the networks of nbc news, thank you for staying up late. i will see you again tomorrow. today, the u.s. supreme court granted donald trump immunity for conduct described in exactly two paragraphs. a 130 paragraph indictment. the rest of the indictment against donald trump still stands as of tonight. the supreme court has ordered the trial judge in the case, judge chutkan, to hear testimony in the case from a very long list of potential witnesses to clarify if some of the remaining charges in the indictment might now fit into a new category created by the supreme court today, granting criminal immunity for some presidential conduct. that could lead judge chutkan to in effect be presiding over an examination of the evidence similar to or equal to what would occur in the prosecution in the trial, the actual trial, of this case when prosecutor jack smith would be calling prosecution witnesses to the witness stand in judge chutkan's courtroom including mike pence to take an oath and testify under oath to prove to the judge that the conduct described in ski the rest of the indictment is in no way an immune from prosecution, even with the supreme court went ski new definition today. unlike a trial, trump does not have to be present for that hearing which could last weeks. it would in no way interfere with his presidential campaign. the 6-3 decision identified two different fears on each side of that decision in the supreme court. the majority of the justices seem to fear a president living under the pressure of unreasonable criminal prosecutions, even though that has never happened in the history of the country. the minority of the justices fear a president they now see as in effect sanction to break the law. the majority called the minority's view, quote, fear mongering on the basis of extreme hypotheticals about a future with the president feels empowered to violate federal criminal law. what the majority saw without today's ruling, this is what they fear is, quote, the more likely prospect of an executive branch that cannibalize is itself with each successive president free to prosecute his predecessors, yet unable to boldly and fearlessly carry out his duties for fear that he may be next. never mind that no president has ever in any sense prosecuted his predecessor. has never happened. the majority of the court fears what has never happened and the minority of the court fears what they have already seen happen in the trump presidency. amy coney barrett who joined the majority in the case disagreed with the majority on one point and that is the excluding any kind of evidence that involves an official act of the president. she raised the question of how that would destroy bribery prosecutions. she said this, excluding from trial any mention of the official act connected to the bribe would hamstring the prosecution to make sense of charges alleging a quid pro quo. the jury must be allowed to hear about both the quid and the quote. the presidential campaign is now the campaign of a former president who abused his power as president against the current president who has not abused that power and does not want any more power. here is what president biden said tonight about the supreme court opinion. >> good evening. the presidency is the most powerful office in the world. it's an office to test your judgment, perhaps more importantly, an office that can test your character. you are not only facing moments where you need courage to exercise the full power of the presidency, you also face moments where you need the wisdom to respect the limits of the power of the office of the presidency. this nation was founded on the principle that there are no kings in america. each of us is equal before the law. no one, no one is above the law. not even the president of the united states. today, the supreme court decision in presidential immunity, that fundamentally changed for all, for all practical purposes, the decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a president can do. this is a new principle. it is a dangerous precedent because the power the office will no longer be constrained by the law, even including the supreme court of the united states. the only limits will be self- imposed by the president alone. this decision today has continued the core's attack in recent years in a wide range of long-established legal principles in our nation. from getting voting rights and civil rights to taking away a woman's right to choose. to the decision today that undermines the rule of law of this nation. nearly four years ago, my predecessor sent a violent mob to the u.s. capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power. we saw it with our own eyes. we sat and watched it happen that day. attack on the police. the ransacking of the capitol. the mob hunting down the house speaker, nancy pelosi. gallows directed to hang the vice president, mike pence. i think it's fair to say it was one of the darkest days in the history of america. the man who sent that mob to the u.s. capitol is facing potential criminal conviction for what happened that day. the american people deserve to have an answer in the courts before the upcoming election. the public has a right to know the answer about what happened on january 6 before they are asked to vote again this year. now, because it today's decision, that's highly unlikely . it's a terrible disservice to the people of this nation. now, now the american people have to do with the court should've been willing to do but will not. the american people have to render a judgment about donald trump's behavior. the american people must decide whether donald trump's assault on our democracy and january 6 makes him unfit for public office in the highest office in the land. the american people must decide his embrace of violence to preserve his power is acceptable. perhaps most importantly, the american people must decide if they want to entrust the president once again the presidency to donald trump knowing he will be even more emboldened to do what he pleases whenever he wants to do it. you know, the outset of our nation was the character of george washington, were first president to define the presidency. he believed power was limited and not absolute. that power always resides in the people. always. now over 200 years later, with today's supreme court decision, once again it will depend on the character of the men and women who hold the presidency that are going to define the limits of the power of the presidency. because the law will no longer do it. i know i will respect the limits of the presidential powers i have for 3.5 years. any president including donald trump will now be free to ignore the law. i concur with justice sotomayor's dissent today. here is what she said, every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law. with fear for our democracy, i dissent and the end of the quote. so should the american people dissent. i dissent. may god bless you all and may god help preserve our democracy. thank you and made god protect our troops. >> leading of the discussion tinnitus prevent sir laurence tribe who taught constitutional law at harvard law. it's the summer break at low schools but i imagine students returning to constitutional law class in the next semester and what just happened to constitutional law? >> it was rocked to its very basis. the supreme court of the united states turned the constitution upside down in a profound sense. the most fundamental principle in which the constitution rests is that the law binds everyone in the constitution elaborates the structure of that law. although it does contain some provisions in the so-called speech and debate clause for immunizing senators and members of the house in certain limited circumstances, it doesn't give any immunity from ordinary criminal law to the president, the most powerful figure in our government. on the contrary, it is because he has such enormous power that he, like anyone else, must obey the criminal law. there are some people, including people of the justice department, rule saying you have to wait until the president leaves office before commencing a prosecution for crimes he commits while in office. but until today, no one has seriously claimed absolute immunity for certain official acts would apply to the president. as justice jackson pointed out in a powerful dissent, she dissented in addition to justice sotomayor your, justice kagan joined the dissent but justice jackson in a powerful dissent said this whole business of drawing a line between official acts and an official acts and saying if you are on the official side of the line, the president can essentially get away with murder. on the unofficial side that he might be prosecuted. she points how that gets upside down. it is exactly when the president is using the official powers that belong uniquely to that office that we should be most worried about the president becoming an autocrat or as donald trump told us he wants to be unto you one, a dictator. the court has it backwards. it is true that the case will go back to judge chutkan and she will hold hearings. some thing that's a silver lining because those hearings can become an can begin soon and the nation can perhaps see much sooner than otherwise would if there had been a trial in the fall. the nation can see more of the evidence about what donald trump did in the fake electors scheme and in the violent mob that he riled up. but that's a pale substitute for what the people are entitled to and that is a verdict, guilty or not guilty. is the president guilty of, for the first time in history, organizing an effort to prevent the peaceful transfer of power to his successor. that we will not have. people will be going to the voting booths and deciding whether to vote for someone who has already abused these powers as opposed to someone who although the powers have been handed to him says i do not want to use them. i believe in the rule of law. voters making that choice without the evidence they need. >> i want to read justice brown -- justice ketanji brown jackson's, the conclusion of her opinion. she says the majority of my colleagues seem to have put their trust in our court's ability to prevent presidents from becoming kings through case-by-case application of the indeterminate standards of their new presidential accountability paradigm. i fear that they are wrong, but for all of our sakes, i hope that they are right. in the meantime, because the risks and power the court has now assumed are intolerable, unwarranted, and plainly antithetical to bedrock constitutional norms, i dissent . decent language doesn't get stronger than that. >> well, the language couldn't get stronger because it deserves to be enormously strong. that language was uttered three days before independence day and several days we will celebrate the nation's survival of a revolution against kings and queens. we had a revolution so that we wouldn't have a king. now, the supreme court says that is what we are giving you. i do not think we should accept that but it seems to me that all that does is basically put the court on the ballot this november. we have to decide whether we want the kind of government that donald trump has helped us half by appointing three members to this court. three of the members of the majority were appointed by him, and two members of the majority ought to have recused themselves. justice alito and thomas. that is five justices. it is those five who ultimately decided even the evidence of official acts couldn't be used to show what the president was up to when he used his official powers. because motive supposedly doesn't matter but motive is everything. whether a president gave a pardon in return for a bribe depends on whether he was doing it as a corrupt matter of whether he was giving a pardon because he thought someone deserved mercy. as justice barrett pointed out, you can't make sense of the quit without the quote but under the incoherent decision of the majority, you can prove the transfer of money that you can't prove anything about the pardon that was given in exchange. that's the kind of thing that makes this decision so incoherent and what makes it dangerous is that even even if we get over trumpism and the maga movement, we will have to rely on the good character of future presidents because the law will no longer serve as a source of inhibition. that is dangerous. that's a prescription for autocracy and eventually for authoritarianism and dictatorship. spent harvard law professor laurence tribe, thank you for starting off our discussions on this historic night . coming up. neal katyal, andrew weissmann will join us with their view of the supreme court ruling . ling. to duckduckgo on all your devie duckduckgo comes with a built-n engine like google, but it's pi and doesn't spy on your searchs and duckduckgo lets you browse like chrome, but it blocks cooi and creepy ads that follow youa from google and other companie. and there's no catch. it's fre. we make money from ads, but they don't follow you aroud join the millions of people taking back their privacy by downloading duckduckgo on all your devices today. turning to the discussion two, neal katyal who is argued over 50 cases before the u.s. supreme court. he is a professor at georgetown law. assad joining us andrew weissmann, former fbi council and the criminal decision in the eastern district of new york in melissa murray is joining us and she's an nyu law professor. they are the co-authors of "the new york times" best-selling book which i used tonight, the trump indictments. the historic charging documents with commentary. all three are msnbc legal analyst. neal katyal, with your supreme court experience , how much of this did you expect? >> almost none of it. this is a decision that was, i think, wrong start to finish. one that really changed our constitution dramatically. both procedurally and substantively, i am shocked. a president can do whatever he wants including and up to navy seal team six to assassinate his political rival is not the constitution that i have ever understood and that the constitution of the united states. this decision goes way, way, way too far in giving the president basically carte blanche when it comes to executive powers. there are some bright silver linings in there about for example the president's rollover state legislatures and fake delegates which i think the court leaves possible to prosecute people like donald trump for. in general, when it comes to presidential powers, this is not the constitution that i have ever understood it to be. procedurally, i would've expected a unanimous decision are close to unanimous. that is the way the court traditionally operates in hot button cases like this. you go back to the nixon tapes case which was almost unanimous against nixon and rejecting his claims of presidential privilege, which was a weak cousin of what donald trump sought here. even nixon's own appointees to the supreme court ruled against him. here by contrast, you have the six republican appointed justices, all siding with the republican nominee for the presidency, donald trump. you have the three democratically appointed ones siding the other way. that's not the place the court should be. it is not surprising we have heard from president biden about this, and i expect in the days and weeks to come, the court will become the front and center piece of the election. i think biden will run against the court more than he will run against even donald trump although the two now are locked kind of at the hip. trump and the supreme court. this is a tremendously unfortunate ruling and one as to which i was shocked. >> yeah, i think so many of us during our lifetimes have come to expect so much of the court because we saw the court deliver in circumstances that approved the court's integrity. the republican president richard nixon proved the supreme court's integrity, and now former republican president donald trump has disproved it. andrew, without the supreme court decision in the nixon case, we wouldn't be sitting here so stunned tonight as we are. >> yeah, we talked about it of air and in many ways this decision could have quietly -- the entire logic of the nixon tapes case because you have this broad recognition by the supreme court that anything that is within a very expensive view of the core functions or the take care clause of the constitution is completely and 100% absolutely immune. and then, even another official acts, there's a strong presumption with the court sets out a very difficult test to allow the government to go forward. let me make sure people understand with respect to the core function the court says it is absolutely immune, they say one of the things within that core function is the communications and the directions of the president and the department of justice. they say when a president orders sham prosecutions, he can do that and not face any criminal repercussions. that -- to say it is to be shocked by it. i am with neal and it is such a transformational decision finally that the tape you played of president biden is so remarkable because you have this sitting president saying, i do not want that power. i should not have that power. that is not how our system works. the sitting president is saying this is not part of the checks and balances we have been this country. we are not an autocracy. it's remarkable, ahistorical matter, your president biden on the day of the decision saying i do not need and i should not have that power. >> melissa murray come you clerked for sonia sotomayor and she made the point in her dissent that every president prior to donald trump, every one of them, assumed that criminal law applied to them. every one of them. they were not inhibited in any way as presidents as law abiding people are not inhibited by the fact that law applies to them. how -- has been dealing with this opinion and the length of time it took to get it out. what was going on, what can you imagine going on inside the court to take this long? >> i don't think we have to imagine it. i think she told us a few weeks ago when she received the radcliffe medal in massachusetts where she said there days where she goes back to her office and she cries. cries because this court of which she is a member has done something so shocking and beyond the pale that it beggars belief. this is one of those days. she chose to read her dissent from the bench. that's an unusual step that they take only when they feel it's really necessary to impress upon the public how monumental the majority's views are. she think, quite rightly noted, this is a major hit to democracy. she noted she did not respectfully dissent. she simply dissented noting that in sad times for democracy ahead. i was not entirely shocked by this decision. this is a supreme court that had a 6-3 super majority for about three years and in three of those four years it has overruled a major precedent every single year. dobbs in 2022. affirmative action case in 2023 in the chevron case this year. now it has abandoned nixon versus united states. it's not done so explicitly but it's an overruling of nixon. who would've thought we would be in a position like this with the supreme court of the united states so emboldened by its mere numbers could simply run roughshod over the rule of law over stare decisis and existing presidents and that's what donald trump put in place. i agree with neal, and surprise upon admin hasn't taken a more strident view about this court and its role in constructing these current landscapes we live in. this is not just about the threat that donald trump poses to democracy. this court by itself is an existential threat to democracy. >> go ahead. >> if i could pick up on that. the most imp