that does it for this edition of "andrea mitchell reports," follow on social media @mitchellreports. "chris jansing reports" starts right now. good day, i'm chris jansing live at msnbc headquarters in new york city. a routine pretrial hearing turns fiery in fulton county. an attorney for one of the interference defendants accusing one of the prosecutors of lying to the judge's face in court is that just a preview of what's to come? plus, president biden insisting that a government shutdown isn't just a potential side effect of the battle over his impeachment, he argues that's the whole point. the latest on the new political risks for biden and the republicans, not to mention the economic risk for the rest of us. and the actions by seattle police that one columnist says screams contempt for the public

they're meant to serve. two investigations now underway into the officer that laughed about a young woman's death and the officer whose car struck and killed her. we'll have the latest coming up. but we start in fulton county, georgia, where a hearing with serious legal consequences in the election interference case turned nasty and personal. it happened as defense attorneys for kenneth chesebro and sidney powell argued for access to both transcripts and actual members of the special grand jury, and then got into an argument over whether the prosecution was being as fair and transparent as they claimed to be. take a listen. >> we're officers of the court. we can state no one was in there besides the grand jurors. that's what they're asking for us to do for them. they can state as their place as officers of the court, this is what the grand jurors said to them. we can state in our place as officers of the court, only the grand jurors was present during deliberations. there is no authority that allows what they're asking the

court to allow them to do. >> no, i cannot take ms. young's word for it that it was done properly. ms. young's trying to send my client to prison, and we have the right to know if it was done properly, and she keeps saying there's no case law. as your honor said, there is case law. instead of creating these wonderful powerpoints that they're so fond of, read our briefs. the collin case says we can talk to grand jurors. so the fact that she got up here and lied, lied to the court -- >> all right, mr. grubman, we don't need to go down that road. >> your honor, she lied. >> i said it's over. >> that wasn't the only big development today, judge mcafee rejecting d.a. fani willis's request to try all 19 defendants together. katie phang is an msnbc anchor and legal contributor. greg blue seen is political

reporter for "the atlanta journal-constitution" and an msnbc political contributor. robert james is a former district attorney for dekalb county, georgia, now in private practice, and charles coleman is with here with me, a civil rights attorney and former brooklyn prosecutor as well as an msnbc legal analyst. welcome all. katie, those were some harsh words from the defense there. what did you make of that back and forth? >> yeah, chris, you know, in prior hearings in front of judge mcafee, the defense for kenneth chesebro and sidney powell as well as the state of georgia have been very polite doing a dance for the court and for the public at large. today the knives were out. definitely saw some sharp elbows coming, especially from the defense's side. in fairness and with objectivity it was definitely defense that got the hairs up on their neck in terms of what's going on, but judge mcafee keeping his cool and making sure he ran a courtroom that was going to be orderly and respectedful, cutting off scott grubman when he was making it a lot more

personal than it needed to be. putting aside the emotions that were at play today, the judge made sure to remind both sides that this case was going to trial on october 23rd for kenneth chesebro and sidney powell, and it came on the heels of an order that was entered this morning that you referenced that basically said the remaining 17 co-defendants including former president donald trump, they don't have a trial date, chris, but they definitely already have some deadlines that are coming up, and he made sure we knew that. october 6th is the initial discovery deadline, and motions are due by december 1st. so chris, although the october 23rd trial is coming up very soon for chesebro and powell, there's also some imminent deadlines for the other defendants. we also saw, like i mentioned before, some easter eggs inside judge mcafee's order today that indicated that another judge is available to try a case if some other defendants decided to drop a speedy demand within a specific window of time, and so basically saying if you drop a speedy demand, you may actually join the trial in progress of

chesebro and powell. or we have another judge that's available to try the case. the judge also saying that severance is an absolute necessity, chris. the other 17 co-defendants in considerations for their rights to due process, and basically logistics. he said we can't fit 19 defendants, all of their counsel, their jurors, the witnesses, the court staff, security personnel, the media, you can't fit them all in one courtroom, so we're going to have to split them into two. there has been a filing for mark meadows that just came out about an hour ago, where he basically said i am withdrawing any of the exigent kind of emergent relief i'm seeking from the 11th circuit because they've entered a briefing schedule that is already on a kind of very hurried pays, and so meadows was saying i don't need to have an expedited hearing tomorrow on this. we haven't seen a cancellation of that hearing yet, but we expect it to come shortly. >> so a lot to dissect there,

charles. the defense simply didn't trust the prosecution. they didn't trust them when it came to handing over information in a timely manner or even how they dealt with the special grand jury. is this sort of how things go in this? because it was pretty heated, and those of us who aren't in courtrooms every day, don't usually see this. >> it's important to understand, it's the defense's job not to trust the prosecution, and part of the reason that you're going to see that -- >> but to call them a liar. >> that is towing the line of what's appropriate. i think that some of those things you heard were extreme, and they were theatric, not only for his client, but also for the fact that there are cameras that are going to be watching. now these attorneys have an opportunity to make a name for themselves, which is why you heard the judge silence him and say that's enough on that pint. but it's important -- >> but it kept going. >> it did. and again, attorneys are going to push the line in court. i can recall as a former prosecutor -- >> you never had that happen to you? >> well, see, the thing is when you're a prosecutor, you don't have that type of leeway because you're representing the government, and so you have to

be on a tighter leash as opposed to a defense attorney, who will take some liberties in terms of how they push it. understand that prosecutors have a certain level of initiative that they have to approach things with in terms of keeping things moving. in order to combat that, in order to put prosecutors on your heel, you're going to see defense attorneys be more aggressive with their language to try to push back, to try to challenge the integrity and ethics of not only the investigation but also the grand jury presentation, and that's what you saw here today. it's not uncommon, it is something that's going to be anticipated but there is a line, and i think that they went dangerously close to the line and the judge did a good job about letting them know, hey, you need to calm them down. >> you are from georgia so you know how this works. one of the things that frankly made me chuckle was the accusation this prosecutor is trying to put my client in jail, which is what prosecutors do, right? that's why the person is a defendant, having said that, is that typical of what you see? and what in your experience has

been the impact of having cameras in the court? >> well, first of all, it's a fight, right? because the state is trying to take away someone's liberty. they are trying to label them a felon and put them in jail. i was a prosecutor for 17 years, and that's when i did when i woke up every morning. it's a fair assessment, and what he's essentially communicating is, you know, i have to fight with everything that i have. i have to fight like hell, excuse me, to make sure that that doesn't happen, and no, i'm not going to trust what the prosecutor says. it's my job to doubt everything that they say and then create doubt with the jury. now, in terms of how this process is going and, you know, what's par for the course. there's nothing unusual that i've seen about the process thus far. i feel like the judge has kept a tight rein on things and he's doing his job as the referee here. >> greg, one other note we heard from the prosecution here is that grand jurors are experiencing doksing threats which brings us back to this

tricky balance of transparency. so much is at stake. we've never seen a trial like this before, the argument that it should be seen. but then on the other hand you have security. what are you hearing behind the scenes and how do you see this playing out? >> yeah, those grand jurors names are released as a link to a case law that dates back more than a century in georgia, and there's some pressure on lawmakers to change that law when the legislature goes back into session next year, but we know that it's not just grand jurors. it's fulton county district attorney fani willis, it is other officers of the court. there's high security surrounding the court, and we're hearing from the sheriff that they're getting ready for more, and they're getting ready for more intense security as this trial hurdles towards an october 23rd start date for at least these two defendants. >> charles, i mentioned the other key development. the judge made it clear that chesebro and powell will be tried together. as for the others, he wrote this, the precarious ability of the court to safeguard each

defendant's due process rights and ensure adequate pretrial preparation on the current accelerated track weighs heavily, if not decisively in the favor of severance, meaning separating them from the other folks, right? how do you see this playing out, and under what time line? >> that's hard to say because, again, i think now we're going to see a recalibration by fani willis's office. now, you recall, chris, during the initial press conference after the announcement of the indictment, fani willis was asked do you intend to try all these together. she said yes. for most people in the legal arena, we all knew that was going to be a long shot. now that you're talking about motions for severance along with speedy trials being dropped for two of the defendants, we know she's not going to be able to do that. it remains to be seen whether additional defendants will choose to exert their speedy trial rights or whether they will wait to see what fani willis does. she's going to have to make a

decision about how she intends to try the rest of them, whether that's in groups or clusters, which is what i would anticipate based on people's levels of culpability and what they're accused of and what that time line looks like. so it could just be the luck of the draw as we heard from the judge earlier today, there are other judges that are available that could potentially take these cases and accelerate their time lines as well if additional speedy trials are dropped. if not, we will have to see how fani willis intends to move forward. >> so potentially later than the first one but not like past the election. >> absolutely. >> greg, there is an article in your paper today about one of the georgia defendants, harrison floyd asking judge mcafee to unseal voting records from 2020. he believes it will help clear him of criminal charges. what can you tell us about that? >> yeah, there's all sorts of issues this could raise, unsealing some very complicated and secure voting records that really go back to some of the key charges in this case.

harrison floyd is pushing to get these records unsealed. prosecutors are fighting that, and it's going to be a very key motion in this case depending on how the judge rules. >> so robert, as an attorney in georgia, you've been here before. do you sigh any possibility floyd or his attorneys can uncover anything that hasn't already been uncovered? >> well, there's always a possibility that something can be uncovered. the question is do you have, you know, a good reason to look, right? you can't just go on fishing expeditions, so the court's going to look at is there a compelling reason to unseal this? you know, what basis do you have to believe that there's something that is there that's going to help your case? that's the $100 million question as it were. >> so i'm going to lay the last one at your plate that no one can really answer, greg, but since you're there and since you cover this so intensively, what are the chances that donald trump gets tried in this case before the election?

>> my gut is it's going to be real tough to try him. look, we heard from the judge today that he's pushing to get this jury sworn in for the chesebro and powell cases by november 5th. that's about two weeks after the trial is set to begin, but for context, another trial in fulton county involving an alleged gang has involved 2,000 potential jurors over eight months and a jury still hasn't been selected in that case. so just getting a jury seated for this trial is going to be an enormous haul for this prosecutor. >> we are going to do lot of in-depth segments just on jury selection, which is going to be wild. katie phang, greg bluestein, robert james, thank you, charles, you're going to stay with us. an historic strike could deal a major blow to the nation's economic engine. united autoworkers racing towards a midnight deadline to make a deal with the big three automakers. we're back in 60 seconds with what to expect if talks should stall out. ct if talks should stall out.

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less than 11 hours, that's how long the big three automakers and 150,000 workers have left to reach a new labor contract or plunge into an historic strike. at this point, ford, general motors, and stellantis all say they've made new, more generous offers but have yet to hear back from the united autoworkers union. if they don't work this thing out by midnight, the union says it will launch targeted strikes at undisclosed plants, a move they say will create confusion for the companies and turbo charge negotiations. nbc's jay gray is at uaw headquarters in detroit, but first with me nbc business and data reporter brian cheung. this is going to come down to the wire, and it's going to come down, brian, to money. a lot of figures being thrown around. what can you tell us? >> yeah, well, let's talk about where we stand as of right now

with just hours to go. here are the demands that the uaw has been asking for. a 46% wage bump compounded over the next four years, automatic inflation adjustments and a 32 hour workweek. and where we stand as of the most recent offers, gm submitted one earlier this morning, but the best offer that we're aware of was a 20% wage bump, which, again, far short of what the uaw is asking for, one-time bonus payments instead of automatic inflation adjustments and juneteenth as a paid holiday, one paid holiday instead of the 32 hour workweek. you can see just how far this divide is. that's a big reason we're hearing uaw talking about striking strategy. it doesn't look good at least for right now. this is still time and both parties are saying they are bargaining as we get into that deadline. >> jay, how are union members feeling about this right now? >> reporter: i think union members right now, chris, are resolved to the fact that they may in some locations not be going to work after midnight tonight. but they seem steadfast in this.

they seem locked in. they all say they want an answer. we're outside of uaw headquarters here in detroit, also known as solidarity house, and i think there's a lot of solidarity right now. will that continue through an extended strike? that's the real question. and look, we've never seen a strike of all three automakers simultaneously by the union in its 80-year history, so that's something that would be different, and the strategy is different. as i alluded to, they're going to target specific plans for -- plants for walkouts, not a nationwide walkout. some concern about which plant may be out next. they think that's a strategy that will help resolve this process and get the concessions they're looking for. >> what's their argument for a pay hike that for most americans seems completely unattainable? and that is approaching 50%. >> reporter: well, what they say, chris, is that they haven't

seen a raise, significant raise in quite some time, that they're well below the cost of living right now, and that the companies are making enough money to support this raise. in a sentence, they're saying it's cheaper to keep them, that the pay raise would be offset by the amount of money they're making. you know, car prices we all know have gone up over the last couple of years because of the supply chain issues and getting parts. there's less of an inventory at this point. if they were to strike nationwide for even a week, analysts say 55 to 65,000 vehicles would not turn on the assembly line. they would not be at dealers across the country, and that would be a huge blow to dealers that are already struggling with the reduced inventories at this point. >> with the clock ticking, jay gray, brian cheung, thank you both so much. punching back over impeachment, president biden's first comments about the new push by house republicans as top democrats sound off about the

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for the first time, president biden is letting us know what he thinks about speaker mccarthy's move to begin an impeachment inquiry. off camera at a private event last night, biden said it's a republican ploy, quote, the best i can tell, they want to impeach

me because they want to shut down the government. and then there is new nbc reporting that mccarthy is feeling the pressure from his right frank on both issues. reportedly telling them in a closed door meeting this morning if you want to file a motion to vacate, then file the blanking motion. meaning, if you're going to try to take the speakership away from me, go ahead and try. kimberly atkins stohr is a columnist for the boston globe and an msnbc political analyst, charlie dent is a former republican congressman from pennsylvania. good to see both of you. congressman, look, rebellion in the troops isn't new. you were around when a fight ended in john boehner's resignation. but how serious do you see this challenge to mccarthy right now, and what's your reaction to the chang from the right? >> i think the challenge is very serious. i think the reason why the speaker launched this impeachment inquiry was simply because he was trying to get votes for the continuing resolution, and he really got nothing for that. i mean, it didn't placate matt

gaetz or some of the other hard-liners. i think the speaker has a real problem on his hands. here's the issue, what will the democrats do in the event that matt gaetz or some other person files a motion to vacate the chair, or throw out the speakers. what do the democrats do. i don't know that the democrats will do anything to support mccarthy right now, it would only take about five of those hard-liners to essentially take down mccarthy, so i think he's in a very precarious position right now. they couldn't pass a rule to bring up an appropriations bill yesterday, and that was the defense bill. the ag appropriations bill the same thing, they don't have the votes to move that. that's done over abortion. they're having a lot of difficulty right now just doing the basics and fundamentals, and the motion to vacate could be very problematic. >> kimberly, punch bowl is reporting on a recent phone conversation between mccarthy and hakeem jeffries, and on

there jeffries cautioned mccarthy, give in to these gop hard-liner demands at your own risk. translation, democrats won't be there with a lifeline if he shuts down the government or impeaches president joe biden. the democrats are hanging tough on this, aren't they? >> they are, and it's understandable why. you have a faction of the republican party that is threatening the very functioning of the government over this one issue, the impeachment inquiry into joe biden, which is not based on any evidence, at least not that i have seen, that would warrant such. and in so doing, they're really torpedoing themselves. coming up on an election year, a very important one, republicans in control in the house need to prove among anything else that they can actually get something done, and if they can't even keep the budget funded over their sort of partisan endeavor to try to attack the president

at donald trump's behest, that's going to prove badly. look, nobody benefits from a government shutdown, but democrats know in this sense that this is a problem that the republicans made. they made this be, and they're going to let the republicans sleep in it. >> well, before kevin mccarthy unilaterally called for an impeachment inquiry, he had argued against it back in 2019 when he was defending then president donald trump. take a listen. >> our job is to legislate, not to continue to investigate something in the back when you cannot find any reason to impeach this president. i realize 2016 did not turn out the way speaker pelosi wanted it to happen, but she cannot change the laws of this congress. she cannot unilaterally decide we're in an impeachment inquiry. >> so against it then, but mccarthy now points the finger at nancy pelosi for setting the precedent, and she responded this morning on this network.

>> don't blame it on me. just take responsibility for what you are doing there and don't misrepresent the care that we took, the respect that we had for the institution. what's happening right now is has taken us to a different place. it's a quest -- you have to question where is their patriotism? you heard mitt romney say they don't believe in the constitution. >> in the political realm, congressman, who has the advantage here if -- and again, only in the political realm because there is no advantage really to a government shutdown, if that happens, will it basically help the democrats? >> well, yes, i've always said that the party that is making the policy demand, you know, i want x. if i don't get x, i'm going to shut down the government. that party will lose the fight over, you know, who takes the blame. so i think republicans are in a difficult spot because this is very different than any other likely government shutdown i've seen.

in 2013, it was over defunding obamacare, at least i knew what the issue was. in 2018, that was over border security and daca, as i recall. this time i'm not sure what the hard-liners want. they want an impeachment inquiry, well, they got that. well, they also want more border funding, they also want less spending. i don't know what they want, they have so many nands. ultimately i suspect house republicans will be blamed for this. and they're dealing with a senate right now that is united, democrat and republican about how to move forward on this continuing resolution to fund the government for about 70 days. this is the problem for republicans. the impeachment inquiry really didn't get mccarthy anything. the hard-liners pocketed that gain and made more demands. this is going to be a really interesting few weeks. >> charlie dent, kimberly atkins stohr, thanks to both of you. i have some breaking news now, we have just learned and we just got the paperwork, that hunter biden, the president's son has been indicted for lying

when buying a gun. i want to bring in nbc's garrett haake. what can you tell us? >> this indictment charges hunter biden with three counts all related to that gun purchase. it describes two counts of knowingly making a false or fictitious statement when purchasing a gun, basically accusing him of lying about being addicted to drugs at the time he was purchasing this weapon, a pistol in october of 2018. and the third count is that he did knowingly possess that same firearm while essentially while being addicted to a controlled substance. so these are counts that were all thought to have been dealt with in that plea deal that fell apart a couple of months ago kicking things back to the u.s. attorney, now special counsel, weiss handling this in delaware, former u.s. attorney in the district of delaware. again, this indictment dealing only with the gun and drug charges. i think it's reasonable to presume we have not heard the last of charges against the president's son, given the scope of what was originally in front

of the u.s. attorney and then kind of fallen apart, back to the drawing board to bring forward these counts now. >> yeah, let me bring in nbc news justice and intel correspondent ken dilanian, and just to pick up where garrett left off, ken, this is a direct result of what, frankly, hunter biden and his lawyers thought was over and done with. they washed their hands. they had a deal clearly, now we have an indictment. >> that's right, chris, and specifically with regard to this gun charge, they had a deal that would have entered hunter biden into what's known as a diversion program where he essentially admitted to the conduct, but agreed to comply with certain conditions, including no longer using drugs, and after a period of time the charges would be dropped, and now instead he finds himself charged in a three-count indictment in delaware, and we don't believe this is the end of it because there were also two misdemeanor tax charges that were part of that plea bargain, which fell apart, as you said, because the

two sides could not agree on some key aspects of it, and so we would expect that there would be some kind of additional action on tax charges, whether only misdemeanors or whether having to do with other conduct. as you know, there's a whole context here, chris, where some of the investigators in this case have come toward to congress and have said that they believe there's evidence that hunter biden committed felonies while evading taxes on millions of dollars of income he was earning from foreign business entities while he was addicted to drugs. so we're waiting to see what happens on the tax charge, and the reason the plea agreement fell apart in principle, chris, was because at the end of the day, the two sides could not agree on whether the agreement held hunter biden harmless from any further charges because david weiss, the then u.s. attorney of delaware now special counsel added a curious sentence at the end of his press release announcing the indictment. he said the investigation is continuing.

when people first saw that, they thought that was kind of throw away the line that the u.s. attorney sometimes says. technically it's really not, this is the end of it. in fact, he was serious, and they disclosed in court that they continue to investigate, federal prosecutors do, questions about hunter biden's foreign business dealings and whether there are any issues under the foreign agents registration act. and as soon as hunter biden's lawyers heard that, they said, wait a second, we have no deal then. why would we plead guilty if you say you might still charge us on other conduct. that's why the deal fell apart. >> ken dilanian and garrett haake, thanks to both of you. let's diver in further. charles is back. i want to read from count one, robert hunter biden provided a statement, that's what you have to fill out to purchase a firearm, certifying he was not an unlawful user of and addicted to any stimulant narcotic drug and any other controlled substance when in fact as he knew that statement was false

and fictitious. it may not sound like much -- >> right. >> -- to the untrained ear. he filled out a form, he lied. he's a drug addict. this is serious stuff. >> just like you, i have that exact same section highlighted in looking t this indictment. that's the core of what he's charged with. you cannot from a status place, have a relationship, be addicted to or have issues with substance abuse and not report that when you're buying a firearm because from a federal standpoint when you are filling out this form 4473, you are prohibited from doing that. so when you do that, you are intentionally making a false statement on an application to a gun seller for the purposes of securing a firearm, which you are not lawfully enabled to have, and that's what he's charged with here, and that's why he's indicted. >> let me look at this because it says lying on a firearms transaction record again is a felony, could carry a prison sentence up to ten years, although prosecutors will rarely, you know, go after something like that, but what do

you see realistically happening now? do they go back to the bargaining table? what happens? >> i expect that this is going to be used as another conversation around a plea deal. i do think that we will likely see him plea to the indictment, as ken already talked about. you still have these tax charges that are wrapped up out there. in order to put all of these things together, it is likely that we're going to see him plea, and i do think this is going to reopen conversation around what it is that's going to be necessary to get hunter biden to actually take a plea agreement. i don't necessarily see this going to trial. >> let me look at those two tax charges, the prosecutors must show that a person intended to avoid paying taxes they owed. that can bring up to five years in prison and maximum fine of $100,000. how complicated or not is that to prove? >> you know, i think that a lot of this is going to be determined by not necessarily how difficult it is to prove, but how much hunter biden wants to get away from this, and what i mean by that is if you take a

step back, we've been talking a lot, probably more so than usual about the notion of indictments and what indictments look like. this is not a particularly speaking indictment in terms of what it lays out. it lays out the bare necessities of what you will need in order to establish something that's going to hold muster in court. a speaking indictment would have far more information in it. where i'm going with this, chris, is ultimately when you're talking about the tax charges, the amount of information that the government provides the public in an indictment is not necessarily as relevant until you get to the point of whether there's going to be a trial. i suspect that ultimately the government is going to give enough information to lay out, not necessarily to establish their full case, but enough to survive and an actual indictment not being thrown out and to get hunter biden to the point of taking a plea. >> there's obviously, garrett haake, a political component to this. >> just a bit. >> this is yet another instance where we have a potential trial, and if not a trial, some sort of plea deal negotiation going

smack into the 2024 election cycle. it is fodder for the other side in the way that donald trump's accusations are, although this is not -- this is not against the president. this is against his son. but let's talk about the political implications of this. >> yeah, i think, chris, your caveat is important. these are very different sets of charges, very different sets of circumstances between anything that donald trump is dealing with, but the fact that the indictee here has the last name of biden is going to be used by republicans. house republicans pursuing the start of their impeachment inquiry and former president trump and his campaign to try to muddy the water here. it is the most tried and true trump tactic here that anything can be sort of brought down to his level. if he's in trouble legally, he will find a way to make you look like you're in trouble legally or people connected to you are in trouble legally. i think something like this, honest to goodness paper, a true bill indictment from a u.s. attorney will be used

politically by the former president very aggressively against president biden, and i think it will factor into the house impeachment inquiry, at least to some degree. the gun charges specifically have never been a part of what the house republicans have been looking at in terms of joe biden's relationship to them. there's nothing in these documents that suggest any relationship to joe biden, no matter how far you want to stretch them. i think if we do see another indictment related to the tax matters, that's really the thing that's going to fuel the fire for house republicans. at the heart of their argument here is that somehow hunter biden's business was lining joe biden's pockets, and so why this isn't there, it generates the smoke and the spotlight that they are, quite frankly, desperate to get on their investigations having gone nine months without turning up much or drawing much attention outside of more right leaning media. >> let me bring back car lee charlie dent, former republican congressman from pennsylvania. is there a danger for republicans in overplaying their

hand here? and i want to put it in this context. drug addiction is an epidemic in this country. virtually everyone knows directly or peripherally about someone or knows someone, whether it's a family, a friend or a friend of a friend who has had a drug problem or some sort of addiction problem. joe biden has been very clear, i love my son, i stand by my son. there will be people who can relate, perhaps, to the idea that people who are in the throes of addiction do lie. people who are in the throes of addiction do things that they should not do. that is not in any way to excuse it, but i wonder if they are as garrett suggests, thinking they can go after this very aggressively, maybe going a bridge too far? >> well, look, i do think republicans really do run a severe risk of overplaying their hand for this reason. i think when you look at the biden family in total, they

remember that joe biden lost his first wife and child in a car accident, beau biden to cancer and now hunter who has all these problems. i think that, yes, they run that risk. having said that, you know, the hunter biden issue is problematic for the president because hunter's actions, as bad as they are, they speak to influence peddling, and frankly, they're mall odorous. republicans don't need to launch an impeachment inquiry to make a political issue out of this. frankly, i don't know that hunter biden is going to motivate a lot of swing voters in this election. so they have to be very careful how they deploy that as a political issue. like i said, i think they're over playing it with this impeachment inquiry right now. i think that is a mistake because republicans didn't do very well with the bill clinton impeachment back in the 1990s. that didn't work out well. they run the same risk here, and

even as bad as hunter biden's actions have been and as smelly as they are with $80,000 a month, you know, for a ukrainian gas company board, it's really outrageous. but at the same time, you know, they haven't really been able to tie this directly to the president in terms of him having any kind of direct financial benefit. so i think there's a great risk to this and, again, i can't imagine that the swing district republicans like this at all. many of them were not prepared to vote for an impeachment inquiry. that's why mccarthy did it the way he did, but just simply announcing it. so i think there's a lot of danger here. >> maybe plays to the base, maybe not so well elsewhere. charles, i can see out of the corner of my eye that you were taking copious notes and making marks on the indictments. what else should we know here? >> i think it's interesting where they're going with this. there's not a lot of detail -- i think one of the things that people have to understand, there's a difference between something that is known fact and something that you can actually

establish. i'm very curious as to where and how are they establishing hunter biden's actual addiction or substance abuse issue? it's not a speaking indictment, so we don't know whether there was paraphernalia found or we don't though what they're using as the basis to contemporaneously line up. we knew that he was suffering from substance abuse at this particular point when he filed this application because it's not a speaking indictment, these are not things that we would know. so it's one of the unique cases that a status crime, if you will, is allowed to be the basis for an additional indictment. so status crimes are things like i'm addicted to drugs. i'm a gang member. it's based on your status as opposed to your actions. so with this, usually you will see some level of information and insight as to how the government had the information they did that assigns him the status that he's given. it's not here, that's not necessarily a surprise so much, i'm just curious as to how they

got about it. i was looking at that and wondering if we will ever get that information. was it a matter of drug paraphernalia or something else found at a time that was contemporaneous with the filing of the actual application or was there some other information they used as the basis to say this is why this is false, and you have not told the truth and therefore are now indicted. >> so they've already had these conversations, right? >> mm-hmm. >> but they -- you could also argue that maybe they're going into a renewed negotiation, if there is a renewed negotiation for a plea from maybe a point of caution. >> sure. >> take longer, shorter, who knows? >> i would say shorter, and i think one of the reasons why is -- the reason the negotiations failed the last time wasn't about the defense or the prosecution. it was the judge, if you recall, who rejected the actual plea deal that had been put out by the parties. because they've been down this road before and they know essentially what the judge is likely looking for, this

indictment should not come as too much of a surprise to either of the parties, certainly not to the prosecution, but it should not be a huge surprise to hunter biden's defense team. they should be prepared for it, like i said, i expect that at some point, the tax charges that are looming will be wrapped up into this, and he will take it to the indictment, and they will go back before the judge and hopefully that will be accepted at that point. >> charles, you've stuck around longer than you were supposed to. thank you so much for doing that. joining me now by phone is washington correspondent for "the new york times," michael schmidt. you have written extensively about the collapse of this deal that brought us to where we are now. first of all, give me your take on this indictment. >> well, it's pretty straightforward. and look, whenever the president's son is indicted, it's an extraordinary event. certainly by his own justice department, we did know based on a filing from the special counsel's office just a few days

ago that an indictment was likely coming before the end of the month. there was some thought that maybe the special counsel's office would wait and try and negotiate a plea deal with hunter biden before the end of the month, a deal similar to the one that they had reached over the summer but dramatically collapsed in july in that federal courthouse in delaware. what sort of remains to be seen here is that will we end up with the same result that we would have as part of that deal? these charges are not brought often. hunter biden is someone who doesn't have a long criminal history. he's never been in prison before, and there's some thought among people who really understand gun laws and gun prosecutions that a judge may look at a -- like if hunter were, you know, to plead to this charge, may give him a diversion agreement very similar to what was negotiated over the summer,

and basically say you can't own a firearm again, you have to go through drug testing, but if you do that, you don't have to go to prison. so it's not -- i don't think that this is a dramatic -- it's a dramatic event for the justice department to indict the son of the president, the president who appoints the attorney general, the people in the justice department to run it. it may not change his sort of exposure in terms of his likelihood of going to prison or not, but as we've seen with the hunter biden story, it never seems to end, and it always takes a twist that we didn't anticipate it taking. this thing looked like -- this being the federal investigation -- looked like it was done, fully cooked and over in june, and here we are today sitting with an indictment of the president. >> when i listen to everything you have to say, michael, and

having read everything you reported and you just said that this is something that is not brought often, that we know that there was a deal in place, even though it's not a surprise, would you say that this is a pretty extraordinary step for the justice department and the prosecutor? >> totally, and you know, what i was saying is that anytime you have a situation where a department controlled by the president is taking action against that president or their family, it's something that, you know, we've never seen, and it raises all these different questions. we are all very familiar with questions about the justice department's independence over the past several years. certainly those were major questions under donald trump, and joe biden has made it part of his presidency to try and reset those norms and have nothing to do with the justice department, people in biden's world will swear up and down

that he has not tried to interfere in any way in this case against his son. nevertheless, there were huge perception, you know, questions here about, well, how can a justice department that's run by someone who was put there by joe biden do a thorough, fair investigation of the president's son. and one of the ways that the fruits of the investigation were sort of protected from the political winds of the moment was just, you know, several weeks ago when attorney general garland appointed david weiss, the u.s. attorney in delaware special counsel, giving him a sort of special designation and some provisions and procedures and guidelines in there that create some independence from the political appointees put at the top of the justice department. >> when you came on the phone, charles and i had been talking

about the tiing of this and whether or not the fact there had already been a plea deal case, if there's going to be another deal potentially more quickly, but then you have the potential for the investigation into some of these other things that you lay out, again, in this article, whether any of his work with foreign interests violated the foreign agent's registration act, which requires him to disclose any lobbying activities for other countries. so even apart from this, the political implications, michael, of how long, how deep this might go into the political campaign, do you have any insights into that timing? >> look, whenever someone, if hunter biden were to go to trial, my guess is that would be something that would happen between now and the presidential election next year. it wouldn't be a very long trial. it wouldn't be a very complicated trial, but it would certainly be the president's son going into court every day to

stand trial on charges, on charges being brought against him by his father's justice department. what we don't know here is what's going on with the other parts of the investigation. we know that they have looked at hunter biden's taxes, hunter biden was going taxes. hunter biden was going to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax charges as part of that deal that came together this summer and then fell apart. so, you know, that was similar to this gun charge. the difference on the tax charges is that for those to be brought, they almost certainly have to be charged in different jurisdictions. they have to be charged, perhaps, in california, or in washington, where hunter biden was living at the time that the tax issues came up. those charges were not brought today or certainly haven't been brought yet today. there's nothing we know about as of now, and, you know, you would think that if hunter biden was

going to plead guilty to these charges over the summer, and that deal collapsed that they would bring, they would bring them at some point. it will just be more complicated because david weiss is the u.s. attorney in delaware, the charges he brought today are in delaware, but those tax charges would have to be brought in different jurisdictions. >> michael schmidt from the "new york times," thank you so much, michael. appreciate you giving us a call. i want to bring in nbc's allie raffa at the white house. i understand you have new information for us. >> we're just learning that vice president kamala harris who have delivering remark at an hbcu in hampton roads, virginia, she was shouted questions from reporters there about this new indictment for hunter biden. she ignored those shouted questions as she concluded that event. and that's not all too surprising, given the strategy and the approach that we have seen the white house take as it

relates to the legal woes of hunter biden. remember, the white house and president thought months ago this would be behind them, and they wouldn't have to worry about this anymore as far as it was just overshadowing the president's agenda and his reelection campaign. of course because of that unravelled plea deal from the judge who questioned the terms or the scope of immunity in that case, they've been forced to reconcile and reconsider this all over again, and it can't be underscored enough, really, how inconvenient the timing of this is for this white house. remember, this is coming just two days after house republicans, house speaker kevin mccarthy launched this impeachment inquiry into president biden because of potential relation to hunter biden's overseas business dealings, and this has just become a political lightning rod for republicans using it to accuse the doj of giving hunter biden a sweetheart deal, with that deal over the summer that

would have allowed him to avoid jail time by pleading guilty to those two misdemeanor tax charges, and then complying with a program that would have allowed him to avoid jail time by taking repeated drug tests and staying out of legal trouble for two years. this is coming, as i said, these house republicans are using this as ammunition against the president, and hunter biden has long been seen as one of the president's biggest political vulnerabilities. but the white house is contending that the president and the doj, of course, as it relates to this have been completely separate. the president, for years now, has taken this vow to remain independent of his justice department. but you look at the legal developments surrounding hunter biden and how every time the news breaks about them, how they just dominate the air waves and really steal the spotlight away from the president's agenda, away from the plans of his day. and you've got to think of how

frustrating that must be for the white house, for the president, as we wait for him to leave to maryland as he's expected to deliver this economic speech in just about an hour now. and so that's really what it comes down to, what we're thinking of optically from the white house perspective and how they're planning on handling this moving forward as far as whether this goes to trial, and how long this will take as it potentially pleads into the president's ability to run for reelection as his son potentially faces these new criminal charges. >> the two key things they wanted to get done today, the president on the economy, continuing to tout bidenomics, we have the vice president starting this new push on college campuses to get out the vote. allie raffa, thank you so much, and not surprisingly, we're already having our folks on capitol hill getting reaction. are early reaction right now from congressman jamie raskin. this was just moments ago. >> i don't think people should

applaud the system when it works for hunter biden but then try to tear the system down when it works for donald trump. both of them have been indicted on different charges. the presumption of innocence operates for both of them, and you know, we shouldn't take delight in other people's misfortunes, but we have to have a rule of law. >> let me bring garrett haake back in on capitol hill. early line, part of at least what we'll hear on the democratic side, which is what they will say is the hypocrisy of the republicans for making the charges that they're making or drawing the conclusions that they're drawing. but also going back to what you were saying, how this all fits in to the impeachment and frankly, whether or not we end up with a government shut down. yeah, chris, look, i think this is related. i think we're going to see the democratic strategy in response to all things hunter biden start to roll out here a little bit. you heard some of it from jamie

raskin who is the top democrat on oversight. he will be the point person on capitol hill for responding to this impeachment inquiry from the democratic side, and what you heard from him there is something you could sort of call reverse both ciderism, if the trump and maga folks are going to try to drag joe biden down by suggesting all of this scandal around hunter biden is related to him, raskin is saying, all right f you're attacking the department of justice for being unfair for prosecuting a political figure in donald trump, here they are prosecuting a political figure in the son of the sitting president, you cannot have it both ways. trying to kind of provide the anecdote by offering the opposite view, and the other part of what you're hearing from raskin, and democrats increasingly going forward is to try to separate joe biden from hunter biden. they're going to defend joe biden to the hill. house democrats have made it clear, joe biden's hands are clean on all things related to

hunter biden. hunter biden is going to have to defend himself with his own attorneys and perhaps with his father in a personal way. to separate what hunter biden is alleged to have done in any of these various instances that will come before them from the actions of president or vice president biden. you heard it from jamie raskin, and i have seen it acknowledged by james comer, his counter part on the oversight committee who made a comment on the hill a short time ago basically saying this is the one case we don't think we can tie to joe biden. that will be the effort from democrats going forward, to separate these two things and remind folks, you cannot cheer for the justice department when they go after your enemies but bo them when they go after who you support. >> garrett haake, thank you so much for that. i want to bring in carol lam, former federal prosecutor and msnbc legal analyst. we were talking earlier about the case in georgia, and a

speedy trial. i'm wondering, in this case, it's been a bit since these alleged actions took place, is there any kind of statute of limitations? what's your take on what you're seeing right now? >> chris, without further information it's hard to be definitely sure but it appears it's something the special counsel felt he needed to do in order to indictment the case within the statute of limitations as you mentioned. there's a five-year statute of limitations in these criminal charges, and you'll see in the indictment that the events at issue took place in october. so october 12th, october 18th. and the prosecution wants to make sure they indict the case within five years. they've got less than a month on the clock here. the fact that this was sort of almost an incidental type of indictment without a lot of hoopla, without a lot of detail in the indictment suggests to me

that this was brought in order to preserve the case under the statute of limitations. speedy trial is a different issue. speedy trial takes place when the case has already been indicted and then the issue is how fast you have to take the case to trial. this is a statute of limitations issue, and what we're looking at here, i think, is that david weiss decided he better file the charges here before the statute of limitations on this firearms charge expires. >> and is that the only reason you think it is compared to some of what we have seen in indictments previously pretty thin? >> well, these aren't terribly complicated cases. the firearms cases, they may be complicated in terms of the actual proof of drug addiction or such, but i think hunter biden has already pretty much talked about his drug addiction during that time period. so i do think that there's not

really that much to say. this isn't the crime of the century. this was basically making false statements about drug addiction in order to get a firearm. if you compare that to the tax charges, tax charges can be very complicated, and particularly when international types of facts are involved because it's much harder to get the documentation and the evidence, in terms of witnesses and documentation from other countries. there are all sorts of treaties that are involved, and so it doesn't surprise me at all that the firearms charges are sort of cut and dried. the indictment doesn't have to be very complicated and it's not. but, you know, the tax charges and the firearms charges are not substantively related. we saw them put together for purposes of the attempted plea bargain a month ago, and that is not surprising because of course hunter biden wanted what we call global peace.