we know that because the now infamous memos drafted by trump lawyers john eastman and jenna ellis both cited these dubious election documents as the basis for throwing out the legitimate votes from those states. you think this would be a prime target for doj special counsel jack smith and his investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and it might well be. we just don't know. but we do know that the most aggressive investigation so far have been by local prosecutors, and that brings me to georgia. fulton county district attorney fani willis has signaled an august decision on potential charges in the investigation of trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in georgia. which included the use of those fake electors. nbc news has obtained a letter from willis to the fulton county superior court chief judge saying most of her staff will work remotely during a three-week period in august. she also asked that judges not schedule trials or hold in-person hearings during part of that same time period. perhaps suggesting that that could be when a grand jury unse

. >> john eastman, john eastman, charlie sykes.mpaign and local gop officials aink ra -- aink raed for alternate elekkors while election challenges made their way through the courts. they have explored whether the appointment of alternate electors in the creator of elector certificates broke the law. another question is whether trump campaign officials and allies initiated the strategy as part of a larger effort to overturn biden's overall victory during the counting of electoral votes on january 6, 2021. there is copious evidence in the public arena from the work of the january 6 select committee that i think adam kinzinger pointed a blueprint for a coup. it is a a document created by john eastman and handed around the west wing. apparently lots of hours of conversations with counsel for the vice president and counsel for the president about it being both illegal and in violation of the electoral count act and unconstitutional. meaning it would fail not 7-2 as eastman first asserted but 9-0 before the u.s. supreme court. do you th

have suggested that certain high-level members of then president trump's legal team, including john eastmansubsequent plans to attempt to persuade vice president pence to count these contingent presidential electoral votes, fake elector votes, as about valid electoral votes. mr. schaffer was not involved, and had no such knowledge of any such plans. mr. schaffer was not involved. but you know who was? team trump. joining us now is again keith fleming. she's a former district attorney for dekalb county in georgia. when, it's great to see you in person on this night of nights. >> thank you, glad to be here. >> how does this letter ring to you? is it possible? >> i think it's one thing that the defense attorneys want to be able to get their story out early. obviously, we've seen, or at least heard from some of the grand jury's about what some of the testimony was, and so, i think the defense team really wants to make sure they have an opportunity to get their story out, even though there are no indictments yet. so, that is a little bit of an odd thing -- >> or an indicator maybe? >> possibly.

steve bannon, mike flynn, rudy giuliani, roger stone, john eastman, mark meadows, donald trump, we have little bit of atmospheric precedent that all of those people i just named better buckle up because their ride is going to get bumpier now. >> it seems that the accounts that were about violence that day were the ones that the jury hung on, that they couldn't or they only convicted pizola on. enrique tarrio had other issues. he had ripped down the black lives matter flag off a church, he had a gun cartridge he wasn't supposed to have, but the conspiracy charges are the ones that seem to be sticking. what does that tell you, you mentioned a lot of people, it was a conspiracy? >> the conspiracy charges are often the toughest to prove. it's an agreement between two or more people to commit a crime, and then one act, what we call an overt act toward the commission of the crime. here's the thing, you don't enter into a conspiracy by filling out documents and getting them notarized. it's a secret agreement between bad folks. once you can prove a conspiracy, the reach of co-conspirator liabil

and there's a lot of evidence that shows trump in the middle of people like john eastman and rudy giuliani who were trying desperately to come up with a plan to interfere with the certification of the electoral college vote. and the proud boys case may give folks at doj and in the special counsel's office a little bit of confidence, confidence that juries are willing to convict people who weren't physically in the mix on january 6th and confidence that you can find an implied conspiracy from the way people act in connection with one another. it's very likely that today adds a little bit of confidence to the stride of people in the special counsel's office. >> it's really interesting you draw that point, joyce, because you said physically, and that goes to whether you're physically present or whether you were physically fighting the officers to get in that day. both of you have dealt with some pretty tough characters as prosecutors, and you know it better than i do, but when you two up the chain of the mob, the really powerful folks aren't always mobbed. you go up the chain of command in th

steve bannon, mike flynn, roger stone, rudy giuliani, mark meadows, john eastman, and donald trump.c president. you don't have to be at the capitol on january 6th to be criminally responsible for what happened there. >> andrew weissmann, what does today's conviction mean for donald trump, if anything? >> i think there's one thing that it means, in terms of jack smith's calculus, before we get there, i just want to note, in and of itself, these are really important convictions. there's a huge domestic terrorism problem in this country. you know, 9/11 was a formative experience when i was at the justice department, in terms of focusing on international terrorism. if you just look at the body count, domestic terrorism is really, the number one problem that doj is facing. in the proud boys and oath keepers, it's so important to hold them to account. they still have tentacles and affects, and obviously, to get to donald trump, there is this call and response relationship between donald trump and those two organizations. the way in which i think this is relevant to jack smith, it's not so

. >> we know john eastman allegedly sought a presidential pardon.ow there were members of congress who went and asked and acquired whether they could get pardons as well. now, at least what this woman is alleging is they premeditated the stop the steal scam a year before the election. that seems to me like something fani willis might want to talk to them about. >> absolutely. what is also crucial about this case, in making her civil claim, it requires proving she was actually an employee of giuliani, and one of the crucial pieces of evidence is the fact that she had access to years worth of his emails, which could, not every email may come into evidence for the purpose of this claim, but a lot of them to show that she was in close proximity to giuliani, who was the president's right-hand man and she had access to all kinds of things that could even raise national security implications based on the number of people whose emails she said she had. that could go forward in proving claims of what happened leading up to january 6th. >> you see right now t

stone, steve bannon, roger stone was there but the war room was being operated by rudy giuliani, john eastman, they were all identified as working hard to find new and incredibly bizarre ways, none of them legal, to get state legislatures in swing states to either block the certiication of the vote, to claim there was fraud, to create new electors, that this effort at the willard that began december 18th, an important date from my perspective, december 18th, a group of lawyers move into the willard to help the trump campaign figure out how to block the peaceful transfer of power tin colluded bullying pence. in the fall of 2021, in march of 2021, there was evidence about the fake electors revealed in public information requests. that there had been completely fraudulent separate sets of electors created out of thin air to try to claim that trump had won in states that biden had had won. the effort by trump to get brad rathens berger to claim it was fraudulent was after that phone call by amy gardener, who obtained a recording of the call. this is stuff that's been public and available. it's be

the text is similar to what we have seen from john eastman and rudy giuliani.h of whom were coordinating with president trump to overturn the 2020 election. >> tim, i want you to just take a beat and go through the architecture of the coup plot, because as i just sort of doodled out, it all runs through georgia. the white house plot that trump is running is now the famous call to brad raffensperger. jeffrey clark wanted the u.s. attorney there to open an investigation without any evidence of fraud. eastman goes down there and is activating the georgia legislature to present this fake, phony slate of electors, and the fake electors themselves, some of them have cooperated, some of them are witnesses, and some are targets of the probe. >> yeah, exactly right, nicolle. i think georgia was the center because they were so surprised and disappointed at the result in georgia of all of the swing states for that one to go to joe biden. i think that was the biggest surprise. i think there was a false sense that there are a lot of republicans in state government down ther

indeed, kim, it was a federal judge who first said that more likely than not donald trump and john eastmanonies. it has been this gaslight free zone, the words of federal judges when it comes to donald trump's role in the coup. >> yes, it has and judges have been speaking clearly about this. i hope that the faith of the american people in the judicial system and its judges remain strong enough for them to listen to that. of course, you know, saying something that might be clear by a preponderance of the evidence does not necessarily mean there will be a conviction this those cases. we are seeing judges such as in the e. jean carroll case consider the evidence in a way that seems fair and impartial and if they can keep the confidence of the american people, i think that that can go a very long distance. and kim atkins store, cornell belcher, and andrew weissmann, thank you so much for having this conversation, for keeping it real and starting us off this hour. >>> when we come back democrats taking real steps to unravel the deep financial entanglements involving justices on the united state

i don't think i've ever seen a situation where so many lawyers, boris epshteyn, john eastman, are allle criminal activity. this isn't the only case involving trump where a judge has ordered that the attorney-client privilege be pierced because of the possibility that legal advice was being used, whether on purpose by the lawyers or inadvertently, to continue in a course of criminal action. it is perplexing and unusual to say the least. >> well, wow. well, that's one legal challenge for former president trump, the one that people feel is the most cut and dry. but then there's this. the district attorney for fulton county, georgia, fani willis, is potentially previewing when she could announce charging decisions in her investigation into 2020 election interference. last week, willis sent a letter to the chief judge of the fulton county court and other officials requesting the courthouse be clear of trials or in-person hearings in early august. she did not provide a reason in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by nbc news. that request may provide a clearer timeline of when any pot