Tonight on all in. Theres so many moving pieces i think it becomes harder and harder to see how one of these cases actually make it to trial other than the one in new york before the election. New york or bust as judge cannon delays the classified Documents Trial indefinitely. It is truly a disgrace that she is not doing her job. Tonight the failure of the courts to hold donald trump accountable. Then President Biden heads to wisconsin to troll his rival fox con failure. They dug a hole and then they fell into it. And a rare moment of agreement on capitol hill. Declaring the office of Speaker Of The House representatives to be vacant. Boo. As Democrats Team up with republicans to save speaker johnsons job. This is just another wednesday on capitol hill. All in starts right now. Good evening from new york. Im chris hayes. For all of Donald Trumps attempts to subvert and sabotage the democratic process, to steal the last election in 2020, overall the system held. I mean maybe barely, but it held. When push came to shove, the vast majority of people involved in the election and institutions stared down a novel attempt to destroy the rule of law and they did the right thing. The system might have bent, but it didnt break. In dozens of cases, for example, more than 60, judges up and down the system state and Federal Court including judges appointed by trump and other republicans ruled trumps claims of voter fraud were complete nonsense and individual lawyers and legal officials, republicans in and out of the white house stood up against trump, too. There is almost no idea more unamerican than the notion that any one person would choose the american president. The president said, suppose i do this. Suppose i replace jeff rosen with jeff clark. What do you do . And i said sir, i would resign immediately. There is no way im serving one minute under this guy, jeff clark. I told him that the stuff that his people were shoveling out to The Public Was Bull [ bleep ], i mean that the claims of Fraud Were Bull [ bleep ]. Asterisk on that last one since the attorney general barr fled and resigned when the going got tough, but you get the point and its important to point out because what we are seeing now just in the last few weeks are glimmers of what it looks like when the courts dont hold. Yesterday federal judge Aileen Cannon, trump appointee who made a name for herself in an egregious ruling in the documents case announces she was indefinitely postponing Donald Trumps criminal trial for stealing top secret government documents and she did so without much of a legal justification at all. She is opting not to settle open questions before her, which is her choice, and then pointing out the fact that they are not settled as the reason why she has to further delay. Dont take my toward for it. Heres the New York Times in a news article, while judge cannon stated reason for putting off the trial indefinitely was that a large number of legal issues remain up in the air, she never mentioned that she herself helped allow the logjam of motions to pile up. Over and over judge cannon has treated seriously arguments that many, if not most, federal judges would have rejected out of hand. Often her acceptance of trumps unorthodox claims have resulted in significant delays in bringing charges in the classified documents case in front of a jury. Because, of course, we all know this, Aileen Cannon knows it, everyone knows it, what donald trump wants most is this trial to be delayed until after the election and cannon has granted him that wish so far. Im not a lawyer, but i follow this quite closely and a lot of very smart accomplished attorneys, legal experts with different ideological backgrounds said they have simply never seen anything quite like What Cannon Is Doing by so transapparently putting her thumb on the proverbial scale to delay and thereby benefit the man who put her on the bench in the first place. As obama attorney general eric holder said yesterday, lets just deal with the very disturbing reality here. This whole process in the documents case has simply not been on the up and up. Some, like former george w. Bush white house lawyer Richard Painter speculated judge cannon holds ambition for higher office, maybe the Supreme Court. Others like former Trump White House lawyer ty cobb think she is both incompetent and in the tank for the expresident. All shes really done today is make official, everybody including jack smith, already knew which was she had no intention of getting this case to trial and she wasnt competent to get this case to trial. The things that she has done here are really inexplicable and its tragic as she talks about having honored the publics interest in the administration of justice by postponing the trial. No, she has not honored the publics interest for one day in this case. This obvious Conflict Of Interest raises an important point. The rule of law which we talk about a lot on this show and network is really only as good as the people who are executing it in good faith. To be clear, the world over there are plenty of autocracies that have laws, statutes, lawyers, judiciaries, bar associations, their version of it. They have all that stuff. They just execute the law in a way that essentially supports a predetermined outcome that is corrupted by the power of certain authorities. Take the example of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich who is currently incarcerated in russia under bogus espionage charges. He is not a spy. He is just a journalist. He has lawyers. He is accused in the russian system of violating specific laws. They didnt just say were kidnapping him, right . His case is ostensibly going through the russian legal system. You see him here at these court dates he keeps having, but no one seriously believes this is anything other than trumped up to essentially take an american hostage to trade for someone or believes hes going to have a fair trial. The strategy there, too, is obviously to delay as long as possibly to keep this man hostage for political reasons and thats what keeps happening court date after court date. We know whats going to happen. Again, this is i mean i cant stress this enough, in many ways i dont think its an overstatement to say that is the difference between a free society and authoritarian. Its not the presence of judges, laws, and lawyers. Everyone has those, right . Now to be clear, were obviously nowhere near that level of judicial corruption that were seeing in russia in this country or what were seeing from judge cannon or the 6th district Supreme Court. These are totally different worlds. The court is entertaining trumps ridiculous claims of president ial immunity, we might be able to count the court as an impartial judiciary again, but in cannon the Supreme Court is a glimmer of what it looks like when you just cant really trust good faith is driving the process. Thats what it is. The problem becomes what to do about it and the only answer i can come back to at the human level is shame, norms because in the end remember thats what saved us the last time around. Yes, the law helped, right . But again, if the doj had bent to trumps will if there had been three or four lawyers atop that department of justice willing to send the letter baselessly claiming widespread voter fraud or if mike pence had agreed to throw out the electors from swing states biden won, if his lawyers advised him he could do that, i dont know. No one knows what would have happened in the end. All weve got are individual people formed by the norms and institutions theyre embedded in making decisions, hopefully coming to the right conclusions and acting in good faith or at the very least, bowing to some sense of Public Pressure or shame not to do the wrong thing. In this case the least we can do now is state plainly and openly what trumpappointed judge Aileen Cannon is doing is a scandal. When our judges dont act in good faith and work only to weaponize the judiciary in an effort to achieve a desired outcome, we are in very dangerous territory, especially true with donald trump effectively running to finish the job he started on january 6th , a job that can only be completed if the judiciary allows itself to be corrupted. Right now the signs are not promising. Andrew weissmann spent years working in the department of justice, most recently as Lead Prosecutor for special counsel Robert Muellers team. Mary mccord served as federal prosecutor for the u. S. Attorneys office in d. C. As chief of Criminal Division and they host together the Award Winning podcast Prosecuting Donald Trump if youre following all this. Great to have you both. Heres the conundrum as i see it which is trumps view of all this stuff is incredibly cynical. He has the authoritarian view. The laws are nonsense, no such thing as good faith. You tell me who the judge is and ill tell you the outcome. I dont want to mirror that rule. So when he says of course, this judge merchan is ruling against me. Hes a hack. I really want to bend over backwards to avoid that because i dont have that view and i do think good faith is a real thing and i think the law actually operates. Am i wrong to be really unnerved by the actions of judge cannon . No, youre not. By the way, that phrase you quoted that donald trump says came from roy connolly. Show me the judge. Ill show you the outcome. That essentially no one has principles, that youre not a nation of laws. Youre a nations of men and women. Mary and i were both in the National Security community and the alleged crimes in the mara lago case are so important to that community to have them vindicated and you have donald trump saying he has all sorts of defenses. He says its a witch hunt, its politicized, theyre his documents, a number of things. What remarkable is the department of justice wants to give him his day of court. To defend himself. This is a situation where theyre saying we want to be held to our burden to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt. We want to vindicate the publics right to speedy trial. In florida with a judge appointed by trump, not in a democratic city, et cetera. They played it totally straight where they brought the case. There were parts of the case they could have brought, but they do what youre supposed to do, which is wheres the locust of all the facts and brought it there knowing one out of three chance was this was who they would get. To say its a disgrace, disappointing is too mild. I agree with you. It is fundamentally upsetting because there arent a lot of checks in the system for a judge who behaves this way and whether its because of partisanship, incompetence or a combination, its kind of irrelevant because the result is the same. Mary, i want to read from judge cannons justification that the Court Determines the finalization of a trial date of this juncture before resolution of the myriad Of Interconnected Pretrial and cipa issues, classified inspection protection act, remaining and forthcoming would be inconsistent with the Court Considering the various pretrial motions before the court and additional pretrial and preparations necessary to present the case to jury. A lot of people point out all those motions stacked up because she hasnt resolved them. Yes, thats right. She also in a lengthy footnote in a same order listed all the things she has resolved almost to sort of justify look, ive resolved a lot of motions and had a lot of hearings, but theres so many more because this case is so complex. In some ways it is. It involves a Classified Information procedures act. She had never dealt with that before. You know what she lacks besides some experience and competence as a judge, she also i think lacks mentors. By that i mean in the d. C. District court, for example, we have a very experienced bench and when a new judge comes to that bench, some of the more senior judges, people like judge Royce Lamberth and recently retired judge thomas hogan, they take those new judges under their wing and particularly on a case that is sensitive like this or that involves Classified Information or that involves something beyond the Run Of The Mill legal issues. Theyre a sounding board, somebody to sort of talk to them about heres how you should think about scheduling. Heres why its important to move this along. Heres the kinds of things i think you need a hearing in. Here are things you can rule on the papers and shes down there in a district with what, two other judges and so i feel like she im not going to try to get in her head about what her motives are. We all know the record. We know her early rulings when donald trump tried to prevent the department of justice from even reviewing the Classified Information or even having the Intelligence Community review the Classified Information to determine what damage it might have caused to our National Security by being so improperly stored and subject to potentially some visitors at maralago seeing it or getting information from what was stored there. Beyond trying to discern her motives, theres just an utter lack of experience here and that shows every time she grants a continuance, every time she schedules things for more time than they need and every time that she refuses to just rule on the papers and instead has hearings when she doesnt. We see this i think time and time again. Quickly and just to you briefly, andrew, to me theres a contrast with this and whats happening in new york. My feeling about new york is i sort of feel like whatever the outcome is, i feel this has been a good faith process. So maybe theyll acquit him. Maybe it will be a hung jury, i dont know, but ultimately it feels like its been a good faith process and thats what you want. Absolutely. In many ways its sort of an ideal trial. You have an experienced judge. He has the temperament of a judge that you want, but youre also seeing collectively a very experienced defense team. Youre seeing a very experienced prosecution team. Just to be clear, a lot of defendants, 99. 9, do not have that. They dont have the wherewithal to have that kind of defense. So you are seeing in new york the Justice System the way it should be and i agree with you. The jury will do what the jury does, but this is the way its supposed to go. Thank you both, really appreciate it. Coming up, a major embarrassment for Marjorie Taylor greene, why democrats today did something they havent done before. They stepped in to save the republican speaker. Thats next. Has no idea shes sitting on a goldmine. Well she doesnt know that if she owns a Life Insurance policy of 100,000 or more she can sell all or part of it to coventry for cash. Even a term policy. Even a term policy . Even a term policy find out if youre sitting on a goldmine. Call Coventry Direct today at the number on your screen, or visit coventrydirect. Com. I dont want you to move. Im gonna miss you so much. You realize well have Internet Waiting for us at the new place, right . Oh, we know. We just like making a scene. Transferring your services has never been easier. Get connected on the day of your move with the xfinity app. Can i sleep over at your new place . Can katie sleep over tonight . Sure, honey this generation is so dramatic move with xfinity. This afternoon Georgia Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor greene made good on her threat to oust republican speaker mike johnson. The form of the resolution is as follows, declaring the office of Speaker Of The House of representatives to be vacant. Boo. This is the uniparty for the American People watching. General lady will suspend. Order. Order. Looked fun banging that gavel, didnt it . Things did not get better from there. After greene introduced her motion republican majority leader Steve Scalise moved to table the motion which would effectively kill it. Within about 40 seconds of the vote opening it had the support to pass and then some. In the end 163 democrats along with 196 republicans voted to save Mike Johnsons speakership. According to House Minority leader hakeem jeffries, it was the right thing for his caucus to do. Our decision to stop Marjorie Taylor greene from plunging the House Of Representatives and the country into further chaos is rooted in our commitment to solve problems for Everyday Americans in a bipartisan manner. We need more common sense and less chaos in washington, d. C. Marjorie taylor greene, an extreme maga republicans, are chaos agents. House democrats are change agents. Joining me now, nbc News Senior Nat