Good evening. Im mehdi hasan. The insanity defense. That is what the Trump Legal Team seems to be offering this week in the wake of Special Counsel jack smiths stunning and damning 45page indictment, excuse, me of the former president , charging him with conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy to violate rights. All charges fueled by his lies per the indictment. The trump team saying, though, he wasnt lying, he truly believed he won the election. Which, if he truly believed that, would of course be insane. But its not true, as smiths and item notes, trump was informed by members of his own campaign and legal teams that he had indeed, lost there was no massive fraud involved. Trump himself is quoted in the indictment telling mike pence after his own Vice President told him that he, mike, pence had no Constitutional Authority to reject the vote on January The 6th, quote, youre too honest. Best of all, one of t
Good evening. Im mehdi hasan. The insanity defense. That is what the Trump Legal Team seems to be offering this week in the wake of Special Counsel jack smiths stunning and damning 45page indictment, excuse, me of the former president , charging him with conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy to violate rights. All charges fueled by his lies per the indictment. The trump team saying, though, he wasnt lying, he truly believed he won the election. Which, if he truly believed that, would of course be insane. But its not true, as smiths and item notes, trump was informed by members of his own campaign and legal teams that he had indeed, lost there was no massive fraud involved. Trump himself is quoted in the indictment telling mike pence after his own Vice President told him that he, mike, pence had no Constitutional Authority to reject the vote on January The 6th, quote, youre too honest. Best of all, one of t
So good to see you again. When this all happened last night, i thought of many things, but i did think of you, and ill tell you why. Its evidence related. You have used your knowledge, your program over the many months of this to talk about how initially it was pretty clear that the Justice Department was not going beyond the events of that day, and you and i talked about that. Other reporters have weighed in, and im curious even though i know you have been talking about it for two hours how you think we got here. Because what we saw in this indictment that i thought was both strong, gripping and bad for the indicted donald trump, was how long and repeatedly they tried to end democracy in america. Yeah, the indictment is so harrowing, and i think that jack smith was at this for just ten months, obviously he built on all of the good work of the committee. I have learned that things are never as clean as what they appear, and we dont always have all the facts before them. But i think the
By Special Counsel jack smith. And then thursdays arraignment on the most grave case of all, this new indictment and arraignment for donald trump, the defendant, over his failed effort to overthrow democracy. We begin there tonight because we have a special for you tonight. Its called indicted the coup conspiracy. A detailed look into trumps failed coup plot with new reporting and context from that detailed Speaking Indictment this week. If youve been following this all really closely, so have we. Weve been working to bring you an even more indepth set of reports tonight. If you happen to be catching up after a long week, ive got a onestop shop for you on what really matters and what weve learned. And by the way, if you are a longtime viewer, i know some of you are, you might recall about a year ago, we broke down trumps efforts to overturn the 2020 Election Results along that grid, how his desperation and his plotting grew as all the legal challenges lost in court and he turned to plo
credit to my colleague who pointed out how cruz s remarks on january the 6th, we ll, have a listen, quote, what does it take to the nearly half the country that believes this election was rigged if we vote, not even to consider the claims, conduct a ten-day emergency audit, consider the evidence? that was ted cruz echoing the exact language referenced in the indictment. that very today planned trump had in mind it according to prosecutors, we talk republicans senator mike lee was a big supporter of the fake electors scheme that promoted a key person behind it, john eastman, who reporting village is one of those six coconspirators in the indictment. text between lee and former white house chief of staff mark meadows in november of 2020 show lead saying he was at one point working, quote, 14 hours a day to help with the plan to prevent congress from certifying joe biden s win. last but not least, as republican senator from wisconsin ron johnson and johnson makes a cameo in the indictment