thank you so much for letting us into your homes during these extraordinary time. we are grateful. "the beat" with ari melber start rights now. hi ari. >> hi, nicolle. quick factual compliment if i may, deadline wasn't the same without you yesterday. >> you worked an hour in this insane week. i'm grateful. i had a fifth grade graduation to attend. >> mazel tov.

i don't think anyone is counting hours anymore. >> brian williams used to call it tonnage. >> there you have it. thanks to nicolle. welcome to "the beat." i'm ari melber. amidst this unprecedented news week, which is why there are so many hours being slotted around, let me start with a quick question -- is there anything more to learn or say about the federal case against defendant donald trump? our team of journalists on "the beat" says the answer tonight is yes. we have been working on something special, a new road map gleaned from jack smith's case, which we now can see for the first time against donald trump. so later tonight we're actually going to show thank you time line from the first clues about the missing documents to trump's historic arrest, that whole road. it is new legal reporting and i can tell you you'll only see it here. that's coming up on this edition of "the beat." our top story right now stems from the rapid developments on

the defense and legal side of donald trump's case here. we had the booking this week, and if you take a look, a view inside that courtroom, we have the different sketches. i'm sure you've seen them by now. you have the judge, the stenographer, donald trump, the lawyers. but obviously we are drawing your attention tonight right now in our top story to a very particular person that has been in these sketches. this is one of donald trump's lesser known defense attorneys as you say there, named christopher kise. he's a lawyer a long ways from donald trump's louder or more famous defense lawyers. you've probably heard joe tacopina. he's known for clashing with lawyers in this very serious doj case women know rudy giuliani who's now under investigation for his work with trump. now kise is not like them, not in his prominence and his counsel, but he is variety toll

trump's defense. he was called in after two other lawyer in the doj case were basically unable to continue. they departed donald trump's defense, and he was literally on the hunt for basically any local florida counsel, because that is required for your arraignment. donald trump's lawyer problems are infamous, but the prospect that tuesday he might have faced his first day of his federal prosecution without local counsel and then could embarrassically begin behind and showing to the judge overseeing the start of this he couldn't follow that basic rule, that was viewed as too far even for trump some they made their calls and got kise back. but he was sidelined after a few months initially in this case when he was first hired. trump's team was hustling to bring him back. and the reasons are striking. the reason he stood there this tuesday, and a piece of this that's important but was not the top thing he was getting into in

tuesday's breaking coverage, the reason is these two people, defendant donald trump and his on again/off again lawyer kise had already parted ways in this case because donald trump refused mr. kise's counsel and advice on steps which might have been might have averted the booking he was called in to help with. i'm going to talk you through exactly what this means. it's pretty straightforward. mr. kise had the facts because he was representing trump as a lawyer in this case. last fall, before it became clear that this of all the problems was the one that got trump federally indicted, kise saw the writing on the wall. he suggested trump shift his approach in which was become an out-of-control criminal level problem with doj, to be more cooperative, to settle with doj. "the washington post" reports the goal was to negotiate to avoid charges, to mix

cooperating and deal with bhakd a disadvantage or advantage, the complexity that doj might not want to do this. they might want an exit ramp to avoid prosecuting a former president. and let me tell you something -- that's decent lawyering. as a lawyer, you always look at the law and the facts. the law might run against your client, as it clearly did here. donald trump has been indicted. but the facts sometimes held, and while no person is supposed to be above the law, if you can go to the doj with facts and say there may have been problems but this is a former official, or this was a police officer, or this was a general, or this is a doctor who meant well, using the facts of the situation, and we're willing to cooperate, we really think there's a way to get this done without charges, that really can work if it's honest, done in good faith -- and this is where they failed -- if it's done in time. but he didn't have a client in

donald trump who was willing to do those things and not in time "the washington post" reporting that kise and team had the offer to take the temperature down, return all the documents, but trump flat-out refused. that's not a shock. instead, trump turned to just basically get the answer he wanted even if he couldn't find it from an actual lawyer. there's an activist who told him what he wanted to hear. this person told trump he could keep the documents and fight the justice department. that person quoted is not a lawyer, it's a person who's known more for his politics and he was trying to play lawyer to trump. indeed, the reporting says he even tried to correct trump's lawyers saying you could keep them. trump's lawyers opposed it. this man is not famous, but ump donald trump was basically trying to choose between his own

lawyer's advice who know the facts, the law, have his interest in mind, but this is how to get out of this, and an amateur who's telling him what he wants to hear and this isn't the law. this is, perhaps not surprising for someone like donald trump, this is not in his interest. we talked a lot about the laws and requirements. think about donald trump as a human being. this would be like going to one or two doctors, getting your first and second opinion and then just having a buddy or random friend say, leave it alone. you don't need the surgery. you don't need the prescription. and just see where that goes. in this case, not getting treatment made the underlying problem worse, and it metastasized into the first federal indictment of a former president in history. another experienced lawyer who trump tapped to run doj -- has no patience for these claims from the bizarro lawyers. >> i think the arguments are

farcical and will be shown as such. what did he do? he engaged in an outrageous act of deception that obstructed that subpoena, and that is wrong. that's a law -- i mean, that's a violation of law. that's a serious problem for him. >> i'm joined now by the former rnc chair michael steele and former prosecutor richard gregory who was chief sent to attorney's office in miami. multidecade veteran, known for other thing of prosecuting panamanian dictator, manuel noriega. welcome. i know you're here to talk through all of this. i want to start with the point about the legal advice not taken and what evidence do you see of that? >> well, unfortunately, a client who does not listen to his

lawyer is a fool. if you hire a lawyer who's experienced in matters like this, you should be listening to him or get yourself another lawyer. and unfortunately in this case, i think you laid it out very clearly. the lawyer wanted him to comply with the justice department and the u.s. government's request to return the documents, and he didn't do it. it's that plain and simple. >> have you seen this pattern in defendants or later convicted criminals that you've dealt with where whatever the facts, which have all been changed, there were clear off ramps and when not taken that can become a fortification of the government's case, look, even when they had the chance, they chose crimes again. >> this is in my practice, in my time dealing with la

cosa nostra, dealing with the largest drug dealers in the world, they made the choice they're not going to cooperate. they tell that to their lawyers and you know that from day one. i have seen some very good -- walk out, saying, i'm giving you advice. go get yourself another lawyer, and that has happened. >> yeah. you mentioned la cosa nostras, the drug cartels. i'll draw one difference between the drug cartel and donald trump, you know, free shout-out of a comparison here. it's hard to tell the drug cartels, yeah, the offramp is end your business, because that's their entire long running business. here, what adds stupidity to injury is, what everyone thinks of donald trump, this was not his core business. he has other things going on.

he's going to run for president again. whatever the narcissism, stupidity, or arrogance that goes into this, it was a viable option to give it all back. indeed, much of it was taken back either way because he's not in power and they came to his residence, his property and took it any way. one difference would be that if he were less i don't know what, proud, he would have maintained his other activities and cooperated on this. that's what a normal head of a criminalenter prize could do, particularly if they have a diversified portfolio, where there's other things he's engaged. there's a reason kise got his $3 million retainer up front. you see that playing out in that lawyers who come to do lawyering on behalf of donald trump often

get kicked to the curb, which is why he was having a hard time finding counsel in florida. no one looking down the road at a career is going to emasculate their practice and put it into debt who can't save himself, has no interest in saving himself and taking that advice. just passionately looking at donald trump's position, it would tell you the easier out here knowing the general idea that we don't want to prosecute a former president, we don't want to go open up this pandora's box, we've all seen and heard and read the memos from doj about just how genteel they want to be with presidents any way. that would be a signal to trump of, okay, i can leverage this a bit to my advantage to avoid any further entrenchment with doj.

but that's not how he looks at it. this is zero sum for donald trump, and it's always kind of amusing for me, certainly as a former lawyer. i was a corporate lawyer. these litiglitigators, i don't why they do what they do. the reality is you listen to folks going on about the rule of law and process and the argument. that means nothing to trump. he wants to head butt the institution. he wants to head butt the prosecutors, and he wants lawyers on his payroll that he's not going to pay, but he wants them on the payroll, to do just that. >> yeah. >> and kise was not that lawyer. >> yes. mr. gregory, when you read the speaking indictment, which tells a story -- we have the time line coming up tonight and interesting lawyer on the counterargument to it -- but the story is one of real brazen law

breaking that concerned the lawyers. where does it rank for you as an opening salvo? strong, medium, lacking? >> this is a very simple offense. the defendant took the documents which he wasn't authorized to take. that's the first part. the more important part is he was -- he did not give them back. he willfully did not return to the proper authorities the documents that he was unauthorized to be holding. all he needed to do was give them back. there would be no case here if he had given the documents back to the government. they weren't his documents. if you see them, they're all clearly marked as belonging to the u.s. government.

these are his personal memorabilia. these are classified documents belonging to the u.s. government, and all he needed to do was return them. when he got a grand jury subpoena he was given a second chance. he was given a grand jury subpoena. he should have returned them all, and he didn't. that simple offense, it will be that simple when it's presented to the jury. >> yeah. as you say, i mean, i don't know, you're a busy guy, mr. gregory. i don't know if you ever watch the a. team, mr. t. >> yeah, that's a long time ago. >> it is a long time ago, but i'll speak for myself, we're all putting on the years. michael and i. every year we check in, every year that goes by, we're like a year older. >> that's it. >> yeah, mr. t. used to say, you brought it on yourself, and there is a mr. t. note in the indictment. you get the final word, mr. gregory. >> well, i think that the -- in this particular case, you not

only had one chance, but two or three chances to properly handle his document, and not only did he not do it, but schemed with someone else to avoid the documents even being found. he lied to his own lawyers about where the documents were. this case isn't very difficult. the only thing that's a problem in the case is the nature of the documents, that is they're classified. and therefore in dealing with it, even in dealing with them at trial, you're going to have to have special treatment for those documents. >> sure. mr. gregory, we appreciate your experience and applying that here. i hope you'll come back on "the beat." michael stick around. i mentioned the special report. that's coming um. prosecutors say what mr. gregory was just telling us, there were these blown opportunities, we're going to visualize that for you for the first time tonight. meanwhile, what are experts

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turning now to our special report. news broke about a federal trump indictment exactly one week ago. trump posted about it online. reporters quickly confirmed the news. special counsel jack smith announced and unsealed it the next day.

and then there were the headlines about what was in there. the espionage charges, the hoarding of national security secrets and the conspiracy around the alleged crimes. trump was then arraigned, with that focus on the charges but also the sight of him in court, the bond process, the judge issuing a partial no-contact order and all the details we have been poring over this week in this unprecedented development. now here we are, the dust is settling. if you follow this kind of stuff, you probably have a general sense of this case, of how trump took and hit the secret material and the evidence against him. you also probably have a sense of some of his responses that he claims maybe he declassified everything or that the doj is just hunting him like a witch. but there is more to this 40-plus page indictment jack smith is using it to tell school bus the court and the judge and

eventually the jury, to tell a story, a story that will be key to this prosecution, and it's crucial for showing a jury why this case is not only clear, the doj says, not only damning and egregious, but how the evidence and time line makes it different and worse than other incidents where ex officials were found to have discovered some of this type of classified or secret material and then returned it. that includes the doj reviews of pence and biden. so right now, we're turning to a new "beat" analysis of smith's case to a time line. what you will see draws on the indictment's evidence and other reported information. this is the doj's evidence for the charge crimes. the defendant is presumed innocent. this investigation began in 2022 when trump sent 15 boxes to the archives and officials

discovered secret materials. this is where the time line starts. very simple and we'll be filling it up. what you see in the upper left is the beginning. the material in those boxes raised these questions about national security laws, and that was referred to the justice department, which you see here in a criminal referral. what you see on the left is the very start. it's a serious but not automatically devastating thing. doj's open probes like this that do not lead to aggressive tactics like searches and seizures, let alone indictments. military veterans, officials like mike pence have faced probes, basically what you see on your screen, with no charges. but the discovery of those documents at trump's home led to a subpoena, and that was the key escalation.

that you see add to our time line. doj was demanding these documents with the concern that they may have been stolen, purposefully held or shared illegally. at that point the documents, would have been taken by anyone on the property. there wasn't necessarily a finger pointing only at trump. there was just doj legally demanding the missing document, and then things start to go south. trump and his team claimed they searched through everything, remember? and they claimed they returned everything. let me repeat. they searched everything and returned everything. all of it, they said. indeed that word "all" is a word they used in a sworn certification. you can see it described from the indictment, trump's attorneys saying any and all responsive documents returned. that's responsive to the doj subpoena i showed you on the time line. you'll see trump and his team returning what they falsely claimed were all 38 documents,

all 38 classified documents. that's what you see at the top. that's the arrow going up from the subpoena. but here is where things took a fork in the road. here is the time when trump and aide began moving, hiding secret documents. trump and his aide doing that basically on a running basis where their own hands. that is the red arrow. the first red arrow you're going to see on the time line. trump sides the other documents. they staged a fake search site. there are photos recovered to show the standing of the documents here. you now see the arrow down to hiding the doomts is the fork in the road. points to one of the crimes trump has been indicted for. what you're still seeing is 2022. the public didn't know what trump was hiding, the lengths he was going, nor how doj fight respond to the arrow you see on

top, the 38 documents which trump did return, which he a former president and his lawyer certified were all the documents. now on our tame line, we get up to summer, august 202, when against this set of developments, something happened that had never happened before to a president's property and residence. the fbi went in and searched. >> today we are in uncharted territory. >> search and seizure, the fbi descends on former president trump's mar-a-lago home. >> the fbi search at mar-a-lago has no parallel in american history. >> nothing like this has ever happened before, and we don't know how this ends. >> we don't know how this ends. that was the fair estimation of that unprecedented at the time step. but we are closer today, because you have now donald trump indicted by the government he once ran. and it was clear trump had lied

about returning, quote, all the documents. what you see on the time line is the doj hit a contraband jackpot. they found he hit more documents than he gave back. we'll put this in full. this is the next step. i show you the search. trump hides the other documents. could have ended there. no president had his property searched. they might have thought, that will wind it down. i gave some back and hid some. then the search yields the documents. yields the photo you see on your screen. it was 102 documents found them comes only in the new indictment we have, jack smith showing they hid far more documents than they gave back. yet trump and his allies, even as this information came out, lied, downplayed, or minimized what was actually going on, what are now indicted crimes. >> i have the right to take stuff. i have the right to look at

stuff. >> the list of what they took was also vague and meaningless. >> they'll probably find a note from me telling me how proud i am of him and what a great job he was doing as president. >> does anyone think when he got down to mar-a-lago he spent a week or month on end going through papers? no, of course not. >> does anyone think that, or do we now have the receipts, the damning texts from his own aides talking about donald trump being personally involved. and when he realized lawyers wouldn't go along with it, lying to them. he was personally involved. it's detailed in the criminal charges. it's striking when you take it together. what you see that's new in the indictment is the entire theory of the case and timeline laid out. so prosecutors tell their stories in words and evidence and quotes. which we've drawn on for tonight's timeline, ending in the charges. now that you've seen the cull my

fact, here it is in full. trump returns the 15 boxes which exposes they have classified material. the archives give to it doj. which demands the missing documents. there are new clues something is amiss. again, the doj is still open to a solution of just demanding and getting all the documents back under subpoena. trump returns 38, claiming falsely through lawyers that was all of it. a lie, while you is an a red arrow going to the hiding of the other documents. the clues about the brazen act and possible crime lead to the famous search of a jackpot, over 100 documents he was hiding even after the trail i just showed you. and it became clear it was the right call because it found so much evidence, which leads to this week's charges and arraignment.

you see the full timeline and the offramps and choices, the opportuniies where this now president trump -- follow it all, and it could end with giving the material back, instead of lying and claiming you gave the material back. this president who has become the federal defendant had those choices, and more than once, had chose the other, lying, allegedly criminal path. that's the timeline, because the story will matter if it's going to breakthrough to the public or jury, and michael steele knows something about story telling in this arena. we're back to discuss this together in 60 seconds. n 60 secs s with things she doesn't need. so she switched to verizon. and now, she has myplan. the first unlimited plan that lets her choose exactly what goes in it. now, she gets to pick only the perks she wants, and saves on every one.

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the evidence in the indictment. as the days go by, we can actually put it all together. we're going to put that up. i'm curious what you see in that part of the story that smith tells. >> look, i think this expertly lays out what we now know. it's visual, it's clarifying, and you begin to understand exactly at those various point where is donald trump could have taken a different path, where donald trump could have done something different. he didn't, because he had a self-interested purpose for doing what he did. that's going to come out in this trial, i'm sure, particularly given if they're documents that are still unaccounted for, what happened to them. this timeline puts that in focus, in perspective. now narratively, ari, what has to happen is jack smith has to tell the story in a way that allows it to sink in for the american people to see through the whitewashing and bs and lies

that are already beginning to take shape around what this isn't. and that's going to be an important distinction going forward. >> we know as people who have studied this that the doj was giving him extra deference. people can debate the propriety of that, but i've covered case where is because someone was in the cia or the military there is a different deference. it's not written down in a rule book to be sure, but it happens. why do you think smith seems to be emphasizing that for what a jury will ultimately hear? which is, hey, everyone would have liked this to go differently, we tried. >> i think the deference piece is an important one, and i wish we just kind of get off of it, because donald trump has proven he doesn't deserve that deference, and this timeline shows us why. because when given the opportunity -- it's a different thing if at that 15 box to nara

and criminal referral he did the handoff, and then the doj came back and said, well, we want to go after something else -- that's a different narrative. but you can see the persistence here of trying to get what was properly government property. donald trump didn't want to do that. he's waived, in my view, that deference argument, and i think jack smith is trying to anticipate that going into a courtroom with a jury of donald trump's peers to say, yeah, we get it. he's the former president. but look how he behaved, and look at how he didn't behave in a way that would have put him some place other than in this courtroom before you. >> yeah, i think -- >> he's a criminal defendant. >> i think you the it that so well. what we look at on the arrows here -- we'll take it in full as we look at it together. where the arrows go black and red in the middle is different than someone just saying, hey, i

don't know, i'm not sure, i'll see you later like you might say if you were a cocky former president. no, it's much more malicious according to the doj evidence. he says, here's all 38, here's all of them. as he's doing that, speaking to the government he once ran and the fbi officials who risked their live, while he's doing that he's down here with the red arrow, personally involved in hiding it, in building up the conspiracy. everything you see on your screen is, again, i want to emphasize, doj evidence. the defendant has rights. he's presumed innocent. but boy, if they get all this into court in front of a jury, this is some tough evidence to rebut, because it shows real-time repeated allegedly criminal duplicity. michael, thanks for looking at the story with us. >> keep in mind that's important given the judge who's seeing the case. >> exactly. and we're going to follow the facts wherever they go. up next, how do you defend

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we have been covering this historic indictment of president trump. my next guest having served as independent counsel, replacing ken starr in the clinton case and later representing donald trump in his impeachment trial.

>> kenneth starr can now be officially called the former independent counsel. robert ray called in to continue the investigation of the clintons. >> the nation's interests have been served, and therefore i decline prosecution. >> tonight we learn the makeup of trump's defense team. it's back to the clinton impeachment with former independent counsel ken starr and his successor robert ray. >> we have witnessed the endless procession of legal theories used to sustain this partisan impeachment. they're federal charges, they're serious, and a jury is going to decide the significance of this. >> robert ray is our special guest tonight. as we remind viewers, you have a lot of experience. appreciate you being here. >> nice to be with you as always. >> i feel very welcome. >> good to have you. my first questions are probably the easiest. you know where i'm going, but i'll ask. have you ever for a client or

yourself knowingly defied a subpoena? >> well, you hope that you've never done that. inadvertently would still be a problem, and certainly not knowingly. my standard with regard to these things as a defense lawyer is, one, don't commit a crime. two, don't do anything that puts your law license in jeopardy. >> makes sense, and related -- >> and three, follows the rules of professional -- >> related easy question. have you ever knowingly signed a false certification to the court? >> not knowingly. you sometimes do make -- and it has happened to me -- errors that you didn't know were errors at the time. that can be its own problem. >> sure, but never knowingly. >> it can be confused with intentional. but as far as i know, never knowingly. >> i think and the viewers know exactly where i'm going. this case starts in the timeline we saw with false certification. quote, the search was conducted to locate any and all documents responsei to the subpoena, which

then jack smith's indictment endeavored to obstruct the fbi creating and quote causing a false certification to be submitted when in fact those documents had not. that's true, isn't it? that certification was incomplete and false. >> and the government is going to have to prove it was knowingly false. aye already said publicly -- i think we were on set earlier. it's been a week now, so i have to try to figure out what day it was buck any way, obviously those -- the false statements and the obstruction allegations that contain this indictment i think are the most troubling. and the reason is because prosecutors bring those kinds of things in because they're intent enhancers. they help you prove the defendants after intent on the theory of why would anybody make false statements or obstruction justice if they didn't have an underlying problem to what is addressed. >> you say and you're

acknowledging those were false, and the photos we have, whether it's the bathroom, the texts about moving the documents around, all that adds up to that that part is proven. >> i don't know about that. that's obviously -- i don't know what the evidence will be. that will be for a jury to decide. i'd like to offer a little perspective here. one perspective is, i think as you have done in the lead-in, and a quite admirable job at it, it strikes me having had a week with this how much is em eminently avoidable. once you have a subpoena, i think he got legal advice he may not have accepted that would have been an exit ramp as you suggest. >> when you say avoidable, he could have acted to avoid his own indictment. >> i think that's one of the things you wonder about and one of the things his lawyers wonder about and what i would have been

wondering about had i been representing him. taking a 60,000 foot view here, i'm reminded of the story that is ascribed to lyndon johnson who walked out on to a tarmac one time with three presidential helicopters waiting. and he started walking toward one of the helicopters and one of the marine aids said, you're walking towards the wrong helicopter. lyndon johnson apparently famous said -- and i don't think it's an apockry fall story, young man, these are all my helicopters. and that's a little bit like what presidents and former presidents view documents. >> yeah, i don't mean to -- >> these are all my documents. >> i don't mean to laugh, mr. ray, but the equivalent of that story -- again, whether it's allegoical or not would be stealing 100 helicopters, giving 30 back and saying that's all of them. whether it's the trump current

lawyer or potentially sympathetic allies like yourself have such a problem. i want to show you the one piece of sound where he seems to admit intent and other aspects of what he's accused of. take a look. >> there's nothing wrong with it. >> i know you. i don't think you would do it. >> i don't have a lot of time. i would do that. >> people ask me why did you have these boxes? why did you have them? the issue in addition to the presidential records act is these boxes were containing all type of personal belongings. one of the fist thing we must do enforce all classification rules. they should give me immediately back everything they've taken from me, because it's mine. it's mine. let me just tell you, i have the absolute right to do whatever i want with them. i have the right. >> did you ever show those classified documents to anyone? >> not really.

i would have the right to. >> what do you mean not really? >> not that i can think of. >> he's admitting to elements of the crime. i understand that if you get a win on the idea that everything was already declassified or somehow personal property, okay. >> i don't think you can legitimatesly claim that, at least not with regard to all of it. >> let me ask the question and you can answer. >> do you hear an admission to elements -- i deposit say the whole thing, but elements like intent and i can and i would and i have them. >> but there's also elements that go to his strong belief,s this which is in any judgment is an intent -- let's take a bigger, longer historical view of this. joe biden, donald trump, hillary clinton, mike pence all have difficulty with regard to retention of classified material from top secret on down. what's the common thread? they take the stuff with them

once they leave office. where do they take it? among other places, largely the drill seems to be they take it home. now, the presidential records act. >> everyone else would be gave it back, would be what jack smith said. >> it's not quite that simple, because it doesn't happen instantaneously. they do take it home, they are afforded a period of time to sort through the documents. certainly for personal information. so former president trump is right about that. and with regard to how this is handled, all of this could be avoided in the future. legal custody does transfer the moment the president leaves office to the national archives. that's true. but everybody understands that physical custody for a period of time resides with the former office holder. i think -- >> yeah, we saw the timeline. he wasn't rushed. >> most other presidents aren't in a rush either, and the simple solution is for the government to provide a secure facility outside of the former official's home where these things should

reside with unfitered access by the former official to those items. >> this is the evidence chart of the elements. i want to let you respond. i want viewers to hear the benefit of your response. you say was this national security and classified material? yeah, they found it after he lied about it. does he know? yeah, he says on tape he's got things that are classified. at this time he can't declassify it anymore. he admits that on tape. then willful. well, just tell them we don't have anything, when he knows he does. give us for the benefit of our understanding a rebuttal to the checklist of evidence. >> i don't know, you're asking me to going to defend on the basis of the presidential records act which is the principal statute that sorts through all this. separate and apart from that, he'll have a constitutional basis to say i am a former president and was once the president of the united states

and i have a right to these documents and a right in my discretion to decide when they go back, and he's going to suggest all these activities are political acts. the decision to make the request to speed tup, the decision to issue a subpoena, the decision -- >> with evidence of selective prosecution? you can't just say i feel it's political in my mood. >> look, jack smith and the department of justice and merrick garland have walked down this road. they're going to put the country through this. this is an election year. those are political acts that can't be seen in any other light than that in an election cycle where one party who has control of the white house is using the levers of government power to prosecute a former president and a current presidential candidate. >> i hate to end on this -- >> that is unavoidable. >> do you feel there was evidence they were more political than say ken starr and yourself? >> it doesn't matter where i think it's more or less.

>> low key interesting. >> whatever anyone else thinks, merrick garland is making a huge effort to say i have nothing to do with this. okay, well, he does have something to do with this. >> he oversees it, that's a fair point. >> no sensible reporter asked the question, were you notified in advance this was coming. >> he said he followed the rules so it suggests to me he was notified. >> this is an interesting call gueye. i appreciate you being here. we'll be right back. you'd like to be. like here. and here. not so much here. if you have chronic kidney disease, farxiga can help you keep living life. ♪ farxiga ♪ and farxiga reduces the risk of kidney failure, which can lead to dialysis. farxiga can cause serious side effects including dehydration, urinary tract or genital yeast infections in women and men,

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tonight on "the reidout" -- >> the prosecutors in my office are among the most talented and experienced in the department of