versus muslim students or black versus white students, because so often people frame it that way. this is a story where if you are going to cover it you need to understand who you are talking to, what organizations they are associated with and what you really believe before you broadcast 10 images of images or photos you have taken. make it very clear the context of the story, because when you talk to students they tell me they are a very different generation. they are seeing images of children dying on their phones. they are horrified. their kids were political science majors and study this for years and kids getting into this just for the past few days because what they have seen transpire around the country. >> this is why i love a real journalist. antonia hylton, you are there doing the work. this is what we need journalism to do. don't make up stuff based on what you think. go and report or rely on an actual reporter. antonia hylton, thank you. well done.

don't go anywhere. i will be back with rachel maddow and the whole gang for special coverage of trump on trial that starts right now. the ex-president of the united states. two american courtrooms. facing criminal trial in one. >> i will go in now and sit. >> and making a desperate case to avoid justice in the other. >> we will hear arguments this morning in trump versus the united states. >> tonight, new testimony of the alleged criminal conspiracy to help elect donald trump. >> reporter: trump turned to the business at hand and asked david pecker, how is our girl? >> as his argument for absolute immunity finally goes before the supreme court. >> this court has never recognized absolute criminal immunity for any public official. >> a private attorney who was willing to spread false claims of election fraud -- >> what was up with the pardon for president nixon? if everybody thought presidents

couldn't be prosecuted, what was that about? >> if it fails completely it is because we have destroyed our democracy. >> tonight, rachel maddow, nicolle wallace, joy reid, chris hayes, lawrence o'donnell, ra melber, all here as msnbc's special coverage of trump on trial begins now. >> who has the time? who has the time? you are telling me that simultaneously we've got three hours of oral argument at the united states supreme court about the former president claiming he is totally immune from prosecution for any crime he did as president and at the exact same time he is being criminally prosecuted in a new york courtroom where the first star witness against him just had his first day of testimony. who has the time?

literally there isn't time to pay attention to all of this, let alone everything else that is happening, too. because of that we are here to help. i am rachel maddow. i am at msnbc headquarters with my colleagues, nicolle wallace and chris hayes and lawrence o'donnell and ari melber. katie was at the arguments today. thanks for hustling back to talk about it. we know that you at home are a real person with a real life and you may not have been able to follow the proceedings in real time this morning and this afternoon. it is our job to come to these things and it was hard for us to cover all of this all at once. we did know it was coming. we prepped for it, we delegated, we listened to things that one .5 speed, we skipped lunch and dinner, but we got it for you and for us. this is our primetime recap of today's events. we will jump right in and start tonight with the supreme court. former president donald trump claiming he is immune from

prosecution from all and any crimes he committed while serving as president. it is a claim so audacious it was widely perceived to be a shocking hail mary when his defense first proposed it. the federal court that first heard this claim just overhand smashed it, ruling against him comprehensively in words that were designed to be set to music, basically. quote, this court cannot conclude that our constitution cloaks former presidents with absolute immunity for any federal crimes they commit while in office. nothing in the constitution's text or allocation of powers requires exempting foreign -- former presidents. and neither the people who adopted the constitution, nor those who have safeguarded it across generations, have ever understood it to do so.

defendants four-year service as commander in chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens. no man in this country, not even the foreign president -- the former president, is so high that he is above the law. that was the ruling by the first federal judge who considered this audacious claim that as president he was immune from crimes he committed while serving in the presidency. when trump appealed that ruling, the appeals proceedings also went poorly for him. the appeals court proceedings made headlines across the country after one of the three appellate judges who heard the appeal asked trump's lawyer in court a shocking hypothetical about whether he can order the assassination of a political rival and really not be charged for it. trump's counsel said, indeed, that was their position. so all of the federal judges who reviewed trump's audacious immunity claim, all of them

have seem not just disinclined to go along with it, they have seemed shocked by it and their decisions at the trial court level and appellate court level, their clarion decisions against him on this immunity question really seemed like they would be the last word. but with this supreme court, never say never. the united states supreme court set on this issue for weeks and then finally announced that they wanted to take this case themselves. they announced they would take it today. what is probably the latest possible day on which they could have scheduled these arguments. to the extent that trump's best defense tactic is delay. the supreme court has already been an excellent accomplice in that defense. even with that backdrop, the arguments today were legitimately, i think, stunning. trump's counsel was grilled for

about an hour. the prosecutor jack smith and justice department was grilled for nearly twice that amount of time. but almost immediately at the start of proceedings, under questioning, we got confirmation that the appeals court hypothetical, that crazy hypothetical about trump being able to assassinate political enemies and never be charged, we got confirmation at the start that that was not a fluke. president trump maintains and his lawyers maintain that he really is immune from prosecution, specifically for killing his political rivals. >> i'm going to give you a chance to say if you stay by it. if the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military or order someone to assassinate him, is that within his

official acts from which he can get immunity? >> it would depend on the hypothetical, but we could see that could be an official act. >> it could and why? >> that could be an official act, really? you might officially as part of his duties want to kill his domestic political rival and if it is an official act, trump's lawyers say he is immune from prosecution. in other words, yes, we think he should be able to do that. anything else you want to clarify he should be able to do? it is not just assassinating individual domestic political opponents. it is worse than that. over to you, justice kagan, again questioning trump's counsel. >> if a president sells nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary, is that immune? >> that sounds similar to the bribery example, likely not immune. if it were structured as an official act he would have to be impeached and convicted

first. >> what does that mean? >> i don't know if it would be an official act. you would have to have more details to provide the analysis that we've been talking about. >> how about if a president orders the military to stage a coup? >> i think as the chief justice pointed out earlier, where there is a whole series of, you know, guidelines against that, so to speak, like the uc mj prohibits the military from following an unlawful act. now if one follows the fitzgerald test that might be an official act and as i would say in all of these hypotheticals, has to be impeached and convicted. >> well, he is gone. let's say this president who ordered the military to stage a coup, he is no longer president. he was not impeached. he couldn't be impeached, but he ordered the military to stage a coup and you are saying that is an official act?

>> i think it would depend on the circumstances whether it was an official act. if it were an official act -- >> what does that mean, depends on the circumstances? he was the president, he is the commander-in-chief. he talks to his generals all the time and told the generals, i don't feel like leaving office. i want to stage a coup. is that immune? >> if there is an official act, there needs to be impeachment beforehand because the framers -- >> if it is an official act -- >> on the way you described the hypothetical it could be, i just don't know, again it is a fact specific context. >> that sounds to me like it is an official act, but it sure sounds bad, doesn't it? >> it certainly sounds bad and that is why the framers have a whole series of structural checks that have successfully for the past 234 years prevented that extreme hypothetical.

>> has that extreme hypothetical always been prevented? yes, your honor, that certainly sounds bad. you can see where he is going at the end of this when he calls that an extreme hypothetical. this is an important part, i believe, of how today's proceedings went. trump's lawyer and most conservative justices today carried on with these proceedings at the supreme court as if it is a wild hypothetical, just a crazy pipedream, like a martian scenario that a president might try to use force to stay in power after he was voted out. who can ever imagine something like that? trump's lawyer today call that unlikely. he specifically called it, i quote, very, very, unlikely. >> that is the wisdom of the framers. what they viewed as the risk that needed to be guarded against was not the notion that the president might escape criminal prosecution for

something very unlikely in these unlikely scenarios. they viewed it much more likely and destructive to the republic the risk of fractional strife. >> the framers did not put in immunity clause in the constitution. they knew how to. there were immunity clauses and some state constitutions. they knew how to give legislative immunity. they did not provide immunity to the president and not surprising they were reacting against a monarch who claims to be above the law. wasn't the whole point that the president was not a monarch? >> the whole point of, you know, america, why we are a country. justice kagan with the trump counsel. basically what he is saying is the idea of anyone actually trying a coup to stay in power, a president trying that, that is crazy. that is so extreme, we don't have to worry about a hypothetical like that. it is really partisan strife, conflict between political parties, that is the biggest

risk to the country, not this crazy idea. justice kagan responding by saying okay, but maybe also a tyrant, unbound by law, running the country with impunity, maybe that would be bad, too. maybe that is why we were actually formed as a constitutional republic. as a general matter, it is folly to extrapolate from oral arguments and say that you know how the ruling will come down based on comments from the justices when the case was heard. with that caveat, though, it seemed clear today that the most conservative justices were inclined to side with trump not just on a technicality, but possibly on the substance. justice clarence thomas suggested today that presidents are always committing crimes. shout out to operation mongoose from justice thomas today. other justices discussing

prosecutors, judges, and even grand juries of citizens in terms that would be right at home in a trump social media feed about heather isn't really a rule of law in this country and that what looks like our legal system is really just corrupt people who are out to get donald trump. the conservative justices today were absolutely and consistently unwilling to discuss trump's alleged crimes as laid out in the indictment that led to this case, to the point that it became almost a comedic, gymnastic effort at avoidance between justice alito and the lawyer for special counsel jack smith. >> if the court has concerns about the robustness of it, i would suggest looking at the charges in this case. >> i'm going to talk about this in the abstract. >> conspiracies to defraud the united states with respect to one of the most important functions, namely the certification of the next president.

>> i don't want to dispute that particular application. conspiracy to defraud the united states of particular facts. >> it is difficult to think of a more critical function than the certification of who won the election. >> as i said i am not discussing the particular facts of this case. >> stop, stop with the facts. do not tell me about the things that whoever your client is did. or the things in the indictment of whoever your client is that led to this case, whatever is about. i want to speak purely in the abstract as if particular facts of this case, facts of what donald trump did are actually an unimaginable hypothetical that i don't need to engage with. the widely held view of today's proceedings at the united states supreme court is that the conservatives on the court will likely succeed in using this case to further and fatally delay criminal court proceedings against donald trump

before the election in november. rather than reject his claims of immunity from prosecution, like all of the federal judges who consider this matter before them, they instead will carve out some newly specified class of actions that are immune from prosecution if you are a president and they will invent a test for deciding what counts is that kind of action by a president and then they will send trump's indictment, trump's federal january 6 case back through a whole new cycle in the lower federal courts to run his attempted overthrow of the government through the courts newly invented legal test that they are going to make for him in this case. which, yes, will take forever, because in the meantime he will get a chance to get back in the white house in order to shut the whole thing down and in the meantime the american people will be asked to vote on whether he should take that

seat at the white house without knowing what federal prosecutors have found and believe is criminal about his conduct when he tried to overthrow the government to stay in office the last time. we are going to have more ahead on that thing that i just described. on why it seems like the justices are going to send this case back to the lower courts. how it is that they sort of showed there cards on that today. but before we go too much further, let's talk about this. let's talk about how it went. >> actually i have a lot. >> okay. we've got a special. start at the top. >> well, i found it, viscerally i found it as one of those handful of moments that felt like genuine vertigo. almost like a physical sensation like am i losing my mind? what is going on? there is something wrong about this and why did this give this sense of distress? i think the reason is this. donald trump's framing of this prosecution is that what is

extraordinary about it is the prosecution. whereas the lower courts and the rest of us, i believe, what is extraordinary are the actions that took to warrant the prosecution. what are unprecedented are the actions at issue, the first peaceful it -- first attempt to stop the peaceful transition of power. not that i -- not that an indictment was brought. but the court adopted the notion that what was new and extraordinary is the prosecution itself and in so doing what they did, as you said quite well, adopted the most cynical sort of authoritarian and relativistic view of all of this that trump himself adopts, which is that any prosecutor can prosecute anyone for anything. and we saw this in the colorado case as well. this assumption that everyone below this court is austere,

generally, with their impeccable vision. everyone below them are political hacks. well, the colorado supreme court didn't want trump on the ballot. any prosecutor could prosecute anyone and what happens next? a democrat gets prosecuted by a republican. all of these political hacks everywhere. we are the only ones who see clearly. we don't trust this process beneath us with the district court and appellate court and prosecutor and department of justice and president who appointed him and colorado supreme court. all of that, no, we get to say. never considering that they are the political hacks. that the people actually engaging in regular order here are all of the lower bodies that produced this to the situation and in so doing what it felt like was almost a philosophical endorsement of the worst aspects of trump, which is that this is just all power politics, but none of this actually adheres to any set of regularity or rules of law. that the reason this has not happened before is because there has never been as

partisan a prosecutor as jack smith. that that is what is unprecedented? that it is not about what he did? so to walk into the third branch of government and these people with all this power. the creative minds that brought you a 12-year-old giving birth -- to listen to these folks and find them in the highest halls of power, adopting the most authoritarian and cynical vision of this was genuinely shocking. >> lawrence o'donnell, i want to go to you next. katie was in the courtroom and heard the arguments. you're a lawyer just like katie. we will make you guys go last, but i feel like i have as much anxiety as you do about this, chris. i want to go to you, lawrence, because you are the man -- i would like you to throw cold water on my feelings and chris's. >> so, there is no cause for alarm in any of this. >> god bless you, my child.

>> as long as joe biden is reelected. because if that was a given fact, if he was running with the 18 point lead in the polls that bill clinton had at a certain point, there would be a lot less nervousness about this because we would know eventually this process will work and if they send it back, the judge can have an evidentiary hearing and actually bring witnesses in in the way that she can't now and so there would then be some actual under oath testimony about all of this stuff before the election. and then eventually you get through all of this prosecution. i actually think joe biden is going to be reelected, so i am not terribly concerned about what they will do in terms of slowing this down, but what you saw, the fundamentals of what you saw and were discovered clearly today is that there is a group on the supreme court who believe that their duty is

to protect the constitution and the law and there is a possibly larger group who believe their duty is to protect the president, not all presidents. the president named trump. and that that intensity launches those fever dreams that we heard from alito and gorsuch about every president now will make sure that their predecessor is prosecuted. they were adopting the trump notion, by the way, that this is a biden prosecution and that the next administration will, obviously prosecute the previous president. to do that they had to completely ignore the 2030 years of history that preceded the donald trump presidency. that all had to be ignored and they did willfully ignore it. these are guys who pretend they are amateur at least historians

who pay attention to all of these things. so it was that tortured process, but would also emerge really clearly was not a single justice bought the trump argument. the trump argument is not -- it is for absolute immunity and every one of them basically found a way of saying that is ridiculous and the alito way included that thing that you showed where he kept saying i'm not talking about these facts. the good side of that coin is, these facts are so bad, i can't talk about them. that is the good side. >> i think thomas may be the exception and may think all presidents are criminals. everybody is like me. >> that is a great mystery. he didn't recuse himself or maybe his definition of recusal as i will talk the least. clarence thomas spoke only three times. he did not ask a paragraph worth of questions. the only thing he raised that

was outside of what anyone else mentioned was an issue that was not even before the court, which was the legitimacy of the appointment of jack smith. that is not even before the court and thomas asked about that, so he remains the most mysterious on the court today. >> i think that we overthink them. i think when you work for a president you know that they are just guys and girls and these particular guys consume all of this and i think what was clear today is they will directly quote segments from all of these programs. alito give speeches in front of conservatives and i am sure conservatives in the audience who don't watch any of our programs. paragraphs from all of our scripts i have heard in alito's rants. they are bound to trump in their feelings of being persecuted to a person. so, in trump's immunity claim which has myriad legal

implications and layers to it, they found common cause with the feeling of persecution and that is what they spoke to today. that is where he found a receptive audience. what is amazing to me is that federal judge carter in california was like, the farther we get, the more murky it gets. but in the immediate aftermath, trump clearly committed the crimes and federal judges said more likely than not he committed felonies. he and that eastman guy and the further we get the more the people at the highest levels of this branch, everyone said the courts held. i think after today we have to get rid of that notion that the courts held and after today we have to get rid of the notion that there is some complicated legal theory. they feel him and feel persecuted like he does. >> i thought it was a very dark day for the supreme court. i don't think the conservative justices comported themselves well and to the extent that

these arguments have a back and forth i am not sure that the other side moved it back enough and i think this will matter in history, because you will study some of these precedents. the last time we were all gathered on a supreme court day it was the colorado case and the reason legally, not politics, legally that experts would say that was unlikely to go against trump was that there wasn't any precedent for booting him off the ballot. now we are gathered today. there is zero precedent for this kind of blanket immunity and there is anti-precedent. nixon and others taking part in sand striking a deal with bill clinton on the understanding that otherwise he could be prosecuted. bipartisan examples, different presidents. and against all of that the test is, okay, trump might not benefit as much, but do the rules hold. based on the questioning, and i agree with your caveat, the rules did not hold for most of the conservative justices. justice roberts has a slow

scandal going. the money and corruption on one side, but also the chief justice overseeing an increasingly partisan maga court and he can't stand idly by. this is on him as well. one more what i wanted to show that we did not get to unofficial acts. there can be potential official acts that would be harder to prosecute. none of these are those. so the fact that could happen, when you are dealing with war or order a drone strike and it kills someone abroad -- >> or reviewable pardon authority. >> or you make in order and it does take an american life. this is not that. i am reminded of the classic aaron sorkin line from social network. if you invented facebook you would have invented facebook and if these were official acts they would be official acts and the reason is you pointed out in the excellent opening that none of the conservative justices wanted to go anywhere near their job, which is to

review the law and find facts. they didn't want to go near the facts. it is not an official act to get people to storm the capital and assassinate the vice president of the united states works for you and the speaker of the house. it's not an official act when you are down by three states and it has all been certified to put in a lector fraud, which was indicted again yesterday with more people. i would defend any president including the former president's right to not have wartime attacks reviewed in domestic court. that is not happening and i don't think they need to spin their wheels pretending that might happen. the facts in front of them they willfully ignored in a way that i will close by saying, because i did wait, that what depressed me the most was not about the upcoming election or anything politically. it was seeing multiple justices out themselves as insurrection and sedition minimizer's today and it was a sad day. >> just quickly, because i was there, so many of us don't get

the privilege and i still want to use that word, the privilege of being able to go inside the supreme court. it is a public place we can go. but when you're there you are struck by how regal and stately, how formal and beautiful the building is, in and of itself, but more underlying the institutions and norms that are supposed to be protected over time and what we saw today that bothered me the most in addition to everything you guys noted is the debasing of the lawyers. i always go back to the lawyers because i always believed that somebody like trump can't do what he does but for the enabling of the lawyers and i think we've seen a series of them that have been indicted or gotten into trouble in various ways because they have assisted, they have been co- conspirators in the literal absences. but to see someone get up and say what he did and when you look at this multipage transcript that i can pull and tell you what pages the words assassinate, assassination, and who come out on and those were hypotheticals embraced by a

lawyer today. it is beyond sobering. it is depressing. it is the idea that you have the erosion of the court health. the erosion of precedent, but also the erosion of the rule of law in the sense that we are supposed to be able to look at people that also have respect for their jobs and what their rules are and ethics and professional responsibilities and i feel like we go so far afoul of that because dictators and autocrats without people to enable them, they won't be able to get to the supreme court. they won't get to the steps of this place. the constitution in the preamble says we the people of the united states in order to form a more perfect union to establish this constitution, but perfection should not be the enemy of good, but there was no good faith today with some of these justices and they are trying to create the perfect place or perfect environment for someone like donald trump. >> a perfect sized hole to put

through what we understand to be law heading into this. we have much more of our recap of what happened today into courtrooms. the united states supreme court and new york courtroom where donald trump is on criminal trial. much more ahead. stay with us. so i started my o. and with the right help, i can make this place i love even better. earn up to 5% cash back on business essentials with the chase ink business cash card from chase for business.

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should -- so, you concede private acts don't get immunity. >> we do. >> so, he urges us that even if we were to decide or assume there was immunity for official acts, that there were sufficient private acts for the case to go back and the trial to begin immediately and i want to know if you agree or disagree about the characterization of these acts as private. a private attorney who was willing to spread false claims of election fraud to spearhead his challenges to the election results.

private? >> that sounds private to me. >> commissioner conspired with another private attorney who caused the filing in court of false allegations to support a challenge. >> that also sounds private. >> three private actors, two attorneys and a political consultant, helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of electors to obstruct the proceeding and the petitioner and co-conspirator attorney directed that effort. >> quickly i believe that is private. >> so those acts you would not dispute. those are private and you would not raise the claim? >> is characterized. >> is characterized those were private acts, not official acts. that is conservative justice amy coney barrett at the supreme court. she is getting from slayer to agree that a whole bunch of things trump was indicted for, all bunch of those things could not possibly be construed to be official actions of a president.

now, justice barrett emerged from the arguments today as potentially the swing vote on this overall issue, maybe, which is crazy given how right- wing she is. out of all of the conservative justices she seemed like the one trying to work out a workable answer, like she might be persuadable by either camp. i think chief justice roberts was hard to read. justice barrett gave more indication than any other conservative justice that she might be thinking about where she will come down. justice barrett really suggested to the other side's lawyer, the lawyer for special counsel jack smith, that maybe if there is a whole bunch of stuff that trump did that everybody admits was just his private acts when committing these alleged crimes, maybe trumps official actions could be kicked out of the indictment and you could just try him on the private stuff. you could just try him for the asserted conduct that even his side admits was private action taken for his private gain.

in other words, couldn't you guys cut the january 6 indictment in half? >> the special counsel has expressed concern for speed and wanting to move forward. the normal process would be for us to remand if we decided there were some official acts and allow that to be sorted out below. it is another option for the special counsel to proceed based on the private conduct and drop the official conduct. >> is it an option to proceed just on some of the stuff trump did, not all of the stuff he did? now the lawyer for special counsel jack smith said in response to justice barrett that really they would rather try him on everything, thank you very much. he did also concede that if they had to follow this approach that she was suggesting, there might be ways to try trump on the private accent not the other stuff, maybe. trump's lawyer, the lawyer for

the over there -- for the other side said the whole case would have to be thrown out. there would have to be a long, long, long, very long, very long deliberate sequence of litigation and hearings and test and proceedings before anything like that could get anywhere near trump. many further proceedings. how about we schedule that for the 45th of december 150 years from now? for justices like samuel alito and maybe brett kavanaugh and definitely neil gorsuch, it seemed clear they are on board with the desire for that kind of delay. what we might call the wait, wait, don't ever tell me approach. listen here as justice ketanji brown jackson sort of gets trumps lawyers on the ropes here. he is finding it difficult to answer questions about the seemingly extreme consequences of this immunity regime he is

proposing. she really has him on the ropes, but listen at the end. as conservative justice neil gorsuch swoops in to save trump's lawyer. to give him a better idea. to suggest that maybe a delay would be a good idea to give everybody a way out of the sand on to step two. >> when you are giving your opening statements, you are talking about, you know, you suggested that the lack of immunity and possibility of prosecution in the presidential context is like an innovation and i understood it to be the status quo. i mean, i understood that every president from the beginning of time, essentially, has understood that there was a threat of prosecution and they have continued to function and do their jobs and do all the things presidents do. it seems to me that you are asking now for a change in what the law is related to immunity. >> i would quote from what

benjamin franklin said at the constitutional convention. history provides one example only of a chief magistrate subject to criminal prosecution and everybody cried out against that. >> i understand, but since benjamin franklin, everybody has thought, including the presidents who held the office, that they were taking this office subject to potential criminal prosecution. no? >> i see the opposite. i see all of the evidence going the other way. >> so what was up with the pardon for president nixon? if everybody thought presidents could not be prosecuted, then what was that about? >> he was under investigation for public and private acts at the time. >> counsel on that score, there does seem to be some common ground between you and your colleague on the other side, that no man is above the law and the president can be prosecuted

after he leaves office for his private conduct. is that right? >> we agree with that. >> and then the question becomes as we have been exploring today a little bit about how to segregate private from official conduct that may or may not enjoy some immunity. i am sure we will spend a lot of time exploring that. >> i would really like to spend as much time as possible exploring that. we can start a several years long process. justice neil gorsuch swoops in. hey, let's finish up all of this talk about presidents and former presidents knowing they can go to prison. why the rush? let's slow down and talk about having more hearings and talk about new tests for what types of behavior count as presidential behavior. new tests we will invent and that will be a long discussion and we have to spend a lot of time on that. let's talk about further proceedings, yes, further proceedings that we would like to see. >> in that case the possibility of further proceedings and

trial. >> exactly right and that would be a natural course for this court to take. the court can and should reverse the categorical holding of the d.c. circuit that there is no such thing as official acts. >> what you agree further proceedings would be required? >> that is correct. >> definitely, definitely, many, many further proceedings for as long as possible. joy reid has just joined us. i'm not a lawyer and neither are you, but watching ms. proceedings today i felt that that was a towel when justice gorsuch said this is not going well. don't talk about presidents -- let's talk instead about new stuff, legal proceedings. >> also they always jumped in and interrupted whenever the women, female justices, try to start talking about the actual case. no, no, let's not dwell on the actual thing in front of us.

let's talk about whether a president could pardon himself. they have all of these other things to do. i have to say that listening to this was strangely liberating for me, honestly. because i am deeply cynical about this majority and never believe in anything other than politicians. they are just politicians, they don't admit they are politicians and they are here to serve donald trump and have always been that. to drive us back to an era they thought was better than the horrible 20th century that ruined america. that is what i always thought about them. it is liberating to no longer have to pretend they are something else. i've been asking our legal analysts, what do you think? almost to a person those who practice before courts like this, people who go into the judiciary and do this and are lawyers, they say no there is no chance this court will find absolute immunity. you don't think so? they didn't. i always did. it is liberating. i asked jamie raskin on my show and he agreed. he said at this point they

should simply move their offices into the republican national committee, because there is no longer a question. they didn't even fake it like they did with dobbs to pretend there was some constitutional principle at issue. they didn't even try to cite the constitutional principle. they are no longer faking it. they are being very obvious now. we are here to protect not the presidency, but this former president. donald trump. we are here to work for him and we will come up with some legalese sounding, you know, gorsuch trying to deepen his voice and sound like an intellectual and we will try to intellectualize it, but really what we are doing, if we are being honest we will protect this president because we want to retire under a republican and be replaced by 30-year-old versions of ourselves. we will do that. you can't stop us, we are just going to do it. so to me it is liberating to no longer have to pretend they are other than what they are. this is what they have always

been and they proved me right. >> and i respond? what you say makes so much sense because it is like the zoo and are seen, i feel like i am taking crazy pills. what you said with someone watching at home, yes, that is what it was today. all i will say is it is getting worse. you are right and that is what was depressing. >> because the worst comp cases -- >> i will say not in their defense, the reason it is getting worse is because they were asking them to make up voter fraud and other off-the- wall arguments after then president-elect biden was declared the winner. they never did that. they never granted those cases. on the one hand there is recent history including trump appointees and on the other hand like you just said it is getting worse. it is bananas and what you think you are seeing is what you are seeing. >> by the way this all comes as the amazing split screen that we saw today. that in the state of arizona, everyone below trump is subject to criminal justice.

everyone like michael cohen in the new york case did the crimes not for themselves. none of them were going to serve office or be president or have immunity. they have nothing but shame and high legal bills. from rudy giuliani, the white house chief of staff, you name it. all of them including the 11 fake collectors in arizona are subject to criminal justice and everyone who did crimes for trump must face the criminal justice system. everyone, apparently according to the supreme court, but trump. they are monarchists. the idea that the founders of this country decided to exit a monarchy and created different monarchy here is insane. >> that is more of our recap of today's action in the united states supreme court and trump's new york courtroom, and had. lots more to get to. stay with us. to let in the lyte™. caplyta is proven to deliver significant relief

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's novel theory would immunize former presidents from criminal liability for bribery, treason, sedition, murder, and here, conspiring to use fraud to overturn the results of an election and perpetuate himself in power. such presidential immunity has no foundation in the constitution. the framers knew too well the dangers of a king who could do no wrong. >> welcome back to our primetime recap of today's

proceedings at the united states supreme court and the new york criminal court downtown where donald trump is facing criminal charges related to a hush money payment designed to influence the 2016 election. nicolle wallace, that was the start of michael dreeben's opening remarks to the justices today. michael dreeben are presenting special counsel chuck smith. that list, putting that out there, bribery, treason, sedation, murder, and here, conspiring to defraud to overturn the result of an election and perpetuate himself in power. michael dreeben saying this is the entire ballgame. this is not something you can slice in half and come up with a tidier way of handling it that keeps you out of the politics. >> if you are someone who studied the 2025 project, the platform for a second trump term, there is no separation at a policy level between trump, the private person who would act and trump, the wannabe president again in his

official acts. they are totally braided together officially and publicly this time. when he ran the first time, it took a lot of investigative journalist to figure out what he really wanted to do. it was a scoop and a leak that led to the story we knew about and covered. that is being promised for people to do knowingly illegal things at the border. it is now all in a document you can keyword search and the official act and private acts as a second term agenda. so, what they do doesn't just matter in terms of the first ever violent transfer of power in america, having a criminal consequence for the person who masterminded it. it matters should he prevail next november. it matters to everybody in the country. i think the idea that there would be no trial was clear to me not because of any sort of distrust that i had for the members of the court but because of liz cheney. they said this court stinks on this issue. conservative, conservatives. you don't get further to the right then liz cheney and they

said this smells. >> is the one person on this table who has worked for a resident, can you walk us through what it would do to a presidents mentality in office if they had supreme power ? >> it is not about that. at has never been that you need the laws to rein in a president from committing crimes. we relied on norms too much and that is on us. now we know. now we know. >> katie, you were in the courtroom today. let me ask you, this is a great question, i'm sorry, does it make it worse to have all of these hypotheticals on the record, to have the hypotheticals out there? a president can assassinate, can you tell the military too much a coup, can sell nuclear secrets for personal gain, his legal team has been asked all these hypotheticals and essentially answered that yes he can do these things.

does it make it was to have these hypotheticals spelled out during the course of this litigation ? >> you would never think it would have to get to the point to have such extreme hypotheticals but it doesn't make it worse, it just grant us in the reality nicole speaks of, that we are not living in a world that we thought existed anymore. it is gone. that has been destroyed. we are now beyond earth 2, we are in this rule of law that doesn't exist on the planet that we are on, which is why we were speaking during the break, i want to emphasize this, ketanji brown jackson had the best analysis with michael dreeben at the end of all of this, which was why can't we just answer the question the way it has been post? if we just say no, you don't get that community, we don't have to do the i'm going to put your official act in this bucket, i'm going to put your private acts in this bucket and never the twain shall meet. this bizarre one legged stool justice roberts analysis that rubric doesn't work. it is fatally flawed and it only leads to delay and bad precedent and bad law, which is why if you just answer the question, no, you don't get immunity for that --

>> you don't need new test. >> you don't have to worry about new trials and district court rulings and more appeals and more delay and then you get to amy coney barrett's point, you can get back to where it needs to be and you don't have to excise out of the official part of it, you don't have to excise that out, you could present it to the jury with a limiting instruction. that is what happens every single day in the court of law. >> the liberal justices, particularly justice jackson, were trying to say there is a way to do this. here is a way we do this. >> she tried cases, she was a public defender. she knows how to do this. >> she is trying to adopt this scheme, delaying everything indefinitely. we have been on the our air for nearly an hour. i'm not one quarter of the way through all the things i want to talk about, even just with the supreme court. it has been a big daily. we would be back with more recap coming up next. next. >> this case has huge applications for the

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these are not the kinds of activities that i think any of us would think a president needs to engage in in order to fulfill his article to duties and, particularly, in a case like this one. as applied to this case, the president has no functions with respect to the certification of the winner of the presidential

election. the states conduct the elections. they sent electors to certify who won those elections and to provide votes and then congress in a joint, extra ordinary joint session certifies the vote and the president doesn't have an official role in that proceeding. so it's difficult for me to understand how there could be a serious constitutional question about saying you can't use frond to defeat that function, you can't obstruct it through deception, you can't deprive millions of voters of their right to have their vote counted for the candidate who they chose. >> thank you, counsel. >> thank you, counsel. welcome back to our primetime recap of today's supreme court proceedings on whether

president trump's is immune from criminal prosecution for actions he took as president. it is also our primetime recap of the first full day of testimony from the blockbuster lead witness in the criminal trial of that same former president, which is ongoing right now in new york. we still have new york to get to. but, on that point from the supreme court arguments today, that discussion at the top from michael dreeben, lawyer for the special counsel's office that has brought the federal prosecution against trump for trying to stay in office, michael dreeben is engaging with the question of what counts as an official act by a president versus what is an unofficial act by a president appeared the reason he was engaging with that is because the conservative justices today, as katie filling was telling us, the conservative justices kept putting that forward as the most important thing to be derived from today's, it. the next thing they wanted to do, the next step i wanted to take in this case, not incidentally, a time-consuming start all over kind of step that would have the practical effect of making absolutely sure that there is no chance

donald trump stands trial before the election. that is what the trump site wants, that seems to be what to the hard-line conservatives on the supreme court want as well. but, while those conservative justices today were demanding that lawyers for both sides dance on the head of this particularly stupid him, the more liberal justices did use today's proceedings to try to spell out what is just bluntly wrong with that. what seems crazy to normal people about the broadest strokes of what trump is trying to do here. >> there's no criminal prosecution, if there is no threat of criminal prosecution, what prevents the president from doing what he wants question >> all of the structural checks that go back to marching against mud, impeachment, oversight by congress, public oversight, there's a long series in fitzgerald directly addresses in the civil context. >> not sure, i'm not sure that that is much of a backstop. what i make is more worried

about, you seem to be worried about the president being chilled. i think that we would have a really significant opposite problem if the president wasn't chilled. if someone with those kinds of powers, the most powerful person in the world with the greatest amount of authority could go into office knowing that there would be no potential penalty for committing crimes, i'm trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the oval office and the seat of criminal activity in this country. >> i don't understand, i don't think there is any allegation in this case. what george washington said, what benjamin franklin said is review the prosecution of a particular something everybody cried out against as unconstitutional. what george washington said is we are worried about factional strife, which will -- >> let me put this quarry on the table. if the potential for criminal liability is taken off the

table, wouldn't there be a significant risk that future presidents would be emboldened to commit crimes with abandon while they are in office? it is right now the fact that we are having this debate because presidents might be prosecuted, president from the beginning of time have understood that that is a possibility. that might be what has kept this office from turning into the kind of crime center i am envisioning. once we say no criminal liability, mr. president, you can do whatever you want, i am worried that we would have a worse problem than the problem of the president feeling constrained to follow the law while he is in office. >> right. let me put this quarry on the table, she says, justice

ketanji brown jackson, speaking plainly, taking a step back to see the larger picture today. we keeps saying how terrible it would be if the president was put on trial for his crimes. can we also talk about how terrible his crimes would be? and, how terrible it would be for the presidency and for the country going forward if all future presidents knew they could commit any crime they want and there's nothing anyone can do about it? chris hayes, i was worried your head was going to nod off. >> i had the same experience listening to oral arguments. yes, exactly. partly it is because trumps lawyer and trump himself, some of the conservative justices all seem to be agreeing on the dirty harry model of the american presidency, which is you have to be tough, you have to break some legs. maybe you got to shoot some bad guys. what are you going to do, bring use against any? that was a consistent theme today. they kept saying bold and decisive action. one of the things ketanji brown jackson brought up, which was a highlight of hers that appears with the point, there are lots of people with tough jobs out there, governors, the people that run the pentagon. they all might face criminal

prosecution. somehow they managed to do their jobs and actually, isn't it probably good that like they are going to do something and they go to their lawyer and ask would i get thrown in jail for this? i was listening to that as someone who came up as a reporter in illinois where 4 of 11 governors went to prison. it was a good that you might end up in jail if, for instance, you sold commercial drivers licenses for bribes as a former governor did when he was secretary of state. those were official act. but, yes, that sword of damocles hanging over your head, probably a useful restraint when wielding great power. >> alex wagner. >> and i talk about the first clip that you play, the idea that as what did sauer say, the official stuff has to be expunged, we need to have a separation between the private acts and the official acts. i think it is quite clearly a delay tactic but it does have me worried if this is the most likely outcome here, remanded

back to the district court, a whole new series of tests arises about what part of this is official, what part of it is private, i worry about the integrity of the case that the prosecution has put forward. they sort of articulated that in court today to make. michael dreeben for the prosecution basically says this is an integrated conspiracy here. it has different components. and, you know, it is donald trump working with private lawyers to achieve the goals of the fraud. once you start to unwind that arbitrarily, i guess, if the district court must and separating private and official conduct, assuming any of it is official, i do worry about what that means for the case with large. >> it slows it down for sure and may kill it altogether. >> if lawrence is right and is a very likely possibility joe biden wins and this ends up going to trial, you do have to think about okay, what actually is the meaningful impact of this if it does. >> don't we have to answer the question that was asked? that is what ketanji brown

jackson, justice jackson kept saying. should we actually answer the question, does a president have blanket immunity? they were going all around trying not to answer it. we actually need the answer to it. to your point rachel, now that we've given the theoretical's of a coup attempt, killing your opponent, bribery, treason, murder, now that we put it on the table where trump can hear it, where he can see it and find it, don't we need to know just in case he becomes president whether he can kill people? he now knows that, in theory, he's got four, five people on the court to think maybe he can. >> the argument about that today was we will carve out an area of private acts only and those ones and those once they can be prosecuted for eventually someday. but, it's going to be an elaborate test. >> don't forget, you have to do impeachment, conviction, before you can get to criminal prosecution. >> which has never happened in the history of the united states. >> ergo the reason why they are creating a higher, more impossible bar. >> that is a nonstarter. you mentioned you are not a

lawyer but you sound like a good one because that is what happens at the supreme court. there is the question presented and it sends to what extent does a former president have presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts? now, that word alleged is doing a lot of work. this question was already written, it was the first clue, andrew weissman and others mention it, it was the first clue they were leaning toward trump. if you can allege her way, it is not really an official act, you just allege it, well, anyone can allege anything. if you watch the news or follow the law, i'm sure you've heard about that. what we are doing here is testing the evidence. there has been overwhelming evidence, which is why jack smith got this far, is why he won this case at the district level, is why he won at the d.c. circuit unanimously in a bipartisan set of appointees. the evidence has already been established to some degree. it doesn't mean trump is guilty

but it means we are past that point. if anyone can allege their way around, then this question and the test the conservatives of the court won't protect america. >> how do you separate it ? giving out pardons is an official act. >> it is an article to power. >> if he sells the pardon, takes a briber for the pardon, is it an official act ? >> the bright part is private but the pardon is not. you can't, you can't, you have to take a holistic view of the integrated forms of behavior. >> splitting the baby and splitting that i. joining us is california congress been zoe lofgren. i know it has been a long day, thank you for being with us. >> i am glad to be on. >> you have heard the discussion among us in terms of what we got from oral arguments. you can't always extrapolate from oral arguments to know how the court will rule but what was your reaction to what you heard at the supreme court? >> i am very concerned. the job of the justices is to

decide the case that is before them. and, they went off on tangents and what if's and hypotheticals. that is not the case. that is not the case before them. this has been run from the get go. they should never have taken the case. the circuit decision was tight and great. okay, they took it. they delete it. and, then they went off on tangents. it looks like they are trying to delay this by not actually deciding the case that is before them. so, i am really concerned. all of us who are lawyers in this country are also officers of the court. we are told in school that the judiciary is to be respected and impartial. and, frankly, up until january 6th, the judicial branch held. i mean, even the trump judges made rulings based on the facts and the long and i think a lot of us had confidence in the judicial branch. but, boy, that faith was really

shaken today. >> congresswoman, in terms of the way things proceeded in court today, i think a lot of americans who aren't lawyers are going to read headlines tomorrow or maybe tonight, they are going to see analysis and analysis i think for a broad audience in a big case like this often focuses on the most easy to understand part of it and the most easy to understand part of it is the hypotheticals . could president trump's order the assassination of a rival? president trump's ordered the military to carry out a coup, could president trump's sell america's nuclear secrets to another country for his personal profit? those hypotheticals are understandable by a broad audience. i think it is, i guess, how do you think that will land with the american people? i'm worried this is going to unsettle people in a new, deep way. >> i think it will unsettle people what ought to be unsettling is that the court is apparently quite obviously

trying to prevent the trial of donald trump. through going off on tangents, hypotheticals that are not before them. the ex-president lawyers conceded that immunity only attaches with official acts. so, they can take the case before them and see what the appellate court did, obviously, overthrowing the election is not an official act. it doesn't need to be further litigation. all of these other hypotheticals, that is not before the court. it may be interesting to people, maybe someday there will be a case about a rogue president killing a rival. but, that is not the case today. and, i just think they looked like partisans, not like neutral justices. >> in terms of that trial, your colleague from the january 6th investigation, liz cheney, had

an op-ed in "the new york times" the past week, where she explained that for all of the incredible revelations we got from the january 6th investigation, all the incredible testimony that we saw, there was testimony the committee was not able to get, including from some very key people, his white house chief of staff, mark meadows. there was the white house counsel's office, lots of assertions of privilege, the vice president, the vice president's counsel, lots of assertions of various privileges. i singled out because those are people who did testify to the grand jury for the federal january 6th indictment brought by jack smith, which will now be delayed. she is effectively suggesting that as a defendant, trump and his counsel know what that testimony is and they must find it terrifying if they want to make sure that the american people don't hear it for november, before they vote. >> well, that is speculation, obviously. trump knows what happened. it is true, we were stonewalled by some of those individuals,

mark meadows and others so i'm sure that the prosecutor has more information than we were able to get. we know enough from our investigation to know that it was not a pretty picture, that the former president was at the center of a wide ranging plot to overturn the election. and when he failed in the various methods that he tried, the last effort was to use violence to stir up a mop to try to stop the certification of the election that went on while the rocket was going on. so, yes, smith probably has more information but certainly we had enough information on the committee to refer mr. trump for prosecution. >> congresswoman zoe lofgren of

california, thank you so much for making time to talk with us tonight. it is invaluable to have us here. our primetime recap continues. another key courtroom today, donald trump's criminal trial in new york had some relations between the prosecution and the defense. we have a recap of that for you, stay with us. >> a stable democratic society needs a good faith of its public officials, correct? >> absolutely. >> and that good faith assumes that they will follow the law? >> correct. >> all of the mechanisms that could potentially fail. in the end, if it fails completely, it is because we have destroyed our democracy on our own, isn't it? >> it is, just to start a more and i also think that there are additional checks in the system. of course the constitutional framers designed the separated powers system in order to limit abuses. i think one of the ways in which abuses are limited is

accountability under the criminal law for criminal violations. but, the ultimate check is the goodwill and faith in democracy and crimes that are alleged in this case that are the antithesis of democracy. >> and encouragement to the words that have been somewhat put into suspicion here, that no man is above the law, either in his official or private acts. >> i think that is an assumption of the constitution. >> university of maryland global campus is a school for real life, one that values the successes you've already achieved. earn up to 90 undergraduate credits for relevant experience and get the support you need from your first day to graduation day and beyond. what will your next success be? to give your teeth a dentist clean feeling. start with a round brush head. add power. and you've got oral-b. round cleans better by surrounding each tooth

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after several hours of questioning across three days this week, prosecutors today wrapped up their direct examination of the first big witness against donald trump, the former ceo of the company that used to run the national enquirer. prosecutors have been using david testimony to outline that he and then candidate trump hatched an illegal plan, a scheme to use the "the national enquirer" as a tool of trump's campaign for president in 2016. they would print positive stories about, they would print negative stories about his campaign rivals, and they would also find as yet untold negative stories about trump that hadn't been published yet and they would pay to prevent them from being published. according to prosecutors, that is all in line with the alleged payment that is at the heart of this case, from donald trump to

star stormy daniels to keep her quiet about an affair she says they had and that trump denies they had. there was a fantastic moment in the opening statements on monday, when the, when the trump lawyer tried to vaguely cast his eye at stormy daniels payment and described it as trump looking for opportunities related to the apprentice. there definitely wasn't anything going on, he was just looking for opportunities related to his television show. anyway. prosecutors say the catch and kill payments amounted to illegal contributions to donald trump's campaign. david pecker told the jury about how he eventually received a letter from the federal election commission, which was beginning to investigate. he was very worried about this. he says he called up trump attorney michael coming. michael cohen told him don't worry about it. now, even though it is this

time of night, we do not yet have the official transcript from court today, still. but, we do have a bunch of reporters who were in the courtroom and were who were in the overflow room and able to take detailed notes, which is what i am about to read from. the prosecutor, "did you receive a letter from the federal election commission? david pecker, yes. when i received criminal record, i called up michael coming. said michael, i just received this letter, what do you do about it? michael cohen said jeff sessions is the attorney general and donald trump has him in his pocket. i said i am very worried. for the record, attorneys general aren't supposed to fit in the presidents pocket, even if a president with notoriously wide leg pants. still, david pecker testified today trump asked about one of the people whose assignments they had paid for . he said trump asked him in january 2017 before he was inaugurated, "how is our girl doing?" meaning how is karen mcdougal.

david pecker said he told trump in response thing for going fine, that she was staying quiet. david pecker says trump asked about her again that summer when he invited david pecker to come to the white house. david pecker says trump asked him, "how is karen doing?" he says he told trump she's quiet, everything is going good. david pecker said that he finally had to put his foot down on any additional payments for trump because trump was not paying him back like he said he would , first for a doorman from a trump party, who made a wild claim about a supposed it trump love child, then for karen mcdougal. again, david pecker expected to be paid back by trump for that payment. trump did not pay him back. this is from a reporter's notes from the trial today. david pecker told his editor, "we already pay $30,000.00 to

doorman. we paid $150,000 ever since two karen mcdougal. i am not a bank. we are not paying out any further disbursements . david pecker testified he ultimately suggested trump himself should be the one to pay for the third catch and kill payments on trump's behalf, the one to stormy daniels and that gets us, i think, to the most important part of david testimony today, which is why trump was so concerned with keeping these negative stories about himself quiet. this is important because paying someone hush money, paying someone to not say a distasteful thing about you is not a crime. prosecutors are alleging the hush money payments in this case were used to influence the election. they were an illegal contribution to trump's campaign and then they say trump covered up the payments by creating false records to make them look like legal fees. from our reporters notes today. the prosecutor. "did you have any intention of renting karen mcdougal story about her affair with mr. trump? no we did not. "was you principal purpose to

suppress her story so as not to influence the election? david pecker, yes it was. steinglass, were you aware expenditures to influence an election made at the request of a candidate are unlawful ? and why did you not want karen mcdougal story to be published by any other organization? david pecker, we didn't want the story to embarrass mr. trump or embarrassed or hurt the campaign. not for the purpose of the magazine's bottom line, it was for the campaign. it was a contribution to the campaign. today, david pecker explicitly said these payments were made to protect trump campaign for the presidency. from our reporters notes today, steinglass, did trump say anything to make you think his concern was for family? david pecker . i think it was for the campaign. in the conversations with michael cohen, with respect to both of the stories and the conversations i had directly with mr. trump, his family wasn't mentioned. i made the assumption, the

comment, the concern was the campaign." he continues, "prior to the election, if a negative story with coming up with respect to donald trump and spoke about it, he was concerned about melania trump. he was concerned about ivanka trump, what the family might feel or think about it. once the election and after the campaign, he was concerned on the doorman story with respect to if the story came out and what wasn't true about an illegitimate child, it was about the impact on the campaign and the election." steinglass, "did that apply to karen mcdougal as well?" david pecker," yes." steinglass, did he ever say he was concerned about how allotting a trump for you? lisa rubin was in the courtroom today. lisa, we don't have a proper transcript so we are piecing this together from everybody's furious fingers. the way that we cut that and pasted it together, is that sort of true to what it felt like in the flow of the

courtroom proceedings to the question >> it was true to what it felt like but there were also a number of other explosive moments.,, the biggest thing was david admission he understood that the payment to karen mcdougal was an unlawful campaign contribution and he understood that in real time, not after the fact. how did he come to understand that? because of his own entanglement with arnold schwarzenegger, who was then going to be running for governor in california and he had a catch and kill scheme of his own with arnold schwarzenegger. arnold schwarzenegger had been on the cover of two magazines and david pecker was in the process of acquiring and the owner of the magazine said before we close this deal, i want to sell to you, you have to talk to arnold. arnold said to him have a big deal with these magazines, i would like to serve as an editor at large for you and i would like to continue my association with the magazines, which have been lucrative for the magazines. but, in exchange, you will come to me with new information

about me and you will help me suppress stories because i am running for governor of california. and, not only did david pecker agree to do that, he did it 30 or 40 times with respect to allegations of affairs, to sexual harassment, he even helped put up one of the women who accused arnold schwarzenegger of bothering an illegitimate child with him in hawaii so that he was away from california during the campaign. when arnold schwarzenegger was found out by "the l.a. times," he was asked did this actually happen? he said ask david pecker. david pecker had engaged in one of those life rights assignment agreements with this woman. and, that is how david pecker said he came to understand it was unlawful, because authorities came knocking at the they investigated him. >> the got in trouble for this. >> the got in trouble, not with the fec because a gubernatorial candidate is not subject to federal campaign finance law . but, that is how david pecker can related the body of knowledge that cost him to say

when he was concerned about this, this might be a problem, i was sensitive to it. then, when michael cohen and he were arranging for his repayment for the mcdougal settlement, a lawyer at american media was consulted and without revealing the substance of the conversation, david pecker essentially conveyed i checked with a lawyer and the lawyer said this is not kosher. even though he wasn't a bank, even though he was worried about the effect on walmart, his biggest distributor of the magazine, when it all was said and done, his biggest concern was i don't want to be in legal trouble. i want to protect my company, i want to protect myself and third of all, i want to protect donald trump. >> he did say explicitly in court today that he consulted with a campaign-finance lawyer or an elections lawyer who was saying around this time, letting him know this stuff

was, it wasn't just that he was realizing it himself based on the fact that there was a state investigation in california, he was turning up in the press, he consulted a lawyer about the illegality of what he was doing. >> he consulted two lawyers. he consulted an on-site election law specialist and he consulted the general counsel of the company, who would have had to pass judgment on it and that was the person who said this is not happening. and, when he says, basically tells michael cohen don't give me a check, don't give me a trump organization check, i don't want it on the ami books, i want nothing to do with this reimbursement because he knows having it on the books opens them up to one ability legally speaking. >> i have to say, i felt this revelation felt enormous to me for this reason . these people are so, they are operating in such a weird world. my wife worked at the obama white house, which is the opposite of this. thing was so weird and everyone is checking with the lawyers about everything. these people are operating in a very different world than there was some part of me that thought these were like flyby the seat-of-the-pants kind of operators, it is possible they didn't realize they were committing a crime. it doesn't mean they weren't

committing a crime but it seems possible he didn't know. this was pretty shocking to me that expert advice, definitely a crime. don't do this. that seems like a really big deal. >> i thought the da got one more win out of this that isn't in all those details. they established that david pecker still likes donald trump and that is a good thing because you have michael cohen and other people who very clearly have to be viewed with at least some questions about the personal animus that will come up on cross. here, the jury was treated to a simple fact, this guy, this was transactional, he says nothing personal against him, just business. >> still like him. >> that makes him a stronger witness against trump. >> after the direct examination of david pecker concluded today, the cross-examination started. the trump lawyers got to start asking david pecker hostile questions, effectively, that had some really interesting stuff. we will be looking at that right after this. stay with us. ay with us. and they don't 'circle back', they're already there. they wear business sneakers

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welcome back to our pending recap of what was a very intense day into different courtrooms. when at the united states supreme court in washington and another criminal court in manhattan. this afternoon, the defense for donald trump got their first chance to cross-examine a prosecution witness. it was the former head of american media, which published "the national enquirer".

now, broad strokes, in some ways, the job of the defense is easier than the prosecution. all the defense has to do is convince one juror there isn't a case against trump. reasonable doubt in the mind of one juror is a victory for trump. the prosecution spent this week just for trying to establish the narrative that david pecker used his role to conspired to unlawfully affect the outcome of the 2016 presidential election to favor donald trump. that is the underlying illegal conduct, which turns these counts of falsifying business records and a felony instead of a misdemeanor. defense attorney today used his court, and get that narrative from the prosecution, trying to put reasonable doubt in the mind of at least one juror. classic termination, you got david pecker to say that trump is not the only figure for whom "the national enquirer" was shelling out money to buy negative stories. i have to tell you, again, the court still hasn't released transcript of today's afternoon session. we had reporters in the courtroom, though.

here are the notes they gave us. emil bove, "under your watch, you only published about half the stories that you purchased, is that right? " david pecker," that is right." a basic nda. david pecker , right. emil bove, there were also instances where ami purchased a story to use it as leverage against a celebrity, is that correct? packer, that is correct. >> there were also instances where ami would purchase a three to get ready to participate in an interview or use their likeness. david pecker. yes. >> standard operating procedure at "the national enquirer" between 1999 and 2020, correct? >> ami has used hundreds of thousands of source agreements for these purposes, correct? and then emil bove went on to get david pecker to talk about specific instances of suppressing stories about specific public figures. they talked about tiger woods and actor mark wahlberg, also

then gubernatorial candidate arnold schwarzenegger and the chicago mayoral candidate rahm emanuel, both of whose clinical campaigns were active at the time. emil bove also elicited from david pecker he has been squelching stories for trump himself long before the trump presidential campaign and that was because trump drove magazine sales and made money for ami. this is from nbc reporters courtroom notes. emil bove, "1998 with the first time you gave president trump a heads up about a negative story relating to marla maples tried to stop the story from running." that is almost 17 years prior to the august 15th meeting. "yes." "17 years of giving president trump a heads up to stories, before 2015 because that was good for business."

"yes." "president trump was given you content to write in "the national enquirer" , correct?" "yes." and emil bove try to put distance between michael cohen and the trump campaign. whether or not this was done to benefit the campaign is at least one of the crux of the matter here . again, this is from nbc reporters courtroom notes today. emil bove, "michael cohen was mr. trump's personal lawyer and that was his only job?" "correct." "between 2015 and 2016 michael cohen was clear he was the personal attorney." "tran33, yes." that is in addition to making it seem david pecker had his facts spoonfed to them by prosecutors, suggesting he might have lied under oath at one point to have behind prosecutors when he didn't mention multiple times that hope hicks, trumps staff hope hicks was present at at least one key meeting. this again is the defense on cross examination. the defense will get to resume the cross-examination of david

pecker tomorrow morning when court reconvenes at 9:30 a.m. . the revelations from david pecker on direct examination feel so understandable and straightforward and sort of right to the point in terms of what that case is. i understand the defense is trying to muddy up this case but i can't quite tell they are making any focused point that is going to be an important part narrative. lisa, you were there today in the courtroom, is that fair? >> i think the defense made headway in trying to establish two things. one, this was not david first rodeo.

and, two, david pecker was always serving david pecker. in other words, the primary purpose of the payment had nothing to do with benefiting donald trump's campaign, trump the david pecker was good business as he had always been. that doesn't, to your point,, and the fact that it is still a federal election law violation. more importantly, as david pecker acknowledged in his direct, he knew it at the time. >> let me interject. isn't there a big difference between what david pecker used to do for donald trump for 17 years in terms of reading stories and trying to keep him happy and trying to get them to contribute and all of that stuff and then once trump campaign started in 2015 and 2016, that is when david pecker started paying to shut people up for the first time. persecution said in their opening statement on monday that that was only once trump had his presidential campaign going, that was the first time they ever paid anyone, paid anyone for information about trump. it is qualitatively process at that point. >> i agree with that. and, the payments were abnormal

by "the national enquirer" standards. david pecker testified on direct it was their standard practice to empower their reporters and editors to pay people up to $10,000.00. anything in excess of $10,000.00 had to be done with david approval and or with the approval of dylan howard, chief content officer. at that point, not only were they doing it for trump for the first time, first payment was $30,000.00 to the doorman. second payment, $150,000.00. the thing the cost of not succeed in deflecting, trump was involved full-time. but was the best thing david pecker did for them? he testified about multiple conversations with trump himself, whether in person or by phone. trump was involved in the karen mcdougal story from start to finish, even holding a dinner at the white house in july of 2017, where he says to david pecker, this is your dinner, invite as many business associates as you want and there is a picture of dylan howard in the oval office as well as a picture of them walking the perimeter of the

rose garden, david pecker and trump. this is a conversation during which david pecker says trump said to him, how is karen? >> is the application of house our girl and house karen, how she doing or is it is she holding to the agreement to not tell the story ? >> is she happy with what you've offered her because david pecker talked on direct about the fact that karen mcdougal, she thought this was a serious arrangement. she was trying to forward her career. she wanted to do it carpet interviews for radar online. she wanted to write columns in the fitness magazines. at one point david pecker had to come to new york and they have a meeting where he hears her out about her complaints about her contractual arrangement with american media. why? because he wants to, in his words, keep her in the family. hold her close. >> that is sad and sordid. i did think as i was reading our notes again on the internal slack because we don't have the transcript of what was being said in the cross that the john edwards case is like the closest kind of parallel analog we have here, particularly because that ended up in acquittal and because that was, that turned on this question of whether he was suppressing an explosive and embarrassing personal affair for campaign purposes or for personal

purposes that the strongest ground it seems to me they have to defend his on that point. that, the idea that like everyone is lying and making it up seems like nonsense. if the arrangement didn't happen seems like nonsense. the idea prompt was not involved seems like nonsense. the place it seems to me they have the shortest argument to make is that this was about personal embarrassment or something else. >> the other piece i think that is strong is that all of the other celebrity catch and kill schemes, this seems to be the only one, correct me if i'm wrong, also reading just through the notes, where they covered up the way that it was reported internally, where they went to incredible, elaborate lengths to make it look like it is something it is not and to hide it from their own accountant, to make it look like it is under the president title rather than where they would normally put the sort of deals. it is unique and almost feel like highlighting arnold schwarzenegger and these other deals, because they structured

this way, they weren't concealed this way, in a way also makes the prosecution's point. >> even if they were concealed in that way and they weren't prosecuted by other people, that wouldn't undermine the fact that this is still a crime. correct? >> and david pecker admitted to. >> i don't think we know, by the way, if american media didn't disguise the other payments. it is simply not relevant and probably not in the discovery of the case. >> i was going to say to your point, chris, i think it is so damming the excerpt that you read that donald trump didn't mention milani a once. it rips apart the idea that this is for personal protection and the fact that has been in court with donald trump in solidarity, which family members? nonefamily members. none of them. if this really is part of the defense, it is paperthin when you don't have anybody sitting next to him. >> today in criminal court in

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welcome back to primetime recap of today's legal proceedings, both in washington, d.c. at the united states supreme court and the new york criminal court, running alongside the trump criminal trial, running alongside it like a subplot has been the question of whether the judge in this case will find former president trump in contempt of court for violating a gag order from the court, a court order, a binding court order that supposedly forbids them from attacking potential witnesses, jurors, and officers of the court. this question is taking a surprisingly long time to answer. before today, prosecutors had already put in front of the judge 10 different posts or comments made by trump or his campaign which they said violated the terms of the gag order. today, prosecutors brought in for more comments that made that they say violate the gag order, including one which happened while trump was on his way to court today.

interestingly, though, there was no ruling on the alleged violations that have already been presented to the judge before today. the judge looked at the new ones that were presented to him just today and said he will hold a hearing on those late next week. nbc news says that hearing will happen on thursday and there will be a hearing but it does seem like it is kind of far away. the question is why is this taking such a long time to resolve? >> the judge wants to be very careful and knows that everything is subject to appeal and he's making good progress. there's a practical side to this. they will tell you this in moscow but if your case is going forward and there aren't shenanigans, this has been a distraction, this defense is gotten away with more than others with the judge me take your time because the case is going well. the other point i wanted to share, didn't get to be with you monday and this question is sometimes does, why is this night different than all other nights, i return tonight to say we heard a lot of hypotheticals at the supreme court about what

would happen if you put a former president on trial and the good news today, why is this night different? here is what would happen. you would have an order the court proceeding and the jury will be there at the prosecution and defense will deal with it and america has not fallen apart in new york as this is the first week of actual arguments and purposes. it can be done. >> even when he calls for his supporters to come out in great numbers, calls for everything to break loose. there has been not quite 1 million across the street anyone day. >> there has been the one guy who banged a pan. >> if you are alone, bring something that augments your presence. i'm telling you. lisa, it feels to those of us who aren't lawyers watching this from the outside that the gag order has been litigated in all of his cases but in this one, on a time frame that seems like it is ineffective in terms

of stopping him from doing the things the gag order is supposed to stop him from doing. >> let me play devils advocate for a second. i think judge juan merchan's power is the gag order violation order is not out and because he's got two options under the statute, he can sign him up to $1000.00 per violation or he can throw him in jail for up to 30 days. so long as his choice between the two is outstanding, that is keeping trump in line. it is the stick that he has. it is sort of a trick that lou kaplan used in the e jean carroll trials. he knew full well trump wanted him to throw him in jail but he didn't do that. he held it out as a possibility. while trump is not particularly well behaved at moments during that trial, i have no doubt kaplan holding out the possibility of ejecting him from the courtroom kept trump further in line. >> why would that system of incentives change if he wrote and said okay, if i want $1000.00 for each of these violations and any additional violations, they are only going to be increased financial penalties or jail?

>> judge engoron , that was the methodology used and i don't think trump took him seriously. when you are talking about sums of money that, despite trump's agent for exaggerating how much is worth, $10,000.00 is not a lot of money to donald trump. $12,000 with, $13,000.00 is not a lot of money to donald trump. so long as judge juan merchan doesn't have other options under the statute, even if he says the next time you do it jail is a possibility, he is already said that. >> is a constraint by statute or by what an appellate court would say from making an amount of money that would be more meaningful, that would be $100,000.00 per violation ? >> i think he is. i looked at the criminal