if jim bakker paid jessica hahn "hush money," what else has he been doing with the ptl money? going on? jim and tammy: not at all. history will prove the bakkers were honest people. we interrupt this program for an nbc news special report. jim bakker, the defrocked head of the ptl ministry, has been found guilty on all 24 counts of fraud and conspiracy by a jury in charlotte, north carolina. jones: bakker kept selling lifetime partnerships at heritage usa even though he knew they were oversold. for example, the heritage grand hotel could accommodate only 25,000 partnerships, but 65,000 were sold. and for the lower-priced bunkhouse partnerships, about 7,000 were sold for a building that had only eight rooms. gumbel: estelle pollard sent jim and tammy bakker's ptl club $15 a month for 15 years. she thought that by giving to them, god would ease her pain and that of her ailing husband. i have been one to help make millionaires out of those people when i don't have enough to even live on. jones: bakker could be sentenced to 120 years in prison and fined over $5 million. i would sa

. >> like the tammy faye bakker and jim bakker thick. >> these lawyers.ped the trump campaign and allies raise $250 million as cnbc reports among those who were stiffed. trump's closest ally, rudy giuliani, the records show that giuliani's companies were only reimbursed for travel and not the $20,000 a day he requested to be paid. that's a whole other story. $20,000 a day. >> i've got to say, giuliani may not have gotten paid for his work to donald trump after the election but he did get indicted. but, david french, i always talk about the -- how my grandmom would send her social security checks sadly even though we -- my parents tried to intervene to jim and tammy faye bakker while they were building their massive multimillion dollar scam operation in charlotte, north carolina. here, we've seen steve bannon sent to jail or at least arrested for his phony scheme to raise, i don't know, $10 million or whatever to build the wall. i find it hard to believe that jack smith doesn't come back with a superseding indictment that doesn't go after this $250 billion

the jim and tammy faye bakker of the republican party. >> the pathetically fearful and it all adds upnkrupt and you would say, no, it was the party, it will find its way back and i feel like where we are is that much of the republican party has demonstrated, again, the political class of it, the base of it, has a different set of problems, but the political class of it has shown itself to be all the things that you have been saying that john meacham is pointing to, it is a giant test for the country and what used to be the republican party. i don't know what that is anymore. it is the collection that we just talked about, and it is staggering that a party that we all considered problematic in some respects but thought of as a serious political party less than a decade ago is what it is now, which is, you know, a whore house. >> and one example of republicans to grade themselves by blindly following donald trump, let's remember, rudydo giuliani was a attorney in new york city. now he's a defendant on ricoh charges because he followed donald trump. dave aaronburg, the indictment out of

that's a jim and tammy faye bakker scheme. that's a steve bannon scheme on a large scale.t we're going to be seeing more of that. richard is right, we seen this in venezuela with the strongmen. we've seen it now in former democracies like hungary, that's now an illiberal democracy. we're seeing it in poland. in israel, it's depressing to see what benjamin netanyahu is doing to that democracy right now. we're seeing a battle for democracy and western values right now in the united states. we'll see how it plays out. richard haass, thank you so much. >> thank you, richard. >>> ahead of trump's first court appearance today, his attorney is already offering a possible glimpse at what the former president's defense may be. john lauro is arguing that trump was simply exercising his first amendment rights by raising concerns about the 2020 election and was following the advice of his lawyers when he falsely claimed mike pence had the power to block the results of the election on january 6th. here's what lauro told nbc's savannah guthrie yesterday on "today" followed by reaction f