like i am finally getting a little bit of closure in this indictment on some of the human drama we have seen laid out, particularly regarding the wor were -- and i mean this he wor specifically, who were terrorized, including having people storm into her home, people accost her neighbors. they had to go into hiding at one point before threatening to make a citizen's arrest of her all after president trump and his allies had demonized these two women, portrayed them as having headed up some sort of effect to defraud the electorate, and we've got multiple charges now, multiple federal criminal charges against people who allegedly tried to intimidate ruby freeman, who went to her home, talked to her neighbors, banged on her, who told her they were there to help

her when they actually were not. i wonder if you've been able to glean anything how much of a push back we have in the trump world with intimidating witnesses. >> yes, we know that donald trump and rudy giuliani really ruined these peoples lives based on the testimony we heard in congress last summer. they were willing to sacrifice their lies to achieve their illegal ends, at least allegedly illegal ends. i think its appropriate to see some measure trying to get them to confess they had actually thrown the election and cheated the election. an incredibly bold request to these women who resisted those overtures, and to see some measure of justice for them i

think it's really important because it puts a human face on who the real victim is in this case. it's not donald trump. it's not anyone on his campaign. it's all of us, all of the voters who would be would-be victims. and these are two people who really suffered, and i think there's a lot of jury appeal to humanize it in that way. it seems satisfying as someone who worked with victims, it seems satisfying to get some measure of justice. >> you are following along at home, if you can follow the qr code on your screen, you can see the link to the indictment itself. if you were moved by the plight of ruby freeman and shea moss who had their lives ruined by these attacks, not only physically threatened, but terrorized, you want to focus in on the indictment and counts --

counts 30 and 31 in particular and the defendants who are described in this indictment for having pressured them and for particularly trying to influence ruby freeman's testimony and her -- her role as a witness. let's go back to blayne alexander who is with us from outside the fulton county courthouse in atlanta. blayne, i have to ask if you're having that weird thing where like the test is over and immediately you get really tired and get the flu because you've been working this story for months and months and months and it's just hit with this indictment. i know you were in the room for fani willis' remarks today. this has to be a bench mark moment for you given how tightly you've covered this story. >> reporter: i appreciate that, rachel. but fortunately, the flu has not set in yet. i'm still running off of

adrenaline. absolutely, it was very surreal to see it come to this conclusion because when we were sitting in that room with fani willis right now, a couple things stood out to me. one, the fact she says she plans to try all defendants together, and i do want to make a note about that, that's more defendants than we were expecting. we expected this to be a sprawling indictment with defendants numbering in the double digits, but when i spoke with the special grand juryfore person she told me they recommended indictments against nearly a dozen people. the longest answer she gave was to the question for her to push back against the criticism former president donald trump had leveled against her, calling this politically motivated, a political smear.

it was very striking she was defending her work, she was defending her investigation, she was defending her team's work in all of this and really kind of defending the 2 1/2 years they'd all spent covering this against those claims from donald trump. rachel? >> blayne, thank you for that. this is -- this is obviously a developing story as we continue to absorb these various 41 counts and the stories behind them, i'm struck. i want to go to our friend chris hayes who's still with us about the specific charges that are up -- that are being faced by a number of trump lawyers and top advisers. chris, i'm looking at, for example, janet ellis, trump lawyer she's charged under rico like everyone else is. she's charged under one other count that includes giuliani, eastman, ray smith iii. which is essentially importuning

georgia state senators and then told those senators they needed to instead appoint the trump electors rather than the biden electors which would throw the georgia election to trump instead of biden. someone like janet ellis, someone like ken chesebro, someone like mark meadows, these are people who didn't participate in a million different parts of this scheme, they participated in a piece of it. sydney powell on the voting machines. jenna ellis trying to get the state senate to appoint trump electors, jeffrey clark with his part in terms of trying to get the justice department to play a role in this effort. do you feel like there is a materially different amount of skin in the game for these various trump allies that may play a role in terms of whether or not they decide to cooperate, flip, or try to get themselves

separate? or does this indictment this way have the effect of putting them all in the same boat and they all unify? >> so it's so interesting you ask that, because that's exactly what i've been trying to puzzle through and maybe want to turn around and ask the folks there and ari in particular. there's a few things that seem notable. first of all, this is actual real criminal exposure for these people. i mean they have been, you know, subject to disciplinary hearings in some cases about their law licenses. that's true of rudy giuliani and sydney powell. they have in subject to lots of, you know, castigation from the january 6th committee. some of them appear to be unindicted coconspirators with federal cases hanging over their heads but as yet not charged. today they've got to appear in court, they've got to figure out what defense strategy is. all this is suddenly very real for all of them. they've also got to figure out

whether they want to cooperate or plead. and the other thing i don't quite understand. i think i don't actually get how a rico case of this magnitude gets tried. because of what you're saying, these different people had different parts of the enterprise. they took place in different -- they took part in different alleged predicate acts, which would be actual criminal triggers which barb mcquade was talking about. those acts you'd have to prove two of which to establish the conspiracy, the criminal enterprise. if you have the former publicist who shows up in this bizarre dystopic turn to try to bully ruby freeman and mark meadows doing a lot more than that, are they sitting there side by side? i don't think i quite understand how these people -- how their

individual calculations of their defense interests are going to start to make themselves known and what that's going to mean for how this plays out. >> yes. and i think that's for a huge indictment like this where 19 people are all alleged to be part of the same criminal conspiracy and that criminal conspiracy had ten different plots in it and she wants to try them together, but if we'd known the abstract of what happened, and this is someone who knows what he's doing. while it seems daunting to us

and i'm sure it seems dopting to the defendants right now, it seems the prosecutors set it up this way on purpose. the last thing i would add here the big difference between this and the federal case is the presence of the indicted coconspirators as opposed to the unindicted coconspirators even though there's significant overlap. in the federal case that was done quite intentionally as everyone has said to build the case for speed. one defendant, get it forward, it's important this get a hearing, that this man be convicted or cleared and the public have the information, you know, by early next year. fani willis clearly that' not -- she's operating in a totally different sphere of jurisdiction and i think frankly a timetable so she didn't have to do that, and now these people got to like -- rudy giuliani

just caught a rico charge, the rudy giuliani of the u.s. attorney of the southern district of new york, rudy giuliani the guy that put away mobsters, rudy giuliani who is the america's mayor and the tough on crime mayor. rudy giuliani's got a lawyer so he can show up to court in fulton county for his rico charge. >> he used federal rico laws to prosecute those mafia -- the irony is just unbelievably thick. >> rudy giuliani is 79 years old. if he is found guilty in this case he will be at least 80 years old. if he pursues an appeal but unsuccessful he'll be headed off to prison around age 82. rudy giuliani is facing tonight the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison and dying in a georgia prison. rudy giuliani is, i think, a very strong candidate to drop

out of the contest with this jury and end up on the cooperating side. >> yeah, and chris mentioned the question how does this affect different people we'll be watching. i think if you are in a disadvantaged state as lauren says or also a smaller fish, you have all the reason in the world to sit down and reassess and the mentioning of the individuals who are facing bar consequences, john eastman is fighting to save his law license, giuliani has been partially suspended, jenna ellis had to admit she lied. we actually had jenna ellis on "the beat" and i checked november 23ered. she's charged tonight. she said in that interview on november 23rd on tv donald trump won in a, quote, landslide. now, she can do those interviews and lie and we had a back and forth. but what she and others have to think about tonight is all the

people that were there they submitted that, they e-mailed that, and if those people cooperate what side do you want to be on. on act 79 it lists several unindicted, scrammed, fraudulent or lying electors. they seem unindicted because they nay be cooperating. if you're one of the trump lawyers on the other side of that, trump got his own cal clas as we discuss that. those lawyers, those aides when we have trump fans, again, i'm going to talk about how cases work, an out-of-state individual who came into georgia to break laws and then left, yeah, you're on the wrong side of that. and there's an old saying we might get hit with a rico, and that saying referrings to the fact rappers know, people who watch movies and batman know rico is scary, and they bring it often they primarily win. >> and they bring it because

they want to not just get the foot soldiers and the people sent out to do the bidding that benefits the kingpin, they want to get the kingpin, too. we're talking about this because we want to talk to somebody in specific detail how to bring a rico case. barb, what we're talking about in terms of the diverse interest of all these defendants, the need to bring a coherent case that makes real to the jury the idea of the criminal conspiracy involving a lot of people but needing to balance the sanity of the courtroom and the coherence of the defense, the cooherence of the case, how do you approach it as a practical matter? >> it really requires an organizational structure. you almost have to story board the whole thing, how it's going to play out in court. number one, there's no way it's going to trial with 19 defendants. the first thing that happens a number of them will plead

guilty. the government will offer suggestions, we want this group to go first and this group to go second. it may be five or six defendant groups. and in terms of presenting the evidence, one of the things we did in my former office was to present the schemes in chapters merchandise and so chapter one we're going to talk about trump's efforts to influence public officials, play the phone calls, call those witnesses that talk about those things, all of the exhibits in there, we're going to call the pressure campaign chapter. every exhibit is pc1, pc2, pc3, pc4. and began each chapter with a case agent who gave an overview of the chapter and presented all those witnesses. then comes chapter 2 which might be the harassment of ruby freeman and shea moss. and the agent gives the overview and you present the evidence about that.

the jury at the end of it hears each of these chapters. so it's a way to help them understand the story and how it all comes together as opposed to going through everything chronically. it gets to be a bit of a mismash. >> in terms of the various actors involved in the various schemes, i've been making divides myself, okay, here's the cast of characters in the voting machine tampering, here's the cast appeared to be involved in the harassment of ruby freeman, here's the ones pressuring the state legislature to throw out the lawful electors and replace them with the fake electors. you can see the chapters emerging the way you're describing it.

does that also give you a structure for splitting up this list of various defendants into various groups, and you charge everyone together and that becomes a way to divide defendants into different trials as well? >> yes, very much so. you'll want to group the ones that have the most overlapping evidence, and that will take some work by prosecutors. sometimes defendants aren't 10 through 19. it could be number 3, number 7. to chris' point you have some people the kingpin level and others who went out to try to make nice with ruby freeman, and the level of their involvement seems very different to charge them all all with the same rico count, but in for a penny, in for a pound.

if they knew that was that was the scheme, they're in. the way a judge deals with that is at sentencing. the king pen gets sentencing as a leader and lower level people are seen in a mitigating role and get a lesser enhancement, but they're all guilty of rico if that crime can be proved. >> and all bound by the mandatory minimum. >> yes. >> in terms of the sentence. andrew wiseman, let me ask you what barb is describing there jives the way barbara is thinking about this. >> totally clear. you can tell a great trial lawyer. you can see to barb's point about complementing the indictment and fani willis those chapters is in the introduction where, yes, it's very complex and lots of details. but first she divides it into here are the basic building blocks i'm going to talk about in this indictment. so it's already doing some of

that work. i do think some of the work fani willis has been doing when she said i'm going to do them all together, which we don't think it'll be in six months but all together is talking about cooperation, that is signaling i'm here, i'm ready, we're going forward. i mean that is just not what you want to hear. if you're a defendant you want to hear, we'll talk about it, we'll see what the judge wants to do. i mean that is a very strong statement where if you look at her other cases they've taken much longer to get to trial. the jury selection alone in one of the cases i think it's still going on. it's over six months for jury selection. this is very aggressive position and i would assume it has to do with cooperation. one other thing about having different levels of people in an indictment, it can play out very oddly at trial. a junior person basically says, you know, there's not really proof beyond a reasonable doubt as to me. maybe it's to other people but

not as moo me. and jurors tend to go, yeah, you know, with donald trump that's a lot of proof. and it tends to really help the government with this with people there's lots of evidence against. it hurts you with respect to the thinner people because the jury tends to think there is less to that person and more to this person, so it's actually a strategy of, you know, if you think they're all guilty and you have that proof, when you have sort of different levels, it tends to hurt the person who's sort of more guilty in terms of proof and -- >> the psychology of that is fantastic. neal katyal is still with us. neal, i want to and ask you now you've had a little bit of a chance to chew on this a bit if you think there's anything particularly problematic, controversial, anything that feels like an overreach in this indictment that might be vulnerable in terms of people

challenging this prosecution. >> no, right now it looks very strong. obviously we focused of the statement of the press conference, about 19 defendants being tried together and that i think is controversial and don't think will happen, but that's on the indictment itself. to me, rachel, the real issue there are 19 defendants, and the thing about 19 defendants that's a lot of opportunities about cooperation. we've already talked about rudy giuliani being someone who might flip, and indeed the whole doctrine, the conspiracy doctrine is written in order to encourage people to flip. and when rico was enacted both at the federal level 50 years ago and in georgia in 1980, it was structured in a way to almost be a super conspiracy doctrine to really be able to throw the book at people and encourage them to cooperate and turn over states evidence. so to me the big thing from the news tonight after reading the indictment and watching the

press conference is of course donald trump is entitled to a presumption of innocence, but the big thing, the big picture here is donald trump for so long got away with so much. it started well before he was president with all his attempts to delay litigation into higher shady lawyers and then of course he did it as president with things like the russia investigation, and he got away with it. and those things for all sorts of terrible reasons didn't culminate in prosecutions. and the picture being painted today is the law has caught up with donald trump. this is the fourth indictment in just a couple of months against him in the fourkt jurisdiction, and, you know, the law is now catching up with him. that's what this indictment to me signals is that, you know, he got away with a lot for a long time, but that play book isn't working again. he'll try it, he'll delay. he'll try all sort of machinations to put political pressure on the governor and

others, but it's really hard with four different very solid indictments. this one has a lot of detail that the other ones didn't have. >> have another proposed set for this evening which is fake electors who have not yet been charged because we've got fake electors charged in michigan. we've got fake electors under investigation in arizona and a few other states. and we've got now state charges against fake electors in georgia that seem very replicable in other states. are charged with the offense of impersonating a public officer for said accused individually and as persons in the commission of a crime and together with unindicted coconspirators unlawfully falsely held themselves out as the duly elected asked qualified presidential electors from the

state of georgia. and that's just one of the charges brought against the fake electors for nothing other than pretending to be real elects when they were fake ones. and the kind of charge this is isn't not some unique idiosyncrasy. and it's going to raise the question in pennsylvania, in arizona, in new mexico, in nevada, where all these other states where things haven't yet been charged, won't it? >> it should. and we have seen this trend so far, but it does turn on the very specific language of the individual statutes of the states. and one of the things that we were hearing from our experts on georgia law from jan 3rd on, which was the day after the phone call, when we got the phone call to georgia is that georgia does have very specific laws that go straight at what was happening in that phone call. and we see it goes straight up

that fake electors scheme. >> it's also going to come down to the language that was used in all of this, right? because chesobro especially in pennsylvania you mentioned, pennsylvania pushed back or the fake electors pushed back about pretending to be fake electors and basically the language in and around their agreement had to be amended because the pennsylvania electors are a little bit skeptical about being fake electors. >> exactly. they want language we're electors if there's a win -- >> there's only two states -- two of those fbi we've seen two states where there's been charges. >> absolutely. i had the same reaction with the southern michigan stuff, which is essentially where the other states -- what is going on

because you now have two states with a blueprint. yes, it's clear you have to worry about the pennsylvania language. you have to worry about in the federal indictment this indictment that a part of the scheme was to dupe some of the electors, so you want to make sure you're separating out the ones who were duped and the ones who weren't. i think this was a carefully tailored charge as simply filed things that were false. >> it was interesting. after we saw the jack smith indictment in d.c., the january 6th related trump indictment, we did then very quickly have new reporting, open to us reporting that despite the fact the indictment had been brought, jack myth's grand jury in d.c. was continuing to send out additional subpoenas to get more evidence and more witnesses on the fake electors, raising the prospect the fake elector scheme either could produce additional charges against trump in d.c., federal charges, or that some of the fake electors could be charged in that federal -- under

those federal -- >> nevada in particular i think is one of those states where there was a lot of information but there was a lot of -- was is hat no cattle in the actual indictment? >> all hat, no cattle as we say in new york. >> or nevada. there might be more to come on that front. >> it's a little bit weird to be talking about the fourth indictment of the former president just this year and being like, okay, now, what's next? you end up like whelting your appetite so you expect there has to be an indictment every 20 days now. the fact this many people have been charged and we're still probably waiting on additional charges if not superseding indictments or new jurisdictions just shows you what the trump era is like. >> this is the defendant trump era. >> this is the defendant trump era while he is the prohibited favorite for the republican presidential nomination in 2024 and the first republican presidential debate is next

week. >> sorry. absurd. the arraignment could be friday, the debate could be wednesday. >> he has said the debates are just people auditioning to be his running mate, and while that's a humiliating thing to say to your fellow republicans, he's probably right while he's looking at at least a half dozen trial dates between now and when he'll be crowned the republican presidential nominee at the republican national convention next summer. >> he's one about one of those candidates, and that's mike pence who's already had a turn at being donald trump's vice president and just becomes a more important witness every day. >> and there's bail. that is the thing he's not factoring in as he continues speaking the way he's been speaking and continues to threaten, judges, witnesses in the way that he has, i think that one if not more of these judges will take action. and the georgia bail statute is actually very tough in the rico

context, so it'll be really interesting to see -- >> you're saying a judge asked lock him up awaiting trial? >> i do think a judge is going to want to do this incrementally. as i mentioned to nicolle it is possible to run for president and not threaten witnesses. it is not -- he does not get to say, well, wait a second, you can't do this to me because i am running for president. there are ways to do that and obey your bail conditions, which is exactly what chutkans said to him. and so obviously it'll be incremental punishment, but i don't think he understands like how firm a backbone that judge has. >> the bold new american political frontier of running for president without overtly threatening, intimidating, or tampering with the witnesses that are potentially testifying against you in one of your half dozen forthcoming trials. that's going to do it for this part of our special coverage, but our special coverage live

here on msnbc continues right now with our dear friend steph ruhle on the 11th hour. >> good evening, once again. i'm stephanie ruhle. our breaking news coverage continues tonight. donald trump with rudy giuliani, john eastman and several other trump allies have been indicted on multiple crimes related to attempts to overturn georgia's 2020 election results. fulton county fani willis spoke about it just moments ago. >> today based on information developed by that investigation, a fulton county grand jury returned a true bill of indictment charging 19 individuals with violations of georgia law arising from a criminal conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in this

state. the indictment includes 41 felony counts and is 97 pages long. please remember that everyone charged in this bill of indictment is presumed innocent. >> boom, the indictment was returned tonight after a absolutely marathon day of witness testimony to the grand jury. the charges are the result of fulton county d.a. fani willis' 2 1/2 year sprawling investigation. trump has denied any wrongdoing and accused willis of, quote, election interference of moving ahead with the case while he's running for president. trump has already been indicted, of course, on three other criminal cases this year. with that let's get smarter with the help of our lead off panel at this late hour, nbc national politics reporter john allen, barb mcquade still with us, greg bluestein, msnbc political contributor, andary busy

reporter tonight for the atlanta journal constitution. "the new york times" chief white house correspondent peter baker. and former new york prosecutor and civil rights attorney. barb, thank you for staying with us tonight. i want to start with trump and 18 others. do you think all 19 are going to go to trial, or are we going to see plea deals before then? >> it seems unlikely all 19 would go to trial. in a rico case it is not uncommon to see a large number of defendants charged, but by the time you get to trial, many of them would have entered a guilty plea, and that's in part because there's often a hierarchy in a rico case. there's a kingpin at the top and there's people at the middle levels and then there's underlings. and oftentimes the understand llgs see they have exposure. i could see some of these defendants ending up cooperating, so carrying down the number of defendants to a

small number before it goes to trial. >> there's still three unnamed coconspirators. what do we need to know about that? >> what we need to know as we're talking about everything in this indictment, everything jack smith has put out in terms of his cooperators and people the investigation is not co-operable to what fani willis is doing. we've been digging about this in the weeds, but let's talk about why this matters. this is not an actual indictment, stephanie. this is something probably more of a concern to donald trump but in the federal case he's facing because he has no way out, wouldn't to donald trump being able to try to maneuver himself to a federal pardon, for example, he has an avenue for escape there. with respect to fani willis

number one, you're talking about minimum jail time to any of the rico charges, she already made that clear and she talked about it during the press conference. you also talk about the fact the pardon process in georgia is entirely different. so this is one of the types of cases that when you're talking about a rico case, you have more and more people involved. rudy giuliani is a former u.s. attorney. none of these people would have ever been in this sort of position before, so now you're talking about people who have ever thissed face scrutiny or pressure in their ability to cooperate, get this information and throw donald trump under the bus because he can't offer them anything, so this is far more major than anything with respect to his legal dealings and that's important to understand. >> let's talk about those lawyers, peter, because earlier tonight our colleague lawrence o'donnell was saying how

stunning it is and as well resourced the former president of the united states is, one would think he would have a lot better, stronger, more senior lawyers than this. he's shocked he'd be getting this bad legal advice, but doesn't it really say it about donald trump. he's shown us for decades it doesn't matter who his lawyer is, he's not listening. >> he's not listening and he doesn't -- he's burned through lawyers he doesn't like, lawyers who don't do well enough on television in his view, lawyers who give him advice he doesn't like. why are we seeing the lawyers we're seeing now? we're not seeing any of the lawyers we saw during the beginning of hir his presidency. we're not seeing any of the lawyers who represented him just a year ago. he's constantly looking for his roy cohn. remember his friendship with roy

cohn, the joe mccarthy investigator from the '50s who became a new york rain playmaker in the legal sphere and was a cutthroat eventually disbarred lawyer. that's who donald trump want as his lawyer, and no one has ever, ever met that standard as far as he's concerned. >> maybe because lawyers looked in the end how it all turned out for roy cohn. let's look at the fact this is in the state of georgia and the risks donald trump took there. even if this is successful, georgia only had 16 electoral votes. trump lost by 70. how likely is it we could see more charges in other states? >> it's certainly possible, steph, as we see the evidence that's presented in this conspiracy that other states can look at what's going on in georgia and say we're going to look into this ourselves. the other point, you know, i think charles was getting into this a little bit, at the federal level they're going to be able to look at what the evidence is going in, just one last thing i want to mention

here, charles brought up rudy giuliani. and it's amazing to me rudy giuliani is being charged under rico statute because he was famous as a u.s. attorney. charles mentioned that earlier. famous for pioneering racketeering law to take ought the mob in new york. >> in 1985 he took out the five major families, the heads of them. how the tables have turned. greg, you were in the courtroom today, but what was unique is that so were we. it was televised, and this trial unlike the others that are federal will most likely be televised much like the january 6th hearings. how much will that matter to the american people? >> i think we saw a glimpse of that, how much it matters to the american people today with being able to see the judge, with being able to see the deliberations, with being able to see donald trump's reaction live rather than through the prism of a photograph or a drawing, and that's another example of why georgia's going

to be unique. you mentioned earlier on the show how donald trump can't stop this investigation if he's elected president again. he can't order fani willis to abandon the case like he could potentially do with the justice department. he can't pardon himself in this case, and the georgia pardons process is different as well because the governor doesn't have unilateral power to pardon donald trump even if he wanted to, and we're not suspecting governor brian kemp has a soft spot in his heart for donald trump. >> peter, how damning will that be to the misinformation machine if this is televised? even tonight what did fox news have on? paul manafort, donald trump's former campaign chair who was jailed for tax evasion talking about the two tiered system of justice. right, ted cruz, a u.s. senator, was standing outside the courtroom as though he was a reporter talking about joe biden vilinizing the justice system

for his own political gain. how much of that will make it difficult to push this misinformation or deflect if this thing ends up on tv? >> well, it's a great question actually. what we've seen so far is expectations that an indictment or two or three, eventually four would somehow change the public view. and that hasn't been the case up until now. if anything, of course, donald trump has done better among his republican supporters than after the indictments. especially if it's televised, especially if americans are watching and making a difference. traditionally i would think a televised trial would be important for the public. people have in fact made up their minds, and whether it's open to rethinking that is big question. people will misinterpret

evidence and information and everything else so far it seems through the lens of preconceived decision where he's being purseicated for his political standing by for quite a while. >> donald trump, we can't overstate this, is facing four separate indictments, right, in new york, in georgia with the doj in florida and d.c. that does not even include civil charges. one might say how could someone commit this many potential schemes? is it possible because the person charged was literally -- figuratively sitting on top the justice department in a position like no other american? >> yeah, you know, the fact he's been charged in these four indictments gives him ammunition to say i'm a victim, i'm being

persecuted, but i think finally slowly the law is catching up with him. the new york indictment goes back to his days pre-presidency, and the mar-a-lago indictment post-presidency, and then these two about trying to hold onto the presidency. so before, during, and after his presidency donald trump has been accused of committing crimes, and it seems that finally the justice dafrmt -- the justice system is catching up him. but, you know, the history has yet to be written about how this comes out, whether hares convicted. and our criminal justice system is designed to make it difficult to convict people. you have to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt to a unanimous jury of 12 people, and we have the theory it's better ten guilty people go free than one innocent person be convicted. there's still a herculean task for all these prosecutors to

obtain convictions for donald trump. >> donald trump's defense has been i had friends around, why didn't they stop me, why didn't they hang the phone up? is that going to be a viable argument? he's the president of the united states. few people would say, no, boss, you're not allowed to do that, especially him. >> it's so important there's so many different lawyers named in this indictment. and one wraen i say that is because it speaks to the amount of faith people have in our criminal justice system if lawyers cannot be held accountable for these type of things being wrong. it's not a viable defense not because there was the pressure of donald trump being the president of the united states that would have stopped a lawyer from telling him the truth. it's not going to fly because there's a such thing in a law as willful ignorance. and at a point you knew or should have known you lost this election, and so whatever the steps were that you were being advised about to try and change that outcome, you had to have

known you were wrong and you just continued to do it. so even as you may want to make that argument, it's not going to fly in a court of law. >> so let me get this straight. i'm innocent and willful ignorance on my right hand, and on my left hand can the people re-elect me to be leader of the free world. this is the first case we're seeing the most senior trump loyalist, right, his homeboys of homeboys being charged. giuliani, meadows, clark, eastman, jenna ellis. what is that going to do to trump world tonight? >> that's a great question. especially if you're not supposed to talk to a witness about a case.

hard to see if donald trump is going to abide by that. that's a rather stark framing. it's not just they've committed crimes but they've combined to create a racketeering enterprise ala the mafia much like the people giuliani once went after. the question is whether or not they turn on each other. one of the most fascinating parts of the indictment is mark meadows is in here. we wonder if he's been cooperating with jack smith, the federal prosecutor. now wesy he's not cooperating with the georgia prosecutor, what does that do? where's his head at, where his legal status right now? we don't know. you're wondering who's on your side, who's going to turn against you, and who's looking out for themselves. >> peter baker, greg bluestein, barb mcquade, john allen, thank you all so much. i want to bring into the conversation tim miller, former

communications director for jeb bush, former republican congressman david jolly and simone sanders townsend, former chief spokesperson for former president harris and host of simone on peacock and msnbc. tim, i've got to get your reaction to what we saw tonight because you have talked about something before that trump is the king of projection and every alleged crime, mishandling documents, these are the crimes he was saying democrats have been doing, namely hillary clinton over the last six years. and the only person we are seeing charged in the grand total of all of this is the last president of the united states. >> after the election it was the maga republicans under trump's direction, allegedly, who were trying to look into some of the

machines in cobb county in georgia. i think there's a long line of times where the accusations trump made were in fact confessions, things he was actually doing, whatever either assumed or wish casted the other side he was doing but he was actually guilty of. another i think is worth mentioning a lot of times there's a fatalistic assessment of what's happening in our politics, but what happened in georgia i think is really important because it's the decisions of specific leaders that got us here, right? trump thought he could pull this off in georgia because it was a republican georgia and a republican secretary of state, which wasn't true in michigan and some of other states. but they were like, yeah, no, we're not going along with this. fani willis, there's other districts, arizona, other places

where he attempted similar crimes. >> david, what's on your mind? >> whether or not republicans are going to say to themselves are we really going to do this, right? are we still going to elevate donald trump? because this is the moment that was kind of anticipated. four indictments, now the table has been set. we have an active gop primary field. the every other candidate in the race has baked into their strategy that donald trump would likely be indicted in at least four different criminal cases, and so, look, the timing of trials matters a lot in terms of donald trump's ability to secure a nomination in iowa. right now indictments have helped him. at this point we've not seen convictions from republican voters or even his opponents. even his opponents largely just say this is a witch hunt, so i

don't know. republicans tonight have to ask themselves are we really going to do this. >> yes, tonight is shocking for our country, unprecedented, but just look at his history. trump org, trump university, trump charity, the mar-a-lago case, what we're seeing with jack smith in d.c. none of this is a surprise. this is who he always was and who he was, frankly, when he was elected. >> it's a great question, steph. are republicans convictions or the color of their patriotism going to change overnight? no, i don't think so. i think the question they'll have to wrestle with is do they want to win. donald trump if he indeed has a trial that's a very different indictment than the current inkiemt supporting him in the republican nomination. it also suggests, republicans, are you ready to put this existential question on the ballot next november. that someone willing to topple our democracy will be your

nominee? so they want to win, and that probably is just the raw calculus, but you don't really see that calculus in your voters that often determine an outcome. >> simone, secretary hillary clinton talked tonight this isn't just about accountability for donald trump. but it the republican party allows him to continue this is about accountability for the entire party. how do you see it? >> i think per usual secretary clinton was right. i think there are many times throughout the last year we've all pulled up from secretary clinton and her debates and said there's something there. i think we're all living through a crisis of democracy and because so many -- we've discussed so many of these things every single day that the gravity of that is not necessarily felt with people across the country. but what d.a. fani willis did

tonight, she made this accessible for the american people, specifically for the people in georgia. and i think that tim is absolutely correct when he knows there's other d.a.'s across the country particularly in arizona, in michigan. and let's be very clear in michigan the attorney general has stood up and taken action, david nessle and everyone, they've brought 16 electors and charged them, fake electors. when we talk about threats to our democracy and trump trying to overturn or steal the 2020 election it seems far off for folks, but this is very real for republicans in georgia. and lastly i'd note i talked to greg blustein and republicans

have split. think about if the same case was brought in arizona. republicans in arizona would have to pick a side. >> republicans are split. i want to ask about one specific republican you know very well, david jolly. what's mitch mcconnell thinking tonight? >> what he always thinks that he hopes somebody else will topple donald trump and take him out, but he didn't have the courage to do so himself. again, mitch mcconnell is a consummt politician. >> donald trump is attempting to fund raise of of this this evening. how can we avoid normalizing this? this isn't something that should be political. this is something all americans should care about in terms of our country, our history. it's a crime. >> it's really concerning just the fact there's certain elements of the normalization of

this, if you will, that are out of our hands. if you you have republican you mentioned last segment ted cruz going out there trying to promote his podcast and talking about how this is navigation of justice and lindsey graham saying the same thing about the network. if all of them are out in the conservative ecosystem attacking the doj, attacking our institutions, attacking the fulton county d.a., there's a limit to what everyone can do. this is one area i think there's a disagreement of people in good will, and people on the pro-democracy side of things i think donald trump indicts himself more times than not. if you look at the all cap leaks he sends out on his social media platform, and they're the

ravings of a mad man. you would not hire that person to manage an arby's. and i think more people need to see that. and even if on the margins there's going to be certain folks more influenced by it, i think that's important to do. what he's pushing both in the fund-raising and on social media is suitly wheels off ravings on somebody who's completely lost it. >> let's stay on that, though, david, because it's not just kash patel or paul manafort out there. it is ted cruz, it is lindsey graham. u.s. senators elected by the american people to focus on policies, to focus on issues to keep americans alive and thriving, push these lies about the weaponization of our

government. >> politicians clasly do follow. and i think the most dangerous think donald trump arguably bought into our body politic was distrust. he knew exactly what he was doing in almost a maniacal way i'm going to convince everybody they can't trust anybody, they can just trust me. he just parked his narrative inside the republican party, but the result is the likes of lindsey graham, ted cruz, and republican voters now accepting the words of donald trump now indicted four times for trying to topple our democracy instead of the actual truth. >> simone, last point to you. are you worried for our democracy tonight? >> absolutely our demacy for a number of reasons.

chief among them we as americans and especially as the media apparatus across the board do not discuss the threats to our democracy at the level of which i think they demand. earlier, last week a governor in this country for a second time in a year removed a duly elected states attorney from their post, and we all across the board discussed it as politics as usual and ron desantis trying to reset and assert himself in this presidential campaign. this is quite serious from the supreme court to the former president of the united states of america attempting to overturn and steal an election to potential would wanny be presidents attempting to cement themselves and follow in donald trump's footsteps. this is quite serious. it's not partisan to call it out and speak truth to power. it's what we here at msnbc have

been doing and going to continue to do because this is a very serious matter. >> well, perhaps it would be more serious and more worrisome after looking at all these charges that the former president wasn't charged, but alas, he was tonight. tim miller, david jolly, simone townsend, thank you all for being here. our breaking news coverage will continue right after the break. continue right after the break helps restore gum health, and rehardens enamel. i'm a big advocate of recommending things that i know work.

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