trial in his federal election interference case, and for the very first time revealing a key case against donald trump. for months now, questions house world about how much donald trump's state of mind matters in this case. did he actually believe that the election was stolen from him, and prosecutors need to show that the ex president knew he had lost the election? well washington post is now reporting this. the justice department weighed in on thedete for the first ti saying that what they need to prove it is not that trump liev the big lie of the election being stolen, but that he knowinglyspread associated lies in a criminal scheme stay in power. so from the special counsel's filing,quot just as the president of a company may be guilty of fraudfor using knowingly false statements of facts to defraud investors, even if he subjectively believes that his company will entuly succeed, the defendant may be guilty of ing deceit to obstruct the government function by which the results of thepresidential election are collected, and counted, and certified, even if he provides evidence that he subjectively believed that the election was rigged. prosecutors saying that trump's words go beyond first amendment protected speech, as trump's attorneys claim, because trump peddled specific false claims of voter fraud in order to commit crimes. again,om this remarkable filing, quote, as the indictmentcognes, the defendant quote had a right like every american to speak publicut t 2020 presidential election and even to claim,faely, that there had en outcome terminative fraud dunghe election and that he had one. d t defendant done no more, his statements pertain to political matters of public importance whatever maned protected under the first amendment, even a false. bu defendant did not stop there. instead, he made dozens of specific claims that there had been substantialfraud in certain states, such as that large numbers of dead, nonresident, noncitizen, or otherwise ineligible voters had cast ballots. or that voting machines had changed votes for the defendant to vote for biden. the defendant then used those lies as the instruments of his for criminal offenses. now this argument is just one of many points. that jack smith is making in his push to urge the courts to reject donald trump's kitchen sink approach to try to stop the federal election trial before it begins for that case entirely. prosecutors warning judge chutkan of what they say is trump's, quote, newest a late tactic. his request to stop all proceedings into the courts have weighed in, and whether donald trump is immune from prosecution because he was president and he tried to reverse his defeat in the 2020 election. the special counsel's office urging judge chutkan to prioritize a ruling on this because it may d before the supreme court. they write, this quote, the defendants actions made clear that his ultate objective with the state motion, as has consistently been the case in this in other matters, is to delay trial at all costs and for as long as possible. the special counsel urging the courts to reject trump's tactics of deceit, all designed to delay this trial, and that is where we begin today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. former acting u.s. solicitor general -- here, plus national investigative reporter for the washington post caroline is here, and the editor at large for the bulwark, charlie sykes is here. charlie, it always felt like trump's, i think you called a lizard, brain and i've always called it his reptilian survival sense, would inform him that this criminal trial is very dangerous for him. and i don't know if it is his performative meltdowns in the civil fraud trial in new york city, but these filings on trump's part have a desperation to them, a desperation to not see trump stand trial for his election interference. >> well, and i think that is obvious. it has been the strategy and the pattern of practice for donald trump. i think you saw the illicit brain in full in new york, but he has a different set of lawyers, in washington d.c.. there are some grown-ups. and of course this is the part of his strategy. because he knows that there is a very real chance that he will be convicted of this case. judge chutkan, if she continues to move ahead at the speed and the seriousness with which she has so far, there is a chance that he will be a convicted felon by the time of the republican convention. when his main hope now is to delay, two of his skate, to obstruct to the point where this will be pushed past the election, and the election is all about keeping himself out of jail. and he can make this all go away. so we do have the lizard brain donald trump, but also we have the donald trump that knows that the only way that he is going to describe this is to push this back as far as possible, and that is not complete. the rational decision on his part, is? it >> no. but it certainly makes the indictment in d.c. and the charges and investigation into january six, i think it is important, as the four of us have always intuited they would be should this moment come to pass. and i want to press you, neal katyal, on the final east them selves. what are we learning about jack smith's team and their case on these filings? >> i think we learned that jack smith's team is professional, competent, analytic, and the like. i think really the thing that we are learning is from the trump team's final east because they basically threw every argument that they could think of against the wall to see what might stick. and what jack smith's team did is meticulously sort through this mess, to use the best descriptive word, and explain why the judge should all let this fall to the floor. jack smith's team picked the motions with surgical, surgical precision. just to take one trump filing, this crazy idea that he is immune from criminal prosecution because he is but president. that is an insane concept, as jack smith's lawyers pointed. out if that was true, the president could commit murder or engage in any number of fraudulent acts to try and subvert an election, canceled the election entirely. the idea that the president is immune from criminal law is insane. now there is an argument that a sitting president cannot be indicted. that is something that has been the case since 1973, but last i checked, trump is not a sitting president. and so it is an embarrassing filing, and i think jack smith called it as much. what i really like in these filings is that he is calling trump out on what the strategy is. it is not to win. but absolute immunity or first amendment or double jeopardy. try and delay the trial, so take an appeal to the court of appeals for the d.c. circuit, and then the u.s. supreme court with the hope that that will delay things. and the u.s. supreme court i don't think is going to hear these arguments. these are pathetic arguments to put it mildly. >> i want to say this, but caroline, there seems to be a benefit eyeglass to going after the mueller team. jack smith teams filing suggest that they operate in a world that is not hermetically sealed from a political climate. they are cognizant of the my cousin vinny legal arguments, they may lose in court, but prevail in the political arena. and so i'm not trying to suggest or positive that jack smith is playing in the political arena, but the filing suggests a keen awareness that everything about this trial suggests that trump's lies polluted both the political arena and, at the time, the constitutional one. the official proceeding that it thwarted. and i wonder what you make of what we are learning and what is being revealed from jack smith's team through the language of these filings? >> i think you are picking up on something so subtle and yet so profound about the way that jack smith is speaking both through his deputies and through these pleadings. let's be clear, he is using declarative sentences, and as neil said, calling out the president for the actual tactic at play here to delay and delay. it is true that the argument that a president is immune from all laws sounds laughable, and yet, it could be in some respects donald trump's -- to put things off in that technical word that we use in court reporting, -- appeal. going up to the appellate court, there is a two-part process and then there is a third process for the supreme court. it can all be glacial in terms of the amount of time that it takes, and it can push this back in a way that donald trump hopes that it can. we will see. but there is something really important about the way that smith is using his words in these extremely lengthy but also clear filings. for example, tom wyndham, one of the first prosecutors assigned by the justice department, to look at the january [silence] january [inaudible] >> carol leonnig as frozen, we will make sure that she is unfrozen before we go back to her. can you hear, us carol? did you hear us? >> yes, can you hear me, i'm so sorry. >> no, you are good. we got you. >> no, you are good. we got you >> for example, you have tom wynden, the first prosecutor assigned to this case by the department justice to look at the white collar potential crimes of the effort to block the election and this occasion, forgive me, of the election on january six. he is the one writing, when he takes it very clear umbrage at donald trump's claim that this is a group of corrupt cronies, and says that these are prosecutors with decades of experience who have taken an oath to the constitution, to follow the facts where they lead, and of course i'm paraphrasing here, but you can hear the grinding of teeth and that pleading saying, you better back off, mr. trump, because that is not what we are. this is not a rigged investigation. you can hear it in mali gaston, another early prosecutor from the u.s. attorney's rastas, when she writes and her pleading that donald trump is personally responsible for what happened on january 6th. there is no fluttering or indirect or passive language. she says that his actions were -- led to the culmination of what happened in the riot on the capitol and ultimately the violence that day. again, i'm paraphrasing. but how much more interestingly clear is that compared to for example robert mueller's very methodical report, which had a lot of legalese, and often was not declarative. >> and look, jack smith's benefits from going, let's see, there was the mueller volume one, there was mueller volume two, and they've been to impeachment trials. he benefits from going fifth, sixth, or seventh, whatever number we are on. but there was such a overwhelming volume of material to use to bolster jackson's legal arguments with trump's own words. i just want to read more from the filing, because i think that to the degree that we are all desperate to know what is going on behind the stores, they are revealing a lot and the substance of these filings. i want to send this to you, charlie. this is the response to trump's motion to s. quote, the inctment belies that assertion, showing that the defendants lies ncerned not philosophy, religion, history, the soal sciences, the arts and the like, but insteadconcrete specific statementh he knew were false. 3600on citizens had voted arizona, more than 10,300 dead people had voted in georgia, and illicit dump of more than 100,000 ballots detroit. there had been 205,0 more votes thanots in pennsylvania. ther h been tens of thousands ofaw fill votes in with constant. moreover, those false statements were used to conspire, to defraud, and obstruct. nor is there any basis for the defendants suggestion that proving he committed fraud through false statements would be akin to dictating what he is required to believe. i read this section because i was on the air when he was lying about these things, and there was this feeling of falling with no bottom, right? that as a democracy, we were just free falling, into this earth to. i talk about it as earth one and earth 2. over on earth 2, there is no consequence for telling those lies. jack smith seems to be saying, how about them apples? i got you. and i wonder, charlie, if you have this sense that's the entire sort of body of lies, and the entire body of ill intent has caught up with trump in this moment? >> well we will see, but i think there expert is a perfect example of what carroll just described. you have the declarative sentences, you have the very very direct language, the very very clear language. one of the problems, and this goes back to your question, with the mueller investigation versus donald trump is that there was a certain asymmetry. they were playing by a certain set of rules. jack smith has watch the way that donald trump attacks, undermines, obstruct these investigations. the way that the office gates. and he has decided that he is not going to make the same mistake. he has figured out what he needs to do, or what is necessary, to take on donald trump. in taking on donald trump means speaking very, very clearly. laying out the lies with real specificity. and i think that the clarity and the directness of his response is an indication that he has learned from that asymmetrical warfare between donald trump and miller and others, which is not a criticism. it is just a recognition that, with donald trump, you are dealing with somebody who you need to bring your a game, and to neil's point, this filing is an indication of just what ineffective team he has put together, and how aggressive they are prepared to be, because this is what it is going to take. if you go after donald trump, you cannot pull your punches. you cannot assume that he is going to play by the old rules. you are going to have to be this blunt, this direct, this clear. >> and just to not to my own awareness of what is being, what is popularly the right-wing ecosystem, this is a line i guess of reasoning that is going around, right. around right-wing media, around my cousin tv lawyer in, where they're saying oh, they can't prove intent. and what jack smith's, the filing i read from the beginning, is articulating is that these specific lies deployed to carry out specific elements of a criminal conspiracy are neither protected speech nor are they excusable or non crimes if you actually believe them. i mean neal, can you just flush that out for us? l, can you just >> first of, alk up on charlie's excellent point, when i have a big huge legal case, and there are three audiences. one is the court as an audience, in the second is the american public, in third is the audience of history. and what i think smith has done so effectively in these filings is he has taken these trump filings, which are pathetic on their face and not calculated for the first -- at all, and he's not going to win in any court of law, but it is relate to the second, and what jack is doing, what jack smith is doing is he is saying, well i'm going to educate the public in the reverse. so that is why you have that beautiful language about all of the different lies that you just put up on the screen. the goal here is to use trump's filings and a way against him by basically demonstrating how ridiculous and absurd that they are and how simple and straightforward the case is for smith. and so when you get to something like criminal intent, this is a complicated legal concept, but the basic idea is that the criminal law requires you to have a bad intent. it's not enough to just do something bad. and the question is, what is about intent that you have to show? here, the prosecutors as you said in the opening segment, use the word deceit. indeed they use the word to seat 46 times in a filings yesterday. and what they are saying is that we do not needed to prove that trump genuinely did not believe the big lie. we do not need a mind reader for trump. all we need to do is show that he knowingly spread lies to try and stay in power. that is it. and so the things like the baseless allegations that dead people are casting ballots when that voting machines were changed from trump to biden, things like that, all of that suffices to show that trump committed a crime. that is what is going on here. they're absolutely right on the wall. and i don't expect that this filing is calculate to do anything about trump except try to speak to his base. >> with all of that sort of out of the way, carol, i want to read the special counsel's response in opposition to trump's motion to dismiss for vindictive prosecution. i guess it speaks for itself, right? quote, the defendants theory of discriminatory purpose is that the incumbent president, joe biden, directed the defendant's prosecution to defeat him in the next election. the defendant fails to bring any evidence to support this claim. that is because there is no such evidence. the incumbent president has no role in this case, and the career prosecutors handling this matter would not participate in this part to prosecution if it were otherwise. i guess i remember a time when that would be so obvious. you would not have to say it or put it in writing. but this is to me both an indication of how clear trumps projection of what he would want the justice department to do on his behalf is, and the jack smith even has to acknowledge that this is not the case with him, and perhaps a nod to the most dangerous element of actually taking trump to trial in march. what do you think when you see that? >> you, know actually was thinking so much about the way that you asked the question, because donald trump we all know is a famous projection or. always imagining that what he would do means that that is sort of the nefarious or machiavellian strategy that another person with shoes. and he accuses people of it before they have ever indicated in any way that they are doing that considering it, or if there is any -- of them considering it. because it is probably what he would have liked to do, but i also have to stress to you, it is not just donald trump projecting possibly what we think he would like to do in a justice department in the future, a worrisome thought, but it is what he actually did when he was president. he did interfere multiple times and the department of justice's work. he did bully, pressure, and harangue his attorney general. both of them to do things that he thought would help him politically. and so it is not a shocker that he thinks, hey, eric holder looked out for president obama and merrick garland in his view is looking out for joe biden getting reelected, but i can tell you from reporting that nothing could be further from the case. i say this with no partisan interest. it is just not true. if anything, merrick garland and joe biden have kept so far apart from each other to avoid any possible implication that they could discuss this and any moment. they have kept such a distance from one another, as have their aides. based on our reporting, merrick garland has kept the farthest from jack smith. so the notion that these prosecutors are -- by anything other than the evidence is hard for me to imagine based on the lack of connection between any of these three main entities. the white house, the attorney general, and the special counsel appointed to run this case precisely because it had to be kept separate from the direct line of the chain of command of the department. >> carol, mike schmidt made a similar point yesterday that for all of the extraordinary reporting, it's your paper at the times about what trump would do if you were there again, you already did all of this. and so i want to ask you to name names. as you are talking,, he sought lisa page, he sought to prosecute hillary clinton and half an vesta gate a comey -- were investigated. the arrested extraordinary audits of comey and mccabe. to your point, he already did this. it seems like the very important sort of fact check for ourselves. and we do it instinctively when we talk