major commitment today from big business about ending all those unfair surprise fees that impact everything from tickets to travel. good day, everyone. i m andrea mitchell in washington. after weeks of donald trump s attacks against merrick garland and jack smith, garland is now speaking out for first time, carefully, since the former president was indicted, strongly defending the prosecutor. mr. smith is a veteran career prosecutor. he has assembled a group of experienced and talented prosecutors and agents who share his commitment to integrity and the rule of law. any questions about this matter will have to be answered by their filings in court. joining me now, vaughn
hillyard, kimberly atkins stohr and from the new york times, peter baker. vaughn, you have a statement from donald trump from a spokesman which outlines a potential legal strategy as former vice president mike pence is ramping up his criticism of trump. right. over the last eight years, donald trump has been in charge of his own defense. it has been a political defense. it is convincing voters. this time, it s a jury. that s why i want to let you look at the statement from a trump spokesman, beginning to lay out what the legal defense could look like. i think that that is an important construct when we talk about the legal end of this. that is what the likes of mike
i think it s really telling is that 31 documents that jack smith cites in the indictment were all documents that were that donald trump failed to return after being asked. particularly after a subpoena. the documents he did return early on, he didn t get charged for. he got charged when he resisted efforts to return the documents. he didn t get charged for just taking them, if he gave them back in a timely basis. i think that s telling. that tells you what the calculation went into jack smith s decision to prosecute here. of course, what really triggers prosecutors is the idea that somebody in the process of an investigation is doing what he can to impede it, is trying to hide evidence, trying to convince wiltwitnesses to provi false affidavits, trying to deceive the government. that s what put this really on a hot track, i think, for an indictment. it s very possible he could have
next. mike pence has done pretty much the same thing. although, he seems to have landed on something a little bit more critical than he started out with, saying that he thinks that trump s actions are indefensible. look, the miami mayor, just like all these other candidates, the test is how do you deal with the 800 pound gorilla in the primary? so far, he has not distinguished himself on that. vaughn hillyard, kimberly atkins stohr, peter baker, jeremy peters, thanks. an nbc news exclusive. as ukraine launches its counteroffensive, president zelenskyy sitting down for an interview with nbc s richard engel. richard joins us live from kyiv coming up next when andrea mitchell reports is back in 60 seconds. stay with us. you are watching msnbc.
you see donald trump continue to have a significant lead over the likes of ron desantis as well as the rest of the field. we are two months out from this debate taking place. again, the issue for each of the candidates is that they are going to have to take on these indictments head on, because the reality is, the hearings will not be playing out until well into next year. likely beyond the point in which they are going to be running against donald trump in the primaries that are slated to begin this next february. peter baker, let s talk about a number of things that have come up on the indictment itself. and the strategy prosecutors as well as the defense has handled this. the washington post reporting in the fall of last year, trump attorney chris kise tried to get the former president to negotiate a settlement with garland and return the documents. other members of the defense team disagreed. in the end, trump wouldn t do it. you know trump so well. you covered him for years. t