professor at the university of michigan and msnbc legal analyst, yamiche alcindor, nbc news washington correspondent. dasha, we re waiting, we re watching this historic moment. set the stage for us outside of trump tower. well, we have got a calm before the storm here yesterday. we had a massive crowd, a lot of noise today. it has been fairly quiet this is a business district, a tourist district, a lot of curiosity, a lot of onlookers. we have choppers overhead. we have got some anticipation building there are officers, heavy police presence here, some officers directing traffic right now, getting ready for the motorcade to make its way downtown and, look, this is a building, this is a residence that was the center of gravity for the trump campaign back in 2016, the center of his power. now, the place where he begins to make a journey that is unlike a journey that he has made in new york city before now to downtown to the courthouse where he will be arraigned, where he will
arrested, we haven t seen the indictments yet. and reckoning has gives a nervousness to some people who wonder and said very publicly should this have been the first case, should this have been a case at all. my first opportunity to ask you, what are you looking for in this, it says, oh, i get why alvin bragg did this. the genius of our system is that you have different state investigations going on in georgia and new york and the federal ones the prosecutors don t coordinate and say what is the strongest case there is a prosecutor, you bring your case when it is ready this is the first one that is ready and it makes sense, these are the oldest sets of facts, the facts as we understand them start in 2016 and the other things like the stolen documents or january 6th, much more recent investigations it is not surprising to me that this is first and, you know, anyone who says this is the weakest, it shouldn t be brought, i don t think you get
each other basically is what they try to do. i m guessing you have no hesitation about saying donald trump will get out of his car and get into that courthouse without any problem? no issues at all. i guess what everybody is waiting to see is when he comes out of the court, is he going to stop and say something or get back in that car and fly down to mar-a-lago and, bill, andrea mitchell here, take us inside the nypd. what kind of special expertise in the areas of intelligence training, counterprotests, movement, what is the key units that are prepared for any contingency today? this is where the expertise and the experience of the nypd really shows there is no police department in america that has the capacity, the number of personnel, the intelligence gathering capabilities and the relationships with their colleagues, fbi, and all of secret service in this case, if you have something like this,
defendant to talk. better seen than heard he has a speech tonight. we don t know if we ll hear from him between now and then but do you always look at if your client says something that it s a potential gift to the prosecution? especially in this case. yeah, you re right, leave it to donald trump to be the first person indicted and want to give a speech back at the scene of another crime, mar-a-lago, where he s going to, you know, speak and probably antagonize his defense lawyers. it s only evidence for the prosecutors. but i think from trump s perspective, he s got politics here as well, he s trying to use it to rile up his base and try to raise fundraising and so on at some point, there is going to be this fundamental clash between trump s political instincts and his legal needs. and as a lawyer, i feel for those lawyers, i don t know how you can navigate that and a client who is very, very
i argued the ashcroft case which was 9-0, in which the supreme court said unanimously there was a zone of freedom for government actors, and you don t want to go after them to put it differently, it s like really hard for a former president to be indicted but you really have to try it s like tinder wood. yes, donald trump is about to do it, but that s something that we re talking about for future presidents we re 20-plus minutes away from what will be the arraignment of donald j. trump 2:15 is scheduled. it s 1:52 eastern time we re waiting for donald trump once he is done with that processing, he will come down the hallway and head to the courtroom. but, neal, one thing you know, this is a president who loves to talk and i think you d agree with me, most lawyers do want any