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tv   The Beat With Ari Melber  MSNBC  April 25, 2024 3:00pm-4:00pm PDT

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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 one.
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no other president has been indicted like this. trump's lawyers arguing he should be immune, basically totally immune because he was president during those efforts. that is a new relatively made up claim which they lost unanimously before the respected d.c. court of appeals. keep that in mind. that is the recent precedent and context for today, and you may remember that was the now infamous hearing where the trump lawyer openly claimed that as president trump could have a license to kill american opponents. that was the kind of chilling talk that many, many people across the spectrum rebuked then. that kind of talk was back today with grave questions about murder and coups and trump's lawyer saying it's okay or it all depends. >> let's say this president, who ordered the military to stage a
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coup. >> orders the military or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts. >> i think it would depend on the circumstances. >> it would depend on the hypothetical. >> it raises questions. >> one might argue that it isn't plausibly legal to order seal team six yet the president uses it in an absolutely outrageous manner. >> the court has to make decisions not just applying to president trump but also decisions that will apply to future presidents. >> a president is entitled for total personal gain to use the trappings of his office without facing criminal liability? >> his novel theory would immunize former presidents for criminal liability for bribery, treason, sedition, murder. >> here's what that means in plain english. i, donald trump, can do anything i want. >> there's nothing to suggest that presidents need immunity because they've managed to do
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just fine for over 200 years. >> those are just some of the high points today. constitution does not say ex-presidents have immunity. never has. before trump no one even claimed that. after trump the courts now are full of prosecutions of his supporters and his aides. more indictments came just last night. and this is the obvious fact here. the insurrection was a public crime spree. it was televised. it was live streamed by some of its participants and now many of them are sitting in prison or waiting in trial. the related election plots are just the same. many justices seemed almost oblivious to that current reality and threat. today was a historic day for the supreme court in the sense that we will be reading about this in history books. off the top tonight i'm going to show you why and give you the breakdown. today was also a depressing day at this supreme court as its trump appointees and some other
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members seemed oblivious to this reality of this insurrection era. oblivious to the doj's victorious sedition convictions which not everyone may follow but judges and supreme court justices are supposed to track that. those people who stormed the capitol got their day in court and many of them were convicted by juries of their peer. other justices did say how shall they supposed to punish a coup. >> let's say this president who ordered the military to stage a coup. he's no longer president, he wasn't impeached, he couldn't be impeached, but he ordered the military to stage a coup and you're saying that's an official act. >> i think that would depend -- >> that's immune? >> it would depend. >> official act is a stand in
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for them saying it's okay. it depends. bring definition it's not okay. a military coup would be against the official governance of a nation. if you can do coup, can you do murder? today obama appointee justice sotomayor pushed on that violent, grim authoritarian logic. >> if the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity? >> it would depend on the hypothetical. we could well see that could be an official -- >> there you have it out in the open. the current republican party's
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nominee lawyer defends murder and they defend it when they say it's an official act. says that should be something that the president can do. license to kill. total immunity. so here we are. don't say they didn't warn you. we are hearing some of the most extreme authoritarian arguments ever presented to the supreme court in the modern era. you could score one for transparency saying they're being pretty clear and transparent about what they're defending in the past and what they would do in the future. inside the courtroom jack smith watched a veteran lit gator he picked and sent in for this pivotal case, probably the most pivotal case since u.s./phoenix. he took a 2x4 to this trump
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defensive' been telling you about saying this made up immunity if you did it would protect and therefore encourage murder, treason, sedition and, again, sedition is, of course, what those jan 6 attackers were convicted of. >> his novel theory would immunize former presidents for criminal liability for bribery, treason, sedition, murder and here, conspiring to use fraud to overturn the results of an election and perpetuate himself in power. such presidential immunity has no foundation in the constitution. >> that's true. the justices know if they say there's an immunity here it will be a new thing. not an originalist thing from the original understanding of the constitution. i mentioned those conservative
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views except for apparently when they don't. it was no immunity under the law for nixon. he took a pardon to avoid indictment, a basic sort of high school history class point against trump that many people have thought about. justice jackson raised it very bluntly and you'll be able to listen here while other justices appeared to root for trump and mused about their opinion that pardoning nixon may have turned out to be a good thing. remember, your personal opinion about a thing that a president could do, ford chose to pardon nixon, he could have not chosen to pardon nixon, that opinion is not supposed to be how the court resolves the narrow legal question of whether the doj puts trump on legal trial or not. >> what was up with the pardon for president nixon? >> i think it -- >> if everybody thought presidents couldn't be prosecuted, what was that about? >> gosh, nixon versus
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fitzgerald, that's something courts shouldn't get engaged in because presidents have all manner of motives. >> president ford's pardon very controversial in the moment. the better decisions in presidential history. >> won't the predictable result be that presidents in the last couple of days of office are going to pardon themselves? >> the last question is pretty cynical. alito saying if you allowed presidents to pardon themselves, wouldn't they do it? pardons are for criminals. no president has tried to pardon himself so it is odd for a sitting justice to ask if that would be the norm. odd is a diplomatic word. it also sounds like yoga level backbending to find some way to get trump off the hook again. now, the court's republican majority was warmer to trump's arguments which unanimously
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rejected them. critics say that shows the partisanship in the maga court overseen by justice rob werts that is unable to curb this red partisanship. that doesn't mean there are no good arguments for the legal claim of some kind of immunity, limited presidential immunity, and i want you to understand, it was 2 1/2 hours, one of the strongest arguments for that side came from a question also by justice a let toempt he asked if a president's bad ideas and acts can be prosecuted, that's what jack smith is saying, it should be able to be part of the case, then what about war time acts, president roosevelt inturning japanese. they were fighting the nazis, fighting the japanese,
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everything was on the line but later it was found to be unlawful by the supreme court itself. as the war tempers cooled it's widely viewed as a racist and grave injustice. so alito asks given that history, wouldn't the door be open to prosecuting fdr or virtually any president for such official acts? >> president franklin d. roos developments decision to intern japanese americans during world war ii? couldn't that have been charged under 18 usc 241 conspiracy against civil rights? >> today, yes. president roosevelt made that decision with the advice of his attorney general, that's a layer -- >> is that really true? i thought attorney general bedell thought that there was really no threat of sabotage as did j. edgar hoover. >> lawyers love to nerd out. of course, the point's not what the ag said at the time or what
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hoover said, the point is not whether he -- it was signed off but whether there is some outer limit, however far, on prosecuting a president for those official acts which might have been taken in war time good faith in one moment and later look like a war crime or a civil rights violation. that's a good question. now the jack smith rebuttal is this ain't world war ii and donald trump's efforts were not on behalf of the u.s., not even a good faith but mistaken effort at national security, they were against the u.s. and its lawful election and its president-elect and his incoming administration at the time. big difference. now one of the lowest moments today also came from justice alito who asked a question suggesting that maybe america should just appease coup leaders. don't upset them because if you do or they're worried about being prosecuted for actual crimes, they might try to stay in power, stage a coup, end
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democracy. bonkers, but i'm going to play for you the extreme premise of this question where justice alito asked if a president worried about prosecution might be more likely to cling to power illegally. he said a stable democratic society requires that a candidate who loses an election, even a close one, even a hotly contested one, leave office peacefully if that candidate is the incumbent. let's take a listen. >> if an incumbent who loses a very close hotly contested election, knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement, but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes
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the functioning of our country as a democracy? >> no, it will not. justice alito's very intelligent so based on my observation it's more likely that he is trying to float this wild idea rather than really embracing it, because to embrace the premise of that question, they ask all kinds of questions, but the premise of that question is, gosh, we better be really afraid of people who might cling to power if they don't like being held accountable after they leave office after losing a lawful election so let's not go down this road. it's called appeasement. it's dangerous when you do it to enemies foreign or domestic. why justice alito is using his perch on the supreme court to raise that today only he can answer. but it is literally the opposite of the oath judges take to talk like that. now where is the court headed? i just went through a lot of the key points from this argument. supreme court's conservative
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majority does seem poised to narrow the scope of the whole criminal case against trump. that's how "the new york times" viewed it today reporting on what happened and basically make it hard to conduct the trial before the '24 election. they also noted trump's lawyer pressed an extreme version of the former president's argument to stage a coup could well be immune from prosecution. i quote that just to give you a sense of how this is playing. this is where we are in america right now. we are just almost normalized or casually discussing the talk of murder and coups. there are many places in the world, in history and right now, if you were in russia where that's just part of life. you go on, soldier through life and know putin does murder russians. that's what he does. but is that where we want to be here? delays alone will give trump most of what he wanted in this case because he can punt this past this election year and based on what the court said on
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the bench today, looks like he's going to get at least that, based on what they said. but before we bring in our guest tonight, i'm going longer than usual, i hope that's okay with you, i do want to put this in the wider framework of the problems we're facing because today is legally a dark day for this supreme court in what the justices didn't say and didn't deal with and didn't focus on. very little of today's arguments dealt directly with the horrific insurrection at the center of this case, which is the doj, special counsel jack smith's case against defendant trump, which relates to a now convicted sedition. so the longer you listen to these arguments today the more you kind of got turned around from this case and this reality. for all the hypotheticals about the future or what would happen with future presidents, all the
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history about presidents not named defendant trump the justices didn't focus much on the korean there is a first ever federal prosecution of a president. he is the first one to try to steal an election and stop the peaceful transfer of power. you know this because he did it in public. he is legally presumed innocent. he deserves a trial. he might beat the trial. that's how we do it here under the rule of law, but that's how we got here. not about hypotheticals and war time overreach done on behalf of the united states however wrongly. not a president in the middle of their term trying to govern, but a defeated president awaiting a president-elect and for the first time in our history, don't forget it, violently stopping a peaceful transition of power with a sedition that's now been convicted. that's some facts that i've put together for you, but i'm also
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going to quote from a long-time republican judge luttig. he testified before congress and he followed the constitution when he was dealing with outgoing president pence. he observes how the court largely avoided these points i'm mentioning today with arguments that discussed everything but the specific question presented. if a former president may be prosecuted for attempting to remain in power notwithstanding the election of his successor by the american people and, thus, depriving his lawfully elected successor of the powers of the presidency and preventing the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in american history. true. and while the court spent hours, i mean literally hours pondering how a coup might involve official acts, luttig notes that -- he knows it, too, i should say, but he notes, he wrote this today that attacking
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congress is not part of the president's job, to which we say, duh. and also, sad that we have to do this kind of constitutional math. but he wrote, it is not a core power or function of the president to ensure the proper certification of the next president, the one in this case who beat him, president-elect biden, by the congress. that core point is not very complicated. let me say it in english as i round out my reporting on today's case. breaking the law is not enforcing it. stealing elections is not protecting them. committing voter fraud and elector fraud is not election integrity. duh, again. now some day there could be a tough case where the court does weigh potential prosecutorial overreach against a president
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who was just doing their job or prosecuting a difficult war with second guessing afterward, but no disinterested expert seriously thinks that's the case here. today some conservative justices claim they have to step in though because there needs to be a rule for the future, not about defendant trump, they said, but for the future later hypothetical cases. that's what they've got to do. well, as a long-time court watcher, i call bull. there's never been an insurrection like this before. the legal task at hand is how to prosecute it, not to anxiously, neurotically cogutate how to prevent an overreach. some day there might be one. without dealing with this sedition, let's worry about the future overreach. the people worried about it are
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the people who were appointed by the guy who did this. they kept insisting this isn't about him. when you say this isn't about the money, it sounds like it's about the money. this isn't about the guy who appointed me and our alliance and we might help him get out of his jam and he might become president again so he can get more appointees on the court, well, you sound pretty guilty in your mind. now if there is a later case, this is the kind of court that would probably take that case anyway so they wouldn't even be stuck with some old rule, like okay to the coup prosecution but the next one is out of bounds. oh, but we already made this rule. does anyone think they're sitting out future big presidential cases? they'll say what they said in this case and the trump ballot case. they'd take the case, sometimes they'd take it right in the middle of everything and say
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it's too important for them not to weigh in, and then finally i'm just disentangling their logic, just tonight since they made the points today, would they then be bound by the case. okay for the coup prosecution but we're worried about a later overreach. we're bound by the narrower earlier version of what we said? who knows. they certainly did not feel bound by roe v. wade and they testified under oath they would uphold that precedent. suh, forgive me for going on for some time. arguments were longer than usual, approaching three hours. while i mentioned there were some decent points made, some tricky questions. at the core what we saw today was, best we could tell, many members of the supreme court shutting their eyes to the insurrection we live through. yes, lady justice is blindfolded but the justices -- we've fwt a lot going on on the set.
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lady justice is supposed to be blindfolded but the justices are supposed to see the facts. if you can't see the facts in front of you about this maga insurrection era, how can we possibly rely on you to prevent the future coups that we're told are being planned? i have two very special guests on the law and the obvious politics when we're back in 90 seconds. i have upped my dish game auntie, in that dishwasher? watch me platinum plus gives you the highest standard of clean, even in your machine. clean enough for you? yeah! scrape. load. done. cascade platinum plus. shingles. some describe it as an intense burning sensation, or an unbearable itch. this painful, blistering rash can disrupt your life for weeks and could make it hard to be there for your loved ones. shingles could also lead to serious complications that can last for years. if you're over 50, the virus that causes shingles is likely already inside you. and as you age,
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an indictment was unsealed charging donald j. trump with conspiring to defraud the united states, conspiring to disenfranchise voters. >> if he makes a mistake, he makes a mistake. he's subject to the criminal laws just like anybody else. you don't think he's in a special, a peculiarly precarious position? >> there you have it. we are joined by former u.s. attorney joyce vance. joyce, i walked through all of this, some of what we heard today and some of the problems. your thoughts. >> well, i thought you were dead on the money, ari, because so many people expected going into this argument to hear if not agreement among the justices then at least agreement that what happened on january 6th was something remarkable in our country, that was separate and apart from other acts that we might talk about in hypotheticals and we really didn't get that today.
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justice sotomayor today tried to float a distinction for what sorts of acts might be unconscionable and she made the distinction when mr. sauer was talking about other acts that could possibly be implicated, possible wrongs by barack obama or by president biden where he suggested that down at the border crossings could be prosecuteable. justice sotomayor said the difference is what donald trump did is for personal gain. >> yeah. >> what the other presidents did was to lead the country. unfortunately that distinction got no traction during this argument. perhaps it will but that which could have been a bright line could have been today. >> chay, we try to think about who we go to. sometimes we talk about who we think of as sources, meaning not the expert but involved, when we
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talk about cases we go to all lawyers to teach us about the law. you are here sir because it doesn't looked like having watched the argument which joyce and i said was far more meager in dealing with the actual coup and threats to the country than one might have thought especially to the lower court, you're here because i'm not sure we can understand this without understanding the politics of the justices. people who have to practice before the court almost can't say it out loud. you can't be a member of the supreme court bar and say they do anything other than follow the law, chay. you're here because i wonder if there's politics at play. >> i think there's politics at play. we're supposed to be talking about the justices very
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rational, logical and emotionless, but that's not what i remember saw today. i saw maga activism there. why is justice thomas there? his wife was involved in the events of january 6th. shouldn't he have recused himself? sam alito before he took away reproductive rights for 50 years released a video saying the government is taking away our liberties. he sounded like alex jones, you know? i think brett kavanaugh has an issue that he was made a national laughing stock by matt damon on snl. i think that affects him. i think that is coney barrett and gorsuch, policy comes before everything including democracy. >> including democracy.
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joyce, drebin, the lawyer jack smith selected, in his lawyerly way he punched back. if you listened closely it was logical. i don't know listening today that he moved the members he needed. maybe barrett was in the middle from what i could hear. here was a little bit of the jack smith side punching back. take a listen. >> the reason why there have not been prior criminal prosecutions is that there were not crimes. what is important is that no public official has had the absolute criminal immunity that my friend thinks of. he's supposed to be faithful to the laws of the united states and the constitution of the united states and making a mistake is not what lands you in a criminal prosecution. >> joyce, your thoughts about what he was dealing with on that bench, because as i mentioned, the emphasis on everything but
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now i found suspicious. the number of justices who want to talk about history and we're writing for the future and not deal with what he says there. you're never getting prosecuted for a good faith mistake. you have to have criminal intent. this is black letter law. here you're not fdr dealing with a war. you've got 20 days or whatever left, you have a president-elect lawfully certified and you're trying to steal the thing. >> so appellate argument is very different from arguing in front of a jury. you don't have to be splashy. no theatrics involved. michael dreeben more than any other speaks the supreme court's language. former deputy solicitor general. he's argued cases in front of the court for decades. michael dreeben went into this knowing he had a difficult path to walk. in fact, in the government's brief they had argued in the
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alternative, that if the court was inclined to go somewhat the direction it appears to have been going, that the government had fall-back positions including something that surfaced in court today, they were willing to argue only the non-official acts were crimes although they believe they're still entitled to use evidence of official acts to show his knowledge and intent. they had crafted this fallback position for such an emergency and dreeben executed that very well. i think you're right justice barrett appeared to be more on the side of the three progressive justices. she seemed to have some stepback from those asserted by justice alito. the big wild card is where the chief justice is. it would be unlikely he would want to be his legacy to giving donald trump a path to forgiveness for a coup, he was the most difficult justice to
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read. >> they had a discussion about the court ruling. it has to have some better limiting principle. i for one couldn't quite tell where that takes him and what that meant. joyce and chay on the big historic supreme court day, thanks to both of you. we have more special guests coming up. we heard a lot of talk about assassination. the former cia chief is with me to separate fact from fiction. later, douglas brinkley on an historic night. stay with us. th e*trade from morgan stanley, we're ready for whatever gets served up. dude, you gotta work on your trash talk. i'd rather work on saving for retirement. or college, since you like to get schooled. that's a pretty good burn, right?
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former president will be in new york city for his hush money trial just as the supreme court in washington, d.c., hears his immunity case. >> it is an incredibly consequential thursday for president donald trump. >> people have to know whether their president is a crook. well, i'm not a crook. >> big day as we watch history unfold. we talked to lawyers, we talked
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to a political expert. as mentioned because of what we're dealing with, i want to bring in the former director of the cia under president obama, john brennan and doug brinkley, the author of "the nixon tapes." director brennan, i'll say to you as i said to an earlier guest. you're knot here for your law degree. there was a lot of talk, perhaps loose talk, about how assassinations and killings work. i wanted to give you the floor to ask whether in that view, something you've devoted your career to, is it true what donald trump's lawyers say about the operation of government, that you need lifetime license to kill, i say this, the power to kill americans without prosecutorial investigation or can you maintain national security without that new power they are asking the supreme court to bolster today?
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>> well, ari, for the past 235 years presidents have been able to maintain national security without such a blanket immunity. it is clear why we have not had to deal with this question previously, because individuals in the white house have adhered to the law. it just i think highlights how abhorrent donald trump's behavior was during his presidency and maybe potentially if he is re-elected again, but i do believe the presidents i worked closely with, presidents clinton, bush 43 and president obama they were never chilled, as the expression was used today, never chilled by the lack of immunity. they recognized they had responsibility to carry out their authorities as president of the united states and also would be held accountable for it by the public, by the electorate, by the judicial system of the united states. therefore the presidents with
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integrity, honesty and take it seriously do not want to rely on blanket immunity that would give an individual like donald trump carte blanche to do whatever he would want under the preterks of national security. >> appreciate that. here was justice alito, a sound we haven't played tonight, about s.e.a.l. team six. >> one might argue that it isn't plausibly legal to argue s.e.a.l. team six, i don't want to slander s.e.a.l. team six because they're -- no, seriously, they're honorable. they're honorable officers and they are bound by the uniform code of military justice not to obey unlawful orders. it is not plausible that is legal, that that action would be legal. and i'm sure you've thought, i've thought of lots of hype they the kalgs. a president could say i'm using official power and yet the president uses it in an
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absolutely outrageous manner. >> director brennan, i'm he curious about your views on that. he cites other people are subject to prosecution to make an argument going towards exempting donald trump for prosecution. the issue is no one -- we're not assuming guilt of anyone. i said earlier in the hour, he's presumed innocent in this and other cases. s.e.a.l. team six and others have not been charged with coup crimes. it is donald trump who's a defendant today. i'm curious with your experience what you thought about that, director brennan, and be, doug, you can weigh in on all of it. >> yes. no president has ever been implicated in any type of coup or trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after an election. during the obama administration president obama had to make a decision about carrying out a strike against a senior al qaeda leader who happened to be a u.s.
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citizen. he decided he wanted to do it in order to protect the national security of the united states. he didn't worry about criminal liability, whatever else and the fact that he didn't have immunity. he recognized he had to fulfill the office of the presidency to make sure he did what he was authorized to do under the law. >> douglas? >> yeah. i mean, look, i thought justice alito was deeply irresponsible to even throw s.e.a.l. team six into this. they're more than honorable, they're heroes to the american people. to kind of start playing this game of, you know, they wouldn't have been able to do what they do and all of this. it's ridiculous. we're dealing with a highly politicized court. we haven't wanted to believe it. there is no immunity for presidents in our constitution. in 1982 with nixon people were
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looking at -- you know, not for criminal charges but they were trying to make a decision for civil cases what an expresident would be. we're getting to the point i feel today we're seeing a supreme court pretty close to saying january 6th didn't matter, that it's a nothing date. it was just a little aw shucks moment. they're claiming, the conservative justices, this isn't about donald trump, it's about future presidents. >> right. >> i think that could be true, but the net effect here is to give donald trump a get out of trial pass and not be accountable to the american people for what happened january 6th and his behavior until a post election scenario. >> douglas, doesn't that go to your expertise, the power of history, the facts matter otherwise they wouldn't have to lie about them so much and what seemed unthinkable the night of
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january 6th, we were up covering it, mcconnell standing on the senate floor saying this was an insurrection. lindsey graham saying count me out. a heck of a lot of people were under investigation and some of them convicted. to go from that to this minimizing today. what does that say i give you the last word about both the power and the peril of the history, even recent history as we understand it? >> i think that people misunderstand presidential power in american history because it's not all about even executive power. george washington used it once. theodore roosevelt used it hundreds of times. fdr used it 3,000. how much power does the president have. the supreme court is leaning in here giving trump and future presidents a get out of jail free card. they can do anything and it goes back to nixon's line on the david cross show on bbc. if the president does it, it's
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got to be legal or it's not illegal and what a horrible thing, to think a president can do anything. arrest people willy-nilly. i feel that the court is mocking our military. and it makes me sad because i spent a lot of my time tape recording, you know, veterans about the anniversary of june 6th. our military and our cia knows what they're doing and the idea that a president is goings to -- you know, has this power to basically bring the military into being a tool of the white house goes totally against our great gift, our civilian democracy. the court is stumbling in a terrible way today. really sad day. >> really striking hearing your assessment there based on what we also flagged in had our reporting at the top of the hour because it was unusual in a bad way today if by bad we mean anti-democracy and accountability. doug brinkley, i appreciate your
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perspective on that and, director brennan, some of the national security apparatus. thanks to both of you. new indictments for elector fraud out of arizona. stay with us. (♪♪) (♪♪) try dietary supplements from voltaren, for healthy joints. oh, yeah, man. try dietary supplements from voltaren, take it from your inner child. what you really need in life is some freakin' torque. what? the dodge hornet r/t... the totally torqued-out crossover. my frequent heartburn had me taking antacid after antacid all day long but with prilosec otc just one pill a day
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we are watching the failed leader of a u.s. coup attempt trying to resist a federal trial for that, that was a supreme court case that has dominated much of our coverage tonight while he also faces a trial in
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new york for criminally interfering with the 2016 electionen, and that's not all. in that criminal trial today new indictments also hit people who tried to help trump with the elector fraud plot that was part of all of this going into 2020. new indictments just late last night. >> the grand jury in arizona handing up an indictment against a group of trump's allies for their attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss. >> those aides include former white house chief of staff mark meadows. rudy giuliani.ellis, john eastman, christina bobb, trump campaign official boris epshteyn. >> today, the supreme court considers donald trump's claim of absolute immunity from anything he did while in office. >> donald trump's historic claim for presidential immunity. >> this is unprecedented because we have never been here before as a country. >> there's nothing to suggest that presidents need immunity because they have managed to do
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just fine for over 200 years. >> donald trump has been back in court for his historic hush money criminal trial. >> pecker tells cohen, quote, we committed a campaign violation. cohen's response according to pecker, said he wasn't worried because, quote, jeff sessions is the attorney general, and donald trump has him in his pocket. >> if legal hell week is a thing, this might be it for defendant trump. we'll be right back. they need their lawn back fast and you need scotts turf builder rapid grass. it grows grass 2 times faster than just seed alone.
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donald trump and his aides are under investigation and sometimes indictment for not only what happened on january 6th itself but the plots leading up. we walked through that with you, also interviewed anyone we can to learn more about this information in real time. one of those plots was elector fraud. i asked boris epshteyn, who has worked for trump for years and worked as a lawyer for him in many cases including the new york case against trump about this in an interview. >> i was part of the process to make sure there were alternate electors for when as we hope the challenges to the seated electors would be heard and be successful. everything that was done was done legally by the trump legal team, according to the rules and under the leadership of rudy giuliani. >> epstein admitting in that interview he was with giuliani part of that plot of elector fraud or fake electors. he has now been indicted as of last night in arizona along with
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other officials. we will continue to interview anyone we can to try to go to the source, but that is now probably part of the criminal evidence in the elector fraud case. we'll keep on it. tonight, msnbc's special coverage, trump on trial, 8:00 p.m. eastern and our whole time. right now, it's "the reidout." stay with us. if you spit blood when you brush, it could be the start of a domino effect. new parodontax active gum repair breath freshener. clinically proven to help reverse the four signs of early gum disease. a new toothpaste from parodontax, the gum experts.
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