to possible witness intimidation, to questionable defense arguments. 100 questions for -- and andrew weissmann. and later, served as an impeachment manager and on the january six committee. congressman jamie raskin joins me live to discuss his reactions to the charges and what she is watching for next. for the third time informants, the former president of the united states has been indicted, arrested, and arraigned. let's face, that we have become oddly familiar with how this all goes. there is the release of the indictment itself, helicopters falling blackest movies, and of course, the court sketches, all followed by a barrage of deranged posts on so -- there is a rinse and repeat feeling that starting to sudden. this one did feel different because it is different. felt bigger because it is bigger. the indictment filed by special counsel jack smith this week detailed the ways in which an american president engaged in a criminal conspiracy from the oval office to subvert the will of the people. of course, like any criminal defendant, trump is innocent of proven guilty there will. be a trial, and his legal team will announce the defense. no matter how downs, this is the one historians will be talking about 100 years from now. trump is now facing four criminal counts in this case, including conspiracy to defraud the united states, obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy against the right of americans to vote and have their vote counted. now, there will be a lot of political analysis and speculation about what this law means and the impact it could have on the race in 2024. i'm here to tell you most of those predictions are a little more than wild guesses at this point. they made bear no resemblance to what we actually see in 15 months when the election rolls around. this is ultimately not about politics. it should not be talked about only through the political prism. it is not about joe biden, it is not about the republican or the democratic party, it is about a coordinated attempt to up and democracy itself by a sitting president. to quote from the indictment, it's about a concerted effort to, quote, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and road public faith in the administration of the election. here's the thing, donald trump hasn't learned a single lesson, doesn't seem that way at least. hasn't changed his behavior at all. that's probably why the judge is that his or brain explicitly warned him, to his face, that it's a crime to influence jurors or threat threaten anyone with information about his case. 24 hours after he was released on bond, he issued this message and all caps on truth social. saying, quote, if you go after me, i'm coming after you. it did not go unnoticed. a few hours later, special counsel jack smith cited that threatening post in requests for protective order. basically prosecutors are raising concerns that trump's gonna publicly share the evidence that they give to his lawyers and use his platform, social media platforms to intimidate witnesses. that seems like a reasonable concern, unfortunately. especially since trump posted another threatening message late yesterday, attacking former vice president, mike pence. who is a witness in the case against him. of course, this is exactly what we have come to expect from trump, will do everything in his power to make this about politics and cast himself as a martyr, as the victim. he wants a public debate about who is for him, whose against him. he wants us to talk about his poll numbers and whether this indictment will strengthen or weaken his campaign. what he doesn't want is the discussion of facts. the truth, is what trump fears most is the facts. the facts will prove more stubborn than he is. he won't be able to spin, cudgel, threaten, or otherwise why is way out of this, he will lose control. he doesn't want to turn mine to the people who made this indictment possible or not joe biden or even merrick garland, their his own supporters. not just republicans, but maga republicans throughout the indictment. does not want us to talk about the additional details that jack smith may have. so, that's exactly what we're going to do over the course of the next hour. joining me now is ron klain, president biden's former chief of staff and my former boss. great to see you. >> great to be back, thanks, jen. >> you have more experience in washington in every job there is an almost everyone. i think part of what we need to address here is, what is normal? what's my? i want to start first with this post. trump posted, if you go after me, i am going to go after you. you're familiar with worrying about security threats. how concerned should we be about those type of posts? ould w>> i think, as you discus, this is an effort by the former president to try to intimidate witnesses who may testify. as you noted, the witnesses in this case or not democrats, they aren't trump haters, they're people who are his closest advisors, loyal vice president, mike pence, likely will be a witness in this case. he's trying to intimidate people who know the truth, they want him to tell the truth. is that normal? no. it's not normal. it's criminal on top of everything else. when you were reading this, i haven't had a chance to ask or talk to you about this, you are the incoming chief of staff when this all happened. you are preparing to leave during covid, during a really hard time in our country. what did you think when you read the? >> i thought how close it came to succeeding. the indictment is a damning indictment of what donald trump tried to do to keep the american people from having their will in the election, trying to overturn the election, interfering, obstruct the lawful process an orderly transfer of power. i think it's hard to read it and not think how close it came to working. that is the scariest thing of, all of all of this. >> the other question i never asked you about. during the transition, as a spokes person on the transition, you are the incoming chief of staff. i remember being worried the night before january 6th about delay tactics being used on the floor. but not about the level of violence or the level of security threats. what were you worried about at the time? >> same thing i was worried, about an effort to delay and postpone. there was talk that vice president pence was not gonna show up to preside. i wonder what that, omenta turned out to be true i did not think that a mob would break into the capitol and and the tabulation of votes. there were times on january six for i was fearful that donald trump would not leave the office and that joe biden would never be sworn in as president because they would not be able to resume the tabulation of electrical votes. >> trump's former chief of staff, mike meadows, not mentioned in the indictment. there is speculation he is cooperating. you don't have any information on that. you did hold the same job. and what struck me is the chief of staff has access, so much access to the president, so much information. what kind of information or access to have four people are trying to understand this? >> a lot of access, a lot of information, are supposed to use it for lawful purposes. the question here, there is a conspiracy that developed in the white house. a conspiracy to not let the will of voters be the -- conspiracy to stop the lawful process of the transition of power. the question, is who is involved in that conspiracy? white house chief of staff, your job is to learn the conspiracies going on and stop, it keep it away from the president. instead, it appears the president himself, with the help of his closest aides, had this conspiracy, executed this conspiracy, as i said, nearly succeeded in that. >> one of the things that was also striking, even more so if he worked in the white house, trump basically went around the typical legal advisers, the acting attorney general, white house counsel, mike pence described the team of lawyers he went to as a crack pot lawyer, to mike pence. however normal is that for a president to go outside of the attorney general, the white house counsel, and others? >> it gives crack pozzebon name. i think what happened here was ridiculous. obviously, an effort to break the law. bill barr was donald trump's handpicked attorney general. put him as attorney general when he forced out attorney general sessions. and then bill barr was the attorney general. bill bowler told him there is no basis, had a giant falling, out barr resigned. and then he put acting attorney general, that person told him, basically, the justice department has no rule here. you have to have a legal challenge to it. legal challenge field cause there's no basis for. and then trump ignored the legal advice who's getting from his normal legal advisers. the white house counsel excluded from meetings, trump brought in these people who are part of his conspiracy to try and overturn the results of the election. there is nothing like this that's ever been seen before. >> the other thing that struck. we certainly weren't and, there although we were on the transition. the vice president claimed he didn't know about the electors plot. you've been the chief of staff to a vice president and president. i don't buy that. i mean, i'm interested in white your gut instinct was to that? >> hard to know what they did or didn't tell mike pence. they were clearly trying to pressure mike pence to do something yet no legal authority to do, which is to stop the counting of electoral college and overturn particular electoral votes. something that no vice president has ever done before, there's no legal basis to do it. and others also rejected this possibility. al gore, 2000, presided over the electoral college tabulation, resulted in him not being elected president. the vice president, it's an unfortunate and hard task, it's common. pressuring pence not to do his legal duty. didn't have the legal authority to do what he did or didn't tell, we just don't know. >> one of the debates out there, whether there should be cameras in the tre is an argument for tt for transparency purposes. you're the chief of staff -- trying to settle the country. what do you think of cameras in the courtroom? are you for it? >> i'd be ford in this case. first of all, i generally favor cameras in the courtroom. i think the judicial process should be more transparent. you know, i think we have cameras in congress for proceedings. we should have cameras in the courtroom generally. i think, specifically, here, given the crimes that are alleged, an effort to essentially overthrow the government, the public has the right to see this trial. the public confidence in the trial will be critical. >> i would ask you to put your senate judiciary chairman had on for a second. as i understand it, chief justice roberts would have to decide that cameras could be in the courtroom. is there anything that the senate can do or the judiciary committee can do to compel that to be the case? >> the congress could pass a law requiring cameras, requiring all federal judiciary proceedings be televised i. don't think that's gonna happen. the decision will rest with the chief justice. i understand the competing considerations here, i think it's a special case. i think there should be televised access to the case. >> you've known the president for so long. came in at such a difficult moment in history. part of the impact of trump questioning the outcome is that an overwhelming majority of republican voters, still, to this day, don't believe president biden was legitimately elected, despite court cases and everything. how do you think? do you think he bears the scars of that? >> i don't think he bears the scars of that. look, look at the job president biden's done in these two years. he's worked with republicans, work even with mitch mcconnell, even closer to get things done. he's worked with kevin mccarthy to get the debt limit situation navigated this year. he's passed bipartisan legislation, bipartisan infrastructure bills, bipartisan legislation temperance, bipartisan gun control legislation. he's been able to work with republicans on capitol hill as much as they've been willing to work with him. he's gone the extra mile. , so i think he's done everything he can to be president for all americans. one more thing, look at these bills he passed, these bills have major investments in clean energy, infrastructure, and all the studies show most of the money of those bills are going to republican states. massive job creation. >> some taking credit for. >> some of taking credit, voted against a. the point, as he's a president for all americans, tournament this country better in every one of the 50 states, no regard to politics. i think that's who joe biden is. it's what he was collected to do. it's what he has been doing as president. >> i think people can now see why i can disco talk to for ten minutes before briefing and all the things i need to know. thank you so much for joining me. >> things are having, we appreciate it. >> coming, up you don't have to be a lawyer. i'm not. to understand how ridiculous trump's legal teams defenses are in this case. we're gonna go through some of their favorite arguments one by one. plus, to the trump allies who are calling this whole thing a political witch hunt know how much of the evidence in this case came from trump allies? and later, a look back at the work of the january six committee and the look ahead to this trial is congressman jamie raskin. we're getting started today. we will be right back. l be rightac bk. rything and now they're slicing their deli meats fresh. that's why this qb profers the new five meat beast. and this qb profers it. and if we profer it. we know you'll profer it too. are you trying to outspokesperson me? maybe. want a smarter way to mop? introducing the new swiffer powermop. an all-in-one cleaning tool with hundreds of scrubbing strips- that absorb and lock dirt away, for a mop and bucket clean in half the time. mop smarter with the new swiffer powermop. after advil dual action back pain... yo! uh! ha! ha! 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>> vo: for us, driving around is the only way we can get our baby to sleep, so when our windshield cracked, we needed it fixed right. we went to safelite.com. there's no one else we'd trust. their experts replaced our windshield, and recalibrated our car's advanced safety system. they focus on our safety... so we can focus on this little guy. >> singers: ♪ safelite repair, safelite replace. ♪ bridgett is here. she has no clue that i'm here. she has no clue who's in the helmet. are you ready? -i'm ready! alright. xfinity rewards creates experiences big and small, ♪ ♪ ♪ and once-in-a-lifetime. >> okay, for full transparency, like most of you watching, i am not a lawyer. but you don't exactly need to be avid to recognize that the arguments by trump's legal team don't exactly hold up. i mean, they appear to be three things pretty focused on, repeating over and over. and each of them feels worthy of some scrutiny. stick with me here. we are going to go through these one by one. let's start with the first amendments defense. it's become a favorite for trump. his lawyers and all of his allies in congress. >> this is an attack on free speech. >> they are trying to criminalize exercising the first amendment. >> you are entitled to question whether it was honest or not. that's the uniqueness of the first amendment. that is the uniqueness of america. you know what? you should be prosecuted for your thoughts. >> this is a free speech killing indictment, killing free speech, that's what it is. >> the argument, as you just heard, goes something like this -- under the first amendment, trump has a right to openly spout his election conspiracy theories. and on one level, they are right. he is well within his rights to say that he won the election even though he didn't. the special counsel's team went out of their way to point that out in the indictment, that also pointed out that trump had legal avenues to file lawsuits and call for audits and recounts, all of which he did. none of which succeeded, dozens of them. but here here's the problem. according to the indictment trump and others worked together with the goal of pressuring officials to overturn a free and fair election. that is not actually free speech. that is a conspiracy. so, think of this hypothetical, like, that will actually help me a lot. if john were to slater's accountant, i am paying too much in taxes, and i wish i didn't have to. even if that's not true, he can say that. that is free speech. but if john were to say to his accountant, i paid too much in taxes, and wish i didn't have to, so don't send in what i owe. that speech, it's also a crime. then, there is the second piece of trump's defense, blame the lawyers, all the lawyers, he had many of them. as former fbi general counsel and our next guest andrew weissmann puts it, the argument is basically, quote, what was he to do? a lawyer told him he could overthrow the government, so he can't be guilty of trying to overthrow the government. that sounds absurd, right? the other problem here is that you are surrounded by lots of lawyers advising him not to pursue these legal avenues. his top law enforcement official, the acting attorney general, told him the justice department cannot and would not change the outcome of the election. the deputy white house counsel told him, quote, there is no world, there is no option, and that you do not leave the white house on january 20th. according to the indictment, trump purposely left his white house counsel out of a meeting where he pressured vice president mike pence to reject the biden electors. you already heard that claim, because council has pushback on trump's false claims of election fraud. donald trump was not let astray by his lawyers. he ignored them, and instead, went lawyer shopping. he went out of his way to find and empower people willing to make the argument that he wanted to make, even when others pointed out how outrageous his plans were. finally and perhaps, perhaps the most absurd argument, trump was simply ignorant. he just didn't know any better that no matter how delusional you truly believe that there was rampant fraud in the 2020 election, and that he actually won. but there are more than a couple of cracks in the foundation of that one. just this week, one of donald trump's lawyers very plainly said that everyone around him knew he lost. >> there is testimony. there's a number of aids that have said that the president was made aware that he lost the election and yet continued to argue that it was stolen from him. >> how do you reconcile those two things? >> i think that everybody was made aware that he lost the election, but that doesn't mean that was the only advice he was given. >> everybody knowing trump lost and he just not knowing. there are also several documented instances where he admitted he lost. during a national security briefing after the election, he told advisers, we are going to give that to the next guy. elissa farah testify to the january 6th committee that while watching joe biden on tv, trump said, quote, can you believe, i lost to this guy. so, just to recap, trump really can't claim free speech here. he can't claim that lawyers. all of whom are coconspirators anyway. and he can't really claim ignorance because that's not exactly believable. so, with such a weak legal defense, watch what trump and his allies will do now. it is a predictable and unfortunately a familiar playbook, delay, confuse, make a lot of noise. trump's lawyers apparently busier running a media blitz rather than handling his defense. just this morning, some of the defenses that were filed sunday morning shows. trump's defenders are already attacking the judge and saying that it is somehow impossible for the legal system to work correctly in washington, d.c.. they will lose this confusion and noise to delay the trial as long as they can because the longer it goes on, the closer he comes to trying to get back into office because the real goal for him to get elected and shut it escapes down. up next, i've got two of our best legal experts, andrew weissmann and neal katyal, standing by, to try and help make sense of donald trump's extremely flawed defense. why prosecutors are asking the judge overseeing the case to step in after trump's post on social media? 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>> so, jen, you know, it's worth noting that on thursday at the arraignment, donald trump under oath swore that he would not retaliate against, or threaten any potential witness. and then, the next day, that post and others, with respect to mike pence, were issued. so, what can the judge do? the judge can start by bringing parties in, and giving, you know, a sir sort of stern lecture, that this is an admonition that you have one more chance. the other thing the judge can do, remember, donald trump is out on bail. so, he is not free to say anything that anyone else would. there can be restrictions on what he did and what he can do. this did happen with roger stone in this very same courthouse, when he posted a photo of the district judge with crosshairs over her shoulder. and that led to severe restrictions about what you can post. just to be clear, any other defendant who did this, who is facing six counts of obstruction of justice, four counts in d.c., two counts in florida, i think it would be sent to jail, and would have to await trial in jail. >> so, you know, one of the things you've been watching, and it's been interesting, lawyers, the judge, the trump team asked for a delay to respond to this protective order request. and the judge shot it down very quickly. it all seems very rapid. what can you make of that? and what does that tell us about what we should look ahead to in the weeks ahead? >> so, first, jen, i just wanted to thank you for the way you started this show, talking about how this trial was something that people are gonna read about in 100 years. and the reason for that is not because this trial -- it's really because this trial goes to the essence of what our legal system is about. trump's lawyers on tv today saying this is just a technical violation of the constitution, and stuff like that. on the contrary, this is as serious as it gets. this is about the ex president who tried to launch a coup and stop the counting of an election. so, i think this is what -- leading to judge chutkan and the timing of this case and what she has been doing over the weekend, i think she is signaling this reputation, she is and known on since judge, she's not gonna accept trump's decisions to try and delay the trial which is a standard tactic in case after case. this thing looks like it is heading toward a fast and speedy trial as it should be, given the gravity of the charges. but when trump goes and uses social media to do what he's been doing, after being warned by the judge, i think that's all the more reason why this trial has to occur quickly. >> andrew, you mentioned that we heard a new defense from donald trump's lawyer this morning on meet the press, and other networks as well. let's listen to what he said about trump's pressure campaign on mike pence and talk about it on the other side. >> pence is an attorney. if he had any point, said or thought, that mr. trump, president trump was acting unlawfully or contrary to criminal law, he would have said that. no one ever suggested that. president trump exercised -- >> actually, he has said that. he said the president asked him to violate the constitution -- the president asked him to violate the constitution which is another way of saying he hasn't break the law. >> he never said -- that's wrong. a technical violation of the constitution is not a violation of criminal law. >> i mean, that sounded to me like a new argument, a new one there. andrew, what did you make of that? >> just to go to neal's a point, a technical violation of the constitution, which is overthrowing the democratic process by which we elect the president, that is neither technical, nor is it legal. you know, this is -- you know, i understand that this defense du jour, they keep on threading things out to see what might stick to the public. but that one is beyond the pale. and it shouldn't be normalized. it is absolutely absurd. again, he will have his day in court. he will be able to float all of these not in the court of public opinion, but before judge chutkan, it is clear it will be rejected. but he will have his day in court like every defendant to raise all of this. but this is not a serious argument legally. >> neal, you have been leading the charge on cameras in the courtroom. you have written about it. you have talked about it before most people were talking about it, saying it's absolutely necessary. do you think we will get them? >> i do. and the reason is this is, as you were saying, the most important trial that america has ever had. and this is occurring in our courtrooms that we pay for it with our taxpayer dollars. and it is, to me, unthinkable that the american public can't see this momentous trial. and, you know, that is particularly so because donald trump is a master of disinformation, and you know, spewing lies. and if we can't see the trial for ourselves, those bits of misinformation will persists and increase, and one of our greatest justice is, louis grand isle, said sometimes -- this trial isn't the name of the people of the united states. we are after all the victims of it, as andrew just said pointedly. this is about overthrowing our democracy, our votes. we should all be able to see this trial. the idea that a handful of people from the public would be allowed in and we could call that a public trial is just, i mean, to me, unthinkable. >> andrew, i know you are not in the business of representing trump or getting in his mind. but looking at all these charges, it's hard to imagine that they aren't discussing the possibility of a plea deal, or a plea agreement. do you think his lawyers are discussing that with him? or what is typically happen at this face, if you are looking at this level of legal threat? >> well, a good defense lawyer has to have that conversation with their client, to advise them about their legal threat. there are arguments on the law and what they think of this, whether they think they'll fly or not, and also factually, what they think will happen in the three criminal cases that he is facing currently, perhaps four cases. that said, it's ultimately the clients decision based on that advice. i think that here, it is clear that donald trump is going to try this in -- sort of the public, because the things that he's been saying so far are just not anything that goes to a factual defense or a legal defense in any of these cases. so, i just didn't see that this is gonna be really an issue where we are thinking about this in terms of the trials, and donald trump's thinking of, i can get to the presidency, or get an ally into the white house, so i can at least make the federal cases go away. >> so, we are looking ahead to a potential fourth indictment. neal, i'm gonna start with you. do you think we are gonna get a georgia indictment this week? are you bracing for that? >> it feels to me, i think we will. i think that's what all the indications are. there are security barriers going up in fulton county and the like. so, i do think we will see a fourth indictment. >> andrew, you as well? what's your thought, this week? >> you know, if it's not this, week it will be the next week. everything has been cleared. all this sort of legal issues that could have helped this up, we've heard from fani willis that she said she is ready to go. so, you know, in this situation, i know she said it would be imminent in january. but now, it really is eminent. and there will be a fourth set of charges. it's important for people to know those charges will stick regardless of who is in the white house because the federal pardon does not affect state charges. >> neal katyal and andrew weissmann, thank you both for spending hours explaining all this to all of us on television. really appreciate both of your time this afternoon. and coming up -- no matter how much donald trump tries to spin this indictment as a democratic witch hunt, he somehow hasn't figured out the calls coming from inside the house. and still ahead, someone who knows the details of what led up to january 6th better than anyone. congressman jamie raskin joins me to talk about jack smith's case against trump. we'll be right back. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ so you only pay for what you need. that's my boy. ♪ stay off the freeways! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ your bug spray should take out bugs, not keep out people. unlike other sprays that stick around, zevo goes from kill to clean in just seconds, plus it's safe for use around people and pets. zevo. people-friendly. bug-deadly. ♪ tourists tourists that turn into scientists. tourists taking photos that are analyzed by ai. so researchers can help life underwater flourish. ♪ your brain is an amazing thing. but as you get older, it naturally begins to change, causing a lack of sharpness, or even trouble with recall. thankfully, the breakthrough in prevagen helps your brain and actually improves memory. the secret is an ingredient originally discovered... in jellyfish. in clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve short-term memory. prevagen. at stores everywhere without a prescription. frustrated by skin tags? dr. scholl's has the breakthrough you've been waiting for. the first fda-cleared at-home skin tag remover clinically proven to remove skin tags safely in as little as one treatment. >> another suit comes as an enormous shock. but donald trump and his allies have been spinning his third indictment as a political witch hunt concocted by democrats. just take a listen to some of the completely unhinged reaction from the right wing media ecosystem. >> from what i see now, it's a totally political thing. >> you know what? you shouldn't be prosecuted for your thoughts. and the difference here is, when hillary clinton said it, nothing happened to her. >> this indictment reads like a fever dream written by adam schiff and dan goldman -- >> the nonsense that came out of his mouth in that press conference is the same stuff we've been hearing. he's like, adam schiff with a bare -- >> the whole reason why biden has to arrest his top political opponent is not because president trump is guilty of any crimes. it's because biden can't beat trump. >> but going through this 45-page indictment, you will not find joe biden or hillary clinton, or adam schiff named as a source of any information in this case. instead, it is the testimony of lifelong republicans, prominent maga loyalists that form the core of the government's case against donald trump. trump's vice president, mike pence, trump's director of national intelligence, john ratcliffe. trump's cybersecurity chief, trump's attorney general bill barr. trump's attorney general that replaced bill barr after the election, jeffrey rosen. trump's acting deputy attorney general, richard donahue. and his former white house chief of staff, mark meadows. now, there sure are a lot of republicans in this democratic witch hunt against donald trump. and when it comes to stopping trump's attempts to overthrow our democracy, it was not democrats, but mostly republicans who stepped in and actually stopped him. they were doing their jobs, like rusty bowers, the former arizona house speaker who refuse to go along with rudy giuliani's scheme to go around the arizona state legislature and replace legitimate electors with fake ones. bowers said, quote, as a conservative republican, i don't like the results of the presidential election. i voted for president trump and i worked hard to reelect him. but i cannot and will not entertain a suggestion that we violate current law to change the outcome of certified election. republicans like brad raffensperger, the georgia secretary of state, pushed back against trump's requests to find votes and his claims about 5000 dead people voting in georgia. raffensperger's response, well, mister president, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong. the actual number were two people, two people that were dead that voted. that's a quote from him. and then, there was michigan house speaker leith-hatfield who said, quote, we diligently examine these reports of fraud to the best of our ability. i fought hard for president trump. nobody wants to win more than me. i think he said an incredible job. but i love a republic too. so, when trump and his people cry witch hunt, and scream about biden, hillary clinton, adam schiff, on and on, the awkward things, none of these prominent democrats are in the indictment. the people responsible for his current legal challenges are republicans who supported him, who voted for him. and they still believe in his policies. they drew the line and his actions. those are the leaders of the supposed partisan witch hunt against him. at the special counsel's office, nobody knows the ins and out of the case better than congressman jamie raskin. he joins me, when we come back. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ...because t-mobile helps pano ai innovate, so they can stop the spread of wildfires. now's the time to see what america's largest 5g network can do for your business. sometimes jonah wrestles with falling asleep... ...so he takes zzzquil. the world's #1 sleep aid brand for a better night sleep. so now, he wakes up feeling like himself. the reigning family room middle-weight champion. better days start with zzzquil nights. with a majority of my patience with sensitivity, i see irritated gums and weak enamel. sensodyne sensitivity gum & enamel relieves sensitivity, helps restore gum health, and rehardens enamel. i'm a big advocate of recommending things that i know work. >> woman: why did we choose safelite? 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>> well, i think it was a tactical move because that statute has rarely been used in, you know, more than a century. i mean, until donald trump, we never had anybody, much less a president of the united states, try to incite a violent insurrection and give aid and comfort to insurrectionists. as donald trump has done. we thought there was overwhelming evidence of that, you know, he called them a great heroes, i'll never forget this day. he continued to praise them. he's talking about pardoning all of them, including, you know, people who violently assaulted police officers or pled guilty to seditious conspiracy, which means conspiracy to overthrow the government. so, i figured that he probably wanted to avoid a big debate about freedom of speech and whether trump was just engaged in speech when it came to egging on the insurrectionists. i mean, everything else he's pled donald trump was integrally involved in the action of conspiring to defraud the american public by promoting the counterfeit slates of electors, conspiring to interfere with the federal proceeding on january 6th, the joint session of congress to count the electors. and then fundamentally, a conspiracy to violate everybody's civil rights by stealing the election away from the illegitimate electoral process under the constitution and the electoral count act of 1887, and substituting instead his counterfeit process that he cooked up with john eastman and the other people involved in the conspiracy. >> my bet is that trump's recent post on a surprise to you. they weren't necessarily a surprise to me either. but even in the days since the arraignment, he's put out a number of threatening tweets. he tweeted a threat at mike pence, like you to be a key witness. he is tweeted out threats that could be regarded, targeted at any range of people, justice department, government. should there be some sort of gag order imposed here? what do you think should be done? >> well, the judge definitely has to look very carefully to what extent trump would be obstructing justice, or interfering with honest witness testimony, and so on, with all of the threats and intimidation which are obviously part of the course of donald trump. but what it shows us, jen, is that this conspiracy continues. i mean, they are now going back to the argument that trump won the election, that he did not believe that he lost the election, although there was lots of evidence, that we found during the january 6th committee proceedings, that he understood, and he was saying to people, can you believe i lost to the sky? and there were lots of indications he knew he had lost, including 60 federal and state court decisions rejecting every claim of adore fraud in the election. but basically, doubled down on it, and they are basically saying they would do this again. in other words, donald trump did not do anything wrong. so, they are giving us a preview of what they might do in 2024, if 7 million vote margin that joe biden beat him by becomes a 10 million vote margin, 12 million, they will just pretend again that they won the election, and engage in the same insurrection tactics against our constitutional order. >> such an important thing to remember. this is not exactly muted at this point. there are few people who know as much as you do about all the details here. and mike pence, it's clear he not only cooperated, he gave them his notes. he has spoken about this epic publicly. he also said this week that he didn't know anything about the efforts to secure fake electors and only note about it after the facts, which i find hard to buy. so, what was your thought when you heard him say that? >> it'll be interesting to see what the evidence shows in court. they certainly took great pains to keep the whole thing secret, which obviously gets completely against the freedom of speech argument that they were just engaged in speech. no, they were acting like conspirators. i mean, in the whole electoral college process is meticulously defined in federal and state law, and in the electoral count act, and every state has its own procedures for doing it. there is no doubt that they will just counterfeit the electoral process. and the idea that that is somehow protected by the first amendment is absurd. there are people in jail today because they counterfeited one vote, one ballot. if you go in and you pretend you are an elected or, you are a voter, and you are not that voter, or you fill out a registration form with a phony name, you're gonna be in prison for years. they try to do that to the entire election. they tried to counterfeit not one valid but the entire election, stealing away the victory that joe biden had won, 300 and 6 to 232 in the electoral college. so the idea that that is just freedom of speech is preposterous. >> we only have a minute left. but i did want to ask you, you are in the capital, you lived this. you've done so much work on this. there could be a discussion of a plea deal. we don't know at this point where it will head. would you be able to stomach a deal that does not include prison time? >> well, look, again, from the beginning, jen, i have said it all of that is within the progress of the prosecutions. we got during the trump era, one of the things we got to's politicians second guessing what goes on with prosecutors and trying to micromanage them and second guess the rule of law. i just want to see that justice is done, and let the wheels of justice turn as they will. the main thing is that people understand the truth and that they will defend democratic institutions and our electoral process. and if somebody doesn't like the electoral college, great, let's replace it with a national popular vote. we can do it. but in the meantime, everybody has got to respect the rules as they are, and not try to substitute some phony, counterfeit process, and leverage the violence in the streets in order to coerce the vice president to follow their well. >> congressman jamie raskin, when the history books are written, you would definitely get a lot of credit for speaking truth, and defending democracy. thank you so much for being with me this afternoon. we are coming right back after a quick break. stay with us. ♪ ♪ ♪ profer the grand slam ham. and this rookie pro... profers fresh sliced turkey. and if we profer it, we know you'll prefer it too. glad you made the cut. you mean slice? 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