Special counsel. There is a whole lot here that we have never before seen. 165 pages laying out the case against donald trump. There are many dozens of bombshells here and people right now are poring over them. And what he did on january 6. At the prospect of mike pence being killed or harmed, donald trump, what jack smith found was donald trump's response was, quote, so what? 35 days before the election, new details on how the republican candidate for president tried to overthrow the last election. Rachel maddow and lawrence o'donnell join me live tonight. Then did he lose the 2020 election? tim, i'm focused on the future. Senator murphy on the republican plan to subvert this election. Plus the threat of regional war as israel invades lebanon. My interview on his brandnew book, when all in starts right now. Good evening from new york. I am chris hayes. Just 34 days out from the election and voting has already started in a number of states. The judge in donald trump's january 6 special counsel case has unsealed a new court filing this afternoon. In the filing special counsel jack smith outlines with new details why donald trump should be federally prosecuted for his attempted coup. So we have a special show tonight. I will be joined in just a moment by rachel maddow and lawrence o'donnell. You see them both there with the magic of television. They will help me break down the breaking news. The filing is 165 pages long, roughly half of which made up a new summary of the case. As prosecutors put it, when trump lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office. With private coconspirators the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he lost. It also explains why donald trump was not acting in an official capacity as president when he schemed to steal the 2020 election. That distinction, obviously very important in light of this summer's ruling by the supreme court which basically said the president of the united states is kind of above the law. He or she can act with impunity, like a dictator working, as long as whatever they do can be justified as an official act of the office of the president and that is why jack smith argues that trump was acting as a candidate, as a private citizen fundamentally, a candidate for office when he tried to overturn the election and therefore should still be eligible for prosecution. The special counsel office rights, although trump was the incumbent president during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one. Working with a team of private coconspirators, trump acted as a candidate when he pursued multiple criminal means to disrupt through fraud and deceit the government function through which boats are collected and counted. A function through which the defendant as president had no official role. Smith also provides multiple new anecdotes from trump's campaign inner circle, outlining what prosecutors say was this willful scheme to defraud the american people. In the immediate post election, while trump claimed fraud without proof, his private operatives sought to create chaos rather than seek clarity at polling places tableting votes. On november 4, someone identified as person five, campaign employee, agent, and coconspirator of the defendant, tried to sow confusion when the ongoing vote count in detroit, michigan looked unfavorable to trump. A colleague at the tcf center told person five we think a batch of votes heavily in biden's favor is right. Person five responded, find a reason it isn't. Give me options to file litigation. The colleague suggested there was about to be undressed, reminiscent of the brooks brothers riot. Person five responded, make them riot and do it. Make them riot. Of course eventually we did get a riot. It was not like the brooks brothers riot in 2000 where republican operatives posed as protesters to demonstrate at the miami dade county election office and then tried to force their way inside in an effort to stop the recount of florida election ballots. This was far worse and more widespread. A fullfledged deadly insurrection at our nations capital unlike anything we have ever seen. Capital ransacked. Police officers having their brains bashed in. It was the end result of donald trump scheme to pressure his running mate and vice president to overturn the election that they have lost without any legal or factual basis. When it became clear that mike pence was not going to go along with the two, donald trump, well, he unleashed the rioters on him. We just heard that mike pence is not going to reject any fraudulent electoral votes. That's right. You heard it here first. Mike pence has betrayed the united states of america. Hang mike pence! hang mike pence! pence was sent down in the basement of the capitol for his own safety while a violent mob urged on by donald trump ravaged the capital, setting up a gallows outside. In addition to a lengthy recounting of trump's many efforts to get pence to steal the election, the new filing also provides insight to what was going through trump's head when he learned his running mate was in danger. Upon receiving a phone call alerting him that pence had been taken to a secure location, someone identified as person 15 rushed to the dining room to inform trump in hopes that trump would take action to ensure pence's safety. Instead, after person 15 delivered the news, trump looked at him and said only, so what? i am joined now by rachel maddow and lawrence o'donnell. It is good to have you here. First i am just very curious to get your initial thoughts, having had a little bit of time to go through the filing. Rachel, i will start with you. It strikes me that there are two things here that are interesting. I don't know if surprising is the right word, but it seems substantial and important. First is why does this filing have two exist? we already have a superseding indictment. Well, this is to show the court that the immunity ruling from the supreme court did not think this case. There are a number of assertions at various levels of specificity in the filings, saying listen, trump was not doing this because he was president of the united states. He was doing this as somebody running to try to win the next term as president of the united states. He was doing this privately. There are great, very quotable lines. The executive branch has no authority or function to choose the next president. So to the extent that trump was trying to affect the choice of the next president, he is doing so as a candidate and as an interested party, but not as president. Also the defendant had no official responsibilities related to the states administration of the election or the appointment of the electors. The president has nothing to do with that, so when he is pressuring state officials, talking to state officials about choosing their electors, he is doing something for which there is no presidential official responsibility, so he cannot be immune from prosecution on those things on the basis of the fact that he was president when he did it. That very clear, like 10,000 layers of argument on that i feel like is a very strong assertion from jack smith, from the prosecutors in the federal case, that the case is not sunk. The other thing that i think is important is that this happens right on the heels, within 24 hours, of j. D. Vance rolling out among the most shameless smooth talking revisionist history about what donald trump did on january 6 and what happened at the end of the 2020 election than we have ever seen. Usually that kind of stuff is delivered to a maga audience. Last night it was delivered to more than 40 million americans by a guy who is very smooth talking and portrayed it as if it is no big deal and maybe it is only the democrats who think this is a big deal. This shows that that revisionist history is absolute punk and when the court inevitably moves forward on the basis of this filing and says trump is not immune, this proves the case against him, the criminal case against him is very strong and very detailed. It arrives sort of right in time i think to cut off what i think was the biggest blast and the most effective attempt at revisionist history on january 6 that we have yet seen and it happened last night. On the first of those two points, i will come to you in a second, lawrence, but on the first of those two points i recall as i was reading the filing today, there is a moment in those arguments that is a disaster in many cases and shocking and appalling, if i can editorialize. There is a moment when amy coney barrett intervenes essentially to do proactively what was done here, where she asks trump's lawyers, calling the electors, is that an official act? he is like, probably not. She goes through a bunch of the things asserted in the indictment to say we don't think those are official acts, do we? it is interesting to see that come back around is essentially the core argument being made over the course of 165 pages. Partly because of the ruling john roberts came up with. Lawrence, your thoughts? i'm going to go to the highest authority i can go to tonight at 10:00 on this very issue that rachel was describing, which is how the supreme court basically sent this back to the trial court and jack smith to determine what, if anything from the indictment can be prosecuted and this is smith's answer, which is to say, well, everything. There is one meeting which involved the justice department. That one meeting where we should say roberts goes out of his way. Right, but what you do have in here, and i remember the day the supreme court ruling came out, my first reaction to it was that this was going to happen. I anticipated it happening in an actual factfinding hearing with witnesses where we would hear mike pence. That might be the next stage of this. It could go to that, but as of now it seems like judge chutkan wants to handle it on paper and you can see how powerful the paper is and you can see the power that a federal prosecutor has in subpoena power that the congress doesn't. When you look at page 67, the source of the quotes in the second paragraph are mike pence as, quote, five pages of contemporaneous notes of a meeting with the president at the time. There is the vice president writing it all down. What you better do any time you talk to the guy. And jack smith has all those notes. The other thing, 165 pages is not the book length version of this, but it is the screenplay length and you can see the through line all the way to january 6. I have to say before all of these pieces were fragments that were floating, now it creates the perfect lead in to january 6, wherein jack smith says having tried everything, having tried absolutely everything, by the time donald trump stood up to make that speech to his crowd on january 6, he had only one hope left and that was his crowd. To send his crowd up to the capital to stop the counting of the electoral college votes. That point about the drama in the document and the narrative arc of it, specifically the pressure on pence, which comes through on the january 6 committee report and is really a focus here. On january 5 the defendant told pence i think you have the power to decertified. When he was unmoved the defendant threatened to criticize him publicly. We know what that means. I'm going to have to say you did a great disservice. It's possible again. It is easy to lose track of what has been entered on the public record and hasn't, but this timing of that tweet, i think that is nick fuentes, who dined with the president, reading out about pence not doing what he is called to do. Trump was alone in the dining room when he issued a tweet attacking pins and fueling the ongoing riot. Mike pence didn't have the courage to do what should be done to protect our country and our constitution. Not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certified. Jack smith writes, one minute later, at 2:25 p. M. the secret service was forced to evacuate pence to a secure location. Rachel, it does not quite say cause and effect, but it lays the cause and effect right next to each other in adjacent sentences. There is so much detail that they are presenting about that tweet in the context of it. They go to great lengths and great detail to explain that trump was alone in the dining room off the oval office when he sent it. They go to great lengths to say that yes, there was another staffer who was sort of cleared to tweet in trump's name, but he did not do that tweet. They go to great lengths to show that at the time that trump's and that tweet, while he was alone and nobody else was there, it was definitely him who did it. He was both watching fox news which had already reported at that point and was continually reporting that the capital had been breached. That the rioters made their way inside congress, where mike pence was. He was also watching twitter where it was being reported in real time. They go through all of those details, like it was him and this is what he knew when he did it and then they establish some of the other things he tweeted around the election and january 6. Arguably the supreme court rules around these things could be construed as official actions. When he did send statements in a milquetoast way that said people should go home and peace and love. That was a presidential thing to do. He was acting on the interests of the u. S. Government. When he said mike pence didn't have the courage to do what needed to be done, there is nothing presidential about it. There is no way that this can be construed as doing anything other than advancing his personal, private criminal interest in that moment. They cover every single angle of it in a way that it just feels like a straight jacket. There is also something you mentioned before and we were sitting together on the day of that immunity oral arguments and decision. This effort, a largely successful effort aided by the supreme court to make all of this disappear down the memory hole. As we sit here 34 days before the election and we all know that everyone who covers this across the ideological spectrum understands he will try to do the same thing again. That is obviously a certainty, right? particularly relevant after your line about j. D. Vance being the first vice presidential nominee not to know who won the previous election. The defendant and co conspirators also demonstrated the deliberate disregard for the truth when they repeatedly changed the numbers. I love this. Changed the numbers in their baseless fraud allegations from day today. The conspirators started with the allegation that 36,000 noncitizens voted in arizona. Five days later it was beyond credulity that a few hundred thousand didn't go. Later the minimum was 40 or 50,000. The timing of this, less than 24 hours after we saw j. D. Vance on the debate