we were made to help plan accordingly. ♪ we moved out of the city so our little sophie wcould appreciate nature. accordingly. but then he got us t-mobile home internet. i was just trying to improve our signal, so some of the trees had to go. i might've taken it a step too far. (chainsaw revs) (tree crashes) (chainsaw continues) (daughter screams) let's pretend for a second that you didn't let down your entire family. what would that reality look like? well i guess i would've gotten us xfinity... and we'd have a better view. do you need mulch? >> today, on a diamond was what, we have a ton of mulch.

until charging donald j trump with felony violations, to national security laws, as well as participating and a conspiracy to obstruct justice. >> the united states of america versus donald j trump. >> >> we have one set of laws in this country. and they apply to everyone. >> tonight, the stunning 49 -page indictment. 37 criminal counts. secret national security documents. strewn around his country club, onstage in a ball room. on the floor in the bathroom. a conspiracy to hide them from the feds. the lies he told to cover it up. rachel maddow, lawrence o'donnell, ari melber, joy-ann

reid, alex wagner, andrew weissmann, and jen psaki are here on msnbc's special coverage of the second indictment of donald trump. ♪ ♪ ♪ good evening from new york. welcome back to our special coverage. i'm chris hayes here at 30 rock with the whole team. as well as the great and the good rachel maddow who is joining us remotely on this historic day. and unprecedented, is an understatement. 37 count indictment against the 45th president of the united states. was unsealed today. a special counsel, jack smith, made his first public comments since his appointment by attorney general, merrick garland, nearly seven months ago. >> today, an indictment was unsealed. charging donald j trump with felony violations of our national security laws, as well as participating in a conspiracy to obstruct justice. this indictment was voted by a

grand jury of citizens in the southern district of florida. i invite everyone to read it in full. understand the scope, and the gravity of the crimes charged. the men and women of the united states intelligence community and our armed forces dedicate their lives to protecting our nation and its people. when our laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and the security of the united states, and they must be enforced. violations of those laws put our country at risk. adherence to the rule of law is a bedrock principle of the department of justice. and our nation's commitment to the rule of law, sets an example for the world. we have one set of laws in this country. and they apply to everyone. applying those laws, collecting facts, that is what determines the outcome of an

investigation. nothing more, and nothing less. >> i think i speak for everyone here at the network, that we also encourage you to read this. the sprawling 49-page indictment, as jack smith said. it is concluding remarks, he said he and his team very much look forward to presenting their case against trump. and crucially will request a, quote, speedy trial. prosecutors, as documented here, have amassed a mountain of evidence against donald trump. the indictment is filled with pictures of the boxes containing the classified documents. and it descriptive accounts, text messages between trump's employees. transcripts of audio recordings from close aides and his attorney. and transcripts of trump's own incriminating words, as reported by his lawyer. including referring to a

document as, quote, like, highly confidential. prosecutors recount donald trump's repeated efforts to steal, obstruct the investigation, and willfully retain a classified documents. which included national security secrets at some of the highest levels of classification. justice department prosecutors describe how trump was personally involved in moving those boxes around his resort in florida, in a game of cat and mouse. classified documents were stored around mar-a-lago out in the wide opening. including in a ballroom, and a bathroom and shower. and office base, his bedroom, and a storage room.

federal prosecutors described trump's scheme to mislead his own attorneys, to get them to lie to the justice department, all in a desperate attempt to hold on to the documents that he did not want to turn over. how he personally combed through the documents, which he referred to as his papers. or as, my boxes. to decide which ones he would keep. prosecutors described two instances in which donald trump showed off classified documents to others. bragging about how they were secret. how he probably shouldn't be doing it.

the indictment charges donald trump with 31 individual counts. wolf or retention of -- charges also include a conspiracy to obstruct justice. withholding a document, corruptly concealing a document, concealing a document in an investigation. a scheme to conceal those documents, and false statements. the government states in simple terms, quote, trump endeavored to obstruct the fbi and grand jury investigations. and conceal his continued retention of classified documents. prosecutors also say donald trump did not act alone.

he has a named coconspirator. the indictment charges this man, his valet, walt nauta, who prosecutors described as a key player in donald trump's scheme. trump directed nauta, in courting to the a diamond, on multiple occasions, to move boxes in an effort to conceal them and to obstruct the investigation. prosecutors say trump even moved documents from mar-a-lago to his new jersey residents. to put it lightly, this is all very serious stuff. we are not talking about trump taking some mementos from the white house. federal prosecutors say trump illegally took documents related to the united states, quote, nuclear programs. potential vulnerabilities of the u.s., and its allies to a military attack. plans of possibility attalia shun in response to a foreign attack. the document describes a may 2022 meeting the response to doj's subpoena for classified documents between donald trump and two of his attorneys in mar-a-lago. included in the evidence or statements donald trump made to his own attorneys about what he calls, his boxes. trump said, according to the indictment, quote, i don't want anybody looking. i don't want anybody looking through my boxes. i really don't, i don't want you looking through my boxes. he also said to his attorneys, quote, well what if we, what happens if we just don't respond at all, or don't play ball with them? another statement quoted in the indictment, wouldn't it just be better if we told them we don't have anything here? and quote. and look, well, isn't it better if there are no documents?

these are the charges carried a maximum fine of $250,000 and prison time between five and 20 years. once again, trump will appear in court on tuesday. the second time this year. this time, in federal court in miami. where he will be booked and arraigned together, with his coconspirator, some walt nauta. the two of them, standing there together in a federal courtroom. to enter their pleas in this remarkable case. i'm joined now by rachel maddow. here at the table, legal analyst, -- joy reid, alex wagner, and lawrence o'donnell. -- i wanna go to you first. i'm gonna start with it. we got this unsealed indictment in realtime. we've all been reading it while broadcasting at the same time. what i begin tonight's broadcast with is sort of what i started. my lord, this is a damning, damning set of facts. >> yes. and this is not a conviction. this is an accusation. everybody is innocent until proven guilty. jack smith went out of his way to say that today. it's good that he did. we should all keep that in mind. at the same time, i do think that this is a remarkably straightforward case in which you don't need to imagine a lot of other things that prosecutors are going to have to hopefully have in their pocket if they're going to want to prove their case, that we

can't see in the indictment. it's not like that. what they are charging is effectively proved by what's in the indictment. if they can demonstrate to the court that what is in the indictment is true. so it's just not that complicated of a case. it's not that far reaching of the case. i will say though, that it occurs to me today, looking at this, seeing the prosecutors ask for 21-day trial. that's 21 business days. they think that in terms of actual time in court, this would be several weeks in court. seeing what they are laying out in terms of the numbers of counts here. seeing what the potential penalties here. this is potentially decades in prison for donald trump. this feels like the end of something. and it is the end of the non public facing part of this investigation. but it really is the start of something that is now going to take a very long time to play out. this will now be months, if not the next year of our lives. dealing with this. and he's got another trial that starts next year in march, in new york.

that could go on further as well. so, the furniture of donald trump, and the future of everybody covering him is now going to be this for a very long time. the people who are supporting trump, and saying they are outraged by this today, the outrage is going to fade with time. people are not going to be as exercised as they are today. but the fairfax will remain. the bear, very simple accusations, that list that starts on page 28 of the indictment of the documents in question here. that for all of the documents of the basis of each of these 31 counts. that's an irreducible truth here. that is going to be hard to explain away after the emotions cool down over what will be a very long protracted process. >> it's interesting you say that, because one of the things i was just starting to look at some of the reactions from the folks that might rush and defend the president. obviously people have one set of arguments that they use all the time, this proves too much. it's weaponization of the justice department, blah, blah, blah. that wrestles with what actually happened here. one of the things, andrew, i want to get your thoughts on this. one of the things i have seen, and you've seen smoke signals from trump's lawyers before they leave the case. they used to be there, or no longer there, or did in the indictment. some of the folks rallying around him, they're not contesting the facts, actually.

they're going to contest the law, right? the facts, which is he had the documents, they asked for them and they didn't get them back. they were found at mar-a-lago. they were in all sorts of places. they had these classification settings. none of that corset of facts seems either contestable or contested, right? what they are going to do is say he had every right to have them. >> so, i agree with you that the political defense will be diversion. and you will have this i was always entitled to do this. i'm perfect. you will also have the adjectives and adverbs with respect to jack smith. that he's a horrible person. again, let's even a stipulate that's true. who cares. all of this is about the evidence. the thing that is so damning when i read this book, as a litigator. and thinking about this as a prosecutor. look, where are the holes? how is this going to be proved? this is overwhelming. because the source of evidence here is not. this is not michael cohen. this isn't where you go oh, i'm going to put on someone who's got a lot of baggage. here you've got employee one. employee to. attorney one.

attorney to. attorney three. it goes on and on. as you said, text messages, tapes, everything is corroborated. this isn't something where you can say, gee, there's a defense. i'm going to attack someone's credibility. these are his people. they seem to be corroborated one side down the other. >> in fact, lawrence, we had reporting from the very beginning about the videotapes. of them moving the boxes. which seems to be confirmed here. they don't quite say videotapes, but they just take in these indictment. these boxes were moved at this particular time, as a statement of facts. >> you can read a stack of random indictments. and not find quotation marks in them. not fine quotation marks saying the person said exactly these words. and prosecutors won't use quotation marks unless they can actually prove every one of those words. not just the gist of it. he said something like this. it's word for word. that's pretty striking. i want to go back to encouraging people out there,

if you read one indictment in your life, let it be this indictment. we like to brag that we've been busy reading a 49-page indictment. it's not 49 pages. there's a lot of white space here. there's pages like 43, that looked like a screenplay page with all that white space. because it's pure dialogue. you've got half pages here, because of the little signature pages and stuff. it really, really, maybe it's 20 something pages. if it was book pages, maybe 15. anyway, consider page 43. you just flip open to page 43. this is how easy it is. they put the crime in bolt on page 43, when you take this out to read it. this is the other person who is indicted in this case. this is walt nauta, here are his crimes. his crime is in bold twice. where he is in an interview. it's a voluntary interview with the fbi. he is served in the navy. he's supposed to know it's a

crime to lie, in this discussion. he's asked, this guy's been moving the boxes, he knows exactly where they are. he's been delivering them to trump's office and all that stuff. he knows which one trump was looking at today. so he says this when they say to him, do you have any information that could help us understand, like, where they were kept? how they were kept? where they were secured? where they locked? something that makes the intelligence community feel better about these things, you know. he says, i wish, i wish i could tell you. i don't know. i don't. i honestly just don't. this is the guy, this is the box guy. his whole life has been the boxes for the past couple months. the final question here, that

sentences in bold. that's a crime. the final sentence is, so, you didn't know. you have no idea how they got there before. he says, no,. and the world know is bolded. because that two is his crime. i just want to encourage the audience. that is how we see this thing is, legally and to read. >> he'll be selling bound coffees of it. [laughter] >> i'm actually selling audiobook version of it. >> and interest rates man you. our page eight, you see the agencies that have information that is been compromised here. this is not the pga. this is the national geospatial intelligence agency, that's analysis of imagery, imagery intelligence, and geospatial information in support of national security objectives. the department of energy, in terms of nuclear deterrent information. the department of state and bureau of intelligence and research. this is serious information. i go back to walt nauta, the only other person named in this. at once, it's the audacity is so flagrant. it's hard to have pity on this person. at the same time, knowing firsthand some of the people

who work these navies guys who work as aides to the president. who workers valets, who work as body man. this is the honor of a lifetime for them. the way in which i can only presume donald trump took advantage of this man's allegiance to his president. and the fact that he was willing to lie so flagrantly to department of justice investigators is an american tragedy. >> by the way, there is a moment in this document where they talk about donald trump having a phone call with them walt nauta, for about 29 seconds after which he moves boxes. they are told on may 11th, there's a subpoena, you've got to get them back. -- what nauta is the one who does these moves from -- he does them on may 24th. he moves three of them. may 31st, he moves another 50. june 1st, he moves 11 more. june 2nd, he moves 30 more. and then on july, in july, the fbi and the grand jury obtained and reviewed surveillance video from the mar-a-lago club, showing the movement of boxes. >> yeah. >> donald trump, and in all things large and small, donald trump's habit, like a mall bus, is to get someone like walt nauta to do the dirty work for him. he's instructing him before each of these movements of boxes. including him talking to -- some woman, it could be melania,

or maybe it could be ivanka, we were debating it earlier. he's told, you know what, there's not enough room on the plane. for all these boxes to go to bedminster. he's like, oh, no he's going to go through them. he's not gonna want the whole box. he's the one communicating and physically moving the boxes. he's caught on tape. and then he is the one interviewed by the fbi, and lies. this guy -- i mean, it's hard not to feel a bit of pity for him. he's the little guy, trump obviously is paying his legal bills. but he faces the exact same consequences as someone who is so rich, and had so much power. >> two men are going to be in a courthouse standing next to each other, like the home alone burglars. on tuesday morning. >> that's an additional legal problem for donald trump. because if he were a stand-alone defendant, i actually think he would be in a better position when and if sentencing comes around. because this guy, people have gone to prison for what this

guy has done. >> oh yeah. >> the idea that well, there is no principle that says oh no no, you can't convicting navy veteran of a crime. all of this mythology that surrounds the notion of convicting a former president. actually them having a code upended to his in there, who is by all previous legal precedent, completely vulnerable to serious criminal sentencing here, is actually very helpful. >> rachel, what do you think about that? that we have to defendants here, and just the story told of this indictment of this individuals essentially being recruited into a criminal conspiracy. not the only one, donald trump tries to rig crude into a criminal conspiracy. basically he attempted to do that with his lawyer. we'll get to that in a moment. that's part of the story in the indictment as well. >> yeah, i think it's a really astute point by lawrence. in every jury, considering a

case like this, they are taught about president. they're taught about like crimes. they're taught about the seriousness of the offense, and all of those things, over the course of their participation in it. when they are looking what about someone like walt nauta, who isn't going to have the world rising up and saying that it is the death of the republic if he's convicted of something. if he is plainly a guilty of something, that is going to make it harder to say that mr. nauta ought to be convicted. and that mr. trump shouldn't because of something else mystical about him that makes him a different kind of citizen. i think that's a really astute point by lawrence. i will also just say, i know in our earlier coverage there was some discussion as to whether mr. nauta might feel like he wanted to play guilty, like he might want to cooperate, like he might want to not be on the, at the sharp end of this stick any longer. i think it's, it's maybe heretical for me to say it. everybody can shut me down. i think we should also talk about the possibility that donald trump might plead.

donald trump is looking at decades, and decades, and decades in prison. this indictment is very straightforward. and not complicated. and doesn't leave a lot out. it tells you very much what they've got to use against him. if it were you, would you consider pleading guilty to this and exchange for leniency? i might. >> yesterday. >> yeah. we're not contending with that. >> i think, in most of these cases, i think most of the time these sorts of cases and employees. in fact, when people find themselves on the wrong end of a federal indictment, 90% plus of the time, it doesn't go to trial because they played. precisely because when the feds come for you they have the guts. i want everyone to stay with me. we've got much more to talk about. including trump's apparent obsession with his boxes, and boxes of documents. as i laid out in painstaking detail. as laid out in plain sticking in detail in this indictment, that beautiful minds boxes. next.

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coverage of the second indictment of former president, donald trump. i say second and pause because we may not stop at two. i wanted to direct our attention to one of the themes in the indictment. we've seen subsequent to this, classified documents showed up in the archives of the current president joe biden, and ex vice president, mike pence. clearly, for this to cross over into criminal territory, right, you have to cross the barrier of carelessness, miss class, clare or cool errors to your underlings for willful-ness. there's a few points in here where what the establish in the indictment isn't just willful -ness, it isn't just what donald trump knows. it's that donald trump as well and truly upsized, to a degree his employees found super weird. with the boxes and the documents.

here's the first example of this. trump employee to, he's referring to trump's courted boxes. he basically is being asked, can you move these boxes? he says, as long as you don't touch his beautiful mind paper boxes. now that's an employee. i think this is actually a really key detail. that refers of course to the russell crowe movie about the legendary -- and economist john nash. in which he descends into this paranoid schizophrenic delusion, where he says stuffing secret documents into a mailbox. this is the employee being like, the bosses nuts about the docks. don't touch us beautiful mind boxes. then, later, trump saying, i don't want anybody looking. i don't want anybody looking through my boxes. i really don't, i don't want you looking through my boxes. then this other example, which i think says a lot. just detail wise, enjoy you referred to this.

i just want to read this. this, as we think, the former first lady. texting walt. they're about to get on the plane to bedminster. good afternoon walt, happy memorial day. i saw you put boxes to potus room. just fyi, and i will tell him as well, not around any wants to take on friday on the plane. we will not, capital and ot, have room for them, plane will be full with luggage. thank you. basically like, oh my god, the guys going to bring the boxes to bedminster. make it stop walt. good afternoon ma'am, thank you so much. i think he wanted to pick from them. i don't imagine him wanting to take the boxes. he told me to put them in the room he was going to talk to you about them.

>> you forgot the smiley face. >> smiley face. what comes up time and time again, it's not under linked, and it's not even just on a normal level of attention is. it is an obsessive focus on the documents. who has them? where they are, and what is in the. i want to bring in jen psaki, host of inside with jen psaki. former white house press secretary under joe biden. i want to ask you about this precisely. because after the news of president joe biden and vice president, mike pence, there was a sense of a way, does everyone just messed up a little bit? there's a lot of documents. >> are they everywhere? >> this is a clerical error. what do you make of these set of facts as presented in the indictment to that point. >> well, a lot of people have said this already on the panel. i mean, indictments and legal documents can be very sleep

inducing. this is not. part of it is because it tells the story of exactly what you are talking about, chris. it's not just about the overarching, you know, this included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities. wow, that's eye-popping on the second page. the fact that where they are, the hallway leading to the storage room could be reached from multiple outside entrances. it's also about, i mean, i can't even right there. that point right there where the door was left open often. let's just pause on that for a second. also the specificity. rachel reference to this. i worked in the state department, in the white house for two different presidents, the specificity to your point of his obsession with these documents, there is a lot more i suspect we will learn about these documents. maybe not all of them. but pages 28 through 33, outline, chris, 31 specific documents. they detail them. right? i'm wondering, this document

that's from june of 2020, that's concerning nuclear capabilities of a foreign country. which is number five. what is that? which country? is it iran? is it north korea? why did he care about that. on page 30, number 12, pages of undated documents concerning projected regional military capabilities of a foreign country. what is that? it also has a reference to five eyes, which is the countries we have, the united states has a very important intelligence relationship with. the specificity, those pages to

me, are so important for us to understand why he cared about this. and why he was holding on to them. and sharing them with people he shouldn't have shared with. which we don't know who yet. but maybe we'll learn more when we learn about what these documents are. >> andrew, you are just noting that there's a theme here in the documents. that the military capability's of foreign nations, and how strange a thing that is to be

collecting. >> you know, i was trying -- this obviously is a selected group of documents. but if you are thinking about what with the intelligence community approve? because the intelligence community had to have vetted this as documents that they were willing to have a trial about. military capabilities of foreign countries, over, and over, and over. it's the kind of thing that is such a closely held secret. that is -- just think about foreign countries. if you are a foreign country that is not friendly to us, and frankly, even some that are friendly to us. >> sure. >> that is what you want to know. what do we know about them? this just reads like crowned jewels. jen gave just a small sampling. it just goes on and on.

there is more about nuclear capabilities in here. >> and the way it even opens in number two. over the course of his presidency, trump gathered newspapers, press clippings, notes, letters, cards, photographs, official documents and other materials in cardboard boxes he kept in the white house. among the materials trump stored in his pockets with hundreds of classified documents. that was actually reported before. >> he took them to the residence. >> he's taking them to the resident. there's this idea that he's >> there is so much more in the indictment, including the meticulous notes of one trump attorney who clearly knew the importance of documenting what he was being asked to do by the classified documents. that could kind of plucking motion hand signal the ex president. all that and more when we come

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aspects of the indictment is the tale of how one of trump's own attorneys deftly avoided being recruited into the criminal conspiracy. on june 2nd, 2022, trump attorney, everett corcoran, goes to mar-a-lago to review these boxes. and he goes there, and he's the one who's going to search the storage room, find the classified documents, to turn them over to the government. now, what's happened in the intervening two weeks since the

subpoena, is that walt nauta and trump have gotten rid of a bunch of boxes. corcoran goes in, he passes through, finds 38 caused by documents. he puts them in a folder. he binds them with clear duck taped. he goes into mar-a-lago to meet with donald trump who says, innocently onshore, did you find anything? is it bad? >> unbelievable. >> okay, corcoran, they talk about what to do with the folder. i'll read from the indictment here. trump attorney discussed what to do with the red willed folder, the folder containing classified documents. with classification -- should bring them to his hotel room, put them in a safe there. during that conversation, trump made a plucking motion, as memorialized by trump attorney one. he made a phony motion as though, well, okay, why don't you take them with you to your

hotel room. and if there's anything really bad in there like, you know, pluck it out. that was the motion he made. he didn't say that. so, this is what happens. this is the best part. alex, i want to get your reaction to this. >> yeah. >> corcoran knows that this is not -- and yet corcoran is the lawyer who has to turn to the fbi and certify it is on the level. so what evan corcoran does, which is pretty smart, trump attorney won contacted a another trump attorney. [laughter] trump attorney three. and asked her if she would come to the mar-a-lago club the next morning and act as a custodian of the records and sinister defecation regarding the search of documents with classification markings in response to the may 11th subpoena. trump attorney three, who had no role in the review, agreed. >> i wrote in the margin there, christina bobb thrown under bus. that is what happened there. although, she shielded herself from the liability quite skillfully. that christina bobb.

but the story of the way in which trump lied to his lawyers, put them in harm's way, expected that they would do his dirty work, it's stunning. it bears mentioning, because there's been so much news today, the two lawyers, john raleigh and jim trusty, who were handling all of this, resigned this morning. that leaves trump -- >> can i just on the question of resign, in trump world, resign, fired. >> same thing. >> fine line. they are gone. >> they are gone. tim parlatore is on cnn all the time. and msnbc, talking about this case. lindsay haugen is left on the team. she has very little experience on this level at all. and todd blanche is also representing boris epshteyn. evan corcoran, who is a source of so much of this damning material, is still representing trump, and the january 6th. >> lawrence, this is what you get here from what corcoran is doing the most to file. it's the james comey thing. comey, these are lawyerly tactics. you have a conversation with donald trump, you immediately go look over's notes. because it's like handling -- material. it is so dangerous to be around

this guy, that you need to protect yourself. this is your coin. protect yourself for these contemporaneous notes. -- >> that continues the tone on hbo's latest version of watergate which is a white house -- where woody carlson and paul thoreau playing gordon lady and woody harrison playing -- their plane for the cotton -- look at how crazy and silly. they try to break in like three times. there is things that i didn't know that are goofy and silly. at the time, in the present tense none of them was regarded as goofy and silly for one second, it was dead serious. this thing already plays as goofy and silly. when you just see it laid out here but also clearly very dangerous.

>> an incredibly damning, rachel part of this that is different and already made this point earlier and others have is corcoran piercing the attorney client privilege, because you tried very hard to preclude your lawyer to criminal conspiracy which again he managed to dodge. provides a window into activity and conversations that happens in maybe not one out of 1000 criminal trials. you don't get the client talking to the lawyer. >> yeah, there's the quotations in the indictment where trump is saying as you mentioned earlier, wouldn't it be better if these documents weren't there at all. do we have to hand these things over -- >> those are the kinds of questions that you can ask your lawyer. between you and your lawyer you can ask all sorts of dominant cremating sounding questions. the only reason that you should ever have those things made public beyond the relationship between you and your lawyer is if you try to engage your

lawyer in the commission of the crime, so don't do that. it's really a bad thing for us to have, a window into it but we have a window into it for specific reasons. i do have one admittedly dumb question here and maybe andrew weissmann is best to answer this. i thought it was surprising that when we got the indictment unsealed and we learned that trump was indicted, also his lawyers resigned. is there anything about this indictment that says why two of his lawyers had to resign? was it in obvious consequence of this indictment? what did you make of the fact that that happened and coincided? >> i didn't think that it was about the substance of the charges. i thought there were two possible explanations. one explanation is that when you are handling the investigation and you have a client who's not to get indicted.

when the indictment comes in the client says thank you so much you didn't accomplish, quiet blames the lawyers. usually the problem is the quiet, the client not the lawyers. that's one possibility, he's honestly upset that they didn't do their job. when they in fact could have. the second is that once you file a notice of appearance, once he was a lawyer up here in a criminal case not just in the investigation. when you say i am representing donald trump in a criminal case could not withdraw without court permission. and a lot of times judges will say you are in. so what do people do, they do something which i referred to when i was a baby prosecutor and somebody said, well i'm not yet in the case and someone said why not? he said i'm waiting for mr. green. and i didn't know what that meant and mr. green is a reference to money. and it's just sort of a euphemism that certainly was used in brooklyn all the time. so here you can imagine the two defense lawyer saying look, if i'm going to stay in the case

and file an appearance there's a certain amount of money that needs to be paid me now if i'm going to be stuck representing you for what could be a lengthy period of time. >> and trump is no not to pay his lawyers. >> he very much as but he keeps finding them. do you know what's strange about this photo of trump's boxes in the court documents? apart from the fact that the boxes are in a bathroom cram next to the toilet under a chandelier, something else is in this photo that i think is incredibly telling, we'll explain next. we planned well for

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>> welcome back to our ongoing special coverage of the first federal indictment, second indictment of the ex president donald trump. with me tonight rachel maddow. along with alex wagner, joy reid, and moyes macdonnell. can we show that picture, this is now sort of instantly iconic picture of the boxes stored in a bathroom in mar-a-lago? this was done, we think at the ex president's direction. here's the thing that stuck out to me aside from the just strangeness of the image and the chandelier and the sponsors. look up above the line of the shower, right. you see the little white box

peeking out up there, there's more boxes in the shower. the room is so packed with boxes that behind the shower curtain there are yet more boxes. these boxes are sort of taking over mar-a-lago. >> this is not the kind of paper you want to be stacking because this is classified paper and he lied about it. so the photos and the evidence and all the incriminating material from the lawyer which you guys were just discussing is really bad for donald trump. he's presumed innocent and he will be afforded his defenses. but i want to be very clear. donald trump has extinguished so many of his potential defenses. he has played himself in public, obviously, when he says i can do that if i want, i basically did that and sean hannity tries to stop him. but he's also played himself in private and on tape. that is why sometimes people talk about manifesting something in your life -- >> yes.

>> you can manifest becoming a billionaire, you can manifest a summer in france. that's nice magical type thinking. you cannot manifest declassification when you are petit no longer the president. if your argument is, well i swear by the 1920 when i left office i did all this and it was a magical process. now you're on tape after the day you said you did that which is a weak defense to begin with it meeting otherwise as we've reported. you've a big problem on your hands. i think donald trump's biggest problem here is somewhat different than some other cases. where he went on the attack, he denied and obfuscated. he's admitted and confessed to

so much which means he's facing a jury that's looking at evidence of what he said in public, what he said in private and trying, even if you want to give him the benefit of the doubt to say well, if you're best defenses you are always lying that's no good. >> rachel, on that point, we've gotten some reactions from republicans. there's mitt romney at one end of the spectrum and folks like clay higgins on the other. i do wonder about the sort of national security apparatus, particularly in congress. and what you get from sort of the intelligence committee, what you get from the folks on foreign affairs and defense. once these facts are laid out what do you think you will see? >> i think it's important to zoom in on it and again you go back to the indictment, you go back to the description of the documents that are being charged. the classification markings on those documents and nobody is going to be able to argue that this is --

this is just inadvertently stuff that shouldn't be. we've been overclassification problem in this country, true, right, but the nuclear capabilities of foreign countries is not something that is overly classified. i do think that it's by virtue of the specificity of the indictment and the seriousness of the stuff he is alleged to have held. it's going to cut through a lot of that. >> our special msnbc coverage of the indictment of donald trump continues after this quick break. (♪ music ♪) (♪ ♪) (♪ ♪) where could reinvention take your business? accenture. let there be change. >> good evening and welcome to

msnbc's continuing special coverage of the special counsel 's indictment of donald j trump i'm alex wagner and i'm joined here but my colleagues ari melber, joy reid, chris hayes, and lawrence o'donnell. for the first time in our nation's history the federal