their attorney, former orange county, california sex crimes prosecutor courtney tom, joined me to discusseir claims. courtney, why do prosecutors not think that this is a criminal case? >> listen, as a former sex crimes prosecutor for close to 15 years, i've never seen anything like this. you know, the goal of law enforcement, as we all know, is to protect the community. the fact that there's no indictment is absurd. you know, you turn. women turn to police. women turn to detectives to do the right thing. it's difficult work to prosecute a physician for sexual abuse. no one's making light of that. but when you have 200 victims saying the same thing, describing unthinkable, unimaginable abuse at the hands of their trusted physician, when is it enough for the police and for the da in this county to listen? >> do you think that your civil case is going to push that? >> these days, sometimes the path to justice is civil justice. when criminal justice is slow to follow or fails, the path to criminal justice was botched. it was a botched investigation. it was a botched prosecution. the police i

courtney, stay with us for as long as you can. i want to bring in joyce vance, our msnbc legal analyst and former u.s. attorney for alabama, as well as tomwriter for the landing. joyce, you heard everything that courtney says, perhaps this is all an effort to make an example, set the stage for what is to come. is it possible that we can see some pushback from the military officials on these charges? >> i think it's possible that we will, right? there is not a basis for bringing charges against these people, and the way military prosecutions work is that there is an article 32 hearing. that is sort of the equivalent of the grand jury process, or a preliminary hearing in a typical criminal case. it is a public hearing, and that has to have an affirmative outcome. the official who is overseeing that proceeding has to find that there is a basis for going forward before a court-martial can ensue. i think that we could expect to see pushback, and must, of course, the trump administration tries to engage in a wholesale turnabout in that process. and of course, in the military system, they frown very heavily on undue command influence, where the

tom, generally bullish, do you remain so? >> i think the only difference, and i agree with what courtney said, mark is going to rally into yearway, i think there are significant sector differences depending on who wins the white house. we're all watching the same things, really things like crypto and small caps and even currencies. i guess maybe the only thing i would interject, there's a small outlier chance it's a contested outcome, and it's hard to find how to price it into equities. >> once you get that out of the way. you focus on what the backdrop is as i suggest, you focus on the fundamentals, economy's strong, the latest ism services read today. was the best in a couple of years. the best back-to-back reads we have gotten in a couple of years. the fed is cutting, pent up demand for m and a. that backdrop exists, other than m and a necessarily, no matter who wins. >> i think so. the number one i focus on for stocks is gross margins. most companies can have gross margin expansion. you don't want a short stock when margins are coming up. >> delaware, nbc news calling it for vice president harris. that gives her another t