attorney joyce vance, a professor at the university of alabama school of law. se that is the ultimate question here, alicia and i'll answer it this way. i'll say it merits an investigation into whether or not criminal conduct occurred. i wouldn't want to prejudge that until the evidence is in. not because this doesn't give the appearance of being fully criminal, but because we are a rule of law country and charging someone with a crime requires the government to have proof beyond a reasonable doubt of all of the elements of a crime. some of which could be rather demanding and rather narrow. but in this situation, and i wrote a piece earlier this week with my colleague bash mcquade and with professor larry tribe at harvard where we laid out a road map to investigate because this gives an appearance to defraud the united states and an entire series of other crimes. >> it strikes me there have been a number of times that i've asked you the question about the former president because theresy cornucopia of legal cases to ask you about that and you were very judicious

joining us now is joyce vance one of the authors of that opinion piece, a former federal prosecutor, of the points in there and a parenthetical is if they have not already begun such an investigation, would we know if the justice department has already begun such an investigation? >> we wouldn't necessarily know. if it was my case and i was a prosecutor, i would prefer that the public have no visibility into whether or not i was investigating. that's how doj is supposed to conduct its investigations. >> and another point in here that was illuminating to me is you mention as one of the possibilities to investigate a violation of the hatch act's criminal provision. i don't know that i remember that the hatch act has a criminal provision but i know it now. we used to see kellyanne conway violate the hatch act every day by campaigning on the white house driveway but that doesn't have a criminal opportunity. describe what could be the criminal violation of the hatch act that you think should be investigated? >> the violation here, lawrence, is coercing political activity. you're right. wha

attorney and msnbc legal analyst joyce vance. joyce, good afternoon. good to see you. discovery phase. do you think they will get there and what does that mean? >> this is a really interesting lawsuit. it is similar to some of the earlier suits we have seen, those brought by congressman eric swalwell, for instance, but the plaintiffs here, the capitol police officers, have a particularly compelling case. this is a civil lawsuit. they've brought claims ranging from violation of the ku klux klan act which is a civil rights statute to state provisions in the district of columbia, the equivalent of state provisions for civil assault and civil battery. some of these claims look like they really will survive an early motion to dismiss, and this indicates will proceed to discovery which could involve, for instance, depositions of some of the defendants including the former president. >> former president trump tried to claim executive privilege in the face of this request for documents from the january 6th committee. obviously he's no longer a part of the executive branch, but

joyce vance is an msnbc legal analyst and a former u.s. attorney for the northern district of alabama and she joins me now. joyce, thanks for coming on the show tonight. mark meadows is a private citizen. what kind of criminal exposure might he have right now? i want to play to you a bit more from that january phone call with georgia secretary of state raffensperger. here he's trying to persuade the state's general counsel to give over voter data to the trump team with an assist from the president himself. have a listen. >> what you're saying, ryan, hold on, let me make sure. so what you're saying is you really don't want to give access to the data, you just want to make another case on why the lawsuit is wrong? >> i don't think we can give access to data that's protected by law. but we can sit down with them and say -- >> but you're allowed to have a phony election? you're allowed to have a phony election, right? >> what type of criminal liability does mark meadows have in a state like georgia? >> it's an important question and the answer,

joyce vance, olivia beavers, thank you both. >>> up next.ened for doing their jobs. >> all the council people's homes that are voting on the vaccine mandate. whoever votes yes, we're coming to your door! we're coming to your home. you want to feel -- you want to intimidate us? we're coming to you now. >> the increasingly violent intimidation being brought to bear on mask policies. next. icies. next for 35 years. i'm a mother of four-- always busy. i was starting to feel a little foggy. just didn't feel like things were as sharp as i knew they once were. i heard about prevagen and then i started taking it about two years now. started noticing things a little sharper, a little clearer. i feel like it's kept me on my game. i'm able to remember things. i'd say give it a try. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. [singing] oven roasted cooold cuts cooold cuts [ heavy breathing ] allergies with nasal congestion overwhelming you? breathe more freely with powerful claritin-d. claritin-d improves nasal airflow two times more than the leading allerg

claire mccass skill is still here andsk john heilemann is he and joyce vance is back. interrupted you when the president started talking, adding his voice to a virtual cacophony calling for andrew cuomo to resign. joyce. >> the president discussed the option as we move forward, which is the possibility of resignation. there's also the possibility of impeachment in the new york state legislature. come.ould there is ald committee already work on that sort of investigative process. then we turn to the legal system. there are two possibilities here. we know that albany is already investigating one set of investigations, the groping allegations against the g governor, and evaluating that as a potential criminal case. they've said this afternoon that they will be seeking more of the information in possession of the new york attorney general. that's significant. there's also a possibility that the women who have come forward could now bring civil lawsuits under title vii. one suspects that's in the offing. there's been an awful lot of investigation here. where ween started, ni

tim o'brien is still with us and joyce vance is with us. tim, i will get to you in a moment. that could force the governor's hand into resigning before he is impeached? >> i think it is politics more than law that comes into play here, nicolle. of course, there are reports albany has started a criminal investigation into one of these allegations. that appears to be a misdemeanor sort of investigation, and it is unlikely that it can move more quickly than the political proceedings. so i suspect we are looking at questions of politics, not law, at least in the short term here. . >> so, tim, the politics of this are pretty stark. i mean i don't know that the governor has any defenders left, not just in new york but in democratic national politics. how do you see this playing out? >> i see him as having to resign, and if he doesn't resign he is going to get impeached and forced out of office. i could be wrong. but when you have long-time allies of his in the new york state assembly who have coalesced around the idea that he will be impeached and are being aggressive about moving t

we're joined now by one of the authors of that piece, legal expert and former federal prosecutor joyce vance. >> good to be with you, ari. >> tell us about the evidence in the case you make here. >> the argument i think is a simple one, and it's intuitive. it balances the need that doj has to restore its bona fides as an agency that's above the political fray, that doesn't do anything for political reasons, and to balance that very important priority against sustaining the rule of law. and we conclude that in this absolutely remarkable situation, where you have every appearance that a sitting president was involved in insurrection, that the justice department must fully investigate the facts and circumstances around that. we don't know, it could be there's investigations going on and that doj, as it so often does, has managed to do that in secret. but the point that we make is that that investigation must be robust, it must look at a wide variety of possible federal crimes, and if there is sufficient evidence to charge, charges should be brought. >> i think it's a very important piece that y

we turn to joyce vance and joan walsh. >> joyce, these written documents and damming documents that donald trump got this far and finding some people at doj who wanted to abuse federal power to try to get a state georgia to use its local republican officials to steal the race there in the electoral college. >> this is extraordinary significance on the face of this written documents what we already suspended. this is hard, undeniable evidence that there were folks inside the justice department and this individual, jeff clark, is someone we know former president trump had referenced in his phone call with attorney general rosen and said well, i hear this jeff clark guy is good, maybe he's somebody i should bring on board and here he pops up with his own plan of circumventing the results of the election in georgia. ari, it is important to look at this not just a single moment in time but as part of a long standing course of activities by the former president that starts at least as early as when he's trying to get the ukrainians to help him out to announce the investigation into joe biden ont

i want to bring in tom winter and joyce vance. she is a professor at the university of alabama law school. welcome. tom, i want to start with you and talk about the criminal investigations currently in effect right now, the albany county d.a., westchester county, manhattan as well. getting a statement from attorney general tish james saying in part, today closes a sad chapter for all of new york, but it is an important step towards justice. we know, tom, the attorney general herself cannot bring criminal charges against the outgoing governor, but what does this mean for those criminal investigations happening throughout new york state? >> it doesn't change anything really. given governor cuomo's long-term ambitions prior to this coming out, from a legal perspective everything is the same as it was this morning, which is that the governor has some serious legal hurdles and criminal hurdles ahead of him. when you look at this today, the albany county district attorney's office, the albany county sheriff's office is looking into a se

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joining us now, joyce vance, former u.s. giuliani? >> well, unfortunately, the docket -- the notation on the court's docket that there's about to be a change of plea hearing doesn't reveal a lot of information to us. chris, there's now some indication that this hearing may be put off until early september at the request of mr. fruman's lawyer. but when defendants change their plea from not guilty, which is very standard at arraignment, to a plea of guilt, that indicates only that they're going to plead guilty rather than going to trial. we'll have to wait for the hearing itself to learn whether this indicates that there's a cooperation deal or whether this is just a straight-up plea of guilt which carries benefits to the defendant, a small reduction in the guideline sentence, and we often see people pleading guilty without any sort of cooperation agreement. >> joyce, you're prescient, we just literally saw it cross that it has been moved to september 10th, not tomorrow. september 10th. can we read anything into that? >> that

let's bring in joyce vance, professor at the university of alabama school of law and msnbc legal analystck confessore, political reporter as well as an msnbc contributor. remind folks who he is. i remember reading news accounts around him at the time it looked like mr. weisselberg was going to stay mum. talk about why they may be pursuing him as a witness. >> calamari is an intriguing figure in the trump organization. he is the chief operating officers but he doesn't have the credentials you would usually expect someone in that position to have. he came to trump's attention because he was being a particularly effective bouncer at a tennis match. he went to work for trump in a capacity as a security guard, and he gained trump's confidence when he was working as trump's personal security guard. so one has a little bit of a sense here he may not have had involvement in the complex financial dealings, but there's the intriguing possibility that he has some insight into trump's mindset and how trump was talking about events as they occurred before they were under legal scrutiny. >> nick confe

assistant state health officer with the alabama department of public health, msnbc contributor joyce vance, and msnbc political analyst fernand amandi join us in florida. i want to start with alabama. how is the state's hospital system holding up? what worries you most about this new surge? >> as we know, we have over 2,600 persons currently hospitalized in alabama with covid-19. about 500 of those are on ventilators. currently we have 42 pediatric patients hospitalized. this is pretty significant for us. our health care system is under tremendous strain. we're out of icu beds. we have a federal team on the ground in southwest alabama. we will have another federal team on the ground next week. we're at a critical phase in alabama and we're just urging all alabamians to come together, mitigate, and vaccinate. >> given that dr. landers, ahead of donald trump's rally in coleman, a city declared a state of emergency as it becomes overwhelmed with these cases, is this the right time to hold such a massive gathering? >> well, as we've advised in does it not guidance with the cdc and the alabama

attorney joyce vance and huff post senior justice reporter ryan riley.f capitol rioters threatened speaker pelosi and that seems particularly relevant given that you have republicans putting her at the center. talk to me about why that is ridiculous and what you think their strategy is there. >> it's ridiculous in terms of the capitol police. first of all, any member of congress has in this also. the capitol police board in so far as there is oversight for members of congress and of course, there is another chamber. there is the house and there's the senate, right? both the leaders were in charge of that oversight. so you know, senate -- then-senate majority leader mitch mcconnell had just as much of a role in the oversight of january 6th in so little as there was. with all of these capitol cases and the constant repeated theme i've seen over and over again with these documents when you talk about people wandering through the halls searching for nancy pelosi. you watch the videos and it is disturbing. you have a mob looking for nancy pelosi, where's nanc

people you know very well, joyce vance, lawrence tribe, barbara quaid wrote something in "the washington post" yesterday a road map for the justice department to follow in investigating trump. they wrote this before we knew all of this stuff about friday's discussions with rosen, saturday's testimony with rosen. who is in charge of this? as you said, there is a january 6 investigation, an i.g. investigation. but to us lay people with no legal training it feels like laws were broken, crimes were committed that imperilled democracy in this country and we need to see somebody taking action that seems consequential and apolitical. who is the person to do this? who is the body to lead this? is it the department of justice? as rachel said the problem with the department of justice, the attorney general, the poor guy goes to work every day at a crime scene. >> it is the department of justice. there is accountability in all sorts of different ways. i would argue there will be accountability potentially at the ballot box in 2022, which is going to be the first election since january 6th. and ther

yet you could in theory impeachment -- joyce vance makes the point there are four criminal prosecutions we've had based on the information of the last few weeks >> sure, the indictments of him along with other individuals. i'm grateful we have a justice department putting a little transparency on what happened leading up to january 6th and even there after. i'm sure there are additional things that we're going to learn that not only took place at the justice department but let's not forget the department of defense, what the president was attempting to use our military for his own purposes. >> i want to ask you about voting rights. the -- the -- the attorney general has spoken out saying congress has to do something about this. we do think there is some kind of a deal being worked out that might at least have the support of 50 democrats, margin and sinema, maybe or maybe not and republicans. there is criticism from the progressive wing of the democratic party that watering down voting rights is not something that they will go for. >> you know, and the same way that the voting rights act

joyce vance and cedric alexander. thank you. we're waiting for president biden to give comments.et's hear the president. >> good afternoon, i'm president of the u.s. aw local 600 in deer born, michigan, home of the historic ruth complex and the for the lightning. mr. president, it is my honor to be with you here today. we know that uaw and joe biden worked together from the earliest days in delaware where we supported you and your first run for office. we were there at the beginning and we're so proud to be here now with our brother and the white house here today. uaw members are excited about the future. the batteries that go in them. we know the president biden has our back. we know he understands that we can grow our industry and preserve and create more good paying union jobs and build back a better plan. we know that this president understands that as we move towards this bright future, none of us will be left behind. that we are the true engine of making this technology work, grow, and power america's middle class. mr. president, you have our back and we have yours. thank y

joining me to discuss kerry sanders with the alabama department of health and msnbc contributor joyce vance, from school of law and an analyst joining us in florida. dr. landers, i want to start with you and the current state of the pandemic in alabama. how is the state's hospital system holding up and what worries you most about this new surge? >> well, as we know, we have over 2600 persons currently hospitalized in alabama with covid-19, about 500 of those are on ventilators. currently, we have 42 pediatric patients hospitalized and it's pretty significant for us. so our healthcare system is under tremendous strain. we are out of icu bed. we have a team in southwest alabama. we will have another federal team on the grounds next week. we are urging all alabamaens to come together, mitigate and vaccination. >> so given that, ahead of donald trump's rally in coleman, a city declared as a state of emergency as it becomes overwhelmed with these cases. is this such a time to 408 such a massive gathering? >> as we'ved a vieded with the cdc and department of public health, i stress, this is medic

joining me right now is joyce vance, former u.s. at the university of alabama school of law and msnbc legal analyst. senator richard blumenthal didn't mince words when he heard the testimony, he said this is important for all of democracy. there are major implications not only for former president trump but for other people involved. what are you try to go in terms of something that would define a criminal act that could lead to charges here? >> so senator blumenthal is dead on the money here in his comments, lindsey. he said something that really struck me. he characterized the former president's conduct this way. he said that trump tried to break the justice department. and that sort of conduct gives rise to a reasonable suspicion to believe that a crime has been committed. my belief is that doj should be investigating that conduct for criminality. it is, for instance, illegal to try to coerce government employees into political action. it seems to me that trying to coerce a government employee into helping you overturn a lawful e