Lost. And there was that rose garden moment after the Supreme Court decision. And he said to you, i dont want people to know i lost, right . He said that to mark meadows. I was standing catty corner to mark meadows. We were leaving the residence. We were at a christmas reception. The president was going back to the residence from the oval office. I was with mark steps behind mark. And this was a conversation between the president and mark meadows. That was part of our interview with former white house aide Cassidy Hutchinson almost exactly a month ago. Now her former boss mark meadows may have flipped on the former president. Meanwhile, another attorney from Donald Trumps elite Strike Force Legal team takes a plea deal in the Georgia Election interference case. We have a lot to cover this morning on the legal cases tied to donald trump. Plus, well go through the on going republicanled chaos on capitol hill. Still no speaker . Mike johnson of louisiana is now the partys fourth nominee for speaker. Well tell you more about him and look at his chances of actually winning the gavel. And well have the latest out of The Middle East where israel continues to launch air strikes on gaza after rejecting a Cease Fire Call from the United Nations. A lot going on. Good morning. Welcome to morning joe. It is wednesday, october 25th. Good to have you all with us. Donald trumps final white house Chief Of Staff mark meadows has reportedly been granted immunity in the federal election interference case against the former president. Sources familiar with the matter tell abc news that meadows has met with special counsel jack smiths team at least three times this year, including once before a federal grand jury. In those conversations, meadows reportedly shared that in the weeks following the 2020 election, he told then President Trump multiple times that allegations of significant voter fraud were baseless. He also reportedly admitted to investigators that trump was being, quote, dishonest when he falsely claimed that he won the election in a speech just hours after the polls closed. Despite allegedly saying those things Behind Closed Doors, meadows has repeatedly claimed in public the election was stolen in including in his 2021 memoir. Abc news reports speaking with investigators the former Chief Of Staff conceded even he doesnt believe some of the statements in his own book. Meadows reported will has been granted immunity in the federal case. He still faces racketeering charges, though, in the Georgia ElectionInterference Probe where he has pleaded not guilty. Nbc news has not confied abcs reporting on all of this. In a statement to nbc, meadows attorney writes, quote, i told abc their story is largely inaccurate. People will have to judge for themselves the decision to run it any way. Lets bring in jonathan lemire, ken dilanian, Chuck Rosenberg and timothy hayfy. Good morning to you all. Timothy, we should start with you as youre the lead investigator in all of this around january 6th for the committee that completed its work last year. How significant is this Development Potentially as reported by abc news . Immunity deal for mark meadows and remind our viewers, if you would, what he might share about the days of the 6th and stolen election . Yeah, willie. It is very significant. He is probably the person closest to former President Trump throughout the post election period. All day on january fth. Hes there for all the discussions about the election. All of the prongs of the multipart plan to try to disrupt the joint session. Then importantly, hes with President Trump all day on january 6th at the ellipse. Then in that dining room as the violence is unfolding at the capitol. If he is now providing a thorough and detailed account of all of these interactions with president , it could be tremendously significant for both jack smith and potentially for fani willis. Hard for me to imagine that a defendant cooperates with case one and then doesnt subsequently not go on to cooperate in case two. Again, were assuming that abc reporters have this right, that they havent retracted it at this point. They have multiple sources on this. Donald trump has known for some time. They have been very concerned about mark meadows who went quiet and whose attorney has continued to say bland, generic things to reporters. But in this case, if abc has this story right, just how devastating is it to donald trump . And his claims of fraudulent election . Extraordinarily so. Lets just take a second to reiterate just how close meadows was with trump. When donald trump contracted covid in october, Mark Meadows Rode in marine one with him, accompanied him in the helicopter to walter reed, spent the night in former President Trumps Hospital Room when he was there at the hospital for a couple of days. He was undyingly loyal and in those weeks after the election as the west wing began to hallow out, people were departing, staff departures, another covid outbreak, meadows remained there the entire time and he was in the oval office repeatedly on january 6th trying to get trumps attention. Trump holed up in the private dining room just off of the oval watching the highlights, if you will, On Television. Meadows trying to get him to stop. Listening to ivanka trump and others. He was there throughout the process, throughout the efforts to try to overturn the 2020 election results. He was privy to a lot of the memos being circulated. He was right there at the front lines. And trump people i spoke to last night, you know, they of course push back on the abc report. They pointed out the lawyer said it wasnt quite right. Well see. But theres one thing its one thing if jenna ellis or Sidney Powell, these attorneys are flipping in the georgia case. The trump team concerned but largely thinks that would be something they can get through. Mark meadows would be an entirely different story. Meadows, as we can see here, the latest to turn on trump. He could have extraordinarily damaging testimony against the former president. Theres a headline, theyre all turning on trump. Obviously, ken dilanian, we have the Jenna Ellis Story Out Of Georgia well get to in a bit. Im curious, though, what you belief the impact of mark me does turning on donald trump would be. And also your reaction to Meadows Attorneys i dont know that i quite call it a nondenial denial. It may have been too clever by half. We have all seen people put statements out like that when they found one or two words werent exactly right and then tried to dismiss the overall story. But whats your take on all of it . Thats a great assessment, joe. As you can imagine we all at nbc news done some reporting behind the scenes on this. And the informed speculation about this denial is or the question is there some issue around the immunity question. Was there some imprecision in the abc news report . Theres a lot of different ways that a witness can get immunity. Get whats known as queen for a day proffer immunity. Use immunity. There may be some inaccuracies there. But the gist of what mark meadows is telling investigators, no one is disputing that including Donald Trumps lawyers are not publicly disputing that. Just think of the impact before a jury of having one of Donald Trumps closest aides testify that he told the president he lost the election and that hes seen nothing that would suggest that there are any fraud claims that could overturn the election and yet donald trump is pursuing them any way. Legal experts have said that prosecutors dont need to show that donald trump believed he lost the election in order to prove these criminal claims against mr. Trump. But it sure would be helpful for a jury if they could establish that. Juries are human after all. It paints a larger picture of fraud. This also underscores that people with lives and careers independent of donald trump are not going to go down for him. They not going to face millions of dollars in legal bills and potential years in prison to protect donald trump. Maybe a few people have worked for him for his whole life who are in lower level jobs have this kind of blind loyalty. We have seen that. But not these major washington figures or minor figures like a jenna ellis. Theyre not willing to do it. And this stuff is really crumbling around donald trump. And i willie, this is sort of the christmas story metaphor that im sure every great legal mind across america has been thinking, bb gun its all a lot of fun until it puts somebodys eyes out. While theyre running around playing, following trump, thinking, oh look what hes saying, hes getting away with. This is fun. Were getting to own the libs. Were getting to own the press. Oh my god. Talk about a feeling of immunity. They felt like they had an immunity not only from the law but the truth. They could say anything because this guy was the president of the United States and he was lying everyday and sending out lawyers to lie everyday. Say horrible things about federal judges, completely undermine the rule of law, or at least they thought in their mind they could. They thought they could lie their way out of a president ial election. And then they wake up. And suddenly they see the charges are coming. May have been a shock to some of these lawyers. You try to overturn an american election, well, law is coming after you. We are a nation of laws, not a nation of men. So we heard it from jenna ellis a couple weeks ago. Listen, im not i dont have money. I dont have money like all these other people. Im not going to sit here and blindly defend donald trump. Hes a narcissist. Hes crazy. I wouldnt vote for him again. Suddenly its all fun and games until its not. She decided im sure family Members Around her had to say, you have to protect yourself. Stop lying for this man. Same thing for mark meadows. Im not privy to anything that mark and his family says. But what do you think his wife and children said to him . Really . Like youve been following this guy around for years and youre going to follow him to prison . Ken dilanian said, its one thing to be Making Shit Up Outside of a courtroom, its another thing to say that in a courtroom. You used the right word a game. It was a game to Rudy Giuliani. It was a game to not the right word. That was the right word. Game. Exactly. That was the right word. Good job there, willie. It was a game of relevance. Rudy giuliani was suddenly important again. Cameras were following him and listening to him and jenna ellis, we know her name, Sidney Powell, we knew her name. They got to be famous and they thought close to power. We said this a million times on the show, the ideal that loyalty is a twoway street with donald trump is so incredibly naive its staggering that these people thought they were going to get anything back from him when they need him, which is right now. And of course hes running the other direction. So Chuck Rosenberg, let me ask you first about the distinction between a plea deal, which this is not for mark meadows and an Immunity Deal and why that might be significant and mark meadows is cooperating on jack smith with this 2020 election case, do we also believe or would it seem logical that hes also cooperating in these many other cases as well . Yeah. Let me take the second question first, willie, tim hayfee alluded to this at the beginning of the show. It would be select i havely if he was cooperating on the january 6th case, logically he would cooperate in the Georgia State case. Oh by the way, would also have a lot of really important and interesting and compelling information about the classified documents case being prosecuted federally in the southern direct of florida. So, typically, not always, but typically if someone is cooperating on one case, theyre cooperating across the board. And federal prosecutors and tim and i both served as federal prosecutors would receive full, cooperate and candid cooperation. We dont tend to cut Cooperation Deals with the defendant or bad guy or mr. Meadows gets to pick and choose on what issues he cooperates. Let me talk about your first question. So, the difference between a plea deal in which someone acknowledges their guilt like jenna ellis did and an Immunity Deal as mr. Meadows may have if the abc reporting is accurate is that the second thing, an Immunity Deal, occurs when a defendant has Important Information for prosecutors that they need to prove their underlying case. They need a vector into the criminal conspiracy. Sometimes the best vectors into a criminal conspiracy frankly, willie, are other criminals. So normally mark meadows wouldnt have to answer a question truthfully if that truthful answer would incriminate him. He has a Fifth Amendment privilege. We all do if weve committed a crime. Most of us havent. Mr. Meadows allegedly did. And so if prosecutors want to force him to compel him to divulge that information against his Fifth Amendment privilege, one way to do that is to immunize him. In other words, mr. Meadows. You must tell us the truth because we are now promising not to prosecute you if you tell us the truth. Once theyve given that immunity, meadows is compelled. He must answer questions and he must do so honestly. If he doesnt, he violates an Immunity Agreement and can end up going to jail for a whole raft of problems. So, Immunity Deals give prosecutors the vectors into criminal arrangements, into criminal conspiracies. And prosecutors use it as a tool to work up the chain. Thats great explanation and important distinction there as we follow this along. Joe, its important to remember as well that we have and the January 6th Committee as tim knows had just a trove of text messages, emails, correspondents from Mark Meadows January 6th and that day. They have a whole bunch on him. As we know from Cassidy Hutchinsons testimony it was her, a 24yearold aide who was the adult in the room that day on january 6th as Mark Meadows Sat and said, what do you want me to do . This is what the big guy wants. Right. We also know that mark meadows just behaved in a very erratic way. Dumped a ton of documents on the committee. Wrote a book. Then started saying exactly opposite of what was in the documents that he gave to the committee. His text messages. Then after donald trump said that everything that he wrote in his book was a lie, he said, yeah, its a lie. Dont own the libs. Own yourself. And so, yeah. Its going to be its going to be fascinating to see where that testimony goes. But theres no doubt that this is if abc news report is right and we have no reason right now to believe that its not, they are staying on it. This is going to be extraordinarily significant. Were going to talk how extraordinarily significant that is along after this oneminute break, jenna ellis. Well take you inside the georgia courtroom where she had a tearful confession. And hopefully let the judge know immediately that she was a christian. We also have so much other news. Of course, the chaos in israel. The bombing in gaza. Of course and ukraine fighting for their very existence. American troops being attacked by iranian proxies. All of this happening while the House Republicans continue to allow five or six radical freaks to team up with democrats let me say that again. The republicans have allowed five or six radical freaks in the house to team up with the democrats. They walked over those five or six radical freaks basically walked across the aisle and became democrats for the purposes of vacating the chair of the speakership. And now here we are weeks later with israel, gaza, ukraine, u. S. Troops all of this on fire, the specter of china and they cant even select a speaker. Its not hard. But theyre making everything hard. And you know what, it hurts republicans. It hurts the institution. It hurts america. It hurts our allies across the globe. And more importantly, as chairman mccall said, it really tarnishes the u. S. Reputation across the globe and makes putin and xi and kim jongun happy. Because those republicans are making the communist chinese partys points for them. Well be right back in one minute. S points for them. Well be right back in one minute now, theres skyrizi. Things are looking up, ive got Symptom Relief. Control of my crohns means everything to me. Control is everything to me. Feel significant Symptom Relief at 4 weeks with skyrizi, including less Abdominal Pain and fewer bowel movements. Skyrizi is the first il23 inhibitor that can deliver remission and visibly improve damage of the intestinal lining. 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