nbc's ryan reilly is following this for us.t is next in the investigation? >> that's a good question. i think the secret service is going to be looking closely at the video tape available for this. this is an area that has a lot of people going in and out. it may be difficult to narrow it down from a broader list of potential suspects, i suppose, because, you know, when you have the video coverage and you have a number of people going in and out, it's going to be tough to determine who exactly was carrying a little bag in their pocket or something. something that wouldn't be immediately obvious that they were carrying it. so i think that, you know, this could be a little bit of a challenge for them to narrow down who it was. you can't say when the windows started, when it was last checked by someone. we don't know precisely where it was found, so, you know, i think narrowing it down is going to depend a lot on what the video evidence shows and if they're able to get the time frame down to when it was left there. >> ryan reilly,

nbc justice report ryan reilly joins me now. a may trial date. exactly what team trump had hoped for. tell us what's happening, ryan? >> reporter: yeah, so the special counsel had originally wanted something in december, but ultimately they landed on a may date. the trump team is considering this a victory. they said, quote, today's order by judge cannon is a major setback to the doj's attempt to deny trump a fair process. that extra time was important to them, those extra few months, and we're talking about the calendar, the presidential calendar. if this happens in may, that's basically right before the actual republican national convention by the time that trial would be over, and he has a lot of these other legal things on the calendar, and other trials. of course there's this pending potential case coming also out of jack smith's office, involving efforts to stop a peaceful transfer of power, expected to come up with a decision on very shortly. so this is really getting complicated and getting very mixed into just the general 2024 calendar ye

i want to bring in nbc justice reporter r ryan reilly to talk with us. hington post" deputy national editor phil rucker as well. ryan, start us off. it's been an eventful 24 hours to say the least when it comes to the investigation into the former president along with his aide walt nauta appearing in court today finally after a few different delays of that arraignment. talk us through what happened. >> yeah, it was sort of up to the last minute a question of whether or not walt nauta would have a local lawyer in florida. he now does, as someone representing him who will be able to sort of introduce his lawyer, his long-time lawyer who has been representing him for a while, stanley woodward, and he will be able to be inducted, into this case. essentially it was a pretty short hearing over the course of about five minutes. not a ton of substance there. as you said there is this new information coming out that we're learning about this incident and how this all sort of came about. it's a little bit of the pulling back of the curtain about how exactly -- or w

i want to bring in nbc justice reporter ryan reilly, what can you tell us?this kind of as simply as i can because it's a little bit complicated. but stanley woodward is an attorney representing two clients who are in court today. both of them former president trump aides, one of them federico klein was a state department official who physically stormed the capitol himself on january 6th and was inside that tunnel that day. the other is this individual william russell, who is testifying before the grand jury. we haven't seen him go. we believe he went in through the garage, but basically, stanley woodward had to come to the verdict in this case. it was a bench trial that happened the last week, and the verdict was coming down from a trump-appointed judge, judge mcfadden here at 2:00 p.m. that had been scheduled on friday last week. they had set it for this specific time. stanley woodward knew he had a client expected to come in in the morning, to make sure that wouldn't interfere with everything. he ended up being a half hour late for this verdict, and the re

joining me now is nbc news justice reporter ryan reilly and nbc legal analyst danny cevallos.unpack here. walk me through the parameter os of this injunction. >> it basically has some limits on what exactly the fbi is able to do. and i think that, you know, you have to take a step back and acknowledge what the reality is about how the fbi's been interacting with this. look at january 6th itself, for example, right? it's not as though the fbi has been going in and saying, hey, take down this post. take down this post. that's what they're alleging. there's not a lot of evidence to support that. and basically we've had a situation where some politicians are making any contact between social media companies and the fbi or law enforcement seem problematic in some way. the fbi's not very good at monitoring social media. look what happened on january 6th. there are all of these warning signs. red flags going up all over the place. they weren't prepared, they didn't do enough. they did not take proper precautions. i think that's the framework you have to remember that this is importan

joining me now is nbc news justice reporter ryan reilly. what do we know about him?.c. jail for a couple of months now. this news filing from prosecutors, they say law enforcement had been looking for him at some point, but weren't able to find him because he had no fixed address. on social media, it was clear where he was living. other january 6th supporters had kicked him out because his views were too extreme for them. he had been trying to show a video of ashli babbitt's death to her mom and others who hang out by the jail there. prosecutors will seek his attention this afternoon. he's facing four charges. misdemeanor charges. but that could change in the future and they say he's a threat to people going forward. he had two guns and 400 rounds of ammunition in his van. and he's really discombobulated and not fully there when he was making the rants on social media and streaming himself outside of the obamas residence, thinking there are tunnels connected from the obamas to the podesta residence. so pretty out there and someone they think is a threat going forward

joining me is nbc news justice reporter, ryan reilly, walk us through this. >> amy berman jackson who her way into consequential cases of the trump presidency is at the center of this one, and saying because donald trump has found the time to file his own lawsuits and take legal action on his own, the excuse that he's too busy as a former president isn't one that holds water. essentially what it's trying to get to is what role donald trump played here. because donald trump bragged about the role of firing strzok and page, that's at the center of this, and the reason he can be deposed. it does feel like you need a recap because this was six years ago. so lisa page and peter strzok were two individuals who were having an extra marital relationship, texting each other, and talking to each other during the 2016 campaign, and saying not so nice things about donald trump, perhaps the sort of things that a lot of republicans at the time were also saying behind closed doors. >> donald trump supporters as well. and they made those comments and that subsequently came out and eventually led to s

i want to bring in nbc justice reporter ryan reilly who is outside the u.s. district courthouse. msnbc political analyst, brendan buck is with me as well as msnbc legal analyst lisa rubin. ryan, all the action happening inside that courthouse behind you. what do we know at this hour? >> reporter: you know, we know that the grand jury is meeting and we know that that critical meeting took place between the special counsel's office and donald trump's lawyers. what was interesting just a few moments ago i spotted some officers from the metropolitan police department here in d.c. along with park police and members of the u.s. marshal service who oversee security at the courthouse all meeting just outside the courthouse, and then they all proceeded to go inside the courthouse. so it would appear as though they were preparing for some potential big event coming up here. we don't know, obviously, you know, we're still awaiting that indictment. we don't know for sure when that will happen, but if that indictment does take place there's going to need to be an arraignment and security measu

joining me now is nbc news justice reporter ryan reilly, you're behind this analysis, explain it to meo essentially what we've seen over the past, you know, several months, really, almost a year, is individuals appear before the grand jury who are involved, you know, in the fake elector scheme and people also being questioned about some of the fundraising mechanisms that were going on. it seems that there's a particular interest in that infamous meeting which has been sort of referred to as the craziest meeting of the trump administration, which took place just before that will be wild tweet that set all of these events into motion, and involving all of these figures that he could seize voting machines and do all sorts of really out there methods to stop the peaceful transfer of power. you know, rudy giuliani we know has gone in to talk with investigators. he hasn't appeared before a grand jury specifically but has talked to investigators about it, and of course the most, you know, infamous or famous, most high profile person to appear before the grand jury was the former vice presiden

joining us now is nbc news justice correspondent ryan reilly outside the courthouse in washington, nbc news correspondent vaughn hillyard here with me in new york, and joyce vance, former u.s. attorney in alabama and msnbc legal analyst. vaughn, we already know russell has testified before in this grand jury process, so what more we learning about who he is, why the grand jury wants to have him back? >> we don't know why the grand jury wants to have him back, but william russell is particularly of interest to us because the january 6th house select committee, they never interviewed william russell. this hits at the point that the department of justice and special counsel's office likely has much more testimony but also evidence that the house select committee never was able to get their hands on. you see that image there, william russell was serving as an aide in the trump white house. he was there just before the ellipse speech that donald trump gave that day on january 6th. we are trying to fill in those puzzle pieces and i'm sure the special counsel's office as well as to what exten

let's bring in nbc news justice reporter ryan reilly.here was a contentious hearing tuesday, over this time line, right? prosecutors wanting a date in december, the defense wanting this date in mid november of 2024, at the absolute earliest. ultimately the date the judge has decided on here seems to kind of split the difference. will may 2024 as the date satisfy both sides? >> you know, the trump team is calling it a win, the quote, the major set back for the d.o.j.'s crusade to deny president trump a fair legal process. the extensive schedule allows president trump and his legal team to continue fighting this empty hoax. you know, overall, i think that this is something that is going to really affect, obviously, the time line of everything that's happening with the 2024 campaign. if this schedule were to hold, this trial would wrap basically just before the republican national convention, you know, voters will have already cast ballots in several states, so it is really something i think that, you know, is going to be smack dab in the m

joining us now with more is justice reporter ryan reilly and with us andrew weissmann. e do we know about the injunction? you would have thought it would be an automatic appeal. this seems like a very big deal. if the white house can't talk -- it's not an order, but talk to social media companies about content when there are erroneous covid information -- misinformation going on the air and interference in elections. >> it's very important for there to be some sort of communication. it's important for those things to be regulated in some way. we shouldn't have the government suppressing speech. i think in the examples that we have seen come out of the litigation and some of the discussions about this have been discussions about whether or not content violated twitter's existing rules. it was government officials flagging things that violated twitter's ongoing policies. we have to be cognizant of the first amendment considerations here, you also have to look at the evidence of what the communications were. this trump-appointed judge made this -- purposely chose to make th

joining us now to get started, justice reporter, ryan reilly. he's also the author of the forthcoming book, sedition hunters. ryan, good morning. it was a week ago today that trump received that target letter from the doj. i mean, what are the chances, ryan, that we can see an indictment being returned this weekend unsealed? >> yeah, really, the countdown started on thursday because that was the last day that donald trump was given an opportunity to go before the grand jury and sort of say his piece. he did end up doing that, i think most defense attorneys would say that was a smart move because it's not often a great idea to go before these grand juries. you know, that was really when this countdown began because at that point i think they had seen so many people, they're talking to people, and we know william russell, for example, who is top aide was with trump asking these questions about his state of mind at that point. especially because we'll russell is the third time he's come before this grand jury. there's obviously something very intere

joining me now is nbc news justice reporter ryan reilly. practice of ours of saying a trump-appointed judge or obama-appointed judge, clinton, bush, et cetera, whatever, is there a reason that we are saying this is a trump-appointed judge in particular. is this ruling out of sorts? >> i think you would be able to tell that from just reading it. but you would be able to correctly guess who this judge was appointed by by reading the opinion. that said, it's important to make sure the government isn't going beyond and violating first amendment rights. they're talking about two situations, they are very different. they're talking about the communications around covid-19 and misinformation, and the fbi side of this, counter terrorism, and threatening posts online. the fbi side is something i followed closely, and there's just not a lot of evidence that the fbi was encouraging social media companies to take down posts. and the argument, especially in the wake of january 6th, that the fbi was too synced up with twitter or facebook or social media

let's talk about what ryan reilly reported a moment ago, the news from the d.c.rthouse where we learned what william russell was being asked by the special counsel's team, something we do not usually hear unless we hear it directly from a witness. >> that's right, high drama at the courthouse unfolding even as we're talking, katy. stan woodward, who is the lawyer for russell, this young aide who followed donald trump even after he left the white house, and has been before the grand jury before, mr. woodward had a sentencing in an unrelated january 6th case that he was scheduled to be at, and he was late, and the judge asked him why he was lately. he was reluctant to talk about it. you're not supposed to grand jury grand jury -- discuss grand jury marries. now, the judge trevor mcfadden was not happy about this. he made a joke, said something like talk about obstructing an official proceeding in reference to one of the charges that may be on the table in this case, and now he has asked a federal marshal to fetch the prosecutors from the special counsel's office wh

joining us now, nbc news correspondent garrett haake, ryan reilly, standing by outside that d.c. courthouse, jill winebanks, former watergate assistant special prosecute herb and michael zeldin, former federal prosecutor. do we know what time the grand jury will meet today and what's on their agenda? >> reporter: you know, typically they met on tuesdays and thursdays and start sometime around now in the morning. we're on a watch right here. this courthouse has a lot of entrances to it and as we heard from andrew weizman, there is a lot of ways they can sort of go about bringing in a grand jury a different way. they have done that with witnesses. we have seen witnesses brought in through the garage. you're talking about multiple entrances here. a third floor that is sequestered. there are ways for them to bring in grand jurors through back entrances and elevators. i think they're going to be working pretty hard to keep the large group of media that is now at the courthouse from finding out what exactly is going on behind the scenes. tuesdays and thursdays are the day when the gran

joining me now, nbc news justice reporter ryan reilly is also the author of the forthcoming sedition s, ryan, earlier this week former trump aide william russell made his third appearance. maybe three is the charm. before the grand jury, and was questioned about trump's mindset around the 2020 election, and january 6th. could we see more key witnesses called back to this grand jury in the time, and maybe in the next couple of weeks? >> potentially, i think the fact that basically the time is now up for donald trump to appear before the grand jury. the last day they did that was thursday. i am suggesting that we are getting to a pivot point. we will never know obviously because the only people who know where this is going are the members of the grand jury themselves as well as the prosecutors who are far from speaking from this stuff so we have to piece together what we know and it's only three defense attorneys and through witnesses potentially who i have spoken through the grand jury and are not barred from speaking about what's going on behind closed doors. and they only have a port

jumping off of what ryan reilly said and what we know about the target letter so far.hat is your reaction to this? >> well, donald trump has a very full advance car, doesn't he. obstruction of justice, conspiracy to defraud, and civil rights violations. we know and it is on tape that he called georgia state officials and said find me 11,780 votes. doing a free and fair election to millions of georgians. but also to the tens of millions of americans that didn't vote for him. and then when he lost he decided to try to incite a coup, you know? calling on his hodgepodge militia of qanon hours and dark web conspirators to attempt to overthrow a government. because he lost. and really now i think this is about finding ways to foment distrust, in so many of these agencies like the doj, the fbi, the cia, and the irs. who are doing their jobs. investigating him. he is trying to turn the american people against these institutions. >> typically what was really the law and order party, i want to ask, you congresswoman about this idea of expunging former president trump's prior eng

let's bring in nbc news justice reporter, ryan reilly. also the author of the upcoming book, sedition hunters. how january 6th broke the justice system. ryan, let's start with the election interference case. what can you tell us about this appearance from william russell? >> this is really critical. investigators really want to get to the heart of the question of, what exactly donald trump was doing between the time we lost the election in november 2020, and the time that january 6th happened. i think the other testimony that's really been out there as important, mike pence is. which happened awhile back. a number of people who really gone in to the grand jury. this is someone who's not testified in multiple times, indicating that there's that they're obviously very interested in. this is someone who was with trump at these critical moments, and knew what he was really thinking. mark meadows also someone who would know that. the question is about mark meadows, what exactly role he's playing in all of this right now? he's been pretty sideli

joining me now is nbc news investigative correspondent, tom winter and nbc news justice reporter, ryan reilly. let's start with the top. walt nauta, finally getting a lawyer. finally pleading not guilty. walk us through what happened. >> it was a short hearing. the big news is he did get this lawyer, and essentially one of the reasons i think it's more difficult to find someone is because, you know, donald trump hasn't been known to pay his bills. that's something you're on the hook for down the line if, you know, no matter where this goes, once you're on the case you're stuck with it no matter what, even if there's a dispute about payment or what have you. whoever signed on for that is in for the long haul. with donald trump, a significant retainer agreement, cash up front in order to take on that case. i think in this case, you have to find someone who's willing to take that on. obviously it would be interesting to find out the details of exactly what the deal was on the finances behind that because walt nauta, right now is firmly in trump's camp. he's still employed by donald trump, his le

nbc's ryan reilly is following this for us, and also with us, former d.c. of homeland security, darnell harvin. start us off if you will and give us a sense of what took place inside the court today? >> i think this is one of those failures of open source intelligence that we've seen in this instance because what we really have originally here is someone who was identified in august of 2021, has clearly been disconnected from reality and posting on social media in the, you know, year and a half since he's been identified, and it was known to be in d.c., was posting about that. was publicly identified as being an individual who is on the so called freedom corner by the d.c. jail, in fact had been kicked out of that group or distanced from the group, because he thought they were too extreme. some of whom believe conspiracy theories about january 6th thought he was still too out there, and saying that he didn't believe ashley babbitt was killed, and she was an actor, and the people around her were actors were there. this is someone who was there when ashli bab

with us to talk about all of this, nbc news justice reporter ryan reilly and nbc news investigative correspondent tom wintour and david aaronburg, state attorney for palm beach county, florida. what do we know about walt nauta's new attorney an arraignment? >> she handled some dui cases, she's advertised recently, she has long experience in the public defender's office in florida and that's her background and history. this was a little bit of a struggle for them to find someone to represent walt nauta, who was a lawyer locally, he's still obviously represented by stanley woodward, who entered just a few moments ago, that nonguilty plea on his behalf. walt nauta acknowledged that he has read the charges against him, but it was a pretty brief hearing all about five minutes overall. >> and, tom what did we learn from the unredacted portions of the search warrant affidavit? >> yesterday we were talking about this, we probably would almost certainly get nothing as far as the ongoing investigation or getting any sort of details about potential witness names that aren't already out there and aren't alre

to talk more about this nbc's justin reporter ryan reilly joins me now. he's also the author of the upcoming book, sedition hunters. how january six broke the justice system. ryan, good to see you. so, let's there is our own and the new scene is reporting on trump aide william, russell being questioned about trump's state of mind. what could this mean for this probe? >>, it was a really interesting moment this week because thursday, stanley woodward, who is representing william russell as well as representing another january 6th defendant, who was on trial, was actually a member of the trump administration, a trump political appointee, who physically stormed the capitol on january 6th. he was set to get his verdict handed down at two pm, but his lawyer was actually at this hearing before the grand jury, and ended up being about 25 minutes late for this hearing, then had to explain to the judge when he walked in what was up, and he told the judge essentially that he couldn't leave his other client, william russell, before the grand jury because he was being

joining me now is garrett haake, nbc news justice reporter ryan reilly, and msnbc legal analyst lisa rubin. of course a target letter, garrett, does not necessarily mean that you will be indicted but donald trump seems to think that, yes, he will, and it will happen this week. why? >> reporter: legal experts say a target letter means you almost certainly will be indicted and donald trump thinks that's the case. we know the target letter was sent, law enforcement official have is confirmed that. i don't suppose we know for certain whether the time line that it lays out is accurate. but according to mr. trump, he says he had four days from receipt of this letter to come and testify before the grand jury and basically tell his side of the story. that puts us at the end of this week. and it suggests that this investigation is all but done with if you were at the point where you know you want to bring the target in to hear what he or she has to say and make your decision after that. donald trump has tried in some form to scoop his run-ins with law enforcement. he missed the mark by a week

joining us now is nbc news justice correspondent ryan reilly, nbc news correspondent vaughn hillyard, msnbc legal analyst danny cevallos, and charles coleman, civil rights attorney and msnbc legal analyst. so ryan, what do we know about how the judge came to this date? >> yeah, a little bit past the time that the special counsel's office had requested, obviously, here, but you know, the former president's team did not want a schedule set at all. not really a win for them. this certainly gets some dates on the calendar. it keeps things going. i wouldn't necessarily set it in stone. there are ways in which there could be potential delays down the line for sure. that happens fairly frequently in other trials. but obviously the political component of this is a huge one, and i think the complicating factor going forward is whether or not any of these other instances in which donald trump has either instigated litigation on his own or has these other court dates and the variety of other cases he's facing or is involved with impacts his schedule or his campaign schedule, which is also a fact

joining me now is ryan reilly, nbc news justice reporter, and author of the upcoming book's addition hunters, how january 6th broke the system. and charles coleman coleman, former brooklyn, new york prosecutor and an msnbc legal analyst. thank you both for being with us this afternoon. ryan, i will start with you. what is the significance of that start date for the classified documents trial? how exactly did judge cannon come to that date? and will it stick? >> it wasn't really what either party wanted. the special counsel want to -- set this for december, while the trump campaign wanted to kick this past 2024 and basically have the 2024 campaign stand in for the jury here, deciding where this case is going to go because, of course, if donald trump does get elected president, well, okay, all of a sudden that november 2024 gate is out the window. and in that case, very quickly goes away as soon as -- the oval office and directs his appointees at the justice department to just missed the pending case against him. so, essentially, what they settle on something that's smackdown in the mi

nbc news justice reporter ryan reilly writes that toronto showed up at bombers residence after formercreenshots on his truth social platform that featured a purported address for obama's home. quote, we've got those losers surrounded taranto road on telegram -- joins me now. ryan, first of all can you tell us about what authorities now about this individual and when he was apprehended and what kind of threat he might've posed? >> frankly, it seemed like online sleuths more than line force minted in this case because a tailor taranto is someone they identified in august 2021. he's been locked since then as a january -- in the capitol, he didn't post in his own video and asked when he was going to be arrested but he was not arrested until yesterday. it was never charged. he was only facing a civil lawsuit from the widow of an officer who died by suicide after january six. his codefendant in the civil lawsuit had been charged last, year has already been now sentenced to 16 days in federal prison. that was a d.c. chiropractor who lived a couple of blocks from the capital. those two didn't

we are getting s guidance from one of our colleagues, ryan reilly, that a courtroom deputy has suggest be no grand jury that returns today, which suggests things can change. we don't know, we know the grand jury had been meeting. there are these questions around timing, what there doesn't seem to be a question on at this point is that jack smith is, it seems, heading towards an indictment, kate. if this does happen, if it does come down it is significant. we're talking about what legal experts say are the most serious set of charges facing donald trump at this point. yes, he's already been indicted for the first time on the state level in new york on hush money payment-related charges. yes, he's already been indicted on the federal level by the same speciaial counsel on those allegations of mishandling classified documents. in this instance, it's not only potentially the most serious penalties against him, if there is third indictment, but it is also sort of the facts at hand here. remember, donald trump is not just the former president set to, we believe be accused of this broader sch

joining us is ryan reilly.rday. he is the man from arkansas who attacked a capitol police officer with the american flag, with the flagpole, beating him repeatedly. what more do we know here? >> reporter: it was interesting, because yesterday in court he was trying to explain why he thought perhaps this person was antifa. he said, i was so concerned with the shoes. apparently the shoes were suspicious. the problem was after this he made some really inflammatory comments about police officers, basically saying they deserved death for protecting the capitol that day. it wasn't something that necessarily aligned with the facts. nonetheless, he was given a little bit less time than prosecutors were ultimately seeking. they wanted more than six years. he ultimately got over four. because he's been incarcerated for the past two-plus years, he'll end up doing about two more years before he's released. it's another reminder as we are on this indictment watch, that all these cases continue to roll in. just last week alo

joining us is ryan reilly, dave aaronberg is still with us.rtment is alleges about taranto, and how serious all of this is. >> what's sort of odd about this case is frankly he was identified two years ago almost in august of 2021 by online sleuths. the way this actually came about is online sleuths found a facial recognition hit that showed him on his county gop web site where he was the webmaster posing with a card board cutout of donald trump. he was sued by the widow of an officer who served on january 6th and died by suicide shortly thereafter. along with another defendant in the lawsuit, david wallace kaufman, who was charged, pleaded guilty and a couple of weeks ago was sentenced. a couple of weeks ago in court, i saw taylor taranto walk into the back of the sentencing. he was on his phone. he got spoken to by the u.s. marshals there. you're not supposed to have your phone in court. he had a little confrontation with them, eventually left and walked off. he has been living this a van down by the d.c. jail for a long time, and that has be