tonight. but your usual host at thi hour would be alex wagner s of on a family vacation this week great week to choose, alex and because she is a way you are stuck with me. i apologize. alex we ll be back next week but tonight, because you are stuck with me, you are als stuck with this. gentlemen, i believe you ve all received copies of the prepared statement that i read to the court in open court as i said in that statement, the reason i changed m decision to fight this matte is because i do not believe it would be against the nationa interest and we have a brutalizing effect of my famil and is gone a through two-year struggle concerning this matter. you also may be aware that wha i said in open court, that i categorically and flatly den the assertions that were mad by the private prosecutors wit regard to their contentions of bribery and extortion on m part i will have nothing more to sa at this point. i will make an address to th nation within a few days and so the cri
attorney, former assistant u.s attorney, somebody who has dealt with these types of case in these courts. sir, thank you for being here, it s helpful thanks, rachel, anytime thanks, we ll be right back stay with us my turn. secret actually fights odor. and it s aluminum free. hours later, still fresh. secret works. one prilosec otc each morning blocks heartburn all day and all night. prilosec otc reduces excess acid for 24 hours, blocking heartburn before it starts. one pill a day. 24 hours. zero heartburn. people remember ads with a catchy song. so to help you remember that liberty mutual customizes your home insurance, here s a little number you ll never forget. customize and save. only pay for what you need. liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty.
office, the member of th special counsel s team in th justice department i washington, these othe prosecutors who are contending with potential charges against trump and the vfenom he is bringing to bear against them. how did you guys bear up how did you guys stay what was and stay focused first of all, it would be presumptuous of me to be teaching all these prosecutors how to suck eggs they know how to do it part of it was youth, suppose. but part of it was reall believing in our job our job as advocates for the united states was to bring a case, to investigate a case, i the case was there, to bring it and if it wasn t, to - stop, and he could not pursu it i remember vividly watchin agnew on tv in my little apartment in baltimore sitting here with my wife while agne was saying i will not resign i indicted, i will not resign if indicted, saying terribl things about the three of us it s noise
and that is just the bare fact of it. so, anybody who tells you that this prosecution in new york i to somehow stop trump from running for president again that s horse hockey. it really isn t that and the reason you can tell it is and that is because the reason this prosecution went a badly for him as it possibly could, it would not block hi from running for president but go back to the last time something like this happened it is true that we have neve indicted a former u.s. president before but we did indict a former u s. vice president, who had onl been out of office for about two minutes, literally, when h was indicted in federal cour in 1973. and that case, that spiro agne case, did have some remarkable similarities to the reported charges against mr. trum today. for example, in vice spiro agnew s case they charged hi with taking illicit payments while he was in the whit house. in trump s case, it s believed
himself, and if he was convicted he should be sentenced to imprisonment. elliott richardson, in the context of watergate, older an wiser than the three of us realized that it was very very important as a policy decision to get agnew away from succession, a heartbeat away from the presidency. that s what brought that cas to a close in addition to agnew knowing that we had built a solid case against him. it was airtight. and he knew, if he went to trial, he was going to b convicted and he was going t go to jail the levity of the charges the perceived strength of th case, obviously, is the thin that creates the leverage on a defendant in this case. if the don t think you ve got a great case if they don t think the penalty is going to be onlin too much, then there s les pressure on them to consider any sort of plea agreement and i think that s one of th big opening questions here nobody has seen the indictment nobody knows the strength of the case against trump including trump. and so th