trump called "style" or something with donald trump around the time that the magazine came out. the prosecution trying to say the memory issues are there. an amazing day, incredible day. talked about the hush money trial. the david pecker testimony. andrea and chris, revelatory and salacious. we'll be following the cross-examination today, the rest of today, probably to much of tomorrow if not all of the day. we also have those oral arguments this morning at the supreme court discussing whether donald trump has presidential immunity. and it was striking what we heard from the justices and not at all clear where they're going. we have to wait for that judgment, that decision. andrea mitchell, chris jansing, thank you so much. always a pleasure. to our guests thank you as well. that will do it for us on this historic day. "deadline: white house" starts right now.

hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york and it is all happening today. we are picking up our special coverage of the tangled legal web now being faced by the four times indicted ex-president donald trump today. a collision of two of his criminal cases with massive consequences, not just for the man, the party he leads, but also for the presidency. our country's democracy. the supreme court heard arguments this morning on trump's claim of presidential immunity leaving the fate and timing of the federal election interference trial, a big blank open question for now, but what is happening at this hour and what is certain is that the trial that could end up being the only criminal trial that ex-president faces before americans go to the polls again in 2024 is the one brought by alvin bragg over falsifying business records to cover up hush money to a porn star and

keep that silent ahead of a national election. former "national enquirer" ceo david pecker is still on the stand and he's being cross examined by donald trump's team. pecker today was asked at length and in detail about the catch and kill scheme that he hatched in a meeting with the ex-president and michael cohen, trump's former fixer. pecker detailed how he purchased the story of trump's alleged affair with former playbook model karen mcdougal for $150,000. and then this happened. the lawyer for the prosecution, his name joshua steinglass asked pecker, quote, was your principle purpose to suppress her story not to influence the election? pecker yes, it was. steinglass, then asked, were you aware that expenditures made by corporations for the purpose of influencing an election are unlawful? yes, pecker responded. then steinglass, the prosecutor, asked pecker why he bought mcdougal's story. pecker said, we purchased the

story so it wouldn't be published by any other organization. we didn't want the story to embarrass mr. trump or embarrass or hurt the campaign. all of this laying the groundwork for what happened later in 2016 when pecker heard the story about trump and adult film star stormy daniels. keep in mind, pecker heard about it, one day after the "access hollywood" tape exploded the presidential campaign landscape, when it was released and made public. the trump campaign was in frantic damage control mode. pecker said that cohen in that time period asked him to pay for stormy daniels' story and even in that frantic damage control moment pecker refused, telling cohen, quote, i'm not purchasing the story. i'm not going to be involved with a porn star. and i am not a bank. paying out a door man, karen

mcdougal. we are not paying out any more moneys. pecker said cohen was upset by that and said the boss would be furious with me. as we know michael cohen ends up using his money to pay stormy daniels $130,000 from his own funds to keep quiet the story stays quiet ahead of the election. the ongoing criminal election interference hush money trial of the ex-president is where we begin with our favorite reporters and you should note it's still happening and we have the developments up on your screen. close watchers of this show do not usually have a computer on the set, it could prove distracting which i'll slam it shut but we are monitoring this in real time and we have the help of our most favorite reporters and friends, nbc news correspondent vaughn hill-yard is outside of the courtroom, host of the podcast, special correspondent for "vanity fair" molly john is at the table with us and we are working him into the ground, i know, we need him

desperately former top official at the department of justice, msnbc legal analyst andrew weissmann is here once again. let me start with you, von, in i have to stop reading these transcripts, when i'm walking around because i'm that person looking at their phone and people behind them get so mad and -- but just tell me why don't you start with what's happening now and widen the lens and go through the day. >> the cross-examination from donald trump's defense team is under way right now. granted, they only have about 30 minutes. they are expected to wind up about 26 minutes from now. court wraps at 4:30 p.m. here. this is the moment, the examination or the prosecution's chance to ask questions of david pecker has wrapped and the number of details not previously publicly known are quite astounding. we wondered if there was one phone call potentially or message between donald trump and david pecker, but we know after

his three days of testimony there were multiple, also meetings at trump tower in december of 2016. there was a meeting at trump tower in january of 2017. the fact is, there was also an immunity agreement between the district attorney's office and david pecker going all the way back to october 2019. we were wondering the extent to which he as a witness was working with the prosecution to help build this case, and we now have a pretty clear answer. david pecker, the longtime friend dating back to the '80s, somebody that they had a relationship going back into the '90s about stories that would appear in the "national enquirer," but there was one notable line for me coming out of this among many, i should say, the most notable line, had to do with one of those phone calls between donald trump and david pecker and it was in march of 2018, when stormy daniels did an interview with anderson

cooper on "60 minutes." after that david pecker testified today that donald trump called up and was furious about the fact that that interview had taken place because he had an agreement with stormy daniels. i want to read the quote, he said trump said quote we have an agreement with stormy daniels where she cannot mention my name and each time she breaches the agreement, she owes donald trump $1 million. just one month after that stormy daniels' "60 minutes" interview donald trump aboard air force one said he didn't know anything about the stormy daniels-michael cohen arrangement and places the blame on michael cohen. what david pecker testified to today was the fact that donald trump was intimately involved with the agreement there and was aware of it and called it our agreement, him, michael cohen and stormy daniels, and this was not just a stormy daniels-michael cohen agreement. >> andrew?

>> this reminds me, you, me and vaughn feels like four years ago, i think two days ago -- >> 17 years ago, aka yesterday. >> yes. george conway related the same type of story where he and his wife were invited to dinner with jared and ivanka, and he said the president called to say are you watching this? so he clearly was -- this is -- it's exactly the same time frame. but i think vaughn has it exactly right, which is, thank you have the d.a. sort of bringing donald trump directly through direct evidence, it's not through michael cohen, you have a witness saying i spoke to him, this was his reaction. essentially what on god's green earth are you doing? why did you release her and why is she speaking and that explains why stormy daniels is not released, explains the difference, but also to vaughn's point he later denied it, you

can be sure in this trial we're going to see that false statement. when you're a prosecutor trying to get mental state evidence, there's nothing better than oh, i have a credible witness who says you knew it on x date, and i can share that right after that you were lying about it. >> i mean, the other thing that i can't get over and i keep reading this, i'm going to read this to you, vaughn, first is how involved the white house staff paid for by the american taxpayer was in catch and kill. this is a note from our colleague lisa rubin on sarah huckabee sanders and hope hicks' role after the interview after mcdougal is interviewed by anderson cooper. pecker said he conveyed to sarah huckabee sanders and hope hicks he wanted to extend mcdougal's contract. this is her catch and kill contract and both sarah huckabee sanders and hope hicks, white house communication staffers working for all of us, the

taxpayers, thought it was a good idea to extend mcdougal's hush money contract. pecker testified he felt extending her contract would keep her from saying bad things about american media and trump. trump relented and said it's your business, telling pecker he could do what he wanted. the timing was muddied in the testimony but apparently happened before march 2018 when mcdougal sued ami resulting in a settlement through which mcdougal reclaimed her lifetime rights. the idea, vaughn, the white house press secretary, communications staffer, were involved in the details of a catch and kill scheme is extraordinary. >> rights. yet another detail we in the public were unaware of, sarah huckabee sanders was allegedly involved in these conversations around karen mcdougal's contract. march of 2018, that anderson cooper did both interviews with karen mcdougal and with stormy daniels, and the testimony from david pecker is that donald trump was frustrated by both and

i think this speaks to the human element of this, right. when talking about nondisclosure agreements humans be humans and between november of 2016 into 2018 stormy daniels and karen mcdougal, they wanted to go forward with their lives and they wanted to share their stories here, and donald trump was frustrated by the fact they were not locked down and a conversation over how to keep karen mcdougal quiet and there was a lunch between karen mcdougal and david pecker and the editor and chief of the "national enquirer" where they were discussing potentially how she could continue to elevate her role within the american media business empire, but while also not talking about donald trump, and so all throughout the first year of donald trump's administration, we as the public did not understand the lengths to which donald trump allegedly was working with michael cohen, with hope hicks, with now sarah

huckabee sanders, to try to continue to keep the full story of these individuals alleged affairs and the alleged hush money payment to keep them silent before the 2016 election from the public not only in 2016 but 2017 and using the white house in 2018 as well. >> what's amazing, i hear that there is some activity behind you, vaughn, just look around to make sure you're still safe -- the talking about maybe this is just a trigger, a former white house staffer, but all of the invoking west wing communication staffers at the highest levels and here's what pecker said about jeff sessions who was the attorney general. pecker said that he received a letter from the federal election commission, he called michael cohen and asked him what to do about it. pecker recalled cohen saying, jeff sessions is the attorney general and donald trump has him in his pocket. pecker said he told cohen he was worried. >> on the staffer point, i mean,

we've been in government and so, of course, that strikes an accord. >> isn't it a violation of the hatch act? >> right. but they like line liter boxes with the hatch act and made a mockery of it by the end that they started that way is extraordinary. >> yeah. the hatch act so everyone knows is something that says you can't be engaged in political activity, you can't use and have politics in the office. i mean, you can't, for instance, if you're the doj can't pick up the phone and say i'm fundraising for a candidate. it's to keep politics out of government. as mark meadows said no one pays attention to the hatch act. there were hatch act violations as we live and breathe. you're totally right and it is right to raise that because we all get -- to that was commonplace whereas when you look at, you know, the obama administration, they were so

squeaky clean and it's true of many others. >> you weren't allowed to -- a journalist couldn't buy you a soda. >> it's not like -- this is not a democratic or republican thing. this is the norm with bush two who was like this is -- he had a very sort of like white house -- >> your painters was an ethics adviser. >> right. >> i want to read you one more thing we learned, dylan howard, who was the journalist deputyized -- i use the term loosely -- following up texted one of his relatives and said, quote, at least when he wins i will be pardoned for electoral fraud. what's interesting about pecker's testimony is the knowledge of criminal conduct that they were engaged in. >> at every point they know what they're doing is wrong and it's a campaign contribution. what i think is more interesting the way the "national enquirer" handles the stories they publish is the way they accuse the trump

world accuses the mainstream media of doing it, but they don't. right. this is really the sort of -- the worst of tabloid journalism, pay for play, catch and kill, and it is, as someone -- i'm on the opinion side but work in mainstream media outlets -- this is the stuff you could never -- any one thing of this, the editor killing a story because someone doesn't like it, this stuff is so beyond the pale. it's the same idea of what they did with the hatch act, except in the mainstream media. >> and i guess, you know, vaughn, the devil in the details here, but what i see coming through now in the cross is, all the other -- like trump says everybody does it. the difference here is the money. the money that changed hands and feels like pecker's testimony we read from, i am not a bank, so trump funnels money through cohen that's what he's in trouble for, the money and lying about the money. >> exactly. and for donald trump, right, he

always like to say he was new to being a politician and his argument through his defense team during this cross-examination of david pecker right now is making the case that they had sort of this transactional relationship dating back to the late 90s and the only difference in 2015 he became a politician. this was common practice and the august 2015 meeting at trump tower was a head nod we're going to continue on in our way. i think that, you know, the difference here, though, is also when we're talking about, right, the january of 2017, meeting that david pecker testified to today is when he was led upstairs into trump tower, that he walked into the room while the likes of james comey and rance priebus, that's where the stakes are different than being the head of a "celebrity apprentice" and i think you guys were talking about pay to play, the only person i'm going to pay is mr. pan man not play. i think the moment here for

donald trump and his team, for his team to try to make the case through this cross-examination that they can that this is -- that donald trump did not have this ill intent but this was something beyond being electorally calculated or campaign calculated but this is who he is as a man and simply a practice he had long had here in new york city with the long standing relationship with david pecker. >> the parts that get complicated, at least with pecker's testimony, are the timing and the urgency of doing it, one, the day after the "access hollywood" tape comes out and that tape and election day. >> this is where, you know, i always talk about the political lens and the legal lens. and so a lot of what we're reacting to is the political lens in the sense of we're just going, can you believe it? this is like fake news and what he was up to and using the white house staff to do it, and it's all these things you're like, this is unbelievable.

>> the legal lens, why the cross makes no sense, is to say celebrities do things like this, at the political lens. we're in the court of law. we're here because of an alleged criminal violation. the criminal violation is false business records, so i haven't heard anything about false business records in any of these other cases, and false business records with the intent to violate another law which is state -- the primary one, state election campaign violations. which you at the outset were saying pecker has admitted. both of those things have nothing to do with any of these other cases. as hideous as we might think all of that is, and tabloid journalism, if you even call it journalism, all of that is sort of like may have ramifications on the political side but it doesn't -- that's where when i was a prosecutor, i loved having a smart jury because this is where you're like great, knock

yourself out on a cross that i can -- in two seconds in closing saying what does that have to do with this case? >> comey is there and pecker there. the only time i remember comey going he runs out in his telling and book writes the contemporaneous memos when he tells trum about the tape, but it's fascinating that david pecker is in his office. >> that is shocking to me. i am curious what you think, andrew? would be curious what you think of that? >> a coincidence or is he there so much? >> leaving the pun aside about the pee tape and david pecker. >> i said yesterday, it's all so dumb. we have to check our potty words right. >> channeling my inner rachel maddow. who knows why. i mean, james comey is the fbi director. >> right. >> there are many reasons for an fbi director to be briefing a

president. >> yeah. >> maybe not always this president, but i mean, that is -- >> it's in the transition. i think this is the much written about time when they all come up and brief him. >> yes. >> comes out and trashes the intelligence agencies because he learns about the tape. >> and he sort of pulls him -- famously giving -- this is when you are a president elect, you are given actually even when you're running, you're given certain briefings and certain other briefings when you're actually the elected and james comey, you know, if you believe what he said in his book pulls him aside to tell him so he wouldn't be embarrassed about this. it is possible that is, in fact, this meeting. but then there's that and according to david pecker there's this discussion about karen mcdougal and how is she doing and essentially is she still quiet. >> he says that he did not mention that hope hicks was in the 2015 meeting.

what's the significance of that? >> i think that's sort of standard cross. it's fair game, which is that every time that a witness is interviewed by the government, there usually is a report of what -- a summary of what they said. that is all disclosed to defense counsel. if the story changes or there are more details or you remember something new, the new report, if this is a good team, they write a new report and that's given to the defense. so they can say did you remember it the first time and not the second time, and the witness can explain i had forgotten she was there or i sort of later remembered it. sometimes it could be worse no, i was protecting her but realize i shouldn't have done that. it's pretty standard also when somebody is recounting something that is not one instance where i met nicolle wallace on this day and i was so thrilled that i only met her once and you remember all the details. that you might expect to

remember all of it. if it's like oh, i was at msnbc for two years. >> she was in and out all the time. who remembers when. >> and that very often you will -- things just think about how your own memory works. you'll remember different things. >> it suggests that was corroborated testimony because hope hicks goes into the grand jury -- >> all of this to prove it wasn't about melania. the lie -- >> the election. >> this was actually about the election and interfering with the election. they heard the "access hollywood" tape, got worried, went after the women and decided to cut deals with them. this had nothing to do with melania. i feel like everything david pecker said was just so clear. >> he said that. he said once he was running for president it was never about killing stories because of melania or ivanka. >> it will be interesting how they play this because we're not saying he's lying, we're saying that prosecutors took advantage of an old man, a feeble memory.

>> he seems to remember the juicy stuff pretty well. here's what's happening right now in the manhattan courtroom. the jury is being excused for the day. as vaughn suggested the cross only went on a little bit today. you can be sure that will continue tomorrow. we're going to continue to track everything happening and bringing back our friends. she's going to join us as soon as she can make her way from the courthouse to our camera location where vaughn is. we'll talk about and look ahead to tomorrow about what else the cross-examination of david pecker will include. "deadline: white house" continues after a short break today. don't go anywhere. day. don't go anywhere. anthony: this making you uncomfortable? good. when you've got type 2 diabetes like me, you have up to 4 times greater risk of stroke, heart attack or worse death. even when meeting your a1c goal. discomfort can help you act. i'm not trying to scare you. i'm empowering you...

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we're all back. andrew weissmann, i know you've -- you've explained some of this before i feel bad asking to do it again, come in and widen the lens for me a little bit on pecker. pecker comes in, he's not disparaged donald trump at all. he believes in his testimony we're still friends. how careful does trump's team have to be in their handling of him. >> extremely. so that is a classic and great move by -- when you're a prosecutor to put somebody on who is showing no animosity. obviously, michael cohen will be quite different. that creates its own challenges. there's nothing better than having somebody on like i am a good friend of the defendant, and i'm here because i have an agreement that said i will not get prosecuted for this crime,

but only if i am truthful. if i start making up stories about somebody who is not guilty or start implicating, you know, leaving people out who are guilty, i'm going to -- my deal is off. i have to tell the truth. >> i've counted three times where pecker is worried about criminal exposure for himself. the deal he does with sdny, two the deal with bragg's office before bragg is elected and three the calls he starts to get from the fec. minus the three immunity arrangements how much legal trouble would pecker have been in? >> it all depends on -- this is like our favorite topic -- how much would a prosecutor have been focusing on this. during the trump administration, if you didn't have an independent prosecutor it's unclear how far it would go. the southern district is sort of in between because they have many, many independent prosecutors but they have bosses

that they are beholden to ultimately to donald trump. so -- but he clearly has exposure. and not only does he have exposure but there was interesting testimony about what was happening internal to ami because at some point, he goes -- we don't know the substance because they didn't waive attorney-client privilege and if you're talking to a lawyer internal to a company you don't have to reveal that publicly even at a criminal trial, but they were going to front the money to the door man. >> night they were fronting the money to karen mcdougal. he was planning on getting reimbursed from donald trump. and with karen mcdougal, it's not a donald trump who says i'm not paying you. it's you have david pecker has a conversation with counsel. >> yeah. >> and then afterwards he's like, we're not participating anymore. >> that's where the arnold schwarzenegger -- he has learned that which runs afoul -- he's so

d he's a witness knowledgeable in campaign finance law. >> he's gotten involved in other campaigns, but yes, it's true. look this is the case that put michael cohen in jail, right. >> yes. >> this is -- i think like this is -- there's a lot of legal culpability here and i think pecker knew enough because he's been involved in other campaigns, and that thing where he talks to the counsel and we can't do the money, if anything that is -- >> i am not a bank, that to me might forever be the ominous sentence he's uttered so far. i want to bring in someone familiar susan craig, she just walked out of the courthouse. i can't see her, but i'm sure it is full. we don't have to go in any order. start with what jumped out at you today? >> nicole, there was so much, but i have to say, if there was

one moment that it's going to be hard to forget it happened right after lunch. david pecker was testifying still on direct under examination from the government, and he talks about a call he got from donald trump in 2017. it was probably in june. donald trump invites him to dinner at the white house, and he says i would really love if you and your wife could come and david pecker responds, let me check with my wife and get back to you. it turns out his wife did not want to come to washington, so he phones donald trump back and donald trump says, you can bring anybody you want because it's your dinner. and so david pecker accepts the invitation to the white house for dinner. he goes down and brings a number of associates including dylan howard, the editor at the "national enquirer," that we've heard a lot about and they have a dinner at the white house and there is a photo that was shown in court, the two men, you can

see their backs, it was a black and white photo, and we have seen images like that for years, of presidents walking down that corridor to the oval office by the rose garden and it was just this incredible photo and david pecker testified that what they were talking about at that moment was karen mcdougal, donald trump asked how is karen, and david pecker responded, she's great. she's quiet. it sent a chill through me to imagine that was the conversation going on, as they were having this dinner at the white house. basically a thank you dinner for david pecker for all he had done for donald trump and the trump campaign. >> so extraordinary, sue, and it's so syncs to this is new, but we did know he lived and breathed by her utterances. this story recounted by george conway of his incredibly triggered reaction calling his

daughter ivanka dining with kellyanne conway or white house adviser at that point. the idea that this was his sort of media fixer, seems to be so cemented in terms of these days of testimony, just tell me what you think the defense even has to work with in terms of trying to either decouple the two men and their intimate bond. pecker said nothing bad about trump that i understood or heard or read, and the -- i understand he also said that trump said that mcdougal was a nice girl. >> he was. and they called her, how's our girl doing or that she's a nice girl, how is karen. they talked about her frequently. david pecker towards the end of the afternoon went under cross-examination but before he did, he talked about donald trump and was asked how does he feel about him today, and he said that he still considers him to be a mentor and a friend, and he told a story about how after

the terrorist attacks at 9/11, some anthrax was sent to the "national enquirer" offices in boca raton, florida, and the offices had to be completely cleaned out. it was financially, you know, i think pretty -- a step back for david pecker because once you have anthrax contamination everything has to be ripped out. the first call he got was from donald trump offering his support and donald trump actually went and hooked him up with sandy weill, the head of travelers insurance and at the time was handling the insurance policy for the "national enquirer," and he just said what a friend donald trump was, and he said, he knows through friends who go to mar-a-lago that donald trump asks about him and that's passed on to david pecker. david pecker doesn't reciprocate because of what's going on, but generally considered himself a friend and that was the note that the -- that the defense had to pick up on that donald

trump's lawyers picked up on when they started questioning. it was sort of almost a warm moment between the two men and what donald trump's lawyers have been zeroing in on this afternoon, it's now finished, was what david pecker was doing, he didn't necessarily know the word catch and kill but using checkbook journalism for years to buy and keep stories off the market or just to keep stories off the market about people who were his friends. we heard about arnold schwarzenegger how he had an agreement with him and apparently had an agreement with ronald perelman the head of forbes in new york a well-known businessman he would keep stories out of the tabloids for him. a number of celebrities that were discussed and they're making it ought to be this was sort of, you know, an ordinary business for david pecker he would do these sort of things. nothing to look at. no discussion of election interference, obviously, in that questioning. then the other thing that they did before i left the courtroom

was that they were picking at his memory, david pecker's memory. they were questioning him. it went on far too long but initially when he was questioned about that august 2015 meeting where this plan was hatched, where david pecker would be the eyes and ears of the campaign, he had remembered it was in the first week of august not the third week. and they were questioning -- apparently during the first week of august donald trump was at a campaign stop and questioned him about that for several minutes trying to show his memory is faulty and apparently in another interview he had done with government investigators he had not mentioned initially that hope hicks was in that meeting that's in the third week of july, so they were trying to pick apart his testimony in that way. >> molly, what's amazing about that testimony that sue is talking about is, just the history behind -- i mean there's

a walk within american president down the colonnade, it goes back, the pictures of kennedy and bobbie, obama and biden, bush and the war cabinet. and then donald trump and david pecker. talking about our girl karen. >> our girl karen and the way he says our girl karen speaks to the idea that he has actually has a relationship with her and this is an alleged ten-month relationship and i did think it was -- you know, and the david pecker stories of new york of old, right. like i mean, ron emanuel and ron perelman. i mean these are people, these are new york people. he sort of served as a kind of press secretary for new york people and he would somehow pump these gossipy tabloid stories into the magazine. what i think is the most interesting is that we saw they had -- they showed some of the

stories that the "national enquirer" ran against ted cruz and marco rubio and they were so crazy. >> crazy. >> a lot of them based on almost nothing, right, like the ted cruz -- that dad was somehow a killer. i mean the zodiac killer. completely crazy. what's so like almost tragic to me is ted cruz is now so on team trump -- >> so is rubio. >> right. neither have said anything about the fact that they were set up in this primary. >> right. ted, marco, our lines are open. i want to do two things. i want to come back to you, sue craig, on the testimony about the contract. and i want to understand why dylan howard isn't a witness. i want to introduce another guest who has been part of these conversations. he's the co-founder and executive director at protect democracy, former associate white house counsel to president obama. ian bass is here. ian, i wouldn't flatter myself

calling my student of autocracy, but i dabble in the study of autocrats and the propaganda piece, trump had it down in a way we didn't even understand. i covered his war with the media as enemies of the people predates that decades in his relationship and arrangement and contractual relationship with the "national enquirer." >> and the contractual relationship is the distinguishing point here because look, all politicians try to massage and work the media. you did this when you were in government. i was part of this in government. the way that most politicians do that in democracy is by making arguments. you reach out to people in the media and try to argue your case and persuade them why you are right and your version of events is the one that they should tell, and that's the way it works in a democracy. the line that gets crossed by politicians is when they no

longer use argument but they use financial or other means to extract what they want from the media and you see that among autocratic leaders around the world. look at berlusconi in italy orban in hungary, they used regulatory retaliation or some cases they owned aspects of the media to get it to tell their story. benjamin netanyahu has been indicted for a corrupt scheme to control the media and the most extreme end, vladimir putin simply kills journalists. there's a line here between presidents or leaders in democracies who argue with the media and those who try to buy propaganda in a way alleged in the trump trial here and that's not governing in a democracy. >> some ways, being a nonlawyer and having the political lens on this, i have always thought these facts are the facts that donald trump was most fearful of being out in the political climate. these are the only facts for which folks seem to hold him criminally accountable.

he's not running on. he runs on the mar-a-lago documents and says they were mine. mine, mine, mine, pra, which is not a thing but that's what he says. on the insurrection, he starts all of his rallies and his first one in waco, starts all of his rallies honoring the violent, most violent insurrectionists in jail. these are not facts that he runs on. these are not facts that he brags about. these are not relationships that he boasts about. these are not associations that he acknowledges. these are facts he denies. but i wonder what you make of the intimacy of the nare a rater, not just in a legal sense, but a political one? >> well, one of the things that he has run on is that the system is corrupt, and that the system has special rules for the powerful who get to get away with stuff that average people don't get to get away with, and that was one of his most effective lines in 2016 he said if you had done what she had

done n reference to hillary clinton, you'd be in jail and i think one of the reasons he may not want to run on a set of facts at issue here is because he's behaving the way he accuses the powerful of behaving, buying themselves special privileges, using his money to get exempted from consequence. i think that's one of the things he has ginned his base and supporters up against and that's what he was doing here and may be one of the reasons it's not the case he wants to highlight. >> sue craig, let me bring you back in on the testimony from david pecker all of the knowledge he and dylan howard had about it the illegality of the financial piece the contract piece, and i want to understand the significance to this case and why dylan howard isn't a witness on the prosecution's potential witness list? >> well, i understand dylan howard and this is hearsay from

david pecker on the stand, but that he is in australia, he has a spinal issue and can't make it. so he's not here. so we're relying solely on david pecker for a lot of this information. the issue about karen richardson and how she was paid is very significant because they dressed it up that they were giving her a job when, in fact, it will a political contribution that should have been reported and it's important because it shows that conspiracy they're accusing trump of was conducted through an unlawful means and they've got to get to that i think as part of the jury when they're going to decide is trump guilty or not, that's going to be coming in court. that's -- there's going to be a piece of it. she wasn't. she was given some things to do but what she was paid for really was not to talk about her relationship with trump, and that was not reported to the federal election commission as it should have been. >> sue, you and i have talked to

michael cohen together. you and your colleagues have covered him. >> yeah. >> it seems that there's some intent to put a lot of his conduct in the voice of a narrator like david pecker. cohen, i'm sure will come in at some point, maybe later, but so much of what david pecker and trump planned and coordinated describes cohen as sort of a function nary, a middle manager. >> right. he was a lawyer involved and the person we're seeing today was a co-conspirator. i have to say, there's been a lot of testimony about michael cohen as a go between but this goes farther than that, a lot farther than that. there were calls made between donald trump and david pecker about his relationships, both women, karen and stormy daniels, karen mcdougal and stormy daniels, both appeared on

anderson cooper's show on cnn and after each appearance donald trump phoned david pecker and was furious and sum and substance said i thought we had a deal to keep these two quiet. he didn't -- david pecker wasn't involved in the stormy daniels payment, but he was like, what's going on? he was very frustrated that this was happening. there were other calls like that that happened between the two of them. so there are times when michael cohen is in the middle but there's very much a lot of evidence where the two men are talking directly. david pecker is -- he's in the middle of all of this. he's a co-conspirator. there's no question. >> he's a heavily immunized co-conspirator. tell me -- >> right. >> they went through a lot of that today. >> right. >> i mean, that to me, again, you don't know what a jury is inferring or taking in, but

andrew weissmann, what is so clear is that what the prosecutors got from david pecker was the birth of the conspiracy, its participants -- pecker, trump, privileges with hope hicks -- and execution. pecker nodding to all the instances he was worried about breaking laws into yeah. i mean, as you said the other day, you have the agreement of the principals, and you really set the stage for a michael cohen as a conduit and facilitator and staffer. this is the principals, you heard from the other principal. you know where the other principal is, he's at the defense table. the one piece, it's a fantastic lead off a witness, he's super corroborated, going i'm a friend of his, still like him. i haven't talked to him basically because my defense lawyer told me not to, that's

what happened, and so -- but he's like i like the guy. he shows no contrition, that's him. you're going to hear he's credible because he not only says i like him, if you want to know how transactional he is and why he would be doing business with this person because they're both transactional. >> the amazing thing is that he had morals and didn't want to put a porn star on the cover of "national enquirer" because it sold at walmart. >> yes. so there was also a legal component to that. >> yeah. >> like he also had a conversation with counsel and -- yeah. i mean i think there was sort of like i think if we -- my read into that is that the lawyer is like, you know, what you're doing, it's the reason all of these other stories that the defense is bringing out, it's awful, but not necessarily legal. this is like -- >> the money. >> wait a second. it's money with an election campaign. the one piece you don't have

yet, which he doesn't know about, is the false business records. he gives you the piece that everyone's always been saying, how are they going to make this a felony. he gives that to you in spades. up one side and down the other and says this was about the campaign. and, you know, not about melania. i had a question for sue on the cold record, it read like kind of dramatic because he was asked, you know, did this switch from being something where he would talk about his family to suddenly this was about the campaign, and once that happened, it was all about the election, the question from the prosecutor was, and did he ever, ever mention his wife melania? and the answer was no. >> right. >> and, you know, that's a courtroom and then the defendant sitting right there and that's the answer from his friend. those moments in trials can be pretty dramatic. >> and it's not like melania is

sitting -- >> she's not there. >> no. >> sue, how did that land? >> well, it -- everybody heard it and it was like wow. it was -- there was no mention of melania. two things, the only time i think i heard or had any sort of -- there was melania came into the picture there was a fundraising note that went out because it's her birthday tomorrow and in the middle of this i looked at my e-mail and got a fundraising note from the trump campaign fundraising off his birthday. wow is all i can say. the other piece i wanted to talk about why david pecker didn't want to get involved with a porn star paying a porn star, it was because his magazine is sold at walmarts across the country, and he isn't want to hurt that relationship, and he talked about that in court, you know. he's worried about the bottom line in that sense and should be because the company was in bad financial shape and is. >> i just want to bring you in on something else that comes through again on the transcript,

and that's all the references to the boss and all of the attempts to clarify on the prosecutor, who was that. donald trump. it's from any, you know, bad script for any even mediocre mob screenplay you don't have that many references to the boss than you heard in pecker's testimony this week. >> yeah. i mean look, he's been able to establish -- this is the dangerous thing about him in some ways as a defendant -- is that he's been able to establish in a lot of ways plausible deniability on things beiabilit create a language of understanding for everybody who works in his operation of what he wants and how he wants that done. that person is quiet. we know what that means. hopefully, continues to mean what it means here and not in mob world in the future. >> what do you make of the moment and the time capsule that this trial provides? i think it's a quaint thing.

trump is worried enough about his base after "access hollywood" that he paid his money to keep quiet women with whom he had alleged sexual relationships. i'm not sure if he would do the same thing now. i have no visibility into this personal life now. it's almost -- it turns out, his base didn't care. "access hollywood" tape is out. the affairs are not. we won't know if that's determinative. do you think the electorate is the same as it was in 2016? >> i think you are exactly right. i think when you go back to when trump was making these decisions, although he thought he could get away with a decent amount -- he made the claim, i could shoot someone on 5th avenue and not lose supporters, he started to realize he could get away with a lot, but he probably is shocked by what he has been able to get away with, not just with the american public but with american institutions. i think i'm with you.

i don't think he would do this again, because as you are seeing, he keeps pushing the bounds. look what he has done about bill barr. he is taunting people who are endorsing him and saying, look how small i can make you look. you still have to grovel at my feet. >> the debasing of everyone that supports him gets right to your point about ted cruz and marco rubio. >> that bill barr thing today was so -- really, this is a man who had this long, storied career. i'm not necessarily a fan. but he -- >> bill barr did more to pervert justice than anyone in the -- >> tell me about it. >> he is a terror. but he ruined himself and the country for trump. that is -- this person had this long career and came back and people thought when he came back, they thought, he is going to -- he is an institutionalist.

turned out to be a fraud. then he endorsed trump, which is -- >> it's amazing. sue, that's one thing that's extraordinary about the courtroom. trump doesn't have that power over the jurors that we know of if the rule of law still stands. trump doesn't have the power over the prosecution. maybe the only people are his own defense attorneys. >> and his people that are there. but he is very much a stripped down individual. he uses the same men's bathroom on the 15th floor as everybody else. it's real. he is there every day. he is basically without power sitting there. he has to be there. if he doesn't show up, he gets to go to jail. >> andrew? >> to capitalize on that. this is a democracy. he is no longer a president. this is -- according to judge

chutkan, he is citizen trump. if you have been indicted by a grand jury that has heard evidence and decides you should face charges, with all of the due process that goes with that, then, yes, you are -- you go to the same men's room as every other defendant. you have a defense lawyer, and he is lucky because he has multiple very good defense lawyers. that is what it means. we should -- the fact that he is there -- he is a human. he is a citizen. the fact that he previously had a job in the government, to my mind, having been in the government, that makes you -- you should be more responsible for less. >> that's one of the norms he obliterated. anyone that worked in the government, have had to fill out sf-286 in detail any time we thought about smoking pot, were asked to buy pot, every time --

everything we have done ever, ever, ever. it's terrifying those documents exist. the idea used to be that you were held to a higher standard. i think we will turn to the immunity claims in a minute. i think what's so remarkable today is that you have got some members of the supreme court really entertaining something closer to trump's version of absolute immunity, while state court and local d.a. is trying to hold trump accountable for laws his co-conspirators knew they were breaking at the time. >> that was exactly my reaction. i've not been a huge fan of justice alito and justice thomas. but i thought even they can't stomach this. it turns out, i was wrong. >> can i say, you are always going to be wrong if you think they're not going to disappoint you and break your

democracy-loving heart? ian, we will keep you around. on what this court and what this judge and what these two legal teams are achieving, how important is that in a democracy? >> i think it goes to the point andrew was making, that they are showing that this person who has tried to portray himself as some superhuman, superhero for his followers is human, is a citizen. i think probably one of the most devastating things about this trial, however it turns out, is that trump looks weak. the numerous times he has dozed off in the courtroom -- it's projection. his claims president biden doesn't have the stamina to do the job. it's trump who is falling asleep. it's trump who looks week. the thing that ultimately undoes strongmen is when the emperor is exposed as having no clothes. there's a little of that going on. that's one of the values of putting people through the

judicial process. >> trump always tells us why. the reason he didn't want this to happen is for what you just articulated. stick around. you stick around. molly, thank you so much for spending the hour with us. sue, thank you for racing out to the location and joining us for the hour. we will continue to call on both of you. still to come, at the united states supreme court today, the other trump legal team representing donald trump in the other alleged criminality, making their argument is a president is above the law to next level stuff. really nuts. arguing that a coup could be official presidential business and that there is nothing wrong with ordering one. we will dive into that and what that means for our democracy next.

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♪♪ hi, again, everyone. it's 5:00 everyone. we are drinking from the news fire hoses today. we turn to this story. in all of modern american history, there have been few days, if any, where the united states supreme court has heard arguments more radical, more extreme than today. the only question now is who that says more about. trump, the team making the arguments, or the judicial body that heard them. this morning and stretching into this afternoon, the highest court in the land considered the scope of presidential immunity, how far it goes and what constitutes an official act. you heard what trump's team

contended in front of a lower court, the idea of of using seal team 6 to assassinate a political opponent is within the realm of immunity. in front of the supreme court today, supreme court justice kagan took that example further.

>> not for nothing, but if he could have, he would have. right? on january 6. make no mistake, that's exactly why he likes orban so much. that's authoritarian. an alarming position to take, given the way donald trump showed us he wanted to rule. he just needed the right people in place. he has shown us his eagerness to strain the boundaries, not just of what is legal, but of what is

moral. he and his legal team are gaslighting the trump base by suggesting a president does wield such power outside the scope of any legal accountability. listen to the way the supreme court justice jackson addressed trump's attorney on his argument there could be a chilling affect on presidents if they didn't have absolute immunity.

>> and yet, all that is part of what every american, regardless of their ideology, should feel outraged by. after listening to what happened today. because lest we forget, the supreme court is considering this because donald trump asked them to. this has done grave damage to our democracy. it's where we start the hour with our experts and friends. dial lithwick is back. and maia wylie is here and ian bassen is with us. also with us, andrew weissmann. thanks for sticking around.

what did you make of what you heard at the supreme court today? >> shocking arguments from the president, obviously, if he is correct, we don't have the democracy we thought we had. even more concerning is the conduct of the court in this case. they didn't need to take the case at all, because the appellate court had a very convincing and sound decision. when mr. smith asked them to decide earlier once they gave an indication, they refused to do it. they have dragged it out. it looks like -- i hope i'm wrong -- that rather than decide the case before them, they are going off on tangents that will lead to further delay. i have to think about my friend and former colleague liz cheney. it can't be in our system that a president who tried to overturn the government to stay in power will not be tried before the

next election. this is really outrageous. >> congresswoman, knowing the details of the fruits of your investigation, these weren't hypothetical questions at all, were they? he has promised pardons to people to carry out his policies when it comes to immigration. we are in post-extrajudicial donald trump territory. i thought there was almost a kabuki almost to the questions and answers. >> well, it was disappointing. certainly, trump has always made clear what he intends to do. the problem is when we don't believe him. he has indicated an intention to be dictator on day one. he said that he intends to -- these are his words -- terminate parts of the constitution.

he doesn't intend to live under the rule of law. he is a grave threat to the constitutional order. it looks like his partners in crime will be the supreme court. >> what do you think of what you saw today? >> i was one of those chumps, i guess, andrew copped to it in an earlier segment, who believed that the court was partisan. we have seen that for a long time. i didn't think they were lawless. i was one of the folks who said, you know, i don't think there's more than three votes for lawlessness. i didn't think that some of the justices who appeared today to bat away any serious reckoning with january 6 and they did that in the anderson trial, too, that colorado ballot trial, they don't want to think about the events of january 6. they said so explicitly today.

gorsuch, kavanaugh were like, no, no, no, this isn't about that. we are making rules for the ages. we have to deal with thorny constitutional questions. in declining to look at or see what justices jackson and kagan and sotomayor were saying over about what happened that day, what trump actually did, they flipped the whole thing on its head. it turned into a deeply, deeply strange referendum on whether it's worse to go after donald trump for what he did or to allow rogue prosecutors to meanly deep stately viciously over prosecute presidents with this. i counted five votes that we would not want to chill presidents. because they might get mad after, as justice alito said, and refuse to lose office. we have to be careful of letting

overzealous, hyperpartisan prosecutors beat up on them. the notion, as you heard in the quote from justice jackson, that that is a scarier prospect than the stuff that we have already heard from donald trump and we are hearing now about a next iteration of donald trump. the notion that the real fear here is the witch hunt is bone chilling and deeply surprising to those of us who were institutionalists right down to the wire. >> i don't feel -- i feel a little redeemed. i never -- i never -- the schism between who they are and who they reveal themselves to be, and the hope that people projected on to them, is endearing. they are paranoid, insulated,

thin-skinned, brittle partisan actors. one is married to a ringleader for the lies behind the insurrection. was he there? did he have to be there? did he talk? what did clarence thomas do today? >> he asked the first question. should he be there? no. note that what has happened to mark meadows in the state of arizona and his wife who was texting with meadows, this is unconscionable that he is on the bench, that he hasn't recused under him having a conflict of interest. he should not hear this case. he was there. he asked questions. i put him in the bucket of people who have no interest in discussing either the events of january 6 or the absolutely frightening possibility that donald trump will not be held account to that. the insanity starts at the top.

the insanity is we don't have a mechanism for forcing a justice who clearly should not have been hearing that case from hearing that case. >> it's wacky if we think of ourselves as a shining city on a hill. >> well, look, i will seize any opportunity to associate myself with dahlia and andrew, even if it's in error. we could have agreed that for thomas and alito, i'm not surprised. those two long ago traded in their black robes for red hats. for some of the other ones, it was surprising. in one particular way that i think lofgren hinted at, conservative supreme court justices say their job is limited to decide the case before them. they are not legislators. they are not making big pronounce pronouncements. what was surprising and amazing today is they did everything but

address the case before them, which as you pointed out at the beginning, was this is a case about whether a president should be immune from prosecution and accountability for trying to overturn the results of an election. that's the case. what i hope will happen before the ultimate opinion is written and hopefully quickly, is there will be five votes to say, whatever the outer bounds of immunity, they don't cover that. there's a chance for the court to do that. i guess i will be the fool again if they don't go there. i hope they do. >> the supreme court plunged in terms of the public's respect for it in regard faster and farther than the media, and congress and any statehouse, any state elected officials. one of the things that makes them different when it comes to january 6 is that trump's january 6 cases, he lost 60 out of 61 of them. those were judges appoints by

trump in some instances, by bush, by clinton and by obama. 60 to 1 in terms of the record. you have a federal judge, david carter in california, early on saying, more likely than not trump committed felonies. all that was left to figure out in the intervening four years now was whether or not he would be accountable for it. there's a schism also between the justices -- their questions before they make any decision and the judges who were on the record about the conduct on january 6. >> yep. [ laughter ] >> why? >> look, let's back up and talk about one of the reasons why people don't have a lot of faith in this court. it's because this is the first supreme court since we have had the second reconstruction in this country, the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s that started actually making sure the constitution applied.

it's the first court that has actually taken away from the american people fundamental rights, the right to abortion, for example. voting rights, it has greatly eroded. it's how it was constituted. this is going well for trump because he appointed the justices. that's something you wouldn't hear a lawyer say out loud for very good reason. it's not supposed to be true, nor is it considered politic to say it. in this case, i think the american public is looking at these justices -- you make the point about thomas and the fact he should be recused. he shouldn't be sitting up there. we also have -- we have the fact that gorsuch would not be on that court if it weren't that mitch mcconnell made up a rule that didn't exist that said obama didn't get a hearing on his nominee for a vacancy a year

before an election. aimy coney barrett should not be on that court because if that rule that didn't exist had existed, she would have been a few months outside of his -- that -- all i'm saying is, everybody is looking at this saying, the court itself is rigged. if you think about the democratic processes by which we have usually had bipartisan agreement about how the supreme court is constituted, and what it actually does. when you get to this point, when you get to this point -- >> what do you expect? >> what do you expect? >> it's a smart point. congresswoman, what are people who were hoping to see all the evidence that jack smith has gathered -- you mentioned liz cheney. she talked about the people that jack smith was able to reach that you weren't because they defied congressional subpoenas. they weren't forthcoming. what is the prospect for the

american people seeing that evidence before the election? >> it's hard to know. certainly, we will wait and see what the court does. it's possible they could lift the stay and make a decision that whatever immunity would possibly exist. in this case, there is no immunity. we do have state court actions. the indictment in arizona is interesting. obviously, the former president is an unindicted co-conspirator. we don't know why unindicted. potentially, they are waiting for the immunity ruling as well. there's a seven-year statute of limitations for those crimes. he could be added. we may get quick action there. the state courts seem to move faster than the federal courts. the distressing thing -- those of us -- all the lawyers are

considered officers of the court. we are trained to believe in the impartiality of the supreme court. i have to say, our faith has been shaken. they look corrupt. the process used to appoint them was rigged. they appear to be partisan hacks. it's a distressing situation for our american democracy. >> wow. dia when we will know what's going to happen next? >> i think a lot is going to turn on -- i agree with the folks. ian said, it doesn't look like the maximalist view of immunity had a lot of takers today. i think there were a lot of takers for some version or other of kicking this back on remand and figuring out some technical legal question, whether it's

what are the boundaries of official acts versus private acts or what the mental state requirement of the president would be. in other words, i think there's a lot of interest from a lot of the justices for taking another look at this before allowing it to go forward. again, this is an appeal on a narrow question as ian said of, does the president have this kind of absolute immunity? these are the kinds of things that are to get sorted out after. there was an appetite for sending that back. what that means is that this is more delay. move delay which means that a trial that should have started, that should be well underway, doesn't start maybe -- the hope was that it would start after the court ruled at the end of june. now it looks like that is vanishingly possible. so i think the scenario we are looking at one way or another is

almost the court knocks out something quickly and that doesn't look like it's on the table given the breadth of objections we heard today. i think the court hands down something in june that may kick it back for more findings, more determinations. which means that as everyone is saying, i don't think we get a trial in judge chutkan's court before the election. >> extraordinary. thank you so much for being part of our special coverage today. the table sticks around longer. when we come back, we will return to that drama-filled day at court in the election interference hush money trial. lisa ruben was in the courthouse. she will join us with a live report on what happens next. later, what could have been our top story on any other day, a host of trump allies, including rudy giuliani and mark meadows have been indicted for

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so since we have been on the air, an explosive and historic and shocking day of testimony in a manhattan courtroom came to an end. testimony by david pecker says he considers trump a friend. shined a light on the catch and kill conspiracy he and the ex-president entered into and employed to help donald trump's campaign and help donald trump

interfere in the 2016 presidential election. pecker spoke of paying for the story of a former playboy model's affair with trump. talked about how he drew the line, said, i'm not a bank in the stormy daniels bombshell case, forcing michael cohen to come up with the money from the boss, donald trump, to pay to silence her. pecker acknowledged his payments to kill stories were payments he knew at the time were unlawful and illegal. he detailed accounts of his conversations with trump's former fixer michael cohen, who was desperate to bury negative stories about his former boss who was at the time the republican presidential candidate. david pecker's cross examination by trump's team will continue. it started a little this afternoon, but it continues tomorrow. court resumes in the morning. the judge announced at the end of today's proceedings that this

wednesday he will hold a hearing on what -- next wednesday, of fresh allegations on the gag order on donald trump. let's bring in lisa ruben. she was in the courthouse for us all day long. lisa, just start at what jump out at you. we will wind backward from there. >> i want to talk about the cross examination of david pecker. we can go back to explosive moments in his direct examination. i thought that one of trump's attorneys did a really nice job cross examining pecker and poking holes in his testimony, enough that jurors might have doubts, both about his motives and how typical some of things that he and trump and cohen are alleged to have done together. let me go through some of the themes that he elicited in a very fast-paced commanding

cross. he elicited from pecker that his partnership was always about money. he said that ami frequently engaged in source agreements that had non-disclosure and exclusivity provisions. the kind of agreement that mcdougal entered into. he said ami got pecker to admit ami engaged in hundreds of thousands of source agreements that had those. he got pecker to admit ami paid for stories they chose not to run. here is where i think things got the most damaging. pecker gave us a snapshot that trump was not the first rodeo on

catch and kill. he talked about arnold schwarzenegger. during his run for governor, they had an arrangement. schwarzenegger would affiliate himself with two magazines pecker was in the acquire of acquiring. in exchange for that continued association of being an editor at large for those two magazines, david pecker agreed he would bring to schwarzenegger in advance stories negative about him that he would help to bury and indeed he admitted he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars doing so. at one point, he admitted he transported schwarzenegger's -- let's call him the baby mama, the woman with whom he had an affair and then had a child outside of marriage. pecker agreed to move this woman to hawaii so she wouldn't be a distraction. the point that he was trying to get pecker to admit to was not only had he done this before, he had done worse and more for

other people without consequences legally or with respect to campaign authorities. he g pecker to admit that schwarzenegger was far from the only person for whom he had done it. he had done it for one other candidate. for the benefit of clients, hollywood stars, and then mayor rahm emanuel. both got a lot of damaging admissions, including the theme we did this all the time and sometimes we did far more for other people without consequences. to create the impression, maybe there wasn't anything all that awry about this. >> andrew weissmann, it seems with the prosecutors, they were girding for a juror accepting

this. that's a story told by trump's defense team. what i understand the schwarzenegger to be, to serve as knowledge of illegality. the schwarzenegger testimony isn't about everybody does it. it's about, this is when i learned it was a crime and hired a kick-ass election interference lawyer. they have campaign finance lawyers because of -- what's illegal isn't the conduct. what's illegal is the money. >> yeah. absolutely. i view this as, there's two things. there's nothing wrong with -- when you deal with a celebrity and you are doing catch and kill, it might be disgusting, it might be something where you go this is outrageous and bad journalism, but it's irrelevant. all of that is a sideshow. that's what defense -- i've been a defense lawyer. that's their job is to look over. the fact that you might have committed a crime before with someone else is not a defense. >> on the criminal question. >> on the criminal question.

here the issue is not that you did this before. that's not a big admission. i don't think it's a big admission to say, aren't you trying to maximize your profit? >> aren't you a tabloid? >> it was in a campaign where he knew and said, i knew this was illegal. >> let me read this. did you report that ami made $150,000 payment to mcdougal? no, we did not. why did ami make this purchase of mcdougal's store? so it wouldn't be purchased by any other organization. we didn't want the story to embarrass donald trump or hurt the campaign. he is not in trouble because he engages in checkbook journalism. he is in trouble because it's an illegal campaign contribution. >> right. the actual crime is the false business records to further conceal it. they would have scored some points if they tried to say, you

had that in the other cases if they're trying to make a selective prosecution argument. this is apples, oranges. the only thing that was a similar apple is not something to be proud of. which is literally saying, you engaged in the same illegal scheme with arnold schwarzenegger is not a defense. >> what did you think? >> i agree with andrew. nobody is thinking in that jury box that david pecker is on the stand because he is a standup guy, he is a law abiding. everyone knows he is up there because he made a deal to avoid his own prosecution. >> three of them -- two of them. >> exactly. that's transparent to the jury. none of that is the issue. it is -- i agree with lisa, that it's what you need to do as a defense attorney. you need to distract and do everything to say, don't think

this is a big deal or look over here. the thing is that one of the things that david pecker already said, testified credibly to is, look, i was happy to do this as long as i was making money. when it came out of my pocket and it wasn't good for my business, that's where i sent them packing. >> i'm not a bank. lisa, thank you so much for being in there, for your great reports. andrew, thank you. on behalf of everybody that has been benefitted from your brilliance. we see you later, is that right? >> yes. >> i'm sorry. sorry, not sorry. maya sticks around. up next, more. donald trump has another new name. unindicted co-conspirator number one after arizona charged more than a dozen of his allies in the trump coup plot. that story is next. ry is next

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now, $20/hour is here. thanks to governor newsom and leaders in sacramento, we can lift workers out of poverty. stop the race to the bottom in the fast-food industry. and build a california for all of us. thank you governor and our california lawmakers for fighting for what matters. our president, donald j. trump, of the state of floor, number of votes, 11. for vice president michael r. pence and the state of indiana, number of votes, 11. [ applause ] >> fake electors announcing the president. if you are going to commit what would turn out to be a crime, maybe don't film it.

if you do, don't post it on social media. those were the 11 fake electors in a video they filmed and posted. signing a false, fraudulent certificate saying trump won a state he lost. they have been indicted for exactly the conduct you saw in the video. along with the top tier of the trump campaign and trump's allies who helped mastermind the entire fake elector scheme. 18 people so far have been charged in connection with trump's effort to overturn his defeat in the state of arizona. they include key trump aides rudy giuliani and former trump attorney christina bob. she was just named the rnc's election integrity chair. these people have no sense of humor. while trump has not been charged, he is described in the charging documents as unindicted

co-conspirator one. the catalyst for the whole plot to overturn his election defeat. representatives for meadows and giuliani deny that they have been charged with doing that. it was revealed that trump was also an unindicted co-conspiracy in michigan as well. mark alias joins me. with me at the table, ari berman is here. maya is also back. i want to talk about arizona. i want to do something i try not to do. i want to talk about this. you feel like you and ari have been on the show talking about the lies behind january 6 and

the insidious voter suppression laws that were rammed through afterward, since the earliest days after 2020. the important thing at this point seems to be even if arizona prosecutes the fake electors, it's not going to save us. no one is coming to save us. people have to understand the tactics that donald trump and the republicans are using. they want us to feel overwhelmed. but the only way to make sure they don't succeed in their wild criminal delusions is to win elections. isn't that where we are, mark? >> absolutely. democracy is on the docket. democracy is also on the ballot. we can't lose sight of the fact that the way in which in the long run we are going to save ourselves donald trump and his ilk is by having people turn out to vote, having them vote and winning elections. i do want to say that it's not an insignificant obstacle to

people doing that that we continue to see republican-controlled legislatures around the country enact more creative, harsher voter suppression tactics. we are living in a split screen. just before we went on air, my team won an important care in arizona that's going to preserve drop boxes and maybe fewer ballots get rejected for signature miscatching. we won a case in montana where that state was trying to enact new voter suppression laws. these battles are going on on the one hand with less pomp and circumstance. on the other hand, we are watching in the u.s. supreme court say, my client could throw a coup, they could assassinate their opponent and there would be immunity. the justices, some of them, are are like, that seems about right. >> it's both and.

it's the legal rapid response that your team does valiantly all day every day and it's what happened at the supreme court. voter suppression will be small beans if they feel like they have been given a green light for a successful coup. what i thought was amazing about the supreme court was, i know the style and the cadence is hypothetical. these are not hypothetical. if trump had his people at the pentagon and more jeffrey clarks at doj, he would have done what they were hypothetically saying he should be immune from. >> yeah. i thought one of the most distressing parts of the argument -- like you said, there's a cadence to it. one of the most distressing parts of the argument was when justice alito kept trying to shut down michael dreeben's discussion of the facts of the case and what donald trump tried to do here. you saw justice alito keep trying to say, i don't want to talk about this case. i want to talk about the hypothetical world. as you point out, there will be

a merging of the hypothetical world and the facts of this case if donald trump comes to power again. everyone who said, don't take donald trump literally, they were proven wrong. donald trump should have been taken literally. donald trump tried to overturn a free and fair election through tactics that led to violence and an attempted insurrection at the nation's capitol. if the courts retreat to some ivory tower theoretical approach, then the next time he is going to be more empowered. you are right, against that split screen, we have to continue to fight day in, day out for voters to try to make sure they can vote and have their ballots counted. >> what's amazing is that when we look back on this time, it probably represents in modern times the most aggressive pushback and sort of

retrenchment taking away the right to vote from the most people of the most secure ballots. drop boxes have the most signature requirements in most states. the kind of voters that they are targeting aren't even secretly targeted. they are flagrantly targeting people that republicans don't think vote for them anymore. >> that's right. it's a broader counterrevolution against this. we saw the backlash to obama and biden's elections. they try to overturn the election. they insight an insurrection. when that fails, the goal of the republican party is, let's institutionalize the insurrection for all of these undemocratic means. what we have is a political system that's already undemocratic. we have an electoral college, a u.s. senate that violate one person one vote. went institutions that are more a product of the undemocratic

systems. the supreme court which we are talking about today. it's a supreme court majority where five of six conservative justices are reported by republican presidents, confirmed by senators elected by a minority of americans, pushed through by people like mitch mcconnell to do this very thing. to green light authoritarianism, a coup, voter suppression. accountability is important. the most insidious example is regrouping. they are basically trying to succeed where they failed in 2020. they are saying, we are organized. we have more money. we have more think tanks. we have taken over all things. >> changed laws. >> that was the first thing, change the laws. they are trying to succeed where they failed and make their authoritarianism make their

minority rule impossible to reverse. it's 2024. >> they are running on it by telling them, we told everyone we are doing this. we have to sneak in a quick break. we will be right back. have to break. we will be right back.

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threats to democracy we face. it tries to give historical perspective. it talks about the crisis of democracy that dates back to the founding fathers, when they created institutions that weren't democratic. layered on top of those are this new anti-democratic movement that's using things like voter suppression and gerrymandering and dark money and the rigging of the courts to try to maintain power despite being a minority faction. it talks about the fight back against minority rule and how we need to build a vibrant, pro-democracy movement in the country. on the federal level and state level. movement in this country on the federal and state level. right now we are in a pivotal fight. before the civil war, during the civil rights movement and i think we're at this other inflection point today where so many fundamental rights are on the line. >> whew.

well, you've been black all your life. i just say this -- >> put that in the next book. >> i'll put that as a blurb on your next prospectus. it is impossible to sit in any -- any civil rights leader in this country of any ilk, we're multi-racial, multiple backgrounds, all of this for us has always been in the leadership conference of civil and human rights has always been a fight for the perfection of this union, for a democracy fighting to win and ensure that people can vote. we only got there in 1965 with the voting rights act of 1965. we're looking at a retrenchment that started before barack obama, let's be clear. the reality is the demographic shift of the country to ari's point. the fact that the demography itself, we are a much more

diverse country now than even 20, 30 years ago. that is what is easily manipulated by folks that want to rig the rules because they want to rig the outcome and they're the minority, but it's also why the court matters so much here, right? >> right. >> because the court and what we've seen from justice roberts back in 2013 said, you know, you all haven't really proved that discrimination happened. it's never stopped. it is the fact that the civil rights movement has for decades been fighting to ensure enforcement of the laws. there has never been a moment in time in the history of this country where civil rights lawyers and civil rights movement have not had to fight to protect the right to vote and when we do we protect it for every single american. >> mark, that's what's under attack now. >> yeah. and so let me put this in very concrete terms. you know, for all of the republicans, justices who say

this is ancient history, this year we, my team lit at this gated in alabama because alabama denied black voters fair districts in violation of the voting rights act. louisiana, the state of louisiana denied black voters fair districts in violation of federal law of the voting rights act. the state of georgia denied voters fair districts by violating the voting rights act. the state of south carolina, the naacp and in that state south carolina racially gerrymandered to the disadvantage of black voters. the idea that somehow these are fights of the past just belie the reality where we are. all of those cases were lit at this gated. all of those cases involve contemporary a beings of republican legislatures and all of them were lit at this gated under a much more cramped understanding of what is even the voting rights act even protects. so this fight for voting rights,

this fight against voter suppression, this fight against election subversion is the fight of our times. it is not necessarily the fight that everyone in their audience would pick but it is the fight they had. if we don't defeat authoritarianism, if we don't defeat minority rule, if we are not able to save our democracy and expand it in the future, then there will be no future for our children and our children's it children in a democracy in this country. >> ari, do you find that this is something that voters are thinking about? i mean, i -- it's a hard thing to poll for, right? it comes up more than it ever has. this democracy was a top three issue in the mid-terms, but it is so -- it's this braided web now on the right. how do voters experience this? >> sure. the right is trying to capture the language of democracy to justify all their antidemocratic things otherwise it wouldn't be so easy for them to do so.

voters do care about this when joe biden talked about it, they said, why are you talking about democracy? why aren't you talking about gas prices and inflation. voters care about their fundamental rights. we have to link the rigging of the democratic process to the rigging of all other rights. if we have a rigged democracy, we're going to have a supreme court that takes away roe v. wade, a supreme court that strikes down reasonable gun control, a supreme court that allows polluted air and water. everything people care about is linked to whether our political system works. if our politics are rigged, everything are is going to be rigged too to borrow trump's favorite terminology. democracy affects everything. we have a minority faction in the republican party trying to overthrow the fundamental norms of american democracy and the fundamental tenant of american democracy which says democracy is facing the consent of the governed. the republican party wants to do

the opposite. they want a shrinking radicalized white minority to overthrow the government. that's why it's a key issue in 2024 and as we head forward to as maya said to a changing demographic and a minority/majority nation. >> it's a changing feel. you feel like you're on a knife's edge. you hold your breath. it could go towards something that doesn't look like democracy or towards something hanging on a thread now. >> we're really here now. it might feel that way every time but now we're actually -- >> this is really is it. thank you so much for spending time with us. ari's book is called "minority rule, the right-wing attack on the will of the people and the fight to resist it." it is out right now. we will be right back. and get six months of disney bundle on them! and it is all good.

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quick reminder, we'll have much, much more on all the incredible news today. oral arguments at the supreme court, of course. the testimony of david pecker and much more with special coverage beginning at 8 p.m. eastern. rachel maddow and all of our primetime friends will be here for the coverage. i'll be back. now the beat with ari melber. hi, ari. >> we have a lot to get to. i will see you at 8. >> welcome to the beat. i'm ari melber. these are extraordinary times. we're watching history unfold at the supreme court which heard arguments about putting a president on trial. historic, unprecedented, all the words are true about this