the breaking news of this historic and quite frankly damning indictment released to the public today. laying out the special counsel s case against donald trump and his gross mishandling of classified documents. given that this is the first time such actions are being taken against a former president, the special counsel made sure he came prepared with the receipts. and they could not be any more incriminating. in all, the special counsel is charging trump with 37 counts. 31 of them have to do with trump s willful retention of national defense information. otherwise known as the espionage act. these are charges related to false statements, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding and corruptly concealing documents, as well as scheming to conceal. included in some of the charges is one of trump s closest aides, walt nada, who was also indicted. also today, we heard for the tir time from the man leading the special counsel investigation, jack smith. our laws that protect n
Might not do it, but you know, she was reversed so fast on everything she did by the 11th circuit, and they are sitting there, the 11th circuit is sitting there right now, ready to reverse any stroke of the pen she comes up with. don t forget, the 11th circuit was very clear that in terms of that donald trump had to be treated just like any other criminal defendant. and that may have been enough of a slap on the back that maybe she ll take that lesson and she may be the best person as a result of that. i don t know. we ll see. i feel like her biggest weapon is probably the least controversial one, too, which is just to say this person is a candidate for the presidency. we re going to push this past the campaign season into 2025. i mean, he shouldn t be treated like anybody else, but he is a presidential candidate. if she wants to hide behind that what do the speedy trial rules say now? because the speedy trial concept applies as a benefit mostly
Donald trump who didn t pay attention to his presidential daily brief, might have paid more attention than we thought in taking stuff home with them. these are documents mostly from his time as president. what he was doing with that sloppy storage is in and of itself an offense. never would have been charged for it. would have completely gotten away with it. and in fact, the authorities really wouldn t know that it was all over the floor in that room if he had just when requested sent it back. in fact, if he just sent it back the third time he was requested to send it back. okay. this is one of those things where it s one of those rare situations where they re basically saying to the bank robber, you know what, if you give the money back, if you would just, you know? and he couldn t bring himself to do that, which is just so deeply pathological. when you say where to begin, i really want to stress to everyone out there, something that jack smith said today,
Not clearly in the prosecution s favor is this judge. aileen cannon, who had shown herself to be very friendly to donald trump. can the prosecutors, can the justice department get a different judge? can they object to her presence given the way she behaved in the special master situation? no, she s decided an issue on the special master. she was overruled by the 11th circuit. the idea they can use that as a way to say she was biased is not going to do it. could this judge try to throw out the damning evidence that comes from donald trump s lawyer which a judge duly allowed, could she say no, you can t have anything coming from the lawyer or whoever it is she could, but it seems far fetched. there s a ruling now that the crime fraud exception permits that to come forward. if they had a hearing on it, i think what you would find is that mr. corcoran would take the stand and it would turn out that
Bad in there. suffice it to say, regardless of how this plays out, trump has cemented himself with yet another first. he is the first president to be twice impeached, the first former president to be charged criminally following his indictment by a manhattan grand jury in march, and as of yesterday, he became the first president in our nation s history to be indicted on federal charges. congrats, donald. i have an amazing panel of guests tonight to discuss this huge historic day. my colleague lawrence o donnell, host of the last word, alex wagner, host of alex wagner tonight. nick ackerman, former watergate assistant special prosecutor, that could come in handy, charles coleman, former brooklyn prosecutor and msnbc legal analyst, as well as frank figliuzzi, former fbi assistant director for counterintelligence and msnbc national security analyst. all-star panel here today. where to begin?