pence to take an action to benefit the defendant as a candidate and help him overturn the results of the election. as discussed, the defendant played no official role in the congressional certification proceeding and was not using his tweets about pence's role to advance any executive branch or government interest. likewise, the defendant had no role in whether state legislatures might take action regarding their own electoral slates. they go on to say that this was a criminal enterprise. donald trump was not acting as the president. don't worry, there will be so much more on this. ken dilanian, thank you very much. "deadline: white house" starts right now. hi, everyone, it's 4:00 in new york. we have major breaking news to tell you about in the case of the united states of america versus donald j. trump with

permission from judge chutkan jack smith released a filing with never before seen evidence he has compiled against donald trump in his investigation of the federal election interference case. it begins with the defense of jack smith's entire case in light of the supreme court's immunity decision which divides official acts from private acts, giving presidents immunity for official ones. it reads in part, quote, the defendant asserts that he is immune from prosecution for his criminal scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election, because he claims it entailed official conduct. not so. although the defendant was the incumbent president during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one. this motion provides a comprehensive account of the defendant's private criminal conduct. this quote comprehensive account of donald trump's criminal conduct is 165 pages long. it's here on our desk, we just got it a few minutes ago. fortunately for us we have an

entire team of experts, lawyers and reporters combing through it right now from front to back and back to front. the breaking news is where we start today with former top prosecutor at the department of justice andrew weissmann, also joining us former u.s. attorney and former deputy assistant attorney general harry litman. with me at the table msnbc legal correspondent lisa rubin. let me read a little bit more to you all. on page 4, quote, at its core the defendant donald trump's scheme was a private criminal effort in his capacity as a candidate the defendant used deceit to target every stage of the electoral process, which through the constitution the electoral contact and state laws includes the state's notification to the federal government of the selection of their representative electors based on the popular vote in the state. the meeting of those electors to cast their votes consistent with the popular vote and congress' counting of the electors' votes

at a certification proceeding. at its core the scheme was a private criminal effort. that feels like one among many of the headlines, andrew weissmann. >> nicolle, i don't like to jump to something that sounds like hyperbole, but there is no question that there are repeated bombshells in this submission and i cannot tell you that i've finished the 165 pages. let me tell you why i think this is so devastating. first, the prosecution recounts direct evidence against the former president. conversations directly with him by lawyers and by mike pence himself. at one point one of the lawyers tells him that there is no proof of any fraud that would be outcome determinative. that claim to the other --

otherwise or he uses an expletive, says it's bs. he has recounted conversations with pence himself describing that the claims of election fraud that the president is making are not true. so this is direct evidence. there also is direct evidence the president is saying i don't care about the details. i don't care that we would lose in court. and when he's warned that there would be violence on page 8 of the filing, when he's warned that if he continues this that there could be violence, he says "make them riot." that's a quote. "make them riot." "do it." those are quotes from the submission. in terms of the cavalier attitude of the former president in connection with the anticipated violence and we all

could see on january 6 exactly what happened and the violence that ensued. >> i will read from that section. in the immediate post-election period while the defendant, donald trump, claimed fraud without proof, his private operatives sought to create chaos, rather than seek clarity at polling places where states were continuing to tabulate votes. for example, on november 4th a campaign employee, agent and co-conspirator of the defendant tried to sow confusion when the ongoing vote count at the tcf center in detroit, michigan, looked unfavorable to the defendant, that's donald trump. when a colleague at the tcf center told a redacted witness here we think a batch of votes heavily in biden's favor is right, the witness responded find a reason it isn't. give me options to file litigation and even if it is, when the colleague suggested that there was about to be unrest reminisce ent of the brooks brothers riot, a violent effort to stop the vote count in

florida after the 2000 presidential election, p 5, person 5 responded, quote, make them riot and do it. the defendant's campaign operatives and supporters used similar tactics at other tabulation centers including in philadelphia, pennsylvania. wis something that the january 6 committee got at and around and i think they would say all of the evidence they developed was telling this story, but they didn't puncture, perhaps, the inner most circle, which is donald trump's voice. they get at the inner most circle of both premeditation, intent and state of mind. talk about that, the power of that evidence. >> absolutely. so that is exactly the limitation. as terrific as the work was, the congressional hearing and how much they did with limited tools, if you recall mike pence did not testify and provide evidence there, nor did certain

witnesses come in and say what their direct conversations were with donald trump. so they talked around meetings, they talked about certain things that happened, but they would not talk about those direct conversations. what this filing shows is jack smith did just that. he has those conversations direct evidence with respect to the former president, direct knowledge to show that he knew that his claims were false and i think, you know, that's one where we knew that was going to exist. i find the statements about his -- what he thinks about violence is something that is both devastating for the legal case and you would know better than i, but from a political case, especially in light of the kind of claims that were made yesterday at the vice presidential debate to sort of sugar coat and whitewash what happened on january 6, this has

donald trump being so incredibly cavalier. remember at the time that he is reported to be making these statements he is the sitting president of the united states. and when he's told about potential violence, it is not how do we prevent it, the quote is, do it. make them riot. so it is so antithetical to what you do when you are a government official as nicolle, you have been and i have been and harry has been, that is you take an oath of office to defend the constitution, to uphold the law, to those kinds of statements that jack smith clearly has are really devastating, i think, both from a legal perspective and obviously potentially from a political perspective. >> okay. i want to turn the conversation to pence. i want to bring lisa rubin in who just gasped upon reading

something on page 142. i will share what you read that made you gasp and then let's dive into what we know to be new and that is mike pence's voice on all of this. what we had were our eyeballs on mike pence's movements on that day. what we had were our ears and the sound of actually disguised voice testifying before the january 6 select committee about the calls, the kinds of calls that came into the sit room back at the white house from mike pence's security detail, but we didn't know much in mike pence's own voice. we didn't know what he would say under oath as the witness in a criminal proceeding but now we do. let me read to you -- i will read first what made lisa rubin gasp. from page 142, quote, upon receiving a phone call alerting him, donald trump, that pence had been taken to a secure location, a witness p-15 rushed to the dining room to inform the defendant, donald trump, in hopes that the defendant, donald trump, would take action to

ensure mike pence's safety. instead, after this person delivered the news, the defendant, donald trump, looked at him and said only, quote, so what. lisa? >> the cavalierness with which donald trump received that news certainly is news to me. you know, it goes to andrew's point about a number of the allegations here, not being just things we've seen before in the january 6th committee and in the transcripts that were generated by that committee's investigation. there is a whole lot of new content here, nicolle, and that is just one part of it. i want to also talk about the fact that while much of the public focus is going to be on the interactions between trump and pence, and pence as a witness before the government, there is so much else here outside of pence so that even if a higher court at a later point decides that those conversations really are off limits, it

doesn't change the fact that, for example, there are huge chunks of this brief that talk about things that are solely outside the executive branch entirely, including a many page long section about trump's outreach to officials in other states, including his infamous phone call to doug doocy, the governor of arizona, his meeting with the two heads of the michigan state houses and the white house, a call to then speaker of the arizona state house rusty bowers, a call to chris carr, the then and current attorney general of georgia, and, of course, the infamous call to brad raffensperger. there's also a huge selection on the fake electors scheme which was largely perpetrated by people outside government, including then chair of the republican national committee ronna mcdaniel and rudy giuliani as well as others. so i think the focus publicly today is properly on pence because there's so much about that that we don't know, but in terms of thinking about what the

right legal outcome here should be, i want to make sure that people understand that there is so much here that is solely private in its nature that trump and his team of lawyers can't get around. they may have delayed the ultimate judgment day and depending on the outcome of the election there may be no judgment day, but in a real court upholding the rule of law, there is a plethora of conduct here that is purely private and outside that presidential immunity ruling that should see the light of day at trial. >> and many of those -- these crimes are also charged in other states that have looked at it. i think we have arizona. >> arizona. >> georgia, michigan and wisconsin that have all charged the fake electors plots in those states. so looking at the same body of evidence. >> that's right. >> crimes identified and charged in those states as well. let me -- let me make a promise that we will dive into those pages, but let me come back,

harry litman, to some of what we're hearing in this section about mike pence who was a witness before jack smith's investigators, but not before the january 6 select committee. it was one of the people that they had hoped to talk to, that they weren't able to talk to. they got as high as his chief of staff and his counsel who proved to be very fruitful and important witnesses, but let me read to you starting on page 12. in the post-election time period mike pence, the defendant's own running mate, who he had directed to assess fraud allegations, told the defendant that he had seen no evidence of outcome determinative fraud in the election. this was in one of the many conversations the defendant, donald trump, and pence had as running mates in which they discussed their shared electoral interests. mike pence gradually and gently tried to convince the defendant to accept the lawful results of the election, even if they meant they lost. these conversations included a conversation on november 4th in which the defendant asked pence

to, quote, study up claims of voter fraud in states that they had won together in 2016 to determine whether they could bring legal challenges as candidates in those states. pence describes the conversation as follows, quote, well, i think -- i think it was broadly -- it was just look at all of it. let me know what you think. but he told me that the campaign was going to fight. was going to go to court and make challenges. and then he just said we're going to fight this and take a look at it. let me know what you think. harry litman, they go to court, i think 61 times, they lose 60 times. there was no evidence of fraud ever. >> right. look, as andrew says, these were words out of pence's mouth, we haven't seen that before. january 6 did a lot but there's

nothing like a federal grand jury and subpoena. we knew he had talked. as andrew and lisa say, there are many dozens of bombshells here and people are right now porg over them. i would submit, though, that the biggest bombshell of the whole document is that it was released as early as yesterday trump was trying tooth and nail to keep this from coming out saying it would harm him in the election and that was the whole reason they were doing it. chutkan just, boom, released it today. so now the genie is out of the bottle. as to pence in particular, they are the most incendiary conversations, there's many, many others, but starting on page 90, the special counsel makes the argument for why the pence evidence is not immune and it's in essence as many people anticipated that pence is both a vice president but the president pro tem of the senate and in that role, it's in that role that trump is trying to browbeat him and that role has nothing to

do with the executive so that's the argument. but you are very right, as is andrew and lisa. let's say a court of appeals, and this is going to go to them, they hope just one more time up and down, says doesn't matter, that's out the window. there is so much more that everyone is in process now of poring through, stuff with mark meadows, many of these persons we know who they are and we can piece it together. the big thing now is it's all been laid bare notwithstanding trump's very strident efforts to keep it from seeing the light of day. now he can appeal but now the genie is out of the bottle, we have all of this evidence with chapter and verse cited. >> it's such a good point in terms of why this matters and i think that if you look at what has been tragically a rather successful effort for donald trump to bend the rule of law around his will, i had to --

andrew weissmann, of your former colleagues on the mueller team at the table talking about the successful effort that bill barr undertook to smear, mischaracterize the results of that 23-month investigation. it's clear that when donald trump is the person who has been investigated, that without the actual facts and the evidence before the public, donald trump will lie about every last facet of it and in this case we're here less than 24 hours after the vice presidential debate where it's like an earth one -- it's like an "snl" skit. the only reason we covered the j.d. vance/tim walz debate is because donald trump sought to have mike pence hung by their own supporters. and to the piece of testimony that made lisa rubin as level-headed a colleague as i have gasp at the prospect of mike pence being killed or harmed, donald trump's -- what

jack smith found was that donald trump's response was, quote, "so what." what do you think the impact could be of this firsthand witness testimony from mike pence and other of the inner most circle from donald trump's white house and campaign? >> i think for people who already understand the earth one, earth two issue, this surreal nature of the vice presidential debate yesterday where the candidate for vice president on the republican side basically said what are you talking about on january 6? there was no effort to overturn the election and there was a peaceful transfer of power. and then today you have chapter and verse, detailed conversations, and just like the january 6 committee evidence, it is coming from the -- we don't know the exact names all the

time, but it is coming from trump campaign officials, trump lawyers and mike pence, his own vice president at the time. so it is coming from within the tent. this is not some democratic hoax. and so you could not have a more sort of stark contrast between rhetoric, empty rhetoric on one hand and actual facts on the other. in terms of what its ramifications could be, you know, i would think that the people who are saying that they have concerns about donald trump and maybe they're not going to vote for him but they're thinking about, gee, does that mean i should vote for kamala harris, is that something that i should do? i would really encourage people to read the brief and read the

evidence and think about the source of the evidence in terms of looking at this election from an apolitical stance. in terms of thinking about it, i think as nicolle, you and i do which is what it means for the country in terms of a functioning democracy with a rule of law because what you have here is chapter and verse, over and over again, about an effort, a conspiracy, a criminal conspiracy, to thwart the will of the american electorate. there is no more serious crime in american history than that. >> and to that point let me read to you what mike pence's testimony has yielded. again, the historic nature of this investigation is that jack smith is the only person known to have interviewed mike pence under oath. when he takes us inside the conversations between mike pence

and donald trump, remember that mike pence had as much to gain by remaining in power as donald trump did. he simply didn't want to incite violence and destroy the constitution and lie, frankly, to do so, but he thought about t he called dan quayle and he asked where the limits were, and he sought legal counsel from right wing conservative legal icon judge michael luttig. and i want to tell you what he said in the room with donald trump. it reads like a scene from "die hard" like a hostage -- trying to talk down a hostage taker. in this case the hostage taker was donald trump and the hostage was the united states of america. quote, a call between the defendant donald trump and mike pence on november 7th, the day that media organizations began to project joe biden as the winner of the election, mike pence, quote, tried to encourage the defendant, quote, as a friend, reminding him, quote, you took a dying political party and you gave it a new lease on life. in a november 11th meeting

between the defendant mike pence, campaign staff and some white house staff during which mike pence asked when most of the lawsuits would be resolved, when does this come to a head mike pence asked, and the campaign staff responded, quote, the week after thanksgiving. a november 12 meeting among the defendant donald trump, mike pence, campaign staff and some white house staff during which mike pence recalls the, quote, campaign lawyers gave a sober and somewhat pessimistic report on the state of election challenges. a private lunch on november 12th in which mike pence reiterated a face-saving option for donald trump, quote, don't concede, but recognize the process is over. in a private lunch on november 16th in which mike pence tried to encourage donald trump to accept the results of the election and run again in 2024, to which donald trump responded, quote, i don't know. 2024 is so far off. harry litman, i mean, we are in

the room with donald trump being offered all these off-ramps from his number two mike pence, private conversations between the person who incited the coup and we have all of this intent and premeditation from the mouth of mike pence himself. it's the enormity of it is hard to overstate. >> yeah, it's incredibly scathing and not just intent and premeditation, but knowledge. all kinds of proof that he knows that this is false. but every time you hear those statements, first when they are out of the mouth of pence, that means only through jack smith and only through the federal grand jury and subpoena would we know it. this is new stuff from what january 6 had. and then second when we are toggling back and forth between politics and a trial, but when it comes to trial, anything that anyone says trump said is going to be admissible under the rules of evidence. so we have not just the most

incendiary statements, but statements that we only got because of jack smith now stand revealed when trump didn't want them and will all be admissible at trial unless, of course, the -- everything about pence is ruled off the table because of immunity. >> let me keep going with, again, what is new to us as a voting public, as a citizenry. again, this is mike pence, donald trump's number two. new information about what happened in a november 23rd phone call between mike pence and donald trump in which donald trump told mike pence that his private attorney was, quote, not optimistic about the election challenges. so by november 23rd they knew that they were losing or had lost or were going to lose all these challenges. so they knew the wacky stuff being said on fox news was not going to prevail in court, including in front of some

trump-appointed judges. i believe that's the earliest we've known that they knew all the challenges were going to fail. a december 21st private lunch in which mike pence encouraged donald trump, quote, not to look at the election as a loss, just an intermission. this was followed later in the day by a private discussion between pence and trump in the oval office in which trump asks pence, quote, what do you think we should do? mike pence said, quote, after we have exhausted every legal process in the courts and congress, if we still came up short, donald trump should, quote, take a bow. of course, donald trump doesn't do that, lisa rubin, he incites a deadly insurrection. leaves mike pence and his family to run to safety in which he says so what when he learns they are in danger. but i believe that november 23rd is the earliest we know that they know they're going to come up short in court. >> yes, particularly given that

we have seen other representations that they really didn't understand that they were going to fully come up short until some point in early december. >> right. the december 29 be wild text. he knows for a month when he sends that message. >> that they're going to come up short. he's been repeatedly advised by that. his point that everyone is telling him he's going to lose is echoed here. one of the things that i find really interesting is jack smith is saying, look, just because somebody works in the white house doesn't mean their communications with trump are off limits. we had previously thought that the special counsel's office was sort of making a concession based on the superseding indictment that many of those communications were, in fact, off limits, and here they're sort of arguing something more nuanced. a number of people who were close to the president, including people who actually worked in the white house, were acting in unofficial capacities.

that they were effectively two hats. some of those people heard and or observed some of the most damning conduct here. there are one, two, three, four -- five different people listed by number at the top of page 147 including a white house senior advisor who acted as a conduit between trump and the campaign, two white house staffers who volunteered for the campaign while working in the white house, a staffer who witnessed what they call a pertinent private conversation where trump was making a statement, and someone identified as the defendant's executive assistant, that person appeared in the original indictment as well because they were responsible for printing out all of these private communications and making sure they got to donald trump's desk. why? because donald trump infamously doesn't have what you, i and the rest of the american public have, which is a smartphone or what people used to use, a blackberry in order to have those private communications. so we are learning a tremendous

amount from this brief and i just want to go back to sort of a larger point. if you were to listen to people in trump world over the last several weeks, they would say really we're not expecting to learn all that much that's new. this is just going to be a recitation of all these facts that are in the public domain. i don't know, i could be known for hyperbole, but i don't usually gasp at things i've seen before or remember before. there is a whole lot here that we have never before seen that didn't appear in anybody's book, that doesn't appear in a publicly available transcript or in a hearing that we all watched. they have been trying to shape expectations as if this is some sort of repackaging of same old, same old. that is not the case here, either because it came straight from the former vice president's mouth or it came from the mouths of people who worked in donald trump's inner circle. we are learning facts that were not previously known to us. and i think the focus here,

there's a lot of focus on what was on different news channels at the time that former president trump was tweeting because one of the big fixations for the special counsel's office is let us show you why judge chutkan these tweets that he issued which might ordinarily be considered a president esper view to communicate with the american public, let us show you why those are fair game here and they intersperse those tweets with what was on fox news at the time. that's because we have long understood that donald trump was left alone at the dining room at some point in time to watch television. now we understand what he was watching and clearly the prosecutors want judge chutkan to understand this is what he was hearing and then this is what he did. those two things together show you he was purely functioning as a candidate. he was not using even the bully pulpit or communicating within the outer perimeter of what a president can do. this is a guy who was solely acting in the interest of his candidacy, not as a president of

the united states. >> andrew weissmann, maybe the best story trump can tell because his depraved indifference to the life and death matter of his own vice president is not a political winner. it's why an otherwise talented mr. ripley last night only balked when the question of january 6 came up. i wonder if there's any evidence from what you've been able to read that mark meadows was useful or helpful or honest as a witness to jack smith. >> hard to tell yet. i mean, there's going to be -- you can be sure that when we go off air we're going to -- me and lots of other people are going to be sort of trying to figure out exactly who these people are, because there are some clues there. it does look like there is some piece there and that is like probably question number one i had. i mean, clearly mike pence is identified so person number two that you're really thinking about is mark meadows. i wanted to go back to something

you were focusing on, nicolle, which is you were describing just how much mike pence had to basically coddle and baby the president of the united states. when you think about this person, hey, don't think of it as a loss, think of it as an intermission that you can run next time and all of these sort of euphemisms and you compare that to leaders like mitt romney, john mccain, al gore, people who know, do you know what, you fight a good fight, you do everything you can to win and if you come up -- you know, you've come second, meaning you lost, you do what's necessary for the good of the country and you take it for what it is. here the image of that pence himself the only selected vice president who has been so loyal

to donald trump, he paints a picture of a man who is deeply flawed as a human being that he can't just say, yep, i lost. i mean, that is so striking that they have to come up with all of these ways around his sort of unwillingness to just say he, in fact, lost the election in a way that all american leaders have been able to do. >> well, and just to jump back into the political significance potentially of this information, there's a lot of lore, right, about trump's strength and sara long well who will join us in a second is described as the manosphere. i don't have a pass tort to the manosphere but being a sore loser and cheater and liar doesn't body well for athletes in the manosphere or professional baseball or football players. cheating and the inability to

concede and lose and walk across the field and shake a hand is just a 100% losing proposition for men and women in any other arena. only in politics does this person who mike pence describes as so frail and fragile and ego maniacal that he has to sort of talk to him in soft voices to get him to not do what he goes on to do. it's remarkable. we couldn't get through this without you. i will give you the last word. >> what you are saying is something that we saw just last night where the vice presidential candidate couldn't himself just state reality and you see that, you know, up to and including today. so, you know, that kind of conduct and that sort of immaturity is something that is infected the body politic. >> we made you late for class. you can tell your students to

blame me. thank you. we will have much more on this breaking news and the potential impact it could have on the presidential contest just 34 days away after a really short break. don't go anywhere. y after a reat break. don't go anywhere. conflict is raging across the world, and millions of children's lives are being devastated by war, hunger, disease and poverty. we urgently need your help to reach children in crisis. please call or go online to give just $10 impact it could have on the impact it could have on the a month. only $0.33 a day. we need 1000 new monthly donors this month to help children in crisis around the world and right here at home. you can help us provide food, essentials, and lifesaving medical care to children in the most need.

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xfinity internet customers, ask how to get a free 5g phone and a second unlimited line free for a year. switch today! new projects means new project managers. you need to hire. i need indeed. indeed you do. when you sponsor a job on indeed, it's easier for talented candidates to find it. which makes it easier for you to hire them. visit indeed.com/hire when we started feeding bogie the farmer's dog, he lost so much weight. pre-portioned packs makes it really easy to keep him lean and healthy. in the morning, he flies up the stairs and hops up on my bed. in the past, he would not have been able to do any of those things. joining our breaking news coverage, joining us at the table nbc news correspondent vaughn hillyard, chief political columnist, msnbc national affairs analyst john heilemann, also joining us executive

director of republican voters against trump and the publisher of the bulwark sara long ross is here. share ration let me start with you, in terms of not just your most recent conversation was voters, but since you've been talking to voters about january 6th, how hot is the issue in terms of opening up the minds of people who once thought trump as president was a great idea? >> yeah, here is what's interesting about this happening right now, the reason that donald trump did not want these documents unsealed is he did not want january 6th to return as a high salience issue this close to the election. i've been doing focus groups for years now and i did them all through the january 6th committee and that was during sort of the early days of the primary and it was a really low water mark for donald trump. i mean, that is when we were seeing, you know -- we would get

lots of groups where zero out of zero people in the focus groups would want to see donald trump as president again because when january 6 this high salience it reminds voters of the darkest day of the trump administration. it reminds them of the chaos, it reminds them of something that as republicans they are ashamed about. i mean, one of the things you might remember from january 6 is how in the early aftermath they wanted to characterize it as a black lives matter riot or something that antifa had done, that it was a false flag operation, right? they didn't want to own january 6th. and that's because it was -- and it's skriebts this way in the focus groups, they still describe it as a dark day or a sad day, but trump was able to over time as it got more distant in people's minds, right, he was able to sort of climb his way back, he was able to paint himself as a victim, as the court cases -- you know, the

indictments started to roll in against him, he didn't have anybody who was willing to attack him in the republican primary or really go after him and as a result he became the nominee again, right, because he has this stranglehold on the party. but with swing voters and these sort of right-leaning independents, reminding them about january 6, that is the number one way to sort of push those voters back away from donald trump. you are talking about immigration, you're talking about the economy, those voters they can start to warm up a little bit and be worried about voting for a democrat, but when january 6 is at the top of their minds, much more so that reminds them, oh, no, i do not want to do that again with this guy, which is why it's so significant that this is coming out right now so close to the election. >> sara longwell, let me remind our viewers what we are working with. donald trump's lawyers were in court until the final moment to keep this filing from jack

smith's investigators from being released. judge tanya chutkan today permitted the release. it is the argument, the legal argument, about which of the acts that donald trump allegedly committed on january 6 and before january 6 that are not official acts and, therefore, not immune in the eyes of the united states supreme court. and, sara, to your point, i mean, as much as donald trump has made attacking the media his sort of favorite line, this is something he cares about very much. "the new york times" head line on this story, quote, judge unseals new evidence in federal election case against donald trump, and it starts this way, in a sprawling legal brief partly unsealed on wednesday the special counsel jack smith laid out his case for why former president donald trump is not immune from prosecution on federal charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election. of course, everyone is drawn to what is new in our line of work,

but i take your point, sara, that it's the fact that this story is in the news that reminds me just at a visceral level which is where most people make their voting decisions in their guts of his conduct on that day. in terms of what's new you also have the credibility of a mike pence who even though hard core maga folks don't like mike pence because he refused to do sort of the final act of the trump play, evangelical conservatives, conservative conservatives, i mean, all types of normal republican people still hold mike pence in a position of trust. what as people sort of sift through and focus on mike pence as a witness to donald trump's premeditated and deliberate attempt to overturn an election he knew he lost, what salience does mike pence have as a storyteller? >> well, look, i think the biggest thing that it does is it's actually -- it is so remarkable that his last vice

president won't endorse him. right? that is just -- it's a crazy mind-blowing thing. we don't normally see things like that. but because donald trump is such a sort of chaotic figure these things don't always rise to the surface. but, again, this is about salience, what you put into people's minds going into this election and this will re-remind people, oh, yeah, this is why j.d. vance had to be on that debate stage last night. it is because donald trump incited a mob that almost got his last vice president killed. and so that reminder and putting mike pence back sort of into the -- because he's sort of invisible. you don't see a lot of mike pence. but you put him back into the public imagination and it reminds them that this guy used to be trump's vice president and isn't there anymore because he certified the election and that is the rift between him and donald trump. it will also, i think, raise the salience of people like liz cheney and adam kinzinger and other people who have been outspoken against donald trump

because they were on the january 6 committee, because they were looking at this information closely and believed that donald trump is entirely unfit to lead the country. so it puts them -- raises their salience now at these last stages of the election. and then also, you know, in this last month there's going to be a lot more people who have to decide do i endorse kamala harris as a republican? we're still waiting on mitt romney, we're still waiting on some of the big names on the republican side. does putting this -- does reading these things from mike pence's own words, does it bring some of those people back into the mix to say, do you know what, i have to endorse kamala harris. donald trump is too dangerous. not only because reading it themselves will cause them to do that, but also they will feel sort of a public pressure, right? you in the media, you're going to ask mitt romney why -- this guy can't be president again, right? obviously mitt romney has said he won't vote for trump but that is not enough in the face of the

threat that donald trump poses. you have to endorse and support the one person who can stand between donald trump and the white house again. between him doing this again. his own fitness is being put under a microscope again and obviously he's unfit in a great many ways, but there is none more significant -- and this is where last night, i will just bring it to the debate for one second, which is that j.d. vance could not say that donald trump lost the last election. i don't care how slick he is from -- at being able to debate. he is disqualified. it is disqualifying to not be able to say that donald trump lost the last election and he would be in that mike pence role. and we've heard him say on the record that he wouldn't have certified the election the way mike pence did. this should also remind these republicans -- these are not constitutional conservatives. they should be nowhere near power. and i am glad to see that this is coming out now because i do

think that it creates a new wave of pressure on republicans to repudiate what donald trump did that day and to say he is unfit for further office. >> i mean, it also, vaughn hillyard, puts back into the spotlight something that proved damaging to the republican brand ahead of the midterms. i mean, one of the many reasons that there was no red wave is because, to sara's point, this story was in the news and these witnesses are all lifelong republicans. every one of them voted for donald trump except some of the election workers who were targeted who weren't partisan in nature, they just got swept up in his coup attempt. but you -- i want to ask you as someone who covered mike pence, as someone who knows mike pence, as someone who knows the mike pence story, what is it like to read in mike pence's own words what he said to donald trump to try to talk him off the ledge? >> i think it was the encapsulation of his vice presidency that there was nobody more loyal to donald trump than

mike pence inside that have white house for those first four years. you take a look at somebody like jeff flake who was mike pence's best friend, they were freshmen members of congress back in 2000. they both before coming to congress had led respective conservative think tanks in indiana and in arizona and ultimately donald trump threw jeff flake off the cliff and mike pence stood by his side. so when you see these interactions inside of the white house and over the phone in which mike pence is trying to keep donald trump to be forward thinking, hey, with he could even potentially run in 2024 again, right? take some time here. the results didn't turn out the way they did. it was somebody who was privately trying to help his, as he said, friend and boss try to move forward. and not in a public manner, it's not like he ran on to fox and was like, we as a ticket, we as a white house need to move forward, right? he did it in the most private way possible up to literally the

day that he entered the capitol that day. for mike pence, for mark short, his chief of staff, they were loyal to donald trump and what these interactions show here was just how long mike pence was willing to try to work with him, knowing that there was other individuals who were friends with him, states like doug doocy, who were engaged in conversations in realtime how do they move forward. brian kemp they were in that precarious situation, too, and no one knew how to respond to donald trump in realtime. >> john heilemann, we have had the, i guess, privilege is one way to describe it, of covering a few special counsel investigations in the time of trump and you never know what's actually going on, right? with mueller there were a lot of indictments, you knew when george papadopoulos, you knew when folks were charged, but this was different. this was incredibly opaque and you did know that pence had gone in i think until about an hour ago you had no idea what he had said. but to hear how gently and how

ernestly and how pleadingly and increasingly desperate he was in his conversations with trump to basically, you know, put down the gun he was holding to the head of american democracy, it is chilling. >> yeah, more than chilling, i think, you know, unnerving. i do, i keep coming back to the thing that sara is saying which is, you know, we progressively over the course of this year when it became clear that none of these cases were going to be tried before the election, some of us, i don't know, at least -- probably everyone at this table but certainly you and me just despaired of, you know, the -- how can this be that a president indicted in these various venues on these various charges that the american people were going to have to vote before a court got to render judgment in any of them. it still is to me -- i mean, not a legal crime but a political crime, a moral crime in some

ways. >> a failure. >> it's a failure, institutional failure of a profound degree, unlike almost anything we have ever experienced in an election before. what you thought, then, was that, well, this is no longer going to be a politically -- the salience of this politically would reduce over the course of time. this report does not bring it back in the way that an actual court case prosecuting one of these things would have. it's not going to do that. but i do think that as we get closer towards election day and people start to focus in a careful way and i want to credit my friend ron brownstein at "the atlantic" who did this the othe day and talked about the difference, and sarah knows this really well. the difference between these two sets of voters out there. persuadable voters who supposedly still haven't decided about the election. turns out most are not undecided. they've voted for years for one party or the other. then the irregular voters. tens of millions of people who didn't vote in 2020, some of

them voted once or twice in the last four elections, they are people who don't, the much bigger pool. and truly, probably the more decisive group of battleground states. every strategist on the democrat side who says if we need to expand the electorate, need to get those people to turn out. if you ask them what's the way, they can tell you the breakdown of how many of those people are nonwhite, working class, men, women. they all say the same things. which is the stake of the election have to be raised up. there must be a sense of we are facing two alternative futures here and some of them, talk to the difference groups but the raising of the stakes is what is going to make someone who is an irregular voter decide i have to participate because my vote matters. to determining what future we have as a country. and this is an important, this

moment, this reminder of all this, the new information, the publicity it's going to get, opens an avenue toward raising the stakes in this election in a way that could be really important in the last four and a half weeks before election. >> such a good point. i think it's these voters that know where to vote. they know how to vote. they're registered. they don't know if they're going to vote. i think what john's talking about is that if you voted for trump in the past that you may be sort of aware of liz cheney breaking with him and you don't understand. you saw an op-ed about a general who came out and said for character purposes, i'm voting for trump's opponent. it feels like it might be some connective tissue to put this whole pillar in front of really important groups of vote ergs. how do you deploy that? >> this election is going to be decided among the narrowest

margins. it's been that way in 2022, 2020. every vote really does matter and i think there is this voter, i mean, i hear from them all the time because i do these focus groups with voters who voted for trump in '16, then biden in '20 then over the course of the biden years, they kind of back slid against biden. they were frustrated with the economy. with the inflation or immigration. and some of those people were kind of backsliding towards trump and this is the kind of thing that when you put it in front of them kind of at the last minute that they're making their decisions and they're the kind of person that maybe they were going to vote for trump but do it against their better judgment and holding their nose and not going to feel great about it. this is the kind of thing that can push them back and say i just can't go back there. i remember how bad it was. it matters what the country is talking about as you go into an

election. and if we're able to remind people of the darkest days of trump, that is the kind of thing that sort of stands up against people's hazy, nostalgia about the trump economy or if they were you know, somebody who feels like maybe the border wasn't handled as well. it can cause them to be like, oh, yeah, i really hated that about trump. going to take another look at kamala harris and see what she's about. john heilemann is totally right. part of being an undecided voter, the biggest part, is voters who are undecided about whether or not they're going to vote. so creating that sense for people of you know what, i cannot go through this again. actually, this is really important. i will do what it takes to make sure i find that half an hour to show up and make sure my voice is heard. that is deeply important. i think that's the kind of thing that could be happening with this. we'll see how much it sticks. one of the things that has just

really plagued, certainly been something i have realized now talking to voters all the time. just how short our attention spans are all the time. how little retention there is. even for really big stuff. i've watched the salience of january 6th just kind of drain away from voters over the years and so if this reraises it and kind of holds for the next 30 days, it's a dominant, more serious part of the conversation that can have a really negative impact on donald trump with these marginal voters. >> you're reading. what else are we learning again from witnesses? >> i think i've learned more about the coordination role that steve bannon played behind the scenes and in terms of his public communications. let's start with the fact i know it's steve bannon. if you look on page seven there there's a private political adviser who worked for the

defendant's '16 campaign and began to assist with the re-election effort then quotes something. >> 7:00 shadow. >> i want to be responsible here and say that we know this is steve bannon because it describes a quote that something he said three days before election day that mirrors reporting by mother jones about a recording they had obtained from august 31st, 2020. so we know p1 is steve bannon. on page 64, there's a recitation of multiple calls and meetings that bannon is involved with behind the scenes with giuliani, eastman, and coconspirator six. basically, they're discussing how to pressure pat so they meet for example trump meets with pence. they meet again after trump meets with pence then talk about how to continue the pressure campaign through bannon's podcast and that ratchets up in a series of meetings and calls

between january 2nd and 5th. starting at page 64 and ending on page, let's say several pages later. the one thing that i really want to share with us is that when coconspirator six comes back to bannon and says the pence lawyer was against us, what does bannon say, this is a family show, f his lawyer. >> oh, my god. so you're going to stay and keep reading. you have to go do something else but you're going to come back. we're going to need you to stick around. sarah, thank you, please come back. i want to thank harry lipman. after the break, your breaking news coverage continues. one of the investigators from the january 6 select committee will join us on what is new to him as we continue to unpack this new filing. don't go anywhere. o unpack this new filing. don't go anywhere. people to think of feeding food like ours is spoiling their dogs. good, real food is simple.

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hi, again, everyone. it's now 5:00 in new york. we are continuing our breaking news coverage of the explosive new filing from jack smith with never before seen evidence and witness testimony in his election interference case against ex president donald trump for his role on january 6th and before events that led to the deadly capitol insurrection. the 165-page filing which again includes never before seen or known about evidence says that donald trump resorted to criminal conduct as an effort and a conspiracy to stay in office.

two major takeaways, donald trump knew that the claims of voter fraud were always untrue. special counsel says the through line to the efforts by donald trump and his allies was quote deceit. we're also learning that the ex-president was callously and consistently indifferent to the physical danger and safety that his own vice president was in on january 6th reportedly saying quote, so what to an aide who informed donald trump that mike pence had to be taken and rushed to a secure location for his own safety. it is a bombshell. it comes 34 days ahead of the next presidential election and in the middle of a campaign which the hallmarks of our democracy took for granted for too long. things like the peaceful transfer of power. people telling the truth. voters punishing politicians who lie to them on purpose and repeatedly are on the line.

they're up for debate. who do we as americans want and that is because of donald trump's special and enduring place at the top of the republican party. it's also news worth keeping in mind given that just last night, we heard donald trump's new running mate, the person who's there because mike pence couldn't be there, jd vance, his big gaffe of the night, his stumble of the night, was his inability or refusal or lack of permission structure, if you will, to say that the reason to biden at the white house is because he won and donald trump lost in 2020. it's where we start the hour with friends still here. also joining us, former lead investigator for the january 6th select committee. national investigative reporter for the "washington post." lisa and john are still with us. carol, we've been trying to separate out what is new to us

and that is pence's testimony under oath before jack smith's investigators, but to sarah longwell's admonition, the very fact of this being in front of us is new information about one of the darkest days in our country's history. is also a story 34 days out from the political election. >> absolutely. unbelievable bombshell as you described it earlier. it's really striking what jack smith has done here because -- i lost your voice. >> no, no, go ahead. we're just listening. >> so sorry. i lost you for a minute. it's a really striking because even though the purpose of this brief is a narrow legal one, which is to show judge chutkan and the appeals court above it and the supreme court above it the parts of the evidence that he has that are still usable essentially to prosecute and indict and convict donald trump.

there are new facts here that are even surprising to me. i felt like i knew everything that happened in the days leading up to january 6th and pence's own safety issues that donald trump made worse on that day. but i didn't know, for example, that he turned to an aide upon hearing that mike pence was at the capitol and in danger and had just been whisked to a secure location. a basement of a capitol. i didn't know that donald trump had turned to the aide and said, so what. i also didn't know that in a private lunch, pence had said to trump after he lost and sometime in mid november, pence had said to donald trump, you know, you may be you should just give it up. i'm paraphrasing here. and try to run again in 2024. and trump said, i don't know. 2024 seems like a long away way. another really striking thing here that isn't related to mike

pence is that trump, jack smith has uncovered how donald trump basically sidelined all the campaign attorneys, or many of them, who said to him point-blank we're not going to win in this election fraud claim that you're making. we haven't won any of these claims. it's not going to work. that is when donald trump decided to announce that he was choosing some additional campaign leadership in the form of rudy giuliani, victoria tensing, her husband, and others who were telling what he wanted to hear, which is that he could stay in power even though he had lost the election. >> let me also read part of the filing that gives us new understanding of the timeline because i think that the fake electors plot, because it happened out in the states and a lot of the actors were outside of the white house, it was

almost covered in a separate silo from the west wing conduct, which we're learning increasingly was directed by donald trump because you said people like john eastman replacing the more normal actors like campaign staff and white house counsel. let me read from page 59 and where those sort of lines of our reporting and the january 6th congressional investigation suggested they intersect but where jack smith really nails that down. quote as late as early january, the conspirators attempted to keep the full nature of the fraudulent elector plan secret. january 3rd in a private text message exchange, cc 6 wrote to cc 5 quote, careful with your texts on the text groups. no reason to text things about the electors to anyone but cc two and me. cc, which i think is short for coconspirator five responded k.

known even by my 12-year-old as slang for okay. and coconspirator six followed up quote, i'm probably a bit paranoid, ha ha. five wrote quote, a valuable trait. the callousness for which they knowingly covered their tracks for conduct they know is scrutinized could implicate them in crimes is stunning. >> it's also super helpful to jack smith, right? he is showing through their own words that these people had a state of mind, an awareness that this wasn't kosher to share widely and my fellow guest, tim, knows all about state of mind and i'm sure will rip on this. it is also sort of amazing, too, because there were so many people that knew this elector

plan. i believe the congressional committee had some testimony from the chair of the republican party for the united states says that she was aware this is driven by trump. she was aware there was this effort to have these alternate electors in place to help challenge the election down the road. if, if, if it turned out that in swing states there was some chaos or confusion about who won and as we know, donald trump was sewing that confusion. another really important thing here is how crisply jack smith distinguishes when donald trump is acting as a candidate. he emphasizes over and over again this action was taken as a candidate seeking re-election. this action was taken as a candidate visiting dalton, georgia, and spreading lies about the election being stolen on january 4th. this call that he makes is as a

candidate. again, distinguishing between that no go zone that the supreme court has established where donald trump's actions as a president are immune. >> let me ask you one last question about your body of reporting and your intimate understanding of what national security types thought of the trump years and trump personally. the character of the man. the kinds of things that general stanley mcchrystal wrote in an op-ed and said in an interview led him to endorse harris for president. it certainly deepens the reporting of alarm. it helped us understand the tie namic and changing and increasing element of the entire trump presidency but i wonder if you think this absolute indifference to the safety of the united states, a constitutional figure. not some figure head. not in trump's view someone whose life should have been

disposable, but someone with constitutional responsibilities to the continuity of government who in the middle of a deadly insurrection, donald trump and people around him are speaking with such callous indifference as to whether he lives or dies. so what. what are you hearing as this new information seeps into the public understanding? >> what i've been hearing from those folks as the countdown comes to the election is tell me something i don't know. they lived it. in the national security counsel. the agencies. they heard donald trump say and do things that were not in the interest of protecting our country and let's not forget, they remember keenly as does jack smith, donald trump deciding willy-nilly that he was going to take back to his private home as he left the white house on january 20th

without stopping for the inauguration of his successor, hundreds of classified documents. some of which that were so secretive and involved the national defense information we have about other countries adversaries, and allies, some was so secretive there were only a handful of people that were authorized by the president or a cabinet secretary to even know this information existed. so there's, there's a wall of answers to your question from a wall of people who saw donald trump behave callously toward national security and his treatment of mike pence on that day both in his response so what or as we reported at the time, his response of well maybe mike pence deserves it when someone alerted him that his supporters were chanting for mike pence to be hung. that is not a surprise to that

group. >> i guess my final question would be then what is explains the wall of silence from folks like gina haskell and mark millie and mattis and kelly if this is a so what to them. >> again, not disclosing sources or individual names. i don't think that cia officials are generally in the news on a regular basis but i have seen mark millie and john kelly say quite a few things on this score and to you included. >> carol, thank you so much for not just getting through this breaking news story with us, but as always, more importantly, putting it into context in the national security context. we're grateful to you, always. tim, let me bring you in as someone who knows this story perhaps better than anyone on the planet. what is your reaction to the testimony that jack smith

obtained from mike pence? >> i see it as more meat on the bones of the story that the committee told a couple of years ago. there's no significant new fact but there's significant new detail that reenforces the bones of the story that we told. this was an intentional multipart plan fueled by deception orchestrated by the former president to prevent the transfer of power. that's what the committee said. that's what this pleading puts together. again, more details. i'm struck by the pence stuff. we obviously did not get the direct testimony of the vice president but his accounts in this pleading of dregt communications with the president. times he told the former president he did not have the authority to do what the former president was asking him to do on january 6th. despite that consistent

approach, the president launching a mob against him is shocking. we knew that from our investigation, but pence and his direct account of that is really, really striking. the other new stuff that i don't think we were successful in getting was the voices, the consistent voices telling the president that he lost including eric hershman. he emerges as being more involved in that team normal group that's telling the former president there's no way forward for you to win. it's time for you to stop. the chorus of responsible people very, very close to the president. hirshman and the former president go back years and years. well before president trump was in politics. those voices and credibility and consistency of them emerges as well. so no new fact. that's really significant evidence that supports the

underlying narrative that the committee told and that i think a jury will hear at some point in the future. >> tim, one of the things that feels new to me is the granularity in the timeline in the way you draw up the pence conversations and meetings. on to the timeline of what trump was tweeting and what trump was saying in other meetings that we heard about from other bombshell witnesses. what is your sense of how this deepens your understanding of how long trump was planning on knowingly claiming he won when he knew for weeks he lost? >> it's a brief that contemplates a crucial issue in the case. which is the necessity of demonstrating the president's intent. the fact he intended to disrupt and official proceeding. the fact he was mindful of the falsity of what he was saying again and again the timeline is

crucial. it does sketch in very careful detail even before the election. some of this pleading goes into the bannon stuff about he's just going to declare victory even if he loses the election. he's going to say that he won. that's hatched before the election. the committee said that. that the pleading stretches the timeline back and traces it all the way through the early morning hours of january 7th when the certification proceeding officially concludes. so he does a masterful job in connecting the dots, juks juxtaposing the lies and the inconsistency of that all of it informs intent. jack smith has to prove that he knew what the president was saying was i don't think. that he intended to use that lie to disrupt the joint session to prevent the lawful transfer of power and does a good job of

laying the groundwork for that. >> lisa. >> you know, when tim was just talking about steve bannon, i want to put more meat on that bones because in the last hour, you and i talked about the ways in which bannon was involved in and around those trump pence conversations in order to put additional pressure on pence and was strategizing with giuliani, eastman and the person known as coconspirator six. about that. we know bannon was an architect of the strategy from the front end, too. from this document. there's a description of a conversation on november 13th between bannon and coconspirator six in which bannon says close hold, don't tell anyone. trump just fired name of campaign add sliezer. and put rudy in charge. you are to report to rudy when six asked if another campaign adviser was gone, too, bannon replied, they all report to rudy and that bannon had and this the

quote, made a recommendation directly that if rudy was not in charge, this thing is over. trump is in to the end. and indeed, he was, and who helped him see that through none other than steve bannon. so i come away from this filing with a new appreciation for potentially why steve bannon was so eager to avoid the subpoena that tim and his colleagues served on him with respect to the january 6th committee and for which he was then convicted of contempt of congress for avoiding. he was all over this thing in ways that were always rumored for perhaps not fully detailed until this filing. >> you're a student of the steve bannon arc of power. i guess in and out of alleged criminality to the degree that he's, i think he gets one of the last pardons of the last hours of the trump presidency for the crimes he's charged with in connection with lying to trump supporters about building a wall unrelated to january 6th.

but is she in jail? sentenced or convicted of contempt. i guess willingness is the right word, eagerness to push everyone sort of a political woodchiper is one of the stories of this up to and including mike pence. >> for reasons i have had the pleasure, not the pleasure, but i had steve bannon on the circus in october of 2020 and we, on the night of the first debate. in pretty much in public laid out a vision of what was going to happen, up to and includes january 6th attack on the capitol, fake elector's scheme.

he had a prediction he laid out that was tracked very closely with what was happening and it was the case that in that time, he had been spending a ton of time he told me then, with rudy giuliani and they were talking about all this stuff back then. so his role, one of the great advantages that steve bannon had was that he got fired from the white house because once he was left, once he was outside the white house there was always, this is always another game roger stone liked to play. always kind of question around how much they were still in communication with trump. you knew neither was a reliable narrater. whatever they could say, they would be very vague about things. were they being vague because they were on the outs but they wanted people to still think they had a connection to trump or because in fact they were talking to trump all the time and didn't want people to know exactly that. so the vagueness served their purposes. the more you poked around in

various interplay that i had bannon in october, november, into december, it was clear how far inside he was and then of course we knew the knowledge of january 6th and him being in the hotel at the willard and we later went up and filmed up there and talked to, looked at those suites. went up there with george conway and looked at where the command center took place. i think you know that he is, it makes total sense, always made sense to me that he was never going to testify and he's rather go what he's doing now which is a relatively short sentence in a minimum security facility which keeps him out of this 2024 election, which makes him crazy, but compared to what would have happened if he had come forward and testified and said all the things he had to say, he would have been in much greater legal jeopardy an they was then and he continues to think his focus on getting trump re-elected, elected in this cycle, is to

avoid still further legal culpability. >> is it clear to you, tim, in reading this filing, why jack smith didn't charge any of the coconspirators? >> they had clear exposure. the pleading makes that more emphatic than the indictment. i continue to think that's a function of his initial decision to have case that, excuse me, could be tried quickly that would be streamlined, that would have minimized legal issues. now that this case is going to be on a longer trajectory, i could see him adding defendants. doesn't mean the codefendants will be off the hook. there could be subsequent prosecutions of them of some or all of them but i continue to think that the intent was, to focus the attention on the approximate cause and that's the former president. just going back to bannon. what we wanted to ask steve bannon about, which he refused to come in as john just said,

was the connectivity between the legal strategy and the people, right? the final step to the extent there was someone who appreciated public opinion and the maga universe's strategy. you've got the lawyers talking about institutional theory but bannon has the ability to couple that with how people on the ground will respond to rhetoric and it's that connectivity between the crowd and the lawyers that i think bannon could have gone a long way to answer. obviously, he didn't want to come in. he didn't come in. he's sitting in federal prison as a result but it's that nexus, the connection. what he tried to bring together, the crowd was the last step when all others failed. bannon could have had real important information about how they intended that very phenomenon. the use of the crowd. >> i'll say to what lisa read, there's another leg to the

stool. he's not only in touch with public opinion especially on the right, but the inside game of lawyers but he also has this public platform in the war room podcast where he can bring political pressure to bear on people because he has got this very large audience relative to the maga nation, to the base. he can, by going on and attacking people on television, wasn't many people who brought down kevin mccarthy. he has this muscle that goes more to the, there's the political strategy piece of it, legal strategy, connection to trump and then there's this platform that he can exercise to be an actual public actor in the drama as well. which adds to the diabolical power of where all the notes come together through him. >> go ahead. >> i was going to say the filing makes what john said absolutely concrete because for example, they're talking about how after the meetings where happening on

january 4th, the next morning, he talks to trump at 10:00 in the morning and then it says less than two hours later on his podcast, bannon said all hell's going to break loose tomorrow. he is absolutely both a prognosticator and participate in this whole process as he's understanding the legal strategy, too. >> and significantly to the case charged which is against trump, let me read through something that i always felt like we had more questions than answers to maybe and that's trump's connectivity to violence and the violence that would break out when his supporters were invited by donald trump to washington in that tweet. this is from page 60. quote, the defendant, donald trump, first publicly turned his sights toward january 6th in the early morning hours of december 19th at 1:42 a.m. the defendant posed on twitter and wrote quote

satsically impossible to have lost the election. big protest on january 6th. be there, will be wild. when five learned about the tweet, he sent a link about it to another of the wisconsin attorneys who had met with the deft on december 16th and wrote quote, wow, based on three days ago, i think we have a unique understanding of this. on december 19th. donald trump called pence and told him of plans for a rally on january 6th and said he thought it would quote be a big day and good to have lots of their supporters in town. tim, when you add that to the evidence and cheney's drawing out of hutchison, the idea that trump moves the supporters into washington trump targets january 6th. for mike pence as the guy that has to sort of do the deed then trump is obsessed. hell bent on moving himself

physically from the white house down to the capitol. it's a really eerie insertion of donald trump. >> absolutely right. there is no question that the former president was directly aware and frankly revelled in the influence he had over his supporters. he was aware that his words were taken literally. he was aware that when he spoke, people listened. he had the ability to generate not just crowds but action. and that was a tool he knew he could use. he wanted people to dom washington. to come to the capitol. he wanted to be with them to ramp up this public pressure on mike pence. this is in the face of the vice president telling him i don't have the constitutional authority to do what you are asking me to do. when the president's own lawyer is telling him yeah, we lose 9-0

in the supreme court. none of that mattered. what mattered to the former president was these people love me, they're going to go down there and that pressure is potentially my hole card that i can play and work. and the irresponsibility of that and how that put pence in danger and led to the insurrection. the pleading directly blames the president's rhetoric and his knowledge of the crowd for the violence. there's a cause and effect there. the committee did as well an i agree with you. that's one of the more stunning facts. president laup ching a mob mindful of his impact on him to disrupt the transfer of power. that is where we are with this. >> as well as the elector's plot. and it brings frankly new

residence that he wanted the mags taken down because he knows the weapons aren't a threat to him and it's just a horrific thought in light of the events of the summer and fall. just a horrific amount of recklessness from donald trump as laid bear in black and white in a stunning new filing. no one's going anywhere. there's much more on this bombshell new data. new information found in this filing today from jack smith. we'll be joined by one of the people who did more than just about anything else. someone who worked with tim on that january 6th committee. jamie raskin will be here. deadline white house continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. house contins after a quick break. don't go anywhere.

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back now with our breaking news. a filing from jack smith detailing never before seen evidence including testimony from former vice president mike pence compiled against the defendant, donald trump. joining our coverage, voting rights attorney and founder of the site, democracy docket, mark elias is here. vaughn hillyard has returned. mark, your thoughts. >> i think this is a blockbuster document but one sentence encapsulates it all. donald trump fold his family it didn't matter if you won or lost

the election you still have to fight like hell. he knew he lost. he put the nation through 60 plus lawsuits. when that failed, he organized an insurrection of the nation's capitol. this man should not be anywhere near the oval office. >> there's evidence we've never seen before because mike pence chose not to participate in the january 6th investigation but he did cooperate with jack smith under subpoena. to do so. and we learn the frenetic nature of the campaign against mike pence. both from donald trump to pence directly in face-to-face meetings. with large groups as well as one-on-one meetings and phone calls. one-on-one and with other witnesses. i think what wasn't appreciated

was that donald trump was the driver. eastman has created some mythology around himself and has been covered. donald trump drove the mission both to lie about losing because of his vanity as well as to bring the mob to washington on january fth as well as the effort to single out pence to do the deed of overturning the defeat and convincing them to do that. i wonder what you make of donald trump and the command and control position of both the deadly insurrection as well as refusal to concede defeat. >> i think that's a really important point. if you go back to a much more mundane part of the post election or the time seemed mundane, donald trump wound up placing a call to the state canvassing board members for wayne county, michigan. it was kind of an odd thing at the time that you had the president of the united states calling two local canvas board

members with the rnc chairwoman trying to pressure them not to certify detroit. the next thing we know, he is of course calling the secretary of state of georgia trying to get him to find 11,000 votes. we know now he was hands on in almost every stage of this post election process for almost everything we are aware of that was done wrong. he is hands on in trying to pressure mike pence. he is hands on in trying to pressure or to build this january 6th insurrection rally effort. he was involved because he did not want to lose power and i think a lot of the people around him knew he lost and others knew he had lost but were willing to humor him, but was the only one spending 24 hours a day, seven

days a week, every moment, trying to figure out a way around leaving office. >> they all knew he lost because every house member was on the same ballot that he was. it was always nonsensical that the ballots were corrupted just at the presidential level. someone who understands that better than anyone joins us now. it's a privilege to bring in congressman jamie raskin of maryland. a key member of the january 6th select committee. played a major role in the january 6th hearings. here's just one of those moments. >> american carnage, that's donald trump's true legacy. his desire to overthrow the people's election and seize the presidency, interrupt the counting of electoral college votes for the first time in american history. nearly toppled constitutional order. but the crucial thing is the next step. what this committee, what all of us will do to fortify our democracy against coups,

political violence, and campaigns to steal elections away from the people. >> congressman, your thoughts, your reaction to this filing. >> well, it's an extraordinary filing because it fills in a thousand details of what exactly the plan was to overthrow the 2020 presidential election. and it goes meticulously state by state explaining the defendant, donald trump's various calls into state election officials and republican officials in order to get them to set aside the real popular election. and remember, the legal frame for this is that jack smith is showing that donald trump was not acting like a president of the united states trying to faithfully execute the laws. it's not like he was calling other places in states where he

lost. it's not as if he was calling any election officials other than republican election officials that he thought he could brow beat into caving into him. and he was literally fabricating claims and evidence as he went. all of these people said well send us the evidence then never sent them any evidence to the point where some of the people on trump's team said stop calling us, we don't have any evidence. there's nothing there. the various election officials just reporting there's no evidence. there's not a page of evidence. there's nothing there. so a lot of this was done by the january 6th committee but there's a lot of new stuff in there and we learn a lot more about the plan to try and coerce vice president mike pence to step outside of his constitutional role and just declare donald trump the winner. this was something that seemed new to me. not just returning or rebuffing

electoral college votes to the state legislatures but just declaring these counterfeit electors were real and declaring trump the winner, which was apparently their first foray into the lawlessness of january 6th. they wanted just to get pence to do this. and then you can see the rage that then instilled in the mob which was chanting hang mike pence when he wouldn't step outside of his institutional role. that of course blends into now the presidential campaign as jd vance is saying he would have done what mike pence refused to do. the reason why mike pence is not on the ticket is because he refused to give into donald trump's orders to steal the election but jd vance is saying he gladly would have done what pence honor bly refused to do as he kept his oath of office. >> one of the pieces of information we learned in this filing that we didn't know before is what it was like in

the room or on the call between pence and trump and what's amazing is how fragile trump is. it's almost soothing phrases like it's not a defeat. it's an intermission. you can run again in 2024. the way movies depict hostage negotiators speaking to hostage takers. in this case, the hostage was the country. democracy. i wonder what you make of all the ways mike pence tried to gently coax his friend to sort of put down this threat. >> well, there's something poignant about it psychologically speaking. every bully is operating on a complete bundle of insecurities as donald trump was and mike pence was trying to ease him off of the ledge and say you know, you can run again in 2024.

this can be an intermission, a respite. a break. then you can come back and do it. he was trying to psychologically condition him to understand what everybody was telling him from the attorney general of the united states which is that he had lost the election and there are numerous indications that understood he lost the election but still wanted to perpetrate the fraud. of course, constitutional speaking, legally speaking, donald trump was just setting himself at odds with the legal order. he set himself at odds with the institutional order and everything he was trying to do here was to commit a series of crimes to overthrow an election that joe biden had won by more than 7 million votes. 306-232 in the electoral college, which happened to be

the same margin by which trump beat hillary clinton in 2016. a margin that trump declared an absolute landslide then. so it was very clear what was going on. donald trump clearly had an intent to set aside what he knew to be the lawful presidential result. then he mobilized this odd ball assortment of lawyers. at one point, they're described as the bar scene from star wars by one of the participants. and mobilize them to go out and tell lies and make fraudulent representations in court. most of them had been sanctioned in court. i think rudy giuliani was just permanently disbarred by the washington, d.c. bar. but there had been sanctions all over the country against him. while you can get away with lying in public in politics, the

supreme court has said that lying is protected by the first amendment. in court, it's not. that's why rudy giuliani all the way down, these people faced all kinds of sanctions for what they did. >> congressman, the timeline we understand to be the timeline, most of what we know about it, we know from your work on the committee. i wonder though, i want to read part of the filing today and ask if it slides back, sort of the premeditation of the decision to contest the results before the election has taken place. this is from page 61 of jack smith's filing. coconspirator two in a memorandum stands in stark contrast to concessions he had made about the vice president's lack of authority in the certification proceeding. two months earlier on october 11th, he had written to a colleague that neither the constitution nor the electoral

count act provided the vice president with discretion and counting of votes or permitted him to make the determination on his own. just one day earlier on december 22nd when asked by other attorneys to provide views that would have filed raised the issue of the vice president's authority on january 6th, two recommended that the complaint not be filed. he wrote this, quote, the rik of getting a court ruling is very high. that all the people all the lawyers around trump knew so early that there was no legal predicate for what they were pressuring pence to do with brute political force. with this brute intimidation that the committee developed evidence including from ivanka. that the lawyers had researched this themselves and knew there was no legal predicate for what they were viciously pressuring pence to do. is that made clear here or

something that you already understood? >> there was no legal predicate as you've said and no factual predicate and all of the lawyers around donald trump understood it. he was acting or strictly speak ng the greek sense of the word, like a tyrant. someone who comes from outside of the constitutional order and tries to tear the constitutional order down in a brute exercise of just naked power. and that's what was taking place here. then there were people who were pulled into the vortex of his blood thirst and ambitious to stay in office and we saw what happened on january 6th and how that finally ended up. but mike pence did his duty on that day. he refused to back down. he refused to essentially vaporize the votes of million of people that had come in through the various swing states. through michigan and wisconsin

and arizona and nevada and pennsylvania and georgia. and he simply refused to kind of upset the whole constitutional system but the fact that donald trump was planning for this even before the election demonstrates that he was acting privately as an office seeker at best if not just as a criminal but someone who was acting privately not as the president of the united states to try to have his way over the entire constitutional structure as we have been. and that's why he ended up being rebuffed at the state legislature level. by the state elections official like brad raffensperger. he says just find me 11,780 votes. he got reputeuated when he went to the department of justice to try to stage a mini coup there then ultimately mike pence said no and his final straw was just to unleash mob violence and 140

of our officers were wounded, hospitalized, ended up with strokes and heart attacks and broken jaws and so on and then driving the house and senate members out of our chambers to try to overthrow the result. but the good news is that through the valor and bravery of our officers and the reenforcements that came in from other states, we were able to withstand the mob assault despite the fact that donald trump, in his official capacity as commander in chief, never sent in the national guard to protect us against the mob that he had unleashed against us acting as a private citizen or an outlaw. >> unbelievable. unbelievable. state of affairs which you just described as vaporizing the votes of millions of americans is precisely why vance is on the ticket. he said he would have indeed done that. thank you so much for scrambling the jets to join us today.

we're grateful. the filing is a whopping 165 pages long. we've just scratched the surface. we have to sneak in a quick break but we'll all be back to get through as much of it as we can. back to get through as much of it as we can.

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helping to protect the 2024 election? >> i think that in order to understand this document, you have to go back to what nick mull vainy wrote in "the wall street journal" where he assured us donald trump would concede gracefully after he lost his litigation. he didn't do that. one of the things you said with congressman raskin was that mike pence was being gentle with him and that state officials were asking for evidence. day after day as my team and i were beating him in court 60 plus times, republican election officials were asking him for evidence. nick was assuring us he would come to terms with it. mike pence was trying to be gentle with him. in 2024, donald trump is going to repeat this. he's not going to accept the results of a free and fair

election. he is telling us that and it is time we stop babying him. he is a grown man. he lost an election. he will likely lose another election. and next time, we need people to stand up early and often against his brand of election denial ism. >> maybe in a technical term for the approach that not just mike pence, but mitch mcconnell, kevin mccarthy took as appeasement and there's no episode in human history where appeasement worked with a man jamie raskin called a tyrant. we are on this path again where people are trying to appease tyrannical conduct. where are we heading? >> yeah, thankfully while some were appeasing, some were saying no. so you read this pleading and just reminds me that democracy comes down to people who are

willing to do the right thing. those people were there thankfully as guardrails in 2020, 2021 and i worry about whether they would be there in 2024 and 2025. mike pence, brad raffensperger, those officials, the list goes on. people did the right thing. god forbid if those people are not in place are not hired, are not installed, are not there to be guardrails the next time. >> vaughn hillyard, trump has a way of making everything relative, right? and relative to john eastman and rudy giuliani, mike pence is heroic but history is judging him for one heroic chapter because everything that happens before january 6th enables the man jamie raskin described as a

tyrant. >> the very first interview that mike pence did on accepting donald trump's running mate position, he was asked by sean hannity how are you going to go about your vice president pi when you disagree with your boss. he says i'll privately tell him behind closed doors what i think but when those doors open, i will walk out and stand shoulder to shoulder with the president. mike pence did that and that's what this document tells us that he repeatedly referred to him as his friend and urged him to look beyond, look to the future. but then those doors opened, on january 6th, he went to the capitol building and did his job. but also he had communications with the likes of governor kemp. but also doug deucey. he's now talked publicly about what he went through and in this, he cooperated with jack smith and in here, we have damning paragraphs where he

stood up to donald trump's urging to throw away the votes. this filing shows he walked through special counsel. there's a lot we didn't even scratch the surface on in terms of the fake elector's plot. >> and i want to go back to something said about the vice president who stood shoulder to shoulder with the president. what did he get in exchange? the most chilling exchange was the one we discussed in the last hour when an aide burst in where he's sitting alone having just tweeted the 2:24 p.m. tweet.

his response is so what. as disappointing as that is for us to read, i wonder how it feels to people like mark short and greg jacob to spoke truth to power afterwards but also how it feels to mike pence to realize the sheer callousness, which certainly we knew before today, but to see it documented so starkly that he just responded to an aide with words that are tantamount to i don't care is really astonishing. and then of course that staffer who we have not identified yesterday, that's a person who overheard yet another remark that is one where former president says in the presence of family members and that staff member, doesn't matter whether you win or lose. you have to fight like hell. that's an acknowledgment as well that by that point, he understood he lost. i don't think that staffer ever expected to be at the center of

this. and yet along with a couple of other people, we talk about eric hirshman in the last hour. that staffer. there are a number of people here who again were complicit until they weren't but we should be thankful for the fact relatively speaking that they are now telling the truth to jack smith and his team. >> we have been covering this breaking news. we will continue to through it in the days and weeks to come. there are 34 days out from another election. my deep, deep, deep gratitude to all of you for rolling with us. mark, tim, lisa rubin, vaughn hillyard, thank you all. tonight at 8:00 p.m., my colleagues join chris hayes for a special edition of all in to break down all of this. jack smith's never before seen evidence and what, if anything, it means ahead of a presidential election 34 days away. our thanks to you for