i ll be back to continue our special coverage of the indictment of donald trump, joining my colleagues alicia and then the, simone sanders hand sound, and me, at eight pm eastern for more in-depth reporting. and analysis, but first, there s still two more hours of velshi on this saturday morning. coming up next, the latest on the trump indictment. what we know, what comes next, and what effect it s going to have on the 2024 election. another hour of velshi begins, right now. good morning. saturday, june 10th. i m ali velshi. for the second time in just a little over two months, the twice impeached ex president, donald trump, has been indicted. this, time by the federal government. yesterday, jack smith made his first official public appearance as special counsel to announce the historic indictment. he also underlined why it s so important that this case moves forward. adherence to the rule of law is a bedrock principle of the department of justice. and our nation
For this kind of conduct. and so this is the rule and the standards that i applied to donald trump. if i would be indicted for this conduct, a president should be indicted. they are not above the law, and i should say, clearly, former president, which makes him exactly on parallel with somebody like me, an american citizen. he is normal or we need to view him like that s. so then the question is, is this the kind of conduct that would get any american indicted, and the answer to that is, yes was a capital y. the evidence of intentionality here is overwhelming. the evidence of obstruction here is overwhelming. again with the caveat that these are claims, they have to be proven at a trial, so the jury satisfaction. the evidence here is articulated s exact kind of evidence that would get anyone else indicted, and i think that s very important for people to understand. for those who will stick with donald trump, increasingly,
Still looking at, and the georgia district attorney is still looking at, that s also, this starts to get less abstract and more tangible. starts to get les abstract and more tangible absolutely, and you know it will always be in the details here, and there s only so much that the department of justice can say a number of the documents here are likely still classified and not ones that can see the public eye one of the things that i think though that would be incredibly damaging to donald trump s if the intelligence embedded in these documents is as paragraph three of the indictment says, implicates the united states national the united states nuclear secrets. that s not something to take lightly. this is a person who consistently put his own interests above the national authority of this country, and we re not talking about it in an abstract way, we re talking about documents that only are
adherence to the rule of law is a bedrock principle of the department of justice. and our nation s commitment to the rule of law sets an example for the world. we have one set of laws in this country. they apply to everyone. that includes someone whom the public elected to the highest office in the lands and interested with the country s most sensitive and closely guarded secrets. but donald trump repeatedly demonstrated both over the course of his turbulent presidency and as he reluctantly left office, to continue to spread lies about the election, that he believed that he was above the law. as the national archives reiterated this week, ever since the disgraceful and of richard nixon s own administration, the presidential records act has required that all records created by presidents and vice presidents be turned over to the national archives at the end of each administration. yet, for more than a year, and despite multiple opportunities to remedy the situation, and returned mat
Fashion, it s managed to not hurt him thus far. and also, it sucks upon the oxygen from anyone running against him, because whether it s swami, mike fence, chris kristen, tim scott, everyone else on the campaign trail is getting asked to comment on donald trump. and in the primary, at least, whenever somebody is talking about donald trump, that s a good thing for him. probably not so much after the conventions if he is the nominee. let me ask you one more question, though. in the hierarchy of the charges and the convictions that donald trump could possibly face, where is this one? because this is a little different than the manhattan d.a. case. one might, like or not like the manhattan d.a. case, but most people say probably didn t have anything to do with three. now, we re looking at classified documents that may have been about war, might have been about iran. that feels a little closer to home in terms of actual national security danger. once you get the january six stuff, with ja