don jr. and eric trump boast testified in the civil fraud case with the future of their family business at stake. today was eric trump's second day on the stand, and nbc reporters note that eric trump seemed more nervous today than in yesterday's testimony. they report that he was often leaning back and forth in his chair and fidgeting, and they also described him as agitated and defiant. the civil prosecutor spent part of today asking eric trump about allen weisselberg's severance package. weisselberg served three months at rikers island for tax fraud and was removed from cfo of the trump organization. when he left he was given a $2 million severance package with strings attached, including a provision specifying that weisselberg could not communicate with, provide information to, or otherwise cooperate in any way with any other person or entity. and weisselberg has been true to his word. he has never cooperated with manhattan prosecutors in donald trump's stormy daniels hush money case, one of the four criminal trials that trump is currently facing. and eric trump says that he was responsible for the weisselberg severance deal. "i was the person who did this, i signed it, i negotiated it." asked if his father had any involvement in this, he said, "no, he did not." eric spoke to reporters blasting the whole trial as a political witch hunt. >> he's come after my father ruthlessly. every single day trump is in this court, she shows up. why? it's her press moment. we haven't dragged a damn thing wrong and they dragged don and i into it as collateral damage. line up as many trumps as she can, she can sit in court, send fund-raising emails to her donors, i'm going after trump. >> experts say this was a rough week in court for the sons. the attorney general's lawyers were able to prove with evidence that the sons were actively engaged in compiling the company's financial statements, many of which the judge has already ruled were fraudulent. and there's more bad news for team trump. today the judge issued a ruling expanding the gag order in the case to include not just donald trump, but also his lawyers. judge engoron was apparently furious that trump's lawyers appear to accuse a court staffer of bias. joining me now to discuss all of this is maya wiley, former civil prosecutor with the southern district of new york, and renato mariotti, former federal prosecutor. maya, what is your reaction? how bad was this for the trump brothers? >> there's a reason that eric trump was much more nervous today than earlier in the week. and it is because it has not gone well for them. i think they have to know, their lawyers have to know that one of the most important things at this stage, of any stage of any trial, but particularly at this stage, the judge has already determined that the financial statements in this case were fraudulent. that's not up for debate. that means that their credibility on whether or not this was continuing, ongoing fraudulent behavior and whether they knew about it, is kind of central and fundamental. they were not credible witnesses. all of the public reporting on this has been i think spot-on in saying things like, on one hand eric trump says, hey, i'm just the guy who poured the concrete. on the other hand, then having to admit to an email where he's being asked questions on financial statements, those financial statements are central to the things that they're being claimed to have misrepresented on. and it's very interesting to watch them kind of say, i just did everything my dad told me to -- oh, wait, wait, no, i took and did all of this without him. you know? they're flip-flopping. the evidence is strong against them. and they're coming off as people who do not tell the truth. that's a bad look in a fraud trial about whether or not you're being truthful. >> renato, maya brings up a great point. judge engoron has already decided that there is a problem here. there's liability. these were fraudulent statements. we're in the penalty phase where he's supposed to determine what the actual penalties will be for the trump organization. how does this week's testimony play into that, and was the trump team successful or did they really do themselves some damage this week? >> i think it was a very, very challenging week. i do agree with maya there. ultimately, what they have to convince the judge is the nuclear option that the a.g. is giving the court. in other words, anything for example, making it so that they can't do business in the state of new york, dissolving some of these companies, appointing a receiver. some of those penalties aren't warranted, and unfortunately, i really don't think that they did themselves any favors. and i really think that that is kind of underscored by the fact that most of the offspring around mr. trump has been attacking the judge, test. at that point that could be held against them. from then on it's all been about a slow -- defeating trump in this particular lawsuit. >> so renato, there's a lot going on here. the main defense seems to be, i trusted my accountants, i trusted the pencil pusher here. this idea that he is a really good businessman and his sons are really good businessmen, and this is a first-class business operation. how is this all going to play out if this is, in fact, the defense that they're just pencil pushers, not real businessmen? >> that has to be the defense. when you have two different valuations for the same property, telling banks one thing and the government the other, they can't both be true at the same time. they have to blame somebody. i will tell you, bet your bottom dollar that the accountants aren't going to march in there and say it was all their fault. that you can without a doubt take to the bank. now look, i do think that's where they have to go, and that's why they're trying to shift the narrative. trump, when he gets caught on one lie, he always tries to pivot to another. he was a brilliant businessman before, supposedly. now that he doesn't look that way, now it's the process, the attorney general, she's biased, the judge is biased, it's all attacking the process because really i don't think the back is there. >> this is a bench trial, which means judge engoron is going to ultimately make the decision. this is not going before a jury. yesterday judge engoron lashed out at trump attorney chris keis apparently made saying, there is a sense of misogyny in you referring to my female principal law clerk. do not refer to my staff again, she is a civil servant. are you surprised he issued this new gag order that now includes the trump lawyers? and what was the meaning of them going after the law clerk? >> yeah, look, i'm not surprised. i mean, this is a judge who's made clear that he's going to keep order in his courtroom, but he's also going to be intolerant of the kind of attacks that are attacks against people that is sadly and disturbingly typical of trump and trump's legal team's general way of treating our judicial system across these cases that he's facing. not necessarily unique in this one. but it's shocking to see a lawyer do it. shocking to see a lawyer do it in front of the judge, about the judge's staff. back to renato's point about the fact that this is the judge you have to convince, it means you typically don't want to antagonize him as a human being. when he has the power to make decisions about just how much penalty you're going to pay and whether, to renato's point, nuclear action -- maybe don't kick the beehive if you don't want the bees to sting you. this has been repeated in this case. the judge has excoriated the attorneys even in some of their filings. this isn't new behavior, they've just antagonized this judge. i will say this. this is a judge who is not going to make his penalty decision based on whether -- his personal feelings about whether he or his staff has been disrespected. he's going to make this decision based on what he believes the evidence supports as the appropriate penalty. i think that's really important because whatever the penalty is, we know that donald trump and his team are going to try to suggest and argue that it is somehow unfair, unjust. that's not who this judge is. >> maya, renato, stick around. coming up, new evidence that the maga base has become the party of insurrection. howard dean and kirk oardella are here on this. what to expect in the upcoming subpoenas in the clarence thomas scandals. donald trump will be taking the stand with his business empire hanging in the balance. w- everyday products, designed smarter. like a smart coffee grinder, that orders fresh beans for you. oh, genius! for more breakthroughs like that- i need a breakthrough card. like ours! with 2.5% cash back on purchases of $5,000 or more. plus unlimited 2% cash back on all other purchases. and with greater spending potential, sam can keep making smart ideas- a brilliant reality! the ink business premier card from chase for business. make more of what's yours. that first time you take a step back. i made that. with your very own online store. i sold that. and you can manage it all in one place. i built this. and it was easy, with a partner that puts you first. godaddy. (tony hawk) skating for over 45 years has taken a toll on my body. i take qunol turmeric because it helpsirst. with healthy joints and inflammation support. why qunol? it has superior absorption compared to regular turmeric. qunol. the brand i trust. i want to turn to breaking legal news. trump's d.c. gag order is on hold. the d.c. circuit temporarily lifted the order in the doj's election interference case while trump's appeals play out. the court set oral arguments for november 20th. we'll see. now i want to t to trump's more immediate legal problem, his new york civil fraud trial. all eyesre on trump himself. he's expected to testify on monday with ivanka trump set to stify on wednesday. trump has already taken stand once during the trial, but not to answer questions on substance. instead, he was questioned about violating the judge's gag order that prohibits him from publicly disparaging the judge's staff. the judge ended up fining him $10,000 for that. we can get a sense of how trump might handle the testimony from a seven-hour deposition he gave earlier this year. the associated press characterized it as a show of defiance and deflection. remember, a.g. james' office released a clip from the deposition in which trump threw convicted former cfo allen weisselberg under the proverbial bus. >> to me, your obligation here of presenting information in accordance with gaap was allen weisselberg responsible for that? >> object to the form. >> i would say yes. >> he also testified, quote, i became president because of the brand, okay? i think it's the hottest brand in the world. he even said, quote, the whole case is crazy. trump also declared, quote, i never felt these financial statements would be taken very seriously. coming back to us, maya wiley and renato mariotti to break this down. maya, what can we expect to see when donald trump takes the stand next week? >> i think we're going to see candidate donald trump. as we've already talked about, donald trump -- there's already been a finding that the financial statements were fraudulent. we're already seeing behavior from donald trump and from his team not taking seriously the fact that this is a judge who's going to make the decision about the penalties. and donald trump is a candidate for public office. and so he understands the scrutiny and the news coverage that is going to come with his testimony. that means he's going to sit there playing to the benches, not to the bench. playing to the public, not to the judge. and so i expect to see a lot of talk about how much he's worth, how valuable his brand. won't help him legally, but i think that's not the court he's playing to. i think it's the court of public opinion. >> do you agree, renato? is this going to be testimony for the peanut gallery, not necessarily for judge engoron? >> i think so. i think they've given up on the judge. they haven't really tried to win him over. we were just talking about that a moment ago. i think they're really looking past that. and i actually think, melissa, that really this trial has been a sacrificial lamb for the trump team. i think trump personally is focused on this now, but i think his legal team decided awhile back that they were facing the war on multiple fronts, and in order to sort of preserve his options for these criminal trials, they had to take the fifth and they had to essentially lay down and accept defeat here, which is very serious, because we were talking earlier, there are some very serious penalties on the table. i really do expect this to be a defeat this week. >> interesting point. if he is successful in winning the presidency in 2024, maybe it doesn't even matter that he's not allowed to do business in new york for the next five years. one of the things i did want to focus on was trump's earlier deposition testimony from april. as we've noted, he rambled a lot during that deposition, even saying at one point, "you are going to let me go on hoping that i make a mistake. and that's okay. that's the way it is. perry mason, perry mason." is he likely to be more buttoned up in court next week, given the stakes? >> yeah, i don't think it's possible for him to completely control himself. you know, i think he is somebody who always thinks that he knows more than everyone else. he thinks he's some genius and he's going to sort of talk did his way out of everything. and you know what he's had a lot of success talking his way out of things. so i think he's going to try to talk his way out of this and talk over this. i think in his mind, whatever the judge says, he's going to pontificate and spout off and try to truth it out later, get it out to his supporters, and that's going to somehow make it better. to the point you made a moment ago, he's focused on getting the presidency. that is his way out of this jam, that's the way he sees it. >> so maya, this isn't the only deposition we have to contend with. there is deposition video from 2016 in an unrelated case, take a look. >> i don't have my glasses. i am at a disadvantage because i didn't bring my glasses. this is small writing. >> all right, if the witness can't actually physically read the language -- >> it's very small writing. i can make it out. do you want me to try? >> maya, what can we glean from this, other than that donald trump might need a better pair of reading glasses, about how he's going to act in court next week? >> he's going to deflect, he's going to pontificate, he's going to try to avoid, he's going to do everything he can to do whatever he thinks serves his best interests. i still think it's public office, not what's happening in this courtroom. so i think he's going to be a little bit more blustery. i think the point still is the same. donald trump is going to do donald trump. we know what that looks like. we've seen it over and over again. i don't think we're going to be surprised. i will say this. i do think it matters for donald trump what these penalties are. even if he wins office, it is going to cost him and it is going to cost his family, and we also know the other thing we have seen from donald trump. he will use whatever power he has to benefit his purse. and so all of that is both what we should be looking for as we look at how he behaves in this trial. >> so renato, as we look forward to next week, you mentioned earlhat in august 2022, donald trump invoked the fifth amendment nearly 450 times and repeatedly said, "same answer" to the questions. what are the chances that he's going to plead the fifth in open court next week? >> i think that will be very wise. it really does not make a lot of sense to me to take the fifth in your deposition and take the hit for doing that, then go forward and answer the questions at trial. i think that's going to not play well with the judge. at this point he might as well stick to the strategy that's going to cost him a loss here, but perhaps mitigate some potential damage down the road in another case. i think he has to stick with that. if he doesn't, tries to go a different route, that's him trying to outsmart his lawyers and outsmart everyone else, and i think that's going to end up badly for him. >> he's preserving powder in any case. thank you both for joining us today. still to come in the mideast, u.s. officials are making a new call for a humanitarian pause. also, there's new pressure on supreme court justice clarence thomas and his billionaire benefactors. and as trump's legal peril intensifies, there's now reporting about his political scheming with his own advisers, describing maga in cult-like terms. with the money i saved, i started a dog walking business. oh. 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>> well, i think trump has always been a bit of a megalomaniac, and he's just getting further and further out there. this stuff is all going to come back during the campaign. and i can't imagine how it's going to do him any good. he does have a core group of cultists, but i don't think that's enough to win an election. >> so kurt in a different lifetime, you worked closely with steve bannon at breitbart. what's your take on bannon's trump davidian comment? is this just rhetoric? or this is the real thing? >> it's 100% on brand. this is a guy who openly boasted about his desire to effectively burn down our entire structure. this is a guy who calls himself a leninist. it's par for the course. this is not surprising at all. let's just be very clear for a second. these people, these people in jail, they're not hostages. they're terrorists. they're domestic terrorists. and the leader of the republican party, the person that's going to be the standard-bearer for this party, believes that domestic terrorists are actually hostages. that's crazy. >> so this is a really important point, governor dean. when you were a presidential candidate, and i remember when you were, you had genuine supporters who really believed in your ideas and were absolutely emphatic about that. how does the energy we saw in your campaign differ from the current maga movement or indeed any of the energy we traditionally see in strong campaigns? >> in my campaign and most campaigns you know of, you don't have a candidate who's hallucinatory. yeah, i was able to bring most of the people in my campaign to john kerry once he won the nomination. because clearly, john kerry was the better candidate than george w. bush, whose administration had lied to get us into the iraq war. this, what's going on now, defies logic. trump and most of his -- many of his followers are not logical. they've embraced conspiracy theories for whatever psychological reason they find that necessary -- i'm not a psychiatrist, so i can't tell you what that is. and it's a pretty frightening moment. i find it hard to believe that 51% of americans are willing to have a conspiracy theorist in the white house now that he has shown his true colors. >> so kurt, an essay from that new book, jonathan karl writes, "trump will continue to talk about what's at stake in the election in apocalyptic terms, the finalbattle, knowing how high the stakes are for him personally. he can win and retake the white house, or he can lose and go to prison." we've talked about this a lot in practical terms, given the stakes, losing or going to prison. what can we expect from the trump campaign and what might we expect from a trump presidency? >> well, we -- >> sorry, go ahead. >> sorry, kirk. >> he will do and say anything -- they will do and say anything to cling on to power, to avoid being held accountable, including unleashing their deranged supporters on the rest of us. what's at stake right now is our entire democratic process. they didn't blink before trying to overthrow and overturn a free and fair election. they didn't hesitate to send their rabid supporters at the united states capitol, targeting anybody that was walking by. there was a reason why josh hawley was running away from these people, his people for crying out loud. there's a reason why they were saying, hang the vice president, their own vice president, the republican vice president, mike pence. if they don't get their way this time, if they don't win, if they want to play this continuing conspiracy theory game, i'm very worried about what they're going to do, what they're going to say. what we know about january 6th is it wasn't just rhetoric. it wasn't just a normal tourist day. these people listened to what donald trump says, and they act on it, take it as marching orders. it's not just rhetoric and hyperbole. it's a very, very dangerous situation when someone's about to use the presidency to avoid going to jail. >> governor dean, with regard to that, someone who inspires this group of people regardless of what the underlying truth of the matter is, and there are new signs that when donald trump tells his supporters that he's the different legal suits, ll of that it actually benefits him, that his supporters respond to it well. political reports that an anti-trump group released four attack ads focusing on these four cmil cases, but the group's own data showed the ads boosted his support among those republicans who watched. what do you make of this? is this simply a cult of personality? or is there something else going on? >> no, it is a cult of personality. look, there are two kinds of trump supporters, basically. one are the people who really have a serious problem with their willingness to get rid of reality in order to get whatever they think they need. the others are people who really do want to change the country and are sort of feeling at a loss. those people are voters we can get. i thought it was brilliant for joe biden to go on the picket line in michigan while trump was at a nonunion one. what's going to happen -- first of all, that was a first for any president of the united states and he took some heat from it. but a lot of people who vote for trump are upset at corporate power, which is ironic, because trump has manipulated and stolen money from his people for years. those people we can get. they're not deranged. they're angry, but that's not the same as being deranged and being hallucinatory about what donald trump is about. >> so that's a really great segue for kurt. kurt, let's talk about the biden campaign. eporting from the ap suggests that the biden campaign ha a new plan toe-engize the bidenoation by making the ection a referendum on trump. that was the strategy in 2020. will it be a winning strategy in 2024? or should they pivot to something else? >> no, it will be a strategy and it will work. unlike the last election, this election, the republican -- the likely republican nominee is going to be spending an inordinate amount of time campaigning from a courtroom, from a courthouse. 91 indictments he'll be fending off. this is not a normal campaign. and you and i both know that if any of those proceedings are broadcast on television, that will be must-see tv. that will saturate everything everywhere. it will be the most-watched thing against the o.j. trial. making trump the focal point, the center point of this effort, that makes all the sense in the world because the media's going to be there anyway. what are we going to expect the press to cover, biden's economic agenda and successes or donald trump in a courtroom raising his hand, trying to avoid incriminating himself and committing perjury? >> do you agree? given joe biden's low job approval numbers, does it make sense with donald trump in a courthouse much of the rest of the year to focus on making this case a referendum against donald trump? >> it's going to be a referendum because people are very well aware -- i've had reasonably conservative businesspeople who have run huge corporations come and talk to me about who we can get to run. and who -- and they're going to support joe biden if it's down to them and trump. they just -- i talk to them about trump, "we can't take a chance he's going to win." he really is a danger to the country. he's a danger to the pocketbooks of most of the people who are voting for him, which is ironic. because most of the deficits in this country have been caused by republicans. that's just factual. george h.w. bush, george w. bush, ronald reagan, and donald trump have run up the largest -- they're responsible for 100% of the deficit. and people -- i think a lot of people don't understand that. but eventually, one of the things i do agree with conservatives about, eventually the deficits are going to drive us into a really serious place. nobody gives a damn, trump doesn't give a damn. he'd give a tax cut to his rich friends that are all down at mar-a-lago. he didn't do anything for the people who are vote fog him. sooner or later, that's going to catch up with him. it caught up with him in 2020. >> howard dean and kurt boredella, thank you so much. congress is putting new pressure on justice clarence thomas and his wealthy benefactors. president biden and the first lady are in maine today to console a grieving community after the tragic mass shooting. first, new calls for a humanitarian pause in the middle east. for your husband! iphone 15 pro — ♪ (wife) carolers! to tell me you want a new iphone? 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>> i think it's clear that the increasing catastrophe in gaza plus the exponential rise in palestinian deaths and displacement has created a real bind for the administration. growing calls from democrats, mainstream democrats, progressiv for the united states to press as hard as it possibly can, both on humanitarian assistance pauses, humanitarian pauses, and continued efforts from the israelis to buy time and space to try to negotiate for the release of hostages. i think the administration, though, is pressing up against a law that's going to be almost impossible to navigate. >> with that in mind, the administration has called for a pause. and this is new language. how does a pause differ from a cease-fire, which some democrats have also called for? >> they have. a humanitarian pause would be in local areas, localized areas, for discrete periods of time. four, six, eight, ten hours in order to try to surge humanitarian assistance, which is increasing through rafah -- cease-fire is a negotiated arrangement or humanitarian truce, language used in a couple of the u.n. security council resolutions that the u.s. vetoed. a truce implies an extended period of calm or even some sort of negotiation to temporarily end the conflict. and the israelis clearly, in wake of what happened october 7th, are in no mood. and they have their own politics, just like joe biden has his politics. so i don't think you're talking about humanitarian cease-fire. you might in the event hamas came with an offer that said, we'll free them all. not just u.s. nationals but israelis as well. i think israelis believe they're being played. separating the yous from the foreign nationals is reminiscent of this selection process and invokes all kinds of dark memories and traumas from the holocaust. >> you briefly mentioned the internal politics within israel. what's your reaction to the defiance from netanyahu, who has rejected calls for a pause? >> look, he's presiding over the greatest intelligence failure in the history of the stale of israel, perhaps with the exception of the october '73 intelligence failure. he's also presided over the greatest terrorist attack in the history of the country. and the single most number of jews killed on any day since the end of the nazi holocaust. he has a stake in wanting to be bold, tough, resist american pressure. what his future is, is unclear. but there's no question that a successful campaign, military campaign, to eradicate hamas, if it's possible, to free as many hostages as possible -- he has a stake in being tough ask standing up to the united states, even though joe biden has been incredibly supportive. both emotionally and with respect to resources and assistance. >> so speaking of the biden administration, here's some more from secretary of state blinken today. >> i've seen images too of palestinian children, young boys and girls, pulled from the wreckage of buildings. when i see that, when i look into their eyes through the tv screen, i see my own children. how can we not? >> aaron, does this mark the beginning of a divergence between the united states and israel in terms of the strategy here? >> overall strategy, probably not. means to achieve those ends, perhaps. but remember, the frame the president has created in the wake of october 7th in some respects is almost impossible to change. if what the region is looking for is moral consistency from the biden administration, not just moral clarity in the wake of october 7th -- in other words, to elevate the deaths of palestinians and make them of equal value, so to speak. they are of equal value in terms of the life of humans. how can one israeli life be worth more than a palestinian life? tony blinken i think, and every other administration official, is trying to create a much more empathetic frame. the problem is, it's not just words. there has to be actions as well. and frankly, listen, i think it's really, really hard to figure out a way to have the israelis continue their military strategy but also find a way to protect palestinians. hamas is embedded, palestinian civilians are operating in densely populated areas of gaza. no one that i know has proposed a way to basically allow the israelis to continue their campaign, but to spare and save palestinian lives. i don't think there's an easy answer to that question. and that's the administration's problem. >> it's a big problem. aaron david miller, thank you so much. up next, justice thomas is under fire over lavish gifts. i'll get into the senate democrats' new plan to combat the corruption. is strong enamel- nothing beats it. new pronamel active shield actively shields the enamel to defend against erosion and cavities. i think that this product is a gamechanger for my patients- it really works. kate is going big and going home for the holidays. that's the plan. at michaels she got everything to make cookies that were anything but cutter. turn ideas into i-did-its. ♪ (holiday music) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ we're building a better postal service. for more on-time deliveries. and easier, affordable ways to ship. so you can deliver even more holiday joy. the united states postal service. delivering for america. . now to senate democrats' plan to target corruption and rot on the nation's highest court. next week, the senate judiciary committee will vote on issuing subpoenas to the powerful benefactors of justice clarence thomas, including billionaire mega donor harlan crow. the move follows bombshell reporting from propublica detailing lavish gifts and luxury vacations thomas received from crow. there's also recent reporting that justice thomas' luxury rv was bought from a loan from another wealthy friend. nbc news has not independently confirmed that report. a senate review found this loan for over a quarter million dollars wasn't paid back but rather was forgiven and not reported on disclosure forms. the senate also wants to subpoena another donor, robert archly ii and conservative activist leonard leo. they have either refused to comply with the committee's investigation or have offered limited information. joining me to break all of this down is leah lipman, the university of michigan's law school and my cohost on the strict scrutiny podcast. leah, what is the importance of the subpoenas that may be coming next week from the senate judiciary committee? >> well, senate democrats seem finally willing and able to step up and do actually oversight and enforcement. we learned from senator wyden's inquiry that the loan to justice thomas for his rv was potentially not a loan at all but just a gift and it was basically completely forgiven and now having seen that actually you can learn some meaningful things that are important to the public and democracy, they have decide we're going to do some oversight too given that no individuals have been going to comply with the request for information thus far. >> so what's the most important information that senators could get as a result of these subpoenas and how might it be used to shape reforms of the high court? >> i mean, thus far, we only kind of know about the gifts and exchanges to these justices from the reporting that propublica and other outlets have done. we don't know the extent of gifts or exchanges or presents that have been destowed on them. leonard leo has arranged the trips from the justices on private jets to various places around the country and set them up with different billionaire benefactors. we don't know the exteblt of the relationship between leo and these individuals and the justices. we know these individuals have given leo's organizations a ton of money and leo has set them up with justices but we don't know the full scope of the details that might be going into these relationships. >> we might even find out information about the relationships between not only the justices and some of these individuals but the justices' spouses. there has been reporting about leonard leo perhaps funneling money to ginni thomas' organization. >> we only know from "the washington post," i believe, that leonard leo directed a company to, quote, give ginni thomas thousands of dollars in money with, quote, no mention of ginni, and because he's not mentioning her in all of these monetary transactions we don't know the extent of them. we know his organizations have worked with ginni thomas, presumably paying her for gosh who knows what, so that's some of the information that we could learn. and we don't know whether the justices' spouses have also received any of these gifts or trips, so that's some other potential information we could learn. >> yesterday, leah, senate republicans flew to the defense of these individuals. let's take a listen. >> y'all ought to be ashamed of yourself. because you're the ones who always profess how you're defending our democracy. you're the ones undermining our democracy. >> the highest court in the land cannot have the lowest standard of ethics in the government. >> this is a fight you want, you're going to get it. >> can the senate republicans hinder this probe and keep more of this information from coming out? >> you know, there's always some possibility that they are going to go to bat for their big donors. you know, some of leonard leo's organizations have given a ton of money to the republicans, attorney general association as well as other associations. if these individuals don't comply with the subpoenas the full senate would have to vote on their enforcement to actually subject these individuals to actual citations or penalties so they could possibly try to obstruct this by resorting to the filibuster to prevent the democrats from getting to 60 votes to actually enforce subpoenas. but i would think they would frankly be ashamed of themselves from trying to insulate conduct that includes taking a supreme court justice on a boat that is called the happy hooker and giving him a glacier martini, and then discussing, you know, whether republicans should abolish the filibuster to engage in more judicial nominations. that's one of the things that propublica has reported that robin arkly was doing. these are thinks i think the public needs to know. >> you drop a lot of knowledge and illuminate everything. thanks so much for joining us. i should note, leah and i are cohosts of the supreme court podcast strict scrutiny, along with kate shaw. you can find strict scrutiny wherever you get your podcasts. . you're replacing me? 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"the reidout" with joy reid is up next. tonight on "the reidout" -- >> it's an absolute joke.