And that's where we begin tonight.
Legal accountability for one man,
Donald Trump, from two different courts.
Trump certainly believes that the rules do not apply to
him.
It's a central part of who he is as a
person.
But in one court, the New York State Supreme Court,
we are waiting on a decision from Judge Juan Marchant
on whether Donald Trump will face consequences for 10 alleged
violations of his gag order in his hush money election
interference trial. Trump seems to be going out of his
way to prove a point that prosecutor Christopher Conroy argued
on Tuesday.
He knows what he's not allowed to do,
and he does it anyway.
It turns out in an interview just minutes before that
hearing on the gag order started,
Trump committed what appears to be yet another violation of
the gag order,
going after his former fixer,
Michael Cohen, a key witness during an interview with a
local Philadelphia station.
Michael Cohen is a convicted liar,
and he's got no credibility whatsoever.
He was a lawyer and you rely on your lawyers.
But Michael Cohen was a convicted lie.
Now, it should be noted,
yes, by his own admission,
Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and lying
to a bank.
So Trump is not making that part up.
But it's important to remember why he committed those crimes
and who he did them for.
He did it to protect
Donald Trump. Cohen lied to Congress about business deals Trump
pursued in Russia while he was running for president because
Trump wanted him to conceal those business deals so his
Russia baggage wouldn't look so obvious.
And Cohen lied to a bank to take out a
home equity line of credit to pay to silence a
woman alleging a sexual relationship with
Donald Trump, namely Stormy Daniels.
Trump weirdly keeps leaving out those details,
what he calls his former
personal attorney and fixer, a criminal in clear violation by
the way of a gag order.
Tomorrow, there will be another chance to hold Donald Trump
accountable in an unprecedented case with farther reaching implications not
just for him but for our democracy.
The US Supreme Court will hear arguments in Donald Trump
versus the United States about whether he can claim sweeping
presidential immunity over his criminal election interference charges from Special
Counsel Jack Smith. But even for the conservative majority on
the court hears one word of arguments,
it is important to recognize the gift that they've already
handed to Trump,
namely time and plenty of it.
With a month long delay,
they refused Jack Smith's request to fast track this case
in December before a single Republican primary vote had been
cast,
sending it instead to the DC Circuit Court.
The court also could have just affirmed the decision by
the DC Circuit Court,
which found that a president,
surprise surprise, did not, does not in fact,
have absolute immunity from prosecution after Trump's lawyers made this
absolutely absurd argument that they could reprise tomorrow.
Could a president who ordered Seal Team 6 to assassinate
a political rival who was not impeached?
He'd be subject to criminal prosecution
if he were impeached and convicted first.
And so your answer is,
is my answer is qualified?
Yes, instead, this 63 right wing majority court,
three of whom were nominated by Donald Trump,
and another whose wife actively encouraged Trump's efforts to overturn
the election and attended the rally that preceded the attack
on the Capitol.
They will decide whether or not Trump is above the
law,
even as he is already the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
Friends of the show legal experts Melissa Murray and Andrew
Weissman write in the New York Times that the Court
has already botched the immunity case,
noting the Court's decision to review the immunity case actually
undermines core democratic values.
And joining me now is the aforementioned Andrew Weissman,
former FBI General Counsel, MSNBC Legal analyst and Co host
of the Prosecuting Donald Trump podcast and Timothy Hafey,
former lead investigator for the House January 6th Select Committee.
I forgot my copy of my book.
I always bring the Trump indictments book everywhere I go.
I take it around like Trump takes his pretend Bible.
But he wrote the open to say more Your your
op-ed was important.
So I want you to say more sure.
You know what we really focused is on time,
on the the thing that you were talking about.
Because the main issue here is you could understand the
Supreme Court if it wanted to say,
you know what, We as the Supreme Court have never
actually ruled on something as crazy as a president saying
they're absolutely criminally immune from prosecution.
Yeah, so we've never addressed that.
We've only addressed that in the civil context.
So they, I could understand that.
They might want to weigh in on that.
There's no way that there's going to be immunity in
this case.
Even if you think that there is going to be
some small area that the president should be criminally immune.
I'm not sure there should be,
but it's certainly not this case.
Yeah, where there's private action
for private gain. It it,
it's just not an official duty.
And so what's the real harm here is that the
Supreme Court could have taken it,
as you noted in December.
They could have, if they were going to take it
a couple months ago instead of December,
they could have said we're going to fast track it
and we would have heard arguments already.
Instead, there has been a stay in the DC federal
case since December.
That case was originally scheduled for trial March 4th.
You know, where we are now,
we would be, we could easily be waiting for a
jury verdict,
right? That's right. And So what I'm hoping is that
at the arguments tomorrow that the justices focus on speed.
Like what legitimate argument does Donald Trump have for why
they shouldn't be decided immediately Or the court could say,
let's lift the stay tomorrow.
Yeah, what? We'll hear from you.
But you know what? You don't have 5 votes for
presidential community in this case.
The stay is lifted. Yeah.
The case can go forward.
We'll issue an opinion as in time.
Sure, that's something they have done.
MMM. It's something other courts have done
and that would, I think in some way dissolve them
from what they have done so far.
But I have to say the tea leaf reading.
Yeah, not good. Not good.
And Timothy Hafey just reprise for us.
If you just for folks who have,
it's gone in the memory hole.
It's been so long since January
2021.
Trump's role as an investigator of January 6th in What
happened.
He was the leader of a multi part intentional conspiracy
to disrupt the joint session and interfere with the peaceful
transfer of power.
The story joy that we told over the course of
the select committees hearings and in the final report
very similar to the evidence that has been amassed by
and will be presented by the Special Counsel.
He is far and away the proximate cause of the
riot as the committee found and as the Special Counsel
will have the burden to prove in the right.
And Tim, if you were,
and I'll ask both of you if Donald Trump were
not President of the United States,
given the fact that people are spending 20 plus years
in prison for what happened on January 6th,
I'll start with you Tim Hafey.
Would he have been a defendant in a case were
he not the President like long before now?
Absolutely. Look, the Justice Department started with the blue collar
cases,
the people that were at the Capitol,
and they eventually got around to the white collar defendants,
like the chief among them,
the former President. But absolutely joy.
Regardless of his his status as the President of the
United States,
his conduct as the Select Committee recommended and as the
Special Counsel has now indicted,
absolutely merits criminal prosecution.