important and i hope the supreme court has the courage to do that. >> the supreme court delivers for donald trump. >> this is a really historic day here the supreme court setting a brand-new standard for presidential immunity. >> a landmark decision on presidential immunity. >> absolutely immuned to undermine elections, to go after individuals. >> and a blistering dissent from the liberal justices. >> orders the navy s.e.a.l. team six to assassinate a political rival. the president is now a king above the law. >> what happens to the case against donald trump? and what does it mean for an election that's just four months away? >> now the stakes are astronomically. >> tonight, when msnbc special coverage of the trump immunity ruling begins. now. good evening from new york, i'm chris hayes. we have an absolutely huge night of special coverage of today's supreme court decision on presidential immunity, you should know the president of the united states joe biden is going to deliver remarks about the ruling from the white house, we're being told, within the hour, we'll take that live as well as reaction. rachel maddow and joy reid are joining us this hour. along with joy reid, jen psaki. in today's 6-3 ruling, the majority of supreme court threw out the entire post-watergate legal structure that has governed the country. legal order that's basic foundations reach back much further than the watergate era, to the country's founding. founded on the principle that the president of the united states, the man elected by the people, is not above the law as a king would be, rather subject to the same rules that govern every other citizen of this country. the decision by chief justice john roberts, the court's conservative majority invented a new legal doctrine. one that says actually the president is a lot more like a monarch than you might have guessed, he's not accountable criminally to the laws of this country for what the court deems to be quoting official acts. i quote from the opinion. under our constitutional structure of separated powers the nature of presidential power entitles a former president to absolute immune from criminal procushions for actions. he's entitled to at least presumptive immunity for all his official acts. now the supreme court says the president has complete and total immuity for official acts. what qualify as an official act versus an unofficial act? the answer is frustraingly we don't really know. the subject of intense litigation and argue menation. it's going to be up to the courts, lower courts' discretion, which makes this hypothetical from this case's oral arguments before the d.c. circuit back in april very troubling. >> if the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts in which he could get immunity. >> that could well be an official act. >> from the supreme court justice oral arguments. hypothetical about s.e.a.l. team 6, lot of people talk about, referenced in justice sotomayor's dissent today. it appears the conservative majority's answer to this hypothetical has been floating over the case on whether a seating president should be shielded from prosecution for ordering the military to assassinate a political rival and as far as we can tell, it's, yeah, probably. here's justice sonia sotomayor in her dissent, quote, today, when he uses his official powers in any way under -- now, if you know anything about the founding principles of this country and our longstanding civic culture, you may be wondering where in the constitutional the originalists drew the justification for the presidential power. the answer is nowhere. they just made it up. point of fact, there was no such thing as absolute executive immunity for official acts from criminal prosecution until this morning at 10:30 a.m. eastern time, no law professors taught it. it wasn't discussed in lower court rulings. it didn't exist until when this decision came down in that moment it was called forth into being. obviously, the conservative majority has a twisted interpretation of the constitution. it's clear to anyone watching, the text here is not what was at issue or the tex of the constitutional. the end result of course among other things, but most immediately is to spring donald trump from potentially facing jail time for his actions leading up to january 6th. that's not definitive but it goes a long way toward it. donald trump tells the world that he believes deeply and fully, that he should be above the law as president. it's deep sense the core campaign message for the second term to finish the job on january 6th. he asked the court to grant him that power and today shockingly, appallingly the court acqueiced. rachel, just your thoughts. i remember talking to you the day of oral arguments when we did a special. everyone's action to that, whoa, are they going to do this? >> yeah. i remember talking to you about this, chris, the day they chose to take it up, the decision to take it up itself was so gob smacking and i'm generally a glass half empty kind of person, i always see the cloud before i see the silver lining. we talked about the radicalism of that decision in and of itself. when the district court, ruled on this issue basically the rule was, you know, of course a president isn't immune, when the appeals court then looked at it and reviewed that decision, it was a bulletproof decision from that appeals court where the bottom line was essentially, of course, no, a president can't be immuned. it was gobsmacking when the supreme court took it up. in my glass half-empty kind of way, i thought, well -- under the worst case scenario they're not going to decide he's immune. it's outrageous they've taken it up. give him temporary immunity before the election. once the election happens, if he wins he makes the prosecutions go away anyway. i didn't expect they'd do this and they, you know, donald trump and his counsel asked for this 100% absolute immunity thing which was insane, i'd say they got 105% of what they were asking for, they got immunity from this court despite so much the language in justice roberts' ruling, saying that there was some -- some measure of humility here, or some measure of restraint. they give trump immunity that even he and counsel did not ask for and given the hypotheticals over the course of these arguments as you rightly pointed out, can a president assassinate a rival? we have to look at the supreme court's affirmative answer to that, yes, you can. with as much seriousness as it deserves. this is a death squad ruling. this is ruling that says as long as you can construe it as an official or quasi-official act you can do absolutely anything, absolutely anything, and never be held accountable, not only while you are president but forever. this president has activated pro-trump paramilitary group, wear t-shirts and celebrate right-wing death squads. a president who has talked about using the justice department to go after his -- to go after his rivals, this explicitly immunizes anything the president wants to do through the justice department and full stop to anyone. >> i'm 100% with you on that. i want to stay on department of justice thing, obviously there's reason why in those, the hypothetical offered by a federal judge in the appeals court arguments about s.e.a.l. team 6, why that's had such significance, but that's a hypothetical, it hasn't happened in american history, what has happened in american history is a president richard nixon using the justice department, the irs, all kinds -- i mean, he had the irs audit his political enemies. he attempted to use the justice department to go after his enemies. that's american history. you've been a historian of this period for a lot of reasons, there was a conclusion that watergate was wrong, and that what nixon did was wrong. the reading from roberts today, watergate wasn't prosecutorable, what nixon did as president he probably was immune for, too bad john roberts wasn't around in 1974. >> i mean, the executive sort of the imperial executive idea pie neared by republican justice department officials like ed meese, governing apex under dick cheney and worked in republican politics to approve the sort of things that happened particularly after 9/11 under the george w. bush white house, those have been brought by bringing a bunch of people who are part of that cultural, bringing them into a supermajority in the supreme court that has brought us to a place where a president has had his lawyers asked by a justice in open court, are you saying your guy can assassinate someone and he'll have immunity for that? the answer was yes. the court wrote it down. and that answer is the logical, you know, apex of where those things go over time. but to have that radicalism land, when you have a potential next term of donald trump on the horizon if he wins in november, where he's saying exactly what he'll do with this power, is quite a remarkable thing, you'll notice that nobody in reacting to today's ruling they're saying, wow, how scary, what is joe biden going to do with this power, right, nobody's saying that, nobody is worried a president like joe biden is going to, you know, abuse this in such a way that's going to be bring about a de dictatorship. because a this's what donald trump is promising that, they're doing this in the full context, the full knowledge of the radicalism of what they're bringing down upon the country and the only solution to this, the only way out of this is to have noncriminals and nonauthoritarian-minded win presidential elections. this is the only way to fix it. if you have someone who's criminal or authoritarian minded when they get in there armed with this ruling there's nothing they can't do. >> on that final point, yeah, the prospective implications of today's ruling are more profound in some ways and more unnerving than the retroactive ones, about the trial, we'll talk about this, was did it mean for the case that jack smith has? it's still alive. they can cabin enough of this to bring it. but the symbolic meaning to me as important as the legal meaning. for the reasons that you say. what it says to trump and to republicans, i mean, the joke i made today was like john roberts pulled down the american flag turned it upside-down and hoisted it back up on the supreme court, it felt like to me the opinion we're with you on this. >> yeah. >> over and above its findings, its holdings as a matter of constitutional law. >> yeah, i mean, if the president -- when donald trump running for president in 2016 started leading crowds in that lock her up chant, as shocking as it was to most of the country, it was a transgressive thrill to trump and his followers because they knew it sounded so wrong. but they enjoyed that transgressive thrill so much that it became policy, he tried to get the justice department to bring improper political motivations against opponents. we know that he's very, very -- this is what he wants to do. this is what he thinks power should be. now the supreme court has said, without reservation, and without limit, yeah, you can do that, we promise you explicitly in the ruling and the language of the ruling, anything you say to your justice department subject to immunity for you. and that is -- i mean, the rule of law means in this country that the law isn't used as a instrument of the ruler, the rule of law is supposed to constrained the ruler. the supreme court just undid it. it's binding. now the way our country is structured. the only way out of this, the only fix to this, is to put someone in the white house from here on out who will not abuse the absolutely tir ran call power. i should note of course joy reid is usually sitting in this chair at this hour, she's with us as well. we'll go to her. lot to get to tonight. don't go anywhere. we'll be right 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want to bring in joy reid who whose hour is this, who has a lot to say about the decision today. >> chris, it was -- it was something to read today, both the decision and the dissent and i guess the sort of best way for him to sum it up, i don't know if everyone here watches game of thrones, if you're a game of thrones fan you'll know there's a king and then there's the hand of the king, and when the king is very young or very old or very mad, the hand of the king is effectively the king, and what i think you saw in this ruling today was the supreme court declare their preferred president of course because they no democrat would exercise these powers would like their next president to, they declare their presidents to be king and the hand of the king. this is from page 110. from the dissent. with its adoption that sometimes exempt the president of dictates of the law when the court says so, the court has effectively snapped from the legislative to bind the president or not to congress's mandates and it's also thereby augmented the power of the office of the presidency and itself. what john roberts said today, he and his five fellow leonard leo appointees will decide when the president has ire. only they can make that decision, they are the hand of the king. the last thing i will say they repeatedly called for boldness and decisive action that we need to see boldness and decisive action and only absolute immunity and presumed immunity can give a president such boldness. how previous presidents how to implement the trail of tears for indigenous people to march, how president lincoln essentially deleted the human property, $10 billion worth of human property from every state in rebellion by fiat, how presidents, let's talk about the presidents in the 20th harry truman unleashed a nuclear holocaust on two parts of japan, he did that boldly and decisively without fear of prosecution, how then does a new president, a future president need such boldness to come from the fiat of the supreme court. >> there has been no lack of boldness and decisive from american presidents and executives through the years particularly when operating in the conduct of war, particularly, andrew, this has been a shocking trajectory for you as someone who knows the law quite well and the department of justice. >> definitely agreed with rachel that i just did not expect there would be five votes for this, this is a watershed moment big picture. i want to make sure people understand, with respect to the department of justice on pages 20 and 21, the decision makes it clear even if there's a known sham prosecution that's off-limits, if you have a president who's on tape saying bring a false prosecution cannot prosecute. no matter how strong the evidence is and this is not a hypothetical because you have people talking about it rue now about weaponizing if they get back in office, so that part is -- it's just so -- to the rule of law when you're talking about a department of justice that the whole principle is to be separate and independent and not be sort of oh baying what the president says you have to do. >> i think the whole piece of this where the legal intersects collides violently with the political is that 2016, trump was, you could go back and say maybe there were other reasons to run, in 2024, the only reason he's running is for retribution, defining it as official. he wants to use official acts. forget about us. forget about the free press's analysis that the justices wrote down and put in writing. we do now have a king. he's ahead in the polls running to take official acts to seek out in his words to seek out retribution, only interested in the official parts of the job. he could have someone architect the white house around officially seeking out punishment for his enemies. 2017, a story in "the new york times" he wanted to prosecute hillary clinton. he fires james comey -- he wanted to commit crimes disguised as official acts. >> i think he said this publicly a thousand times. i was reading today, on the lovely project 2025 plan, on page 560, this is first line of that part, the next conservative administration should embrace the constitution and understand the obligation of the executive branch to use its independent resources and authorities to restrain the excesses of both the legislative and judicial branches. this is plan that steve bannon has been holding up in he cent interviews. and the justices what they did today is basically, i worked for two presidents. nicole worked for a president. they haven't -- they've done the bad things without -- now you have the person you're asking the american public to rachel's point to vote for people and trust the presidents they elect will have the morality to not abuse. that's essentially what they're doing. >> so, the very bad news for donald trump in this decision today and for candidate trump, very, very bad, is that mike pence is going to walk into a federal courtroom raise his right hand and take an oath to tell the truth and testify against donald trump in this case in september. it's going to happen much faster. absolutely. what this is, is we created an absolute immunity on one paragraph of the indictment, applying to exactly one paragraph of the indictment. the rest of the indictment goes back to the judge chutkan's courtroom, this supreme court has ordered her to have a hearing about the evidence in the case to determine whether the act in question is an official act or has a protection or not. that's for everything in the case except for one conversation that he had with the acting attorney general. so what you're looking at here, basically, there will be some briefs on each side and the judge will schedule a day and say we start today. mr. smith, who's your first witness? exactly like a prosecution. what jack smith will have to do and sometimes in pretrial evidentiary stuff they don't want to turn all cards over. they need to see every single one of