and luckily, we will never ever forget the great norman lear. on that note, i wish you a very good night. from all of our colleagues across the networks of nbc news, thanks for staying up late with me. i'll see you again tomorrow. california congressman kevin mccarthy the shortest serving speaker of the house in over 140 years is ending his extraordinary 2023 by throwing in the towel. >> now it is time to pursue my passion in the new arena. while i'll be departing the house at the end of this year, i will never, ever give up fighting for this country that i love so much. >> if you blinked, you might have missed mr. mccarthy's ten month term as the country's highest republican elected official, and that's not just because it was so short. it was entirely unproductive. mccarthy bargained away basically everything to when the speaker's gavel and he got nothing in return for it. that is the lesson for people who court the far right who do the bidding of donald trump, look the other way. and right now republicans all across the country are learning that lesson. remember trump's fake electors plot in the 2020 election? the coordinated effort to get fake slates of electors to cast pretend electoral votes for donald trump? well, those fake electors cause played those dramas in seven states. they got nothing for it and they are now the subject of some very real investigations. in georgia, fani willis has charged three of the 16 fake electors in that state as part of her conspiracy case against donald trump. in michigan, 16 fake electors have been charged by the states attorney general. one of them is already cooperating with prosecutors. today, in nevada a grand jury announced that it has indicted six of nevada's fake electors. all of those cases are making a way through the courts. and in the state of wisconsin, we finally got something we have not yet seen. accountability. today, donald trump's ten republican fake electors from the state of wisconsin officially agreed to settle a lawsuit over their election forgery. those ten republican fake electors have agreed to withdraw their fake documents, they have agreed to acknowledge that joe biden won the 2020 presidential election three years later. and they have all agreed to never serve as presidential electors in any election where donald trump is on the ballot. so all of that is meaningful and it is long overdue. but it is also very clarifying. because as part of that settlement in wisconsin, we have also learned new details about what that fake electors plot looked like behind the scenes. and those details are damning, especially for republicans, especially for donald trump. in one set of text exchanges, one of the fake electors refers to the whole plot as a possible steal. as in what we are trying to do is steal an election. specifically while discussing the logistics of the plot, the fake elector says, they don't want to have a technicality mess up the possible steal. and then in case you are wondering, the fake elector then clarifies that by saying they, they mean the republican party of wisconsin and trump's lawyers. okay just to be clear. another person on the text chain asked how do you feel about all of this? that same fake elector replies, i feel like i have to do it otherwise there will be a target on my back in my own district. cut it to the trump line otherwise, sound familiar kevin mccarthy? and this wisconsin settlement, it is clear that the trump team and the national republican party were all over this fake electors plot, in ways that we truly did not understand. here is another text message from a wisconsin republican party insider. on a phone call with rudy g. he saying to all the states, no heads up to any media on electors meetings. rudy g says no request for's electors certification, got that? and another exchange, another elector says apparently ken chesebro is inviting himself to this thing. sure enough, these new pictures show trump lawyer slash skunk at the garden party ken chesebro in the room overseeing the fake electors plot in washington, snapping pictures like it was a birthday party and not a coordinated attempt to overthrow democracy. the trump team was apparently so involved in this plot in wisconsin that they provided private security to the fake electors as they gather together to pretend certify votes for donald trump. so today we are finally seeing the consequences here for all of this. there are settlements, there are statements, there are investigations, there are trial dates. all of these things are finally happening and none of it looks particularly good for donald trump and his allies. the more we learn about these plots and players across the country, the more we see how directly team trump appears to have been involved. which is why today in georgia we learned that fulton county district attorney fani willis plans to call some of trump's inner circle to the witness stand in her case against donald trump. that includes trump's vice president mike pence, his former attorney general bill barr and his former current strategist steve bannon. called to the witness stand to testify under oath. joining me now is andrew weissmann, former senior member of robert mueller's special counsel and co-host of the indispensable msnbc podcast prosecuting donald trump. andrew, thank you for being here. i see the names bill barr, i see the names mike pence, steve bannon and my first question is, how realistic is it that we are actually gonna see these folks on the witness stand out in georgia? >>, while i am less interested in georgia because there is no trial date. so it is realistic that they would be called when there is a trial date and if there is a trial date before the election. if it is after the election -- >> there is no chance. >> it's really a question of who is going to win that election. but i do think the real question for those three is whether they will be called in the federal case. and there mike pence for sure will be a witness. i think like bill barr as well will be a witness. regardless of the baggage and they do have significant baggage in terms of their toeing the line for the trump administration, in many ways that makes them better witnesses in terms of their credibility. and as i've said about mike pence, he is sort of a really devastating witness it and also an exhibit. xhib because you can't compare somebody who had the exact same interest as donald trump was on the ballot, who had every interest if there was fraud in the election to say it, who is modeling what you do in this country when you lose. this is like what parents, or any normal parent's teaching a child, which is if you lose that's it, it's over, you take your bumps and you go home. exactly. so i think he will be quite a strong witness. i think the same is true with bill barr, especially given so much a much he did for donald trump and certainly i and other people in the mueller investigation were very aware of how much he did. but there was a line he was not willing to cross. >> given the scope of what we now know in the last few days. jack smith elected to bring in this case, the federal trial presumably in march. i would assume some former justice official, justice department officials are gonna be on his list for witnesses as well as they are on fani willis 's list. i did not realize because i did not go to law school that if you are even a former doj official, you need the approval of the present day justice department in order to testify. that and awkward position for merrick garland to be in? given how desperate trump's had to have a through line between the biden, the justice department in the federal investigation? >> i don't think so because it's so relatively automatic. this is not something where yes, you do need to have approval under something called it to be rags -- >> i knew it was going to be a garcia, there was going to be some kind of legal reference point. >> yes exactly. but it is not that hard. it is also the kind of thing that merrick garland could delegate. he could say i'm going to give it to and a political, meeting a non political member of the department to make that decision. and a case like this, would always be granted. what you are really trying to do is avoid someone getting called or is harassing or there is just no relevance. but here, could you really imagine mike pence or jeffrey rosen the acting attorney general doesn't have relevant information, and they've already testified before congress, so we know what they are going to say in large part, so of course they will be given permission. of course, donald trump will use all of this, but this is one where you just have to ignore that. >> i would argue a lot of it can be ignored because it's all political, almost all political. i do want to get your reaction to these fake electors plots being effectively dismantled all over the country. there is the actual legal nuts and bolts of jack smith's legal arguments here. but the here is the court of public opinion, to see the state a. g.'s or the civil suits and in settlements, and in admissions if not wrongdoing, fraud saying joe biden is actually the winner of this. we never should've done this, this was a fake electors plot and nothing else. how meaningful is that for jack smith as we barrel towards that march 4th date? >> i think that's a great question because i was thinking about sort of how to explain this. when you think about big picture, the big picture is you have ten electors who said what we did was wrong, we are not real electors that joe biden won. that we were told to sign up only as a contingency. this was not going to be advanced unless or until there was constant supreme court ruled in our favor and we were misled. so that's just the big picture, a good thing for the public to know, because we are in this state of the world where two-plus-two doesn't equal four -- >> to have fake electors themselves say this was a steel is meaningful. >> exactly. now on a legal front, i think one of the more relevant things that shed out to mary mccord, because she was one of the lead lawyers in the civil case. that's what she does when she's not working on this podcast. >> it's a full-time job that podcast. he >> just be serious, this is such an important case because you have ten people who are saying they will fully cooperate, who are saying that we were misled by? people in the trump campaign. and you know who the chief person is? chesebro. >> he is in the room with them andrew. i was shocked to see him, by the way mast in a room as the fake electors to the fake certification taking photos. you cannot have the more direct engagement than that. >> yes, just to be clear there is a defense here for people oh i didn't think i was a fake elector, i thought i was a contingent elector, which is if the supreme court of the state had said we are now real, then the election was actually for trump, and we were ready. that is sort of the defense to a criminal charge. chesebro doesn't have that, because he was going to use these electors no matter what, and you know one of the ways we know that? on the 14th of december there was constant supreme court rules against trump and says this is frivolous, and on the 15th, kenneth chesebro saying let's use this. this orchestrates getting this to washington so it can be used even though the wisconsin supreme court has said you lost. >> in defiance of the court. >> exactly. so that is blatant on his part. >> the fact that the trump campaign is supplying security here, the fact that rudy giuliani is literally directing them not to have press in the room for these fake costume certifications if you will, that all seems like damning evidence directly connecting state level plots to overturn the election, or the results of the election, to trump hq. if you are jack smith, as you probably know all of this anyway. i would imagine it strengthens your hand. do you imagine that some of this material is gonna come up in his case? >> absolutely. what he is going to do is share that this was an orchestrated scheme from headquarters. in other words, it's coming from washington. this was not grown up from the states seeing that there was something wrong happening. in fact in nevada where we just saw criminal indictments, there wasn't even a lawsuit at the time so they basically, the charges they manufactured that, so they could say well we are doing this because there is this lawsuit. that was the cart before the horse. so that is going to be definitely part of the march trial that jack smith has orchestrated. >> what it feels like is that is if the walls are closing in? or the three dimensions are meeting? you have this state level investigations and trials and settlementse, you have the federal investigation looming in the not so distant future, and then you have the prosecution over the d. a.'s office in fulton county. there is a lot of overlap in these three arenas. and we know that trump's team down in georgia is asking to have access to some of jack smith's material up in washington, d. c.. the georgia folks for trump say we need access to it, we may subpoena it. what is the likelihood the law to see more of an exchange of material between what's happening in georgia and what's happening in washington given the sort of common threads of those two things? >> so, i think that there is no question that jack smith is going to want to give to the defense in the federal case everything that is relevant, anything that has potential exculpatory, anything that is potentially impeaching, i'm sure fani willis will want to do the same thing. that is required under the local rules, and due process. it doesn't matter that is donald trump or john doe or andrew weissmann. that is what a defendant is entitled to. that kind of crossover i think you will see. i also think there is an enormous overlap already in terms of the information that both districts, the federal and the state have. but to be fair, donald trump is going to have that because he is a defendant in both, so he may get it in the federal case. it's not like he is going to be suddenly gonna wonder what's happening in the federal case. he knows that as well. but for the moment i think the key thing because there's no trial in georgia, the thing i'm really focusing on is the d. c. case, do they have all the discovery, is there anything that could possibly delay that case? >> and actually, can you answer that? i myself was very interested in these pending decisions of the d. c. circuit court over presidential immunity. i know you dedicate a lot of your podcasts to it. do you foresee any major speed bumps. i shouldn't say speed bumps because that's diminishes the severity, the gravity of it. but do you see challenges in the road ahead for judge chutkan as she tries to keep the train on the tracks because as you say, this federal case in d. c. may be the last best shot to hold trump accountable for january six? >> and for the public to have access to and see all the evidence and to assess that before the election. so two thoughts. one is i do think the d. c. circuit will act quickly. the big unknown which i can't answer is the supreme court of the united states, whether they have enough votes to issue a stay. i will hazard a guess that because i think the presidential immunity claim is so weak here, it's hard to see that there are gonna be enough votes to say that we are going to stay this case. part of that is that i think judge chutkan is doing something very smart. by starting the jury selection essentially now, she is making sure that the appellate courts, the d. c. circuit and the supreme court understand, you can't just turn around and say now you can start. getting a jury takes months. so if you start putting this trial off, it's not like the jurors just wait in the wings. she may have to start all over again which will be a de facto pushing off until after the election, and i don't think, although this is a guess that there will be enough votes on the supreme court to have that happen. >> i see you kind of almost closed your eyes as you made a prediction about the roberts court. >> yes. >> i think that's what everyone does at this point. we don't think they are that crazy. >> because you feel in your heart more than you think it's so important to the nation to have the trial. >> yes without question and this court is somewhat predictable unpredictable. we will see. andrew weissmann, it is a pleasure and a thrill and an honor to have you want to set my friend. it was full of platitudes. and praise. thank you andrew. coming up, it is fight night in the state of alabama. four presidential republican candidates took to the debate stage and tried to stay on it. plus, kevin mccarthy is leaving congress. he says that in his brief time as speaker, he, quote, rose to the challenge and did the right thing. which sounds exactly like what kevin mccarthy thinks of kevin mccarthy. congressman jamie raskin joins me to weigh in on all of that. that's coming up next. with this tomorrow. you won't. it's ripe in here. my eyes are watering. look how crusty this is. ugh, it's just too much. not with this. good advice. when stains and odors pile up, it's got to be tide. i got this $1,000 camera for only $41 on dealdash. dealdash.com, online auctions since 2009. this playstation 5 sold for only 50 cents. this ipad pro sold for less than $34. and this nintendo switch, sold for less than $20. i got this kitchenaid stand mixer for only $56. i got this bbq smoker for 26 bucks. and shipping is always free. go to dealdash.com right now and see how much you can save. i've struggled with generalized myasthenia gravis. but the picture started changing when i started on vyvgart. vyvgart is for adults with generalized myasthenia gravis who are anti-achr antibody positive. in a clinical trial, vyvgart significantly improved most participants' ability to do daily activities when added to their current gmg treatment. most participants taking vyvgart also had less muscle weakness. and your vyvgart treatment schedule is designed just for you. in a clinical study, the most common side effects included urinary and respiratory tract infections, and headache. vyvgart may increase the risk of infection. tell your doctor if you have a history of infections or symptoms of an infection. vyvgart can cause allergic reactions. available as vyvgart for iv infusion and now as vyvgart hytrulo for subcutaneous injection. additional side effects for vyvgart hytrulo may include injection site reactions. talk to your neurologist about vyvgart. dear moms and dads, what you have achieved here today is going to help us and our futures. it is why we're coming up on stage to collect your diplomas. mom, love you always. vo: when you graduate, they graduate. visit finishyourdiploma.org to find free and supportive >> today the congressman who adult education centers near you. bragged to reporters, i never quit? today that man called it quits. with more than half his term remaining. and when he quit, he said this. >> thank you from the bottom of my heart. we did our part. and when the stakes were the highest, we rose to the challenge. we were willing to risk it all, no matter the odds, no matter the personal cost. simply put, we did the right thing. >> simply put, we did the right thing. that is kevin mccarthy's legacy according to kevin mccarthy. kevin mccarthy's legacy according to the facts involves normalizing an attempted coup and bargaining away the dignity of the speakership. perhaps the most consequential thing he did was not even a speaker. a few weeks after the insurrection on the capitol, mccarthy traveled out to mar-a-lago to have dinner with donald trump. in so doing, mccarthy effectively brought donald trump into the good graces of the party and set the stage for his political comeback. i