ex-president's legal team responding just minutes ago before today's 5:00 p.m. deadline to special counsel jack smith's motion for a protective

order arguing to narrow the proposed order to, quote, shield only genuinely sensitive materials from public view. the request came because the prosecution felt compelled to ask judge tanya chutkan to prohibit the defendant, here in this case the former president, from publicly disclosing evidence gathered during their investigation. the protective order motion apparently not enough to deter the ex-president from making more problematic public comments throughout the weekend as we saw and even today. he attacked judge chutkan, the former vice president mike pence, and of course the special counsel jack smith. this breaking news is where we start this hour. former acting assistant attorney general for national security at the u.s. department of justice mary mccord is here. editor at large for the bulwark charlie sykes. plus with me here on set maya wily, a former assistant u.s. attorney, now the president of the leadership conference on civil and human rights. and just to start off, you know, we are getting this document

just a few minutes ago. we were expecting it to be on time. i guess courts operate that way. so we got it a little bit early. but right before it struck 5:00. i know we're still going through the document but i don't know if you've had a chance to kind of glance at the it and the conclusion, the summary of what the argument the trump team -- that trump's team is making here in terms of why they don't want this protective order. >> yeah. and look, i haven't been all the way through this document, as you point out, ayman. but what is clear is first of all they're conceding there can be a protective order. this is not a blanket response that says you can't stop him from talking at all about -- you know, so we agree that there can be some -- thank you. some protection. but at the same time they're arguing that it should be limited to what they're calling sensitive materials. so haven't read the exhibit to say what they think those are and are not. but secondly, and i think kind of strikingly, trying to make

sure that they can share information even with people they are not paying as part of the defense. that's a big red flag to me because think about it this way. rudy giuliani is an attorney. well, if trump isn't paying him for legal counsel but they say we're going to treat him as part of our defense even though he's an unindicted co-conspirator, you can see many problems with why that might be concerning. so you have to ask yourself, who is it that they want to share material with who they are not paying as part of the defense? >> and we are just getting here as i mentioned the printout of the indictment, 29 pages. going through it in real time to get a sense of what the response is from team trump. but mary, i don't know if you've had a chance to look at it but one of the main things you see there on page 1, or certainly on point a, if you will, in the argument from trump's team is they say that the proposed protective order is overbroad,

basically saying that it just covers way too much information and they want to narrowly define it specifically to maya's point about some of the sensitive information that may be revealed throughout this. >> really it seems -- and i have just gotten this, and so i have barely, barely even skimmed. i've only looked at the headings. i can tell from the headings that this is really sort of an extension of the argument that they've been making sort of in public through the former president's social media posts and along with his own attorneys' appearances on multiple television shows over the weekend, which is this first amendment argument. right? the argument over the weekend is this is just a first amendment case, this is a case that's trying to penalize the former president for exertsing his first amendment rights, and this response to the motion for the protective order is basically if you issued this protective order this will infringe on the president's first amendment rights. he has a right to speak about this case and he should be able

to speak about documents that are provided in discovery that don't, at least to the extent they don't contain sensitive information, which as you were just discussing they want to divide -- define even more narrowly than the government would define that. so i think this first amendment theme is already in just -- we haven't even been a week since the charges, is a major, major theme of everything they're going to be doing to defend this case. >> yeah. and to mary's point, and you read between the lines here to get a broader sense of what the defense strategy for trump might be. and it does actually say it here when you look at page 2, maya, this is again trump's team that is writing this. they're making this, and this is what they write. "in a trial about first amendment rights the government seeks to restrict first amendment rights. worse, it does so against its administration's primary political opponent during an election season in which the administration, prominent party members and media allies have campaigned on the indictment and proliferated its false

allegations." >> well, first of all, mary is completely right. and what we're really seeing is the political weaponization of the first amendment. because we're seeing it become something that is well and far beyond what it traditionally is conceived of. because look, we've talked about this before. and andrew i think made this point earlier with you, ayman, about mr. lauro's laying out the defense tactics here. and it was very much to kind of suggest that there are no limits to the first amendment, that you can actually hide behind it in order to commit crime if you take it to its logical extension. i mean, lauro would not say that he was arguing that. but i think in essence they are using this process as much as possible to also talk to the electorate, particularly their base, and try to ensure that they're understanding this case in the way they want them to understand it.

and frankly it's not a complete or thorough or fair discussion about the constitution or our laws. >> charlie, if you thought that this was not going to be about politics, think again because it's clear from just skimming through this right now over the last couple minutes, the defense is intending on making politics front and center. again, i'm going to read an excerpt from page 4. "against this backdrop the government requests the court assume the role of censor and impose content-based regulations on president trump's political speech that would forbid him from publicly discussing or disclosing all non-public documents produced by the government including both purportedly and sensitive materials." again, they -- and in this document they make reference to thinly veiled comments by other political players talking about the indictment, and they are now making the argument that president trump's -- if this protective order was granted president trump's hands would be

tied in the political arena, so to speak. >> yeah. to andrew weissmann's point they're making argue thamts may fly in the court of public opinion or at least among republican primary voters, less likely to be successful in court because of course all conspiracies involve speech, all sorts of fraud involve speech. witness intimidation involves speech. what is really striking to me, though, is this -- just pull back the lens just a little bit. is the fact that last thursday the federal magistrate very pointedly told donald trump, you know, do not try to intimidate or influence jurors or potential witnesses. and what does donald trump do within 24 hours? he puts out a tweet, "if you come after me, i'm going to come after you." he goes full mob boss, full thug. and it felt like over the weekend as if he was almost trying to dare or bait the judge into taking some action that

would be able to enhance his ability to play the martyr card here. he wants to be able to say look, i am the victim. they are gagging me. they are silencing me. it is interesting -- it will be interesting to see how the judge responds to this. this is not part of this particular motion. but how far will the judge be willing to let donald trump going in using social media or his bully platform to go after and attack the prosecutors, insult the judge, insult the jury pool, and as he has so often in the past intimidate potential witnesses here. you know, she doesn't have to throw him in jail. but it would be interesting -- and iebd interested to hear the other lawyers on the panel comment on this. it would be interesting for the judge to call donald trump and his lawyers into the court and say can you explain what you mean by this, these threats? your threats of retribution. and why i should not regard this as an act of contempt of court. it would be interesting to have

donald trump have to explain that to a federal judge who's presiding over his felony case. >> mary, let me read for you an interesting passage here from page 9. it's headlined "other disputed revisions." and it's kind of revealing. and we'll get into it in a second. but part of it reads, "despite the extraordinarily limited time president trump had to prepare this response, we attempted to confer with the government in good faith over the weekend by sending our proposed revisions and arranging multiple phone calls. setting aside our general dispute regarding the treatment of nonsensitive documents, we had hoped the government would engage with us in a collaborative dialogue aimed at fashioning mutually agreeable language for numerous procedural and definitional clauses in the proposed order. unfortunately, the government declined the cooperative approach, refusing to provide any real-time feedback. ultimately, just hours before our deadline the government notified defense counsel it would oppose most of our

revisions. although time limitations prevent us from fully explicating every proposed edit, we address several significant issues below. once again, we believe it would be beneficial to set a hearing on this matter such that the parties may fully discuss each red line in sequence and address any concerns the court may have." that is a lot of legal language. give us the common sense, or the common version of that for most of us who don't speak lawyer. >> i think there's a couple of things going on there in what you read. one is that they are still bickering with the government about who is failing to cooperate with who. when the government came in with its protective order motion on friday night it explained it had originally proposed one on tuesday the day -- i'm sorry, wednesday august the 2nd, the day before arraignment, hadn't heard back from the defense attorneys until friday, two days later, and so therefore they felt like they needed to come

into court with their motion. when the defense attorneys on saturday asked for an extension to oppose the protective order, they claimed that the government hadn't been willing sneeshlg to engage with them and confer and the government responded saying yes, we have. so we are going back and forth with who is playing nicely in the sandbox and who isn't. and i think that's part of what they're trying to suggest, that they have actually -- were the ones being magnanimous here and that the government was not responding in real time. and i expect the government will respond to that if not in writing orally when they're before the court. the other thing they're trying to do is really, really pick apart this proposed protective order with red lines and get the court to, again, delay things i think by getting the court to hold a hearing on this and go paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, and entertain argument about each provision of what really should be a pretty

standard protective order. and i think this is part of the delay tactic. they're again requesting a hearing. on something that really shouldn't require a hearing. these protective orders, the first one the government proposed was based on one they had agreed to in the mar-a-lago case. the second one was based on one that a trump-appointed judge, judge carl nichols, had actually issued in another case. so these are not things the government was making up. they're things that are pretty standard. and i think this is really a delay tactic. and the third thing i would say is not specific to the portion that you read but i think is related to this motion as a whole. and again, i haven't -- or this opposition as a whole. and i haven't read the whole thing. but it seems to fail to acknowledge that mr. trump is now the defendant in an ongoing criminal proceeding. and they are treating this as if he is still just an ordinary citizen candidate whose rights cannot be restricted at all. and that's just not the way it works in the criminal law. rightly or wrongly, the law provides for on a showing of the

requisite predicate cause there can be restrictions on people. there can be restrictions on their liberty. many, many defendants in criminal cases end up detained pretrial. there can be restrictions on their speech. and i think that's something that mr. trump and his attorneys so far are not really acknowledging. >> all right. so you brought up a really interesting point about this being a delay tactic, and you actually have that right here on page 2. this is again from the filing just now from team trump and his lawyers. they write, "these chaotic events underscore why local rules allows 14 days to respond to motions and why courts generally disfavor the filing of motions before the parties have solidified the parameters of their dispute through good faith con feral. without a doubt the court's decision to vary from this default local rules and allow president trump less than one business day to respond to this important motion is a concerning development inconsistent with his due process right. president trump respectfully

requests the court allow the parties 14 days to respond to all written motions as lcr 47b provides and fundamental fairness requires." so it is -- delay is the name of the game, at least in this document. >> delay has been the name of the game across the indictments. so it is the standard m.o. we've seen it in mar-a-lago where the team explicitly asked that the trial not be held until after the election. and i think we're going to continue to see it, to mary's point. i just want to make one other point that's so important as we're looking at this protective order debate. it's if you look at the difference between, say, a joe biden as a candidate for president saying i'm not going to let trump win versus a donald trump putting out threatening statements saying i am going to come for you if you stand against me, those are very

different messages. and so the idea that a court can't look at i along history of behavior including behavior that donald trump took when he was president and roger stone was on trial to threaten people, the things he did to dangle pardons to try to influence witnesses, and so all of this is to say it's not like there isn't a long history of behavior here that is a backdrop, that helps us distinguish what's free speech versus witness tampering. >> charlie, an interesting point brought up on page 9. definition of authorized persons. and i ask that in the context of what it is saying. the government requests that the court limit disclosure of materials to only certain members of the defense team. one defense counsel, which it defines as counsel of record in this matter, and two persons employed by defense counsel. this limitation is unreasonable

and unworkable and not supported by any legitimate interest. for me as somebody who knows how the trump world operates it looks like they want to be able to take the material presented to them in discovery beyond the legal counsel team, given to surrogates, given to people to go out there and weaponize for their own advantage. >> well, exactly. there's no mystery about the strategy the trump team is going to follow. i mean, obviously delay will be front and center because they want to push this past the election. they want to disseminate this as widely as possible. and then maya pointed out just a little bit earlier. but i am also struck by sort of the asymmetry now of the communications and the political strategy. they do want to weaponize p. they have their surrogates out. you have trump's attorneys doing the full ginsberg on the sunday morning shows yesterday. and at least in terms of the messaging, jack smith is not going to be doing the same thing. he's not going to be on the shows. so i do think it's going to be interesting to see how this

plays out. they've adopted a strategy, sort of a high-low strategy. they're going to be putting their attorneys out making first amendment arguments. but then you have donald trump going on social media and issuing the attacks. and the through line on all of this is they want to delay this because for donald trump this is all about the politics. this is not about making a legal case. this is keeping this front and center, using this to get the nomination, and hopefully using the election to make it all go away. and i think we need to understand exactly how all of the these tracks are going to play out simultaneously. >> all right. you referenced that truth social post. very important point. i think in a lot of people's assessment it's what's triggered this, maya. and it's referenced here on page 7. footnote 8. "notwithstanding the government's claims otherwise, president trump's august 4th, 2023 truth social post cited on page 3 of the motion does nothing to support the proposed order. the government argues that based on this post there is a danger

that president trump might publish grand jury transcripts or other sensitive information, a provocative claim when searching for headlines perhaps but one that falters under minimal scrutiny." so it seems they're trying to downplay that because anyone who read that social media post saying "if you come after me i'm going to come aafter you," read that and interpreted that as a threat, as a possible example of witness intimidation. they're saying that is hyperbolic and that is not the case. >> except that we have seen and heard donald trump do that over the years. we have seen sadly too many politicians in his party adopt the posture of saying we are going to weaponize our power if we don't like what you do, if we don't like what you say, if we don't like the positions you take. i was just in front of a house select committee on weaponization of the government

which was really trying to argue that there was somehow a deep state while they were using the very powers of the committee and the powers of congress to shut down any discussion about what social media companies should be doing to protect us from hate and harassment online, which is one of the areas that is permitted under our constitution in order to balance, balance our right to free speech with our right to safety. you know, there is a gray area. there is a need to have a debate. but frankly, this isn't -- going back to mary's point, these are not things that are unknown or unusual in our judicial system. but we're hearing a very dangerous narrative that goes to the heart of trying to undermine confidence in our judicial system. but it's using it in a way that's also trying to tell us not to believe our lying eyes or ears about when we see

incitement to hate and violence for what it is. >> i feel like we're being gaslit in real time with some of these statements and assertions being made by trump's lawyers. maya, charlie, mary, please don't go anywhere. we're going to continue the conversation on the other side of this break. we're going to continue to go through this response from the trump legal team. and when we return, why a top homeland security expert is calling donald trump a persistent threat to national security. he's going to join us next. also ahead, how republicans in the key battleground state of ohio are subverting democracy, trying to raise the threshold for state ballot measures on abortion because they're way out of step with the voters. "deadline: white house" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. 's what i'm t'! (josh allen) is this your plan to watch the game today? (hero fan) uh, yea. i have to watch my neighbors' nfl sunday ticket. (josh allen) it's not your best plan. but you know what is? myplan from verizon. switch now and they'll give you nfl sunday ticket from youtubetv, on them. (hero fan) this plan is amazing! (josh allen) another amazing plan, backing away from here very slowly.

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donald trump's lawyers wanting a narrower protective order than the one requested by the special counsel underscores the ex-president's threats to both our nation's democracy and to our rule of law. in a new piece in politico homeland security expert donnell harvin points out that to name a political figure or any prominent u.s. person in a domestic intelligence assessment is taboo. but he says the threat from donald trump is too great not to. he writes, "violent groups and individuals are drawn to trump because he does not reject and in many cases defends their varied ideologies. a trial and conviction of trump could expand the number of disaffected and radicalized citizens who see violence as the only means to solve perceived political and societal wrongs." harvin says the ex-president presents a threat greater than ones from our foreign

adversaries. "he has become an ideology, one that tens of millions of americans embrace. many are willing to commit acts of violence, go to prison, forfeit their marriages and relationships and even die for. how can any foreign adversary be more dangerous to us than ourselves? it is why our adversaries expend great effort at sowing domestic division with elaborate and sophisticated mis- and disinformation campaigns. meanwhile, an update from the special counsel's office in just the last hour. former nypd commissioner and long-time associate of rudy giuliani bernie kerik met with investigators in smith's office today. that is according to his attorney, who said the meeting lasted for about five hours and focused on giuliani's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. joining our conversation, donell harvin, former chief of homeland security and intelligence for washington, d.c. donell, it's great to have you with us. speak to us a little bit about your piece and why you view a

thrice-indicted donald trump as such a danger to the national security of our country. >> well, the conversation you had on the other side of the commercial break was fascinating. it really talks about the things that he does to incite his base. quite frankly, we've seen this for quite some time. what we see is just a mere violent threat will come from truth social. i'll just give you an example. several weeks ago donald trump tweeted out former president obama's home address. and within short order one of his supporters loaded up his car, drove from north carolina to washington, d.c. with several weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. it was interdicted by the secret service while making threats against the former president. so words have impact. and what we've seen is the radicalization of what we call normal law-abiding citizens. we saw that on january 6th where

thousands of individuals who have been charged, very few of them had a prior criminal record. so we see people willing to give up their freedoms to really join this movement. and it's quite dangerous. >> the language of demagogues is very important in this, and i want to read a little more from what you write about it. "of the over 1,000 individuals charged for attacking the capital, the vast majority have a minor or no prior criminal record and were by all accounts law-abiding citizens up until the day trump radicalized them. roughly 15% of those charged were current or retired military or public safety professionals, individuals sworn to defend the constitution and the public." talk to me about how he does that. how does trump have the ability to win over so much support for his lies? how is he able to convince people who perhaps have not committed other crimes to actually commit in the case of january 6th and others violent crimes in his name?

>> we've lived with violent extremists for decades. right? especially on the right. you can go back to the '90s, 2000s. eric rudolph, you know, the oklahoma city bomber. what we're seeing now, though, is not just these far fringe individuals. we're seeing regular individuals that are being radicalized. and what happens is there's a central theme in radicalization and domestic extremism, and that's this theme of aggrievement. this theme of someone's taking something away from you, life isn't going to be what it used to be for you, they're coming to get you. and you see these things play out in real time at some of these trump rallies. "they're not coming after me, they're coming after you and i'm the only person to stand behind -- in front of you." so what happens is you need this sense of aggrievement, this sense of existential threat to really mobilize radicalization, which is not illegal, to the pathway of violence, which is clearly illegal. and that mobilization process

happens in plain sight. online, with these posts, and individuals that would normally not be seen as, you know, mainstream, quite frankly our political environment's mainstream political violence. it's made it so over the last, you know, five or six years, okay to threaten people in the name of politics. and this is the place where they're at right now. >> mary, i've spent a lot of time overseas covering radicalization and terrorism, foreign terrorism. our government is equipped to dealing with that. perhaps not as good as we want it to but certainly we have the ability to designate organizations as terrorist organizations. how do we contend with what donell has laid out and this ability to radicalize and inspire lone wolf tacks as he mentioned with that possible case in d.c. going after former president barack obama? how do you come back from that from a legal point of view when you run up against free speech

concerns of americans? where do you draw the line between your right to express your disdain for the government and then crossing that line to inciting mob violence and terrorism, domestic terrorism? >> well, you've really zeroed in on one of the key sort of differences here between the program for countering international terrorism, terrorism that is generally sponsored by or motivated by a foreign terrorist organization that we designated under our laws as a foreign terrorist organization. for foreign terrorist organizations it's a poison pill to provide any support whatsoever, whether that's money, other goods or services, or one's own self as a fighter. so anyone who, for example, when isis declared a caliphate in 2014, anyone who sought to travel to become a fighter for isis or to provide other services to isis, anyone who sent money, anything like that could be prosecuted criminally.

because in large part of the first amendment spt rights to free speech we do not designate domestic organizations as terrorist organizations. domestic organizations like all domestic-based americans and other individuals here in the u.s. have first amendment rights. foreign organizations do not have first amendment rights. and even though violence and incitement to imminent unlawful activity including violence, even though that is not executived under the first amendment, if wur talking about an organization, an organization made you do things that are first amendment protected and things that are not first amendment protected. and in the u.s. there's no way to do an actual -- that would raise issues about why you are penalizing the protected things even though you could penalize the unprotected things. whereas of course with a foreign terrorist organization our law doesn't concern itself with those distinctions and the thought is any resources that go

to a foreign terrorist organization, even used for legitimate purposes, free up other resources for violence. so we have a different regime here, but that does not mean that there are no barriers on first amendment rights. as i just cased, that supreme court law, right? incitement to imminent unlawful activity. unlawful activity, viejs. fraud for example is not protected even though fraud contains a speech element. so part of what we are talking about when we're trying to address the domestic extremist threat is how do we use legal tools but also how do we counter it from a non-criminal perspective. and i think donell was really -- you know, i agree with everything he said in terms of what drives radicalization in the u.s., this feeling of being aggrieved, of victimhood. if others are doing better that must mean i'm doing worse.

that is where we have to come up with non-criminal tools to address that. unfortunately our elected officials and our leaders in many cases are actually contributing to the polarization and the radicalization and the mainstreaming of extremism rather than pushing wack against it. >> such an important point about how the politicians are also contributing and poisoning that well. mary mccord, donell harvin, charlie sykes, thank you to all three of you for spending m-some time with us this afternoon, helping us make sense of that breaking news. maya, please stick around. we've got a lot more to discuss. up ahead the anti-democratic move the republicans are pulling in ohio all to make it harder for abortion rights supporters to have their say. we're going to explain after the break. their say. we're going to explain after the break. we depend on each other a lot. she's the rock of the family. she's the person who holds everything together. ♪♪ it's a battle, you know i'm going to be there. keytruda and chemotherapy meant treating my cancer

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it's up to us between now and august 8th. we have an opportunity to raise the threshold to 60%. and some people say this is all about abortion. well, you know what? i'm pro life. this is 100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution. the left wants to jam it in there this coming november. >> that was ohio secretary of state frank larose saying the quiet part out loud, saying that anti-abortion rights activists are willing to dismantle their democracy to keep ohio voters from having a say. the amendment to the constitution which voters will decide on tomorrow would change the threshold for ballot initiatives to pass from a simple majority to a 60% supermajority. the initiative was an attempt by the legislature to defeat a

ballot initiative which would let voters in ohio decide whether or not abortion was legal in the state by raising the bar so high that the initiative could not pass. anti-abortion rights advocates should be scared. in every state since the dobbs ruling where voters have been able to weigh in on abortion, they have voted to protect abortion access against what legislators have been trying to do. more than 530,000 ohioans have already voted early. joining us is senior staff attorney for the center for reproductive rights and lead attorney in zeravosky versus state of texas case, molly dwayne. maya is also back with us. maya, let's start with you. walk" walk us through what is happening here. our viewers believe -- viewers i should say -- voters, excuse me, in ohio, it required a simple majority to be able to pass this ballot initiative to protect women's rights. so republicans and certainly those that are against abortion rights, instead of playing by

the rules, instead of accepting the outcome of a democracy have changed a threshold and are now trying to raise it to 60% making it nearly impossible for ohiotons pass the ballot initiative. >> you know, this is just rule rigging in order to silence the majority of the state. because that's exactly what this does. the ballot initiative itself is direct democracy. right? it's allowing voters to go to the polls and say directly what laws they want or don't want in this case in the constitution. and what i know and what they see is the polling in the state of ohio. and frankly this rule rigging started even before abortion because we saw it in the voting arena. making it harder for folks to vote. even as recently as january we have seen the efforts like strict voter i.d. laws. we've seen early polling sites close, voter roll purging. but all of this is really amounting to the same thing, which is minority rule over the

majority, and silencing voters because they know. they know what the polls are telling them. and i just want to say a the will bit about what's at stake, although molly can do this even better. but you know, let's just -- there are doctors who are not able to deliver emergency care to a woman giving birth, life at risk, without stopping the action and spending 15 minutes going through documents for approval because they risk potentially criminal prosecution. doctors around the state have been saying we have now been violating our hippocratic oath because people are in more danger now than they were when we had the right to deliver health care. that is what is on the ballot. and this is what the rule rigging is preventing voters to speak to directly including women. their own experience with their own health care. >> molly, this is a state that we should note where a

10-year-old who was the victim of sexual assault had to go out of state to receive abortion care. you've got clients in your state of texas nearly dying and had their ability to have children in the future severely impacted as a result of what is happening there. what are these legislators fighting to protect exactly? >> you'd have to ask them. but it sure is not pro life to me or any of my clients, right? what we know is that abortion is a winning issue. when voters vote on abortion it's a winning issue. from california to kansas. so really, as you said, they're saying the quiet part out loud. and i think what's interesting about this is that when the u.s. supreme court overturned roe v. wade they explicitly said leave it to the voters. and what we're seeing is that anti-abortion activists are not willing to stop at anything to ban every woman, every pregnant person from having an abortion, even if it's necessary to save her life or her health.

and that's what our case is about in texas. and there, even there the state is saying this case should not move forward, these plaintiffs should have and should continue in the future to be sick, at the verge of death, until they're eligible for an abortion. and guess what? voters don't like it. >> you brought up texas. i want to squeeze in a quick break, but i do want to talk to you about texas and why the state of texas is in this case trying to restrict women's rights even though the supreme court in that state tried to at least expand some rights for the time being. please don't go anywhere. please don't go anywhere

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i don't feel safe to have children in texas anymore. i know that it was very clear that my health didn't really matter, but my daughter's health certainly mattered. and that's heartbreaking. >> i just kept telling myself and my baby that i'm so sorry. she had no mercy. there was no mercy there for her. >> the reason why i might not be able to get pregnant again is because of what happened to me as a result of the laws that they support. >> all right. so that was the plaintiffs in a case seeking to get the state of texas to clarify just when doctors can intervene to save a woman's life or health under the state's strict abortion ban. on friday a texas judge actually ruled that the ban was too extreme and that women with serious pregnancy complications

should be able to receive treatment and that doctors should not face the threat of criminal charges. in yet another example of the cruelty being the point, the state attorney general immediately appealed the judge's ruling to the texas supreme court, which blocked the injunction from taking effect. we are back with molly duane, lead attorney in that case against texas, and maya wily is here on set with me. molly, i misspoke earlier when i said that the texas supreme court had made that decision. it's now gone up to the texas supreme court. but what was it like for your clients to have this victory only for it to be immediately snatched away by the attorney general -- deputy attorney general? >> i wean, it was truly amazing for my clients to have this victory. we're talking about people who have gone through unimaginable hell. right? watching their child die in front of their eyes. becoming septic while waiting for abortion care and losing their reproductive functions as a result. and you know, amanda zaroski,

the lead plaintiff in the case, said for a the first time in a long time she cried for joy. and when i called samantha casiano she told me the same thing. and what was similar was real women came to court and told their stories. and the staff for the attorney general's office had to look them in the eyes when they said your testimony doesn't matter, we don't even think you should be allowed to testify, and if anything it's your own fault for not being able to get pregnant. i mean, truly the arguments that they made in court were so offensive and inhumane that it was shocking to watch. >> yeah, the dehumanization, the cruelty is the point as we've been saying. molly, what are the next steps in this case? how confident are you that your clients will ultimately prevail in the state of texas? and if not what do you do next? >> well, it's a long road. as we know, we have litigated at the center for reproductive rights in texas many, many times. and unfortunately in state court

in texas an injunction is lifted immediately upon filing the notice of appeal. so we knew that this was coming but we were prepared for it. and we are prepared to fight this case all the way up to the texas supreme court because truly this is the bare minimum. and we think everyone should be able which is that you know, when a patient has a life-threatening medical emergency, when their health is on the line, their doctor should be able to provide medical care and should do so in concert with their medical judgment. isn't that what we all would want our physicians to do in the same situation? so the fact that the state won't even bring on this i think really shows how extreme their position abortion is, not ours. >> so let me pick up on that point, maya, which molly illustrates. we expect our physicians to do everything in their power to save our lives, certainly the lives of women when they're on the operating table. what is texas trying to defend here? what is the argument they're making about why a doctor cannot save the life of a woman?

>> i can't answer that question, ayman, and my mother is from texas. the reality is it's a fight over ideology rather than health. it's a fight over dominance than democracy. it is a fight that has very little to do with whether or not we believe in freedoms or whether we are going to have a regime that is going to tell people who they are, how they can live, what decisions they can make about themselves and their bodies. and it's why we have so many americans, including americans who themselves would make personal decisions not to have an abortion, right. this isn't about what your viewpoint is on a medical procedure. it's about whether or not the government should be in the bedroom with you, or the government should be standing between you and your doctor. telling your doctor what he or

she cannot and cannot do, what he or she can or cannot advise you or they will face criminal penalty. but thing goes back to both molly's point, both of what we're seeing in ohio is that we have some -- these are politically elected people who are making political decisions not decisions based on what a democracy truly is and what it means to have civil and human rights. >> and as you said earlier, it is against the majority will because the majority of americans do not support this. maya wiley, molly duane, thank you for spending time with us this afternoon. i greatly appreciate your insights. we're going have a quick break. we'll be right back. a quick brk we'll be right back. game today? (hero fan) uh, yea. i have to watch my neighbors' nfl sunday ticket. (josh allen) it's not your best plan. but you know what is? myplan from verizon. switch now and they'll give you nfl sunday ticket from youtubetv, on them. (hero fan) this plan is amazing! (josh allen) another amazing plan, backing away from here very slowly. (fan #1) that was josh allen. (fan #2) mmhm. (vo) for a limited time get nfl sunday ticket from youtubetv on us. a $449 value.

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prevagen. at stores everywhere without a prescription. in another legal loss in a lies the impeached former president, he dismissed the suit for comments she made on cnn after winning her sexual abuse and defamation case in may when she had been asked about the verdict finding trump sexually abused her but did not rape her, carroll said "oh, yes he did." judge caplan in his ex-president didn't make his case and her statement that he raped her is substantially true. in a statement to nbc news, carroll's lawyer roberta caplan said they were pleased with the decision and looking forward to the next defamation trial. that trial set to start on january 15th, the same day of the iowa caucuses. another quick break for us. we'll be right back. we'll be ri. ? liberty mutual customizes your car insurance...

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all right. thank you for being with us on this monday. "the beat" with ari melber starts right now. >> hey, ayman. thanks very much. welcome to "the beat." we're following some of the same late-breaking news. the big clash between jackson and donald trump. this is the first new trump filing since the arraignment, and there are threats and there is accountability for that. i actually a special report that we've been planning on that news, and that's coming up tonight. we actually begin with our top story and a special guest. it's an individual, an attorney making his "the beat" debut. he has a front row seat to some of these crucial legal clashes in this set of charges against defendant donald trump and the