Today, Donald Trump had what appears to be his largest
entourage yet at his criminal trial in New York City,
among them nearly a dozen Republican members of Congress, including
Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boeber.
And then there were hints of menace, Florida Congressman Matt
Gaetz tweeting a photo with the message quote standing back
and standing by Mr.
President.
The very same language Trump used in the first presidential
debate in 2020 when referencing the far right group the
Proud Boys.
A message that the Proud Boys then took as marching
orders in the lead up to January 6th.
Also in the courthouse Today a key architect in the
January 6th coup, Jeffrey Clark, the former DOJ lawyer who
was indicted in the Georgia case and also named as
an unindicted Co conspirator in the federal prosecution of Trump
over the attempted coup.
Joining us now?
Kyle Cheney who is at the trial today.
He is a senior legal affairs reporter for Politico with
a focus on January 6th and Andrew Weissman and Lisa
Rubin are back with us.
What a day for you to be in the room
given the way that this ties your expertise together.
Yeah, it was.
You know, you see all these threads, the different Donald
Trump related investigations sort of coming together here.
As you've talked about this has become kind of a
loyalty test for a lot of his allies.
And that has brought in people like Jeff Clark who's
not just an ally of Trump in the January 6th.
But is charged with him in Georgia, a Co conspirator,
alleged Co conspirator and is an unnamed and unindicted Co
conspirator in his Washington DC case too.
So to see him sort of in the room as
again a sort of a show of loyalty, I'm not
even sure they're allowed to have contact under some of
the release orders in those cases.
So it was interesting to see them in the same
proximity of Matt Gaetz saying standing right, bringing this very,
very overt reference to the Proud Boys.
And you know, again, I don't know what kind of
loyalty that's supposed to demonstrate, but just to.
But it was sort of a very brazen thing in
the picture that he put up with.
It was him standing right behind Donald Trump in the
hallway.
So.
So it was sort of an unmistakable reference.
Speaking of of brazen rhetoric, Lisa Donald Trump appeared to
talk about one of the prosecutors in this trial today
without naming him.
Let's take a listen.
We'll talk about it on the other side.
A lead person from the DOJ is running the trial.
So Biden's office is running this trial.
Not true.
Just to Fact Check that Biden is not running this
trial.
What is he doing there?
What he's really doing there is daring Judge Juan Marshawn
to put him in jail, because the last time that
Donald Trump was penalized for violating the gag order, Judge
Marshawn made it very clear to Donald Trump, you do
this one more time, and I have other remedies at
my disposal.
The statute only provides me with two One is a
fine of up to $1000 for each violation.
The other is jail, and I don't want to exercise
the jail option.
It would be inconvenient.
It would be disruptive to the administration of justice, but
I will if I have to.
And it almost seemed like Donald Trump was daring him
to do it just to throw a bomb into the
proceeding as it reaches its inevitable conclusion.
We didn't hear from the DA today on it.
We haven't seen the full transcript yet, so it's possible
they mentioned it at a sidebar.
But so far in open court, the District Attorney's office
has not said to Judge Bershon this counts as a
violation.
That doesn't mean that they won't.
And on Monday or beyond, we might hear from the
DA's office that while they don't don't want this to
interfere with the rest of the trial, it's possible that
they'll say to the judge as it reaches its conclusion,
hey, this happened while the jury is out.
Now it's time for you to take some action.
It's the challenge for the DA, which is you describe
this as being a distraction and there are so many
distractions when you're talking about Donald Trump.
That is part of his entire theory of the case.
So they are weighing, do we derail a case that
is on its way to its conclusion or do we
deal with the fact that he's clearly, once again not
playing by the way?
Yeah.
And in addition to the statement that you played the,
there is at least some evidence that the sort of
mini knees who are auditioning for the vice president, presumably
because they also want to be people who will be
hung out to dry like Vice President Pence.
I mean it's like there's nobody thinks about what what
happened to the that person, those people.
It's not like they're just saying something that's unscripted.
There's reporting that that we've reported on that Donald Trump
was editing what it is that they were supposed to
say, which is again another violation of the gag order
And to tie it back to Michael Cohen that we've
been talking about Michael Cohen, when he testified before Congress
and was being attacked by Republicans in his testimony, he
said, look, I know what you're doing.
I used to be you.
I mean, I used to do that for Donald Trump.
And I'm telling you, it's like a fool's errand.
And so you're seeing this again with people who are
thinking, oh, now I can be the vice president and
look at, look what Vice President Pence is 1.
What happened to him on January 6th?
And two, it's remarkable that you have a vice president,
a former vice president, who is not actually endorsing the
person he was, you know, serving as president.
I think about what it was that Matt Gaetz tweeted
out.
All I can think of is the fact that in
so many ways they are creating a permission structure for
future violence.
Whether that is related to the outcome of this court
case, whether that is related to the outcome of the
election, that they see 1/6 as a precursor, as a
preamble to whatever is coming next, not simply something that
is in the past that has been reckoned with.
Well, I think, I think a lot of the forces
that led to January 6th are still present in our
in our politics.
And I think that you know, the outcome of some
of these cases and whether the justice system is, you
know, up to the task of of, you know, holding
holding former president accountable, whether these cases even get tried
at all, that's really the question right now.
And regardless of the outcome, you know, to not have
them hanging over this election process, you know, is is
a live issue.
And I think that, you know, we don't.
I think whatever happens there is going to be, you
know, telling about the direction of the country.
Can you help me understand, Lisa, given the amount of
time that you have spent in that courtroom, how it
is that people get into that courtroom, how they get
seated and what it tells you that he has about
a dozen folks?
I am so glad that you asked me this question
because today on the record from the DA's office, they
basically said, hey, you had a bunch of surrogates for
the former president who came in at an awkward moment.
They were basically disruptive of the cross examination.
They came in at a time that members of the
public wouldn't be allowed to come in and out.
Could you ask them to stop doing that?
And Todd Blanche, for his part, said one, I don't
control these people to their members of the public.
Let's accept his first proposition that he doesn't.
He, Todd Blanche, is a member of the legal team,
doesn't control them.
The proposition that they are members of the public is
simply belied by what we can see.
They do not come in the same public courthouse entry
that Andrew and Kyle and I come in every day.
From what we can tell, they are transported with the
former president.
They are admitted into his bubble by the Secret Service.
Whether they undergo additional security at that back entrance to
the courthouse from which Trump enters is not clear to
us.
But what I can tell you is this.
They enter the courthouse through the president's holding room, which
we understand is an additional courtroom that's been cleared.
They come out with him as he makes the statements
to the press and the hallway, and then they enter
the courtroom with him and this bizarre procession that almost
resembles A militaristic parade.
It's a long line, almost in hierarchical order of importance
of who comes in with him, the legal team, the
AIDS, members of Congress, et cetera.
To call them members of the public, akin to the
guy that you showed on tape earlier who had been
waiting in line for hours and hours.
That's just simply not an apartment or fair comparison.
And I want to say one other thing.
Matt Gaetz might be making statements that, you know, make
our jaws drop, and Donald Trump might be violating the
gag order.
But some of these people don't have to say a
word.
And that's because for where they are sitting, each of
the witnesses is marched directly in front of the first
row of Trump observers, each side meeting the prosecution.
And the defense has the first two rows of the
gallery in the courtroom.
That means, if you're Michael Cohen this morning, who did
you walk by?
Eric Trump, as you are trying to get into the
courtroom to your seat, you're not walking down the center
aisle of the courtroom as we see in so many
procedural dramas, but rather in a separate entrance designed to
maximize your security and your protection from the remainder of
the public, given what is going on here and how
controversial it is with some members of the public.