people. this is now the second indictment that trump is facing since he went in office after manhattan prosecutors charged with 34 felony counts earlier this year over alleged hush money payments. and a post on his truth announcing the indictment, trump wrote the correct biden administration has informed by attorneys that i ve been indicted. i am an innocent man. tonight, trump posted a formative video repeatedly claiming that investigation is a hoax. politically motivated. they can t stop because its election interference at the highest level there is never been anything like what has happened, they figured that the way that they would stop us is by using what is called that s what this is. it s wolf warfare for the law. it s called election interference. they re trying to destroy the reputation. and they can try to win the election. joining us now is msnbc colleagues, ari melber and lawrence o donnell, also with us is laura jarrett, nbc news senior legal corresponde
to the teflon don. josh marshall hugo lowell and andrew weissmann. appreciate it. that s all in alex on this thursday night. wagner tonight starts right now, good evening, alex. chris, what a thursday. accountability, i think that is the phrase of the day. accountability. yes. again, lots of things it seemed here to for unthinkable, becoming think-able as the other theme of the last few years. in some, ways unthinkable to donald trump. as much as he knew this was coming, now that it s happened, he s in a different league. he has made history, not the kind of history that i think you want to make. thank, you my friend, as always. you bet. thank you to you at home for joining us this evening. nbc news can now report that former president donald trump has been indicted in the special counsel s investigation into his alleged mishandling of classified documents. the indictment was filed in federal district court in miami. trump has been summoned to appear in federal
their work, despite all of the attacks on the justice department, on prosecutors, on the judges, on jurors themselves at times. these prosecutors quietly were working with laypeople in florida, trying to figure out how to get to the bottom of what happened here. it really has been a stress test for the better part of the last seven years as the trump, while president, and now as the ex president, has to try to take on the government single-handedly, and has tried to attack this entire process. and yet the special counsel went on with his work quietly, and appears to have gotten the job done, and appears to have secured that indictment from a federal grand jury in florida. alex, that doesn t mean that this case will be easy, it doesn t mean that there will not be attacks, and there will not be efforts to try to make the case go away, but i just think that it is remarkable to take a step back and recognize where we are as a matter of
he can t coordinate his activities, with trump, world officially anymore. however, alex, during that period of time when he was that spokesperson. i would say that he was maybe a more central figure than we would ve previously thought, or really even talked about. he is certainly not a figure that had character in the story, that we talked about extensively. he was at the presidents side, constantly and most importantly, for purposes of this investigation, he was the presidents mouthpiece. he went out and made statements, starting in february of 2022 with respect to the national archives as efforts to get documents back from president trump. then he continued to make statements after the mar-a-lago search, and beyond their. those are the types of things that the prosecutors were interested in talking to him about. your question about, what is the significance of pence being the last witness? sometimes prosecutors find that as they are approaching readiness for charges, and i think that
about bringing it somewhere where the conviction, if they get, one would not be overturned on appear. it also shows strength, alex, that they are willing to take this evidence to any courtroom in the country, including trump s backyard. i think that they could ve manipulated this, in terms of venue, to get enough of the charges in washington. they could ve brought it there, they could ve just did, let s let the facts be what the facts are. politically, it s interesting to me how many republicans are coming out and saying things tonight without knowing what the evidence is. my sense is that something s flipped here. my sense is that there is going to be a charge, tampering with witnesses, that maybe some of these witnesses have been threatened. they should not cooperate. i just think it s very dangerous for anybody in public office to be saying that somebody s innocence, and that this is a sham, a political