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00:03Good evening and thank you so much for being with us tonight. I'm Rachel Maddow here at the MSNOW Mothership
00:10in New York along with some of my very favorite people in the world. Lawrence O'Donnell is here. Chris Hayes
00:15is here. Ari Melber is here. And you wouldn't know it from the cold open.
00:19It's like my childhood. But Nicole Wallace is here. Even though you inexplicably did not get mentioned in the cold
00:25open, I'm very sorry. I feel, yeah. Well, I'm happy to be here. I am here. It's not a hologram.
00:31It's me.
00:32You get to be here double, triple time. You get extra passes to be here whenever you want because you
00:37were randomly left out of that. All right. We are going to be joined in the course of this special
00:41coverage tonight by additional colleagues, Jen Psaki, Stephanie Rule, Moore. The gang's all here, especially Nicole.
00:50But the reason we are all here tonight together is for a special primetime recap of the historic hearing that
00:58took place in Washington today with Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought 44 felony charges against the man who
01:07is now the sitting president of the United States.
01:09As Jack, as special counsel, Jack Smith operated independently within the U.S. Department of Justice.
01:15He and his team of prosecutors and FBI agents investigated Donald Trump. They investigated his efforts to overthrow the U
01:23.S. government to try to get the results of the election he lost thrown out so he could stay in
01:28power anyway.
01:29They then investigated. They then investigated. His handling of classified information after he left left office.
01:35But of course, in the American mind, the culmination of Donald Trump's efforts that were investigated by Jack Smith.
01:44So, as you know, Jack Smith's leadership, a grand jury brought four felony charges against Trump in the case to
01:57overthrow the U.S. government and stay in power after he lost re-election.
02:01A second federal grand jury brought an additional 40 felony charges against him in the classified documents case for taking
02:09huge amounts of highly classified material with him after he left office, an alleged violation of, among other things, the
02:17Espionage Act.
02:19I mean, just spelling this all out, saying these words right now, it never stops being astonishing that the person
02:26facing those kinds of felony charges was nevertheless elevated by the Republican Party to become their nominee for president of
02:34the United States.
02:36Espionage Act and all.
02:39But he was their nominee and he won the general election and the federal felony criminal charges that Jack Smith
02:46and his team brought against Donald Trump were never heard in court.
02:51And today, for the first time, Jack Smith testified in an open hearing in Congress about his work, about the
02:57evidence his team developed against the man who is now the sitting president.
03:01As Smith remarked several times today, there is no analog for this in U.S. history.
03:07Nothing like this has ever happened before.
03:10And this historic hearing today didn't disappoint.
03:14That said, it did happen starting at 10 a.m. Eastern.
03:17It happened right in the middle of the work day or in the middle of the school day.
03:22So even though this was a big, important deal, you may very well have missed it.
03:26There's no shame in that.
03:27Whether or not you were able to catch some or all of it live, though, we wanted to do this
03:31primetime recap.
03:32Basically, as as our our public service to you.
03:37So whether or not you were able to watch any of it, you will not have missed a thing.
03:42All right.
03:43Today's hearing started with Jack Smith making clear the stakes of the crimes that he investigated,
03:49the stakes of that investigation being shut down and the stakes of the punishment that Trump and his Republican loyalists
03:56have since pursued
03:57against Jack Smith and against everyone in law enforcement who has tried to hold the line against Trump's crimes.
04:09After nearly 30 years of public service, including in international settings,
04:13I have seen how the rule of law can erode.
04:17My fear is that we have seen the rule of law function in our country for so long that many
04:24of us have come to take it for granted.
04:28The rule of law is not self-executing.
04:32It depends on our collective commitment to apply it.
04:36It requires dedicated service on behalf of others, especially when that service is difficult and comes with costs.
04:46Our willingness to pay those costs is what tests and defines our commitment to the rule of law and to
04:53this wonderful country.
04:56Our willingness to pay those costs, especially when that service is difficult and comes with costs.
05:02That was as much a theme today as any other, both in terms of the conduct of Jack Smith's investigation
05:08and the repercussions since.
05:12Since all of it has been very much dominated by the willingness, the eagerness of this president and his supporters
05:18to do harm,
05:20to even do violence to anyone who opposes Donald Trump or tries to stop him from committing what Jack Smith
05:27clearly again and again and again today described as crimes.
05:35Mr. Smith, if your case had gone to trial, would the evidence from Georgia have helped prove that President Trump
05:41knowingly engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the 2020 election?
05:47Yes. After an investigation following the facts and the law, we believed we had proof beyond a reasonable doubt to
05:54prove those charges.
05:55Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 election, President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results
06:03and prevent the lawful transfer of power.
06:06Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity.
06:12We followed the facts and we followed the law. Where that led us was to an indictment of an unprecedented
06:18criminal scheme to block the peaceful transfer of power.
06:22But you are correct that the only person charged in this case was Donald Trump, who, in my estimation, was
06:28the person most culpable for the crimes charged.
06:32You know, it was the Republicans who agreed to this hearing.
06:36They agreed that this should be in public and on television.
06:41And, you know, it's possible they're only watching right-wing pro-Trump news.
06:46And so they haven't heard much about what Jack Smith actually did in his investigation.
06:50They may not know much about who he actually is and how he speaks.
06:54I don't know why Republicans agreed to do this today, but I'm guessing they did not expect that Jack Smith
07:00would just spell it out like this so clearly, spell it out.
07:06The evidence he found and the conclusions that he drew about the president's criminal behavior.
07:13Did your investigation find that Donald Trump attempted to manufacture fraudulent state slates of presidential electors in seven states that
07:24he lost?
07:26Yes.
07:27Did he pressure state officials to ignore true vote counts in those states?
07:34Yes.
07:35Did he spread lies and conspiracies to his followers to make them believe that the election had been illegally rigged
07:43against him?
07:44Yes.
07:45Did he pressure DOJ officials to stop the certification of the election?
07:52He did.
07:53Did he pressure his own vice president, Mike Pence, to stop the certification against the oath of office that he
07:59had sworn to the Constitution?
08:01He did.
08:02And when all of this didn't work, did he, Donald Trump, motivate and inspire an angry mob to the U
08:10.S. Capitol to stop the certification?
08:14Our proof showed that he caused what happened on January 6th, that it was foreseeable, and that he exploited that
08:22violence.
08:23Did Donald Trump know that his allegations of election fraud were lies when he spread them?
08:30Our proof was that he did, and we intended to prove that at trial.
08:34Our evidence said he did.
08:36We intended to prove it at trial.
08:38There was plenty of explanation today about how they would have proved it at trial, including an unexpected invocation of
08:45Martians, thanks to a remark from Republican Senator Lindsey Graham quoted here.
08:53In terms of the grand jury testimony that's now been released, the fact that Donald Trump, according to Senator Graham,
09:01would believe that Martians stole the election, what does that tell you about Trump's state of mind?
09:11That statement is consistent with what we found in our investigation, in that our investigation revealed that Donald Trump was
09:21not looking for honest answers about whether there was fraud in the election.
09:27He was looking for ways to stay in power, and when people told him things that conflicted with him staying
09:35in power, he rejected them, or he chose not even to contact people like that who would know if the
09:42election was done properly in the state.
09:43On the other hand, when individuals would say things that would allow him to stay in power, no matter how
09:51fantastical, he would latch on to those.
09:54That pattern, over time, we felt was powerful evidence that he, in fact, knew that the fraud claims he was
10:03making were false.
10:05He intended to stay in power, even though he knew that the claims he was making were false, and he
10:12was willing to obstruct justice and intimidate witnesses to do it, which special counsel Jack Smith was able to explain
10:19even to this somewhat bewildered Virginia Republican congressman, a man named Ben Kline.
10:27Did you have any evidence that President Trump's statements about the cases against him intimidated witnesses or prevented them from
10:33coming forward?
10:35I had evidence that he said, if you come after me, I'm coming after you.
10:40He asked, he suggested a witness should be put to death.
10:43The courts found that those sort of statements not only deter witnesses who've come forward, they deter witnesses who've yet
10:51to come forward.
10:51But you weren't able to identify a single witness who didn't come forward because they were intimidated by President Trump.
10:57We had extremely thorough evidence that his statements were having an effect on the proceedings that is not permitted in
11:08any court of law in the United States.
11:10That is not permitted in any court of law in the United States, which puts a very fine point on
11:15the fact of how lucky it is for Donald Trump that these cases never made it into a court of
11:20law for a trial.
11:22In this primetime recap of tonight's hearing, we are going to go through some of the conspiracy theories that Republican
11:28members of Congress raised in the room, including a wild one that maybe the key to making this all go
11:33away is that maybe Jack Smith wasn't sworn in right when he took his oath of office.
11:39He's left handed.
11:40So maybe it was the that'll do it.
11:42We'll talk about tonight about Republicans perhaps inadvertently cutting the knees out from their own criticism of Jack Smith getting
11:50phone records about the alleged co-conspirators in the case calling members of Congress in their actions today.
11:56They undercut that allegation they were simultaneously making in the hearing.
12:01We're going to talk about Republican Congressman Troy Nell's baiting and sniping at the police officers who are in the
12:08room today, causing a disruption in the room, causing some choice swearing.
12:13We're going to get to all of that tonight.
12:15Congressman Jamie Raskin is going to be joining us live here tonight.
12:18He pulled a rabbit out of a hat at the very, very end of the hearing.
12:22As Jim Jordan was trying to gavel the hearing to a close, Jamie Raskin jumped in and sprung something on
12:30everyone.
12:30It apparently means that we may hear from Jack Smith again.
12:35That was much to the surprise of the Republicans today when they learned that live and in the moment from
12:39Jamie Raskin, as we all did watching it on TV.
12:43So we're going to talk with Congressman Raskin about that coming up.
12:47But I will I will just finish with this and then we're going to hear from everybody.
12:51To my mind, if you only took away one thing from the hearing today,
12:55it was this next exchange between Jack Smith and a Vermont congresswoman named Becca Ballant.
13:03It was an exchange about basically what it means to be Jack Smith right now in 2026 to have done
13:11the investigation that he did,
13:13to have found what he found, to have served your country by sticking to your guns,
13:18even when that meant the leader of the United States government and his party and his supporters would try to
13:24destroy you for it.
13:27Trump has said that you, Mr. Smith, should be investigated and put in prison.
13:32He called you a disgrace to humanity, a radical left Marxist, a criminal.
13:36In fact, Trump has used the words deranged Jack Smith 185 times on Truth Social.
13:45How do you think that these statements have impacted you, your staff and your investigation?
13:55With respect to me, I think the reports, I'm sorry, the statements are meant to intimidate me.
14:01I will not be intimidated.
14:04I think these statements are also made as a warning to others what will happen if they stand up.
14:11And I am, as I say, I'm not going to be intimidated.
14:15We did our work pursuant to department policy.
14:19We followed the facts and we followed the law.
14:21And that process resulted in proof beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed serious crimes.
14:28I'm not going to pretend that didn't happen because he's threatening me.
14:31And, Mr. Smith, do you believe that President Trump's Department of Justice will find some way to indict you?
14:41I believe that they will do everything in their power to do that because they've been ordered to by the
14:46president.
14:48Jack Smith, I will not be intimidated.
14:51I'm not going to pretend those serious crimes didn't happen just because he's threatening me.
14:56As I said before, I will not be intimidated.
15:00Nicole Wallace, what did you take from this hearing today?
15:03Well, what I took from my own reaction was that this was so extraordinary.
15:08But before Trump destroyed the Department of Justice, there were hundreds of Jack Smiths inside the Department of Justice.
15:15He was the arch type of the kind of person who chose that life instead of, you know, being a
15:22partner at Paul Weiss and having multiple houses and occasionally playing private.
15:26I mean, this is what DOJ was made of.
15:28So what I thought about was how successful Trump's been in moving the Overton window, that I watched this with
15:34a lump in my throat, thinking about nostalgically about what the department was.
15:39The other thing I thought of was he is the most senior Justice Department official to defend what we kind
15:44of shorthand as rank and file.
15:46But the people that have been purged from the Justice Department were the best of the best.
15:50The most senior prosecutors, the most senior FBI agents who have been pilloried reputationally, threatened legally, face death threats, by
16:00and large, if they've been named and outed and smeared in the right wing press.
16:03And they have hollowed out the Department of Justice.
16:06Merrick Garland hasn't defended those people.
16:08Lisa Monaco hasn't defended those people.
16:10Joe Biden hasn't defended those people.
16:12Today, Jack Smith, right after that clip you played, described the real danger and the threats and efforts to intimidate
16:20him to his team.
16:22And he and he really defended the integrity of the work they did.
16:26And I think some of what sinks in when you watch this is that we're all here today because this
16:32is extraordinary.
16:33We all know that this doesn't happen inside the Justice Department.
16:38No one says what he said today to the public in that Congress, to Pam Bondi or Todd Blanche or
16:44Emile Bobe.
16:44And if they did, if Danielle Sassoon or Liz Oyer or any of those people did, they've been asked to
16:52leave.
16:52That's right.
16:53Which is the dark and terrible side of the Justice Department professional ethic that says if you are asked to
17:01do something unprofessional or wrong, you resign.
17:04We have seen people resigning like whole forests of them falling all at once.
17:10And what it means is that the Justice Department, as you say, doesn't have those folks in it anymore.
17:14That's right.
17:14And what is so, I think, painful about this is is not that just Jack Smith's work that he did
17:23on behalf of not a president, not a party, but on behalf of the country.
17:28He worked for the country. He was a taxpayer funded prosecutor who came out of a different post to do
17:33this extraordinary job at a point in time when there was literally nothing to be gained.
17:38And as he stated at the end, he faces threats and harm and he's all but certain he will be
17:43indicted.
17:43They will attempt to prosecute him because Donald Trump wants them to.
17:48That not only did he not succeed in bringing a case, he knew he could prove beyond a reasonable doubt
17:53to a jury that he will be punished for it.
17:56Yeah. Chris. Yeah, I, I like Nicole, also felt like I was watching this human embodiment of all that's been
18:02lost and all that is crucial and central to really the entire functioning of American democracy.
18:09Like the this kind of a person who's a serious, smart, capable person devoted to public service who is doing
18:14their work without fear or favor.
18:16Yeah. Which they really want to destroy. I mean, they're quite explicit about that. Right.
18:20They want to turn it into the U.S. government into basically Tammany Hall with nukes.
18:25They want they want to they want a complete machine.
18:28Yeah. That's also like the global superpower where, like, everyone has a job because you gave Donald Trump some money
18:33or, you know, right.
18:34And this is like the ultimate rebuke to. And what you do with your job is serve the machine.
18:38Yeah. I forget, Tammany Hall also tried to do some good things.
18:41Yes, it's true. You're right. Actually, you are actually correct that Tammany Hall is actually superior.
18:45We're in Laura's defense.
18:47You are. No, that is actually an important and good point.
18:50There was some, like, pothole filling.
18:51No, they actually did do it.
18:52Yeah. You know, the second thing, I mean, the other very lukewarm take I have is like, boy, it really,
18:56I mean, he was guilty as hell and it was a real mistake.
18:58We elected him again.
18:59The final thing I thought was just watching it, the sort of optics, take a step back is like someone
19:04used this term that we're in the midst of a click tatership.
19:07Yeah.
19:07This this sense that everything they're doing, the Trump administration is spectacle, the sort of spectacle of menace that when
19:13an ICE officer actually shoots and kills an American citizen in a car,
19:16he has to move the cell phone from his hand to the other hand so he could keep recording as
19:21he shoots her because the generation of content is so important.
19:25Today, we got reporting that when Charlie Kirk was killed, Kash Patel, inside the FBI, the first thing he was
19:30concerned about was what he could tweet and coordinating with Dan Bongino about what he could tweet,
19:34that he wanted to tweet pictures from Windsor Castle with his girlfriend that actually would expose MI5 agents.
19:39It's all New York Times magazine today that this obsession with spectacle.
19:42And here's Jack Smith is like the ultimate opposite of that.
19:45Right. Like a sober, solemn, serious person facing down this kind of carnival of absurdity that has now become again.
19:53And that's always been part of politics. Hearings, as you will attest. Right.
19:57They're always theatrical. Theatricality is part of politics. I have no problem with that.
20:00I talk for a living. But what is totally absent is any sense of seriousness or moral compass right now
20:09in the government we have.
20:10And here's this person who just feels like dislike archaeological finds from another era.
20:16Totally. Yeah. I mean, the aesthetic of it, his asceticism, his stoicism is itself part of the part of the
20:23message.
20:24All right. Jack Smith's headline today was Donald Trump belongs in prison.
20:28Yeah. That he had the evidence that the case is moving forward, that he could prove it beyond a reasonable
20:34doubt.
20:35Even Republicans seem to acknowledge that he is a strong and aggressive prosecutor, which is what prosecutors are supposed to
20:40be.
20:41Donald Trump belongs in prison. That's really something for the country to still see and hear from this person.
20:46Second, to echo others, Jack Smith is a sober guy in a drunk bar at 1 a.m.
20:53Yes, exactly. And he stands out more that way.
20:57And our job is to try to make sense of this. And you just presented some of those key highlights.
21:02People can take it in. People can go online later tonight, tomorrow, watch more.
21:06What I saw there on the scale of public servants was an especially sober, fair person.
21:13If someone was watching and they're super political and they wanted to see him spar and rebut every type of
21:20Republican question that was a little leading or a little over here, he didn't do that.
21:24Why did he do that? Because that's not who he is.
21:25Yeah. But they need to discredit him because even with the case closed, he still comes off very credible.
21:32Yes. And more of the case is going to come out if volume two of his report is unsealed by
21:38the court.
21:38And a lot of people argue that part of the reason this whole hearing might have happened today was to
21:43try to muddy him up before the country gets a whole new dose of information based on the evidence that
21:49he gathered.
21:50Well, you know, for me, whenever I'm watching congressional hearings, I mourn for the day when they actually used to
21:57work.
21:57So one thing that was on display was the decline and fall of the congressional hearing.
22:02We used to have hearings like this in which both sides were actually trying to find the truth.
22:10The Watergate hearings were the example of this.
22:12There was a certain slight amount of Republican defensiveness for Richard Nixon through the beginning of the Watergate hearings.
22:19But as the evidence mounted, members responded to the evidence.
22:25Yes. And what you saw today was this utterly nonsensical display that there's no amount of evidence that could ever
22:33be proof to any Republican on that committee of anything.
22:37And this is where Donald Trump is not to blame for Donald Trump.
22:41There could be no Donald Trump without those people.
22:44Those are the people, the Republicans in Congress.
22:47They are the people who gave this country Donald Trump.
22:51They are the people who decided we're not just going to tolerate him.
22:55We are going to try to become him.
22:57And so what you saw today were Donald Trump's best students, students in Trumpian lying.
23:03They just think they can go into a committee hearing and lie and lie and lie.
23:08And during our lifetimes, that was absolutely impossible.
23:12If you got caught in a hearing in the center of the House saying something that could be proved to
23:17be untrue during the hearing,
23:20which was hard before the Internet, but, you know, but if that could happen, if that could happen, that would
23:26be the end of that person on that committee.
23:29The chair would go to the speaker and say, we have to get, we've got to get him off of
23:33this.
23:33We can't be here for this.
23:34And so here we are.
23:36The enabling party of Donald Trump was on display today.
23:40Yeah, I couldn't help but think that, you know, back in the day, if you were like a kid who,
23:46you know,
23:46played hooky from school to watch a congressional hearing, you could pretty much assume that that kid someday was going
23:52to become a congressional staffer or run for Congress.
23:54Like, it was that kind of nerddom.
23:55Any kid watching this today is definitely never going to run for Congress.
23:59This is like whatever the opposite of an advertisement is for whether this is a good line of work.
24:03There's a famous Moynihan quote of you're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.
24:09He would say that in a Senate hearing approximately once a year because he would be pushed to the point.
24:16Of saying that exactly once a year.
24:19That's how much we accepted the same facts and then argued off of the same facts in those days.
24:24All right.
24:25We got much more to get to tonight during our special coverage, our special recap of special counsel, Jack Smith's
24:31public testimony,
24:32including our exclusive interview with the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Congressman Jamie Raskett.
24:38Stay right with us.
24:39Don't go anywhere.
24:41Our assessment of the evidence is that he is the person most responsible for what happened on January 6th because
24:49what happened.
24:50It was foreseeable to him.
24:51And then when it happened, he tried to exploit it in furtherance of the conspiracy.
25:02When he wrapped up his work last year, special counsel, Jack Smith, filed a report on each of the two
25:08big cases he had brought against Donald Trump.
25:11Volume one was the election case about the allegations that Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election.
25:18That report, volume one, it's 174 pages.
25:21If you include the introductory letter, it's terrific reading, very well written.
25:26I recommend it.
25:27Then there's volume two, which I cannot show you.
25:31Volume two isn't the election case.
25:33It's the other case that Smith investigated.
25:35It's the one that covers Trump hoarding classified material in Mar-a-Lago.
25:40Classified material he should not have taken with him when he left office.
25:44I can't show you volume two because volume two has not been released to the public.
25:49It remains under seal by court order.
25:52There was, in fact, some speculation that one of the reasons Republicans might have agreed to this hearing today is
25:58because they hope to draw Jack Smith into some trouble by maybe provoking him to violate that court order to
26:06talk about that case and that report.
26:08Or maybe they just wanted to muddy Jack Smith up so that the country and the public thinks poorly of
26:14him before, I think inevitably, the court rules that that report must be released and we get to see a
26:23whole new trench of evidence against Donald Trump.
26:26Anyway, it ended up being quite interesting today when it wasn't necessarily Republicans who really harped on the issue of
26:31volume two.
26:32In that other case, Democrats brought it up instead, including in this moment with, once again, Congresswoman Becca Ballant of
26:38Vermont.
26:41I understand that the district judge, Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee who oversaw the case in Florida, issued a gag
26:48order that prevents you from discussing any parts of the classified documents investigation.
26:53That is not already public.
26:55I understand that, including your findings that you laid out in volume two of that report.
27:00Am I correct that the reason your report is not available in full to the public is because of this
27:05gag order?
27:08I wrote a report.
27:11The attorney general, it was submitted to him.
27:14I understand generally that there's been litigation about whether this report would be public or not.
27:20I have not been a party to that litigation.
27:22I just know that there is an order and I know the Department of Justice, the current Department of Justice,
27:28has interpreted that order in a way that I cannot speak about anything that could possibly be in that report
27:36and its findings.
27:37And when Judge Cannon issued that gag order, she cited pending cases against Trump's co-defendants.
27:43Is that correct?
27:44I'm sorry?
27:45When Judge Cannon issued the gag order, she cited pending cases against Trump's co-defendants.
27:52Is that correct?
27:53That's my recollection.
27:54Are those cases still pending?
27:57No, they're not.
27:58No, they're not.
27:59So there is no reason, from where I sit, for this important information to be not made public.
28:07So if the justification for not making that report public is there's still pending cases against Trump's co-defendants, well,
28:14now there's no pending cases against Trump's co-defendants.
28:17So why not release that report?
28:19Joining us now is former FBI general counsel and MSNOW legal analyst Andrew Weissman.
28:24Andrew, it's nice to see you.
28:25Thanks for being with us.
28:27Nice to be here.
28:27What was your reaction overall to the hearing today?
28:32You know, I was thinking about it from an international perspective, given that the prime minister of Canada, you know,
28:40just the other day, said we can't fool ourselves anymore.
28:44We can't pretend that this is normal.
28:46First of all, there has been a rupture in the international order and that international law has been violated and
28:56the United States is the aggressor and we have to deal with that reality.
29:01And now we have Jack Smith testifying publicly for the first time about sort of on and on about domestic
29:13law being violated, you know, in all sorts of ways.
29:18And it's hard not to put the two together and see this real rupture in the rule of law, both
29:25here and how we act abroad.
29:28And we're seeing it play out, whether we're talking about Venezuela or Greenland or domestically, where we think that the
29:37military might be called out to invade a blue state of the United States of America.
29:45And so, yes, there's a part of nostalgia when you see what is happening.
29:50But I also feel like Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, really was correct in saying we have to
29:56deal with this new reality, both here and domestically and abroad.
30:02And I hear the melancholy in your voice as you explain that.
30:05I know that the not just the rule of law, but the Justice Department in particular is a big part
30:11of your life and a big part of your understanding about the right way to live in this world and
30:15to do right by that's what this country stands for.
30:19Andrew, I all my colleagues want to ask you other questions about this, too.
30:22I have one just quick one that I want to ask you is that it's sort of a political one.
30:25I think that Republicans, a lot of people expected that Republicans thought they might be able to trip up Jack
30:30Smith today.
30:31They might be able to get him to violate the court order sealing that all the information about that, the
30:39classified documents case.
30:40They might be able to get him on a false statements sort of trap.
30:45They might be able to get him to, you know, inadvertently disclose grand jury information, some other thing that they
30:50could get him in trouble for.
30:51They could come up with some excuse for giving a referral to the Justice Department, get him prosecuted.
30:55Did they lay any sort of glove on him on any issue like that today?
31:01Well, Rachel, you know, that concern is one that is well taken given what has happened with respect to Jerome
31:09Powell, what happened with James Comey.
31:12The idea that they're going to try and come up with any discrepancy where you don't say exactly the right
31:19thing and say, oh, it's an intentional lie.
31:22And so I can understand that concern.
31:26I don't think they did lay a glove on him.
31:29It doesn't mean that there won't be repercussions for the same reason that we have seen the same happen with
31:36respect to the Fed chair and the former FBI director.
31:40I think one thing to note that is important in terms of sort of behind the scenes here is that
31:47sitting behind Jack Smith were two senior lawyers from Covington and Burling.
31:53They're to be commended because there are not a lot of law firms now that are willing to do that
31:59and willing to take the heat and to stand up for the rule of law.
32:03That is remarkable, and it needs to be sort of called out and called out when people do stand up.
32:09But sort of that crumbling of the rule of law is not something that is happening really behind the scenes
32:18here.
32:19And it's very hard, as many people know, to find counsel who are willing to stand up.
32:27As Jack Smith said in his opening, as you quoted, Rachel, the rule of law is not self-executing.
32:34And it is law firms like Covington that deserve credit for, you know, making sure that Jack Smith is extremely
32:42well prepared so that there aren't any slip ups that people could take advantage of.
32:48Hear, hear. Yeah.
32:50Andrew, it's Chris.
32:53I professionally keep apprised of various MAGA right wing theories, stories.
32:58You know, they made a big deal about the phone records of U.S. senators, and we'll talk about that
33:01a little later.
33:02The oath of office thing, I had not really gotten a lot of.
33:07And can you—so I was a little like, what's the deal here that he wasn't ever really the special counsel
33:13or something?
33:13Is there any—sometimes, like, well, Trump will say a thing, and it turns out when you get to the end
33:18of it, there's some little kernel of maybe a thing.
33:20But I—do you have anything on that, on the oath of office thing, what they're on about?
33:25I do not, but it obviously is a made-up theory.
33:30I mean, just remember, we've had presidents of the United States have to take the oath of office twice because,
33:35you know, not all of the exact words were said.
33:39I mean, one thing that has been publicly reported by Carol Lennig is it is—the only speculation I have is
33:46it is worth remembering that when Jack Smith started,
33:49when he was, you know, technically first the special counsel, he was overseas because he was working on the International
33:56Criminal Court.
33:57And it may be that in connection with taking the oath sort of remotely that there was some snafu or
34:05they thought that he needed to repeat it, you know, what he eventually got here in the United States.
34:10But that's just speculation on my part.
34:12You know, that's not going to change the facts.
34:16I mean, to me, there was so much nibbling around the edges here where it's like, let's talk about the
34:22phone records.
34:23Let's talk about when you took the oath of office.
34:26Let's talk about how much money you spent.
34:27All of that has nothing to do with false claims about fraud in the election.
34:33It has nothing to do about the serious crimes and attack on the Capitol.
34:38It has nothing to do with the president pardoning people who attacked the Capitol.
34:43I mean, all of those really went completely unrebutted.
34:47And you spent so much time with the Republican side on really trying to distract from core, key, factual information.
34:58Yeah, it's almost like somebody found out that there was like a misspelling on your birth certificate or whatever.
35:04That would be you don't exist.
35:05That's great.
35:06Former FBI general counsel, Andrew Weissman, we really appreciate you being here tonight, Andrew, and always.
35:11You're welcome.
35:12All right.
35:13Coming into the hearing today, Jack Smith had every reason to expect that Republicans on the committee would try to
35:18trip him up, try to muddy him up, certainly, and make his day as miserable as possible.
35:22In nearly five hours of testimony, it's not at all clear that Republicans did score any of the points they
35:28were hoping for.
35:29A little bit of a look at how Jack Smith responded to some of their best efforts to try to
35:34get him just after the break.
35:38One thing I want to be clear about today, the case that I investigated and the case we had, it
35:44was built to be tried in a courtroom, not in the media.
35:48Our case was built to withstand the crucible of litigation, and our assessment was that we had proof beyond a
35:56reasonable doubt that we'd do that.
36:01We were collecting months' worth of phone data on the Republican Speaker of the House, the leader of the opposition,
36:08right after he got sworn in as Speaker, all around the time of a major vote.
36:13That sounds like a flagrant violation of the speech or debate clause to me, and I think most people agree
36:19with me.
36:19And Speaker McCarthy had no recourse, did he, because you issued a nondisclosure order ensuring that neither he nor any
36:26of the American people knew about these subpoenas.
36:28Is that right?
36:31The toll record, the non-content toll record subpoenas, we did secure nondisclosure orders for those subpoenas.
36:38You did, and let me ask you, Mr. Smith, at the time you secured those nondisclosure orders, was Speaker McCarthy
36:43a flight risk?
36:48The nondisclosure order was based on concerns about...
36:51Was Speaker McCarthy a flight risk?
36:53He was not.
36:54He was not.
36:54Then why did your nondisclosure order refer to him as a flight risk?
36:58It says right here the court finds reasonable grounds to believe that such disclosure will result in flight from prosecution.
37:09Sir, when securing a nondisclosure order, the risks don't have to be associated...
37:16You think that the Speaker of the House is a flight risk?
37:19Can you finish answering the question?
37:20No, this is not your time.
37:22This is my time.
37:23You think the Speaker of the House is a flight risk?
37:26You think he's going to hop on a plane and leave the country?
37:30California Republican Brandon Gill thought that he had him.
37:34Not only did Jack Smith scoop up the House Speaker's phone records, he did it in secret with a nondisclosure
37:41order.
37:41And for this ridiculous reason that Kevin McCarthy was a flight risk, oh, come on, this is my time.
37:46Don't interrupt me.
37:47This has to be done in a very specific way.
37:50I said California, Texas Congressman.
37:53There's a very good reason why Texas Congressman Brandon Gill did not want to let Jack Smith finish that answer.
37:59Because what Jack Smith was starting to say there, what in fact he had spelled out in his deposition before
38:05this same committee last month,
38:07is that he never claimed House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was a flight risk.
38:12Rather, the boilerplate statutory language that Smith's team gave to a judge to sign,
38:17that includes four different reasons why a judge might agree to a nondisclosure order about somebody having their phone records
38:25subpoenaed.
38:26And one of those four reasons is that the person might pose a flight risk.
38:30But there are three other reasons, including stuff like maybe disclosing the subpoena could cause somebody to destroy or tamper
38:38with evidence.
38:38Or it could cause a potential witness to be intimidated.
38:43So the flight risk thing has nothing to do with Kevin McCarthy, nothing to do with this matter at all.
38:50It is a total canard.
38:52But if you can interrupt him at just the right time, this is my time, then maybe he can't explain
38:58that.
38:58So mission accomplished.
39:00Lawrence, when you're talking about the dignity of congressional testimony, I thought of this moment.
39:05Well, the other thing about flight risk is that if you disclose to Kevin McCarthy that this is happening, someone
39:11else might flee.
39:12There could be someone else who picks up that information who's not Kevin McCarthy goes, oh, if they're that close
39:17to him, then I should get out of here.
39:19Yeah, there's that point.
39:20But, you know, this phone records thing was just this repeated, pointless nonsense where they all kept saying, and they're
39:28all shocked, they're completely shocked, that it's only Republicans.
39:31The only phone records you want are Donald Trump and the White House calling Republicans in the House and the
39:38Senate on January 6th when he's trying to get them to turn over the election.
39:43And it's only Republicans.
39:45And, you know, you know how many people were convicted of crimes in Watergate?
39:50Forty.
39:52All Republicans.
39:54Weirdly no Democrats.
39:55And here's the thing.
39:56There wasn't a single Republican who complained about that.
40:00There wasn't one Republican senator who said, how dare they convict only Richard Nixon's Republicans for committing crimes with and
40:08for Richard Nixon.
40:10Yeah, seriously.
40:11Ari, I also have to put this to you.
40:13In the middle of this hearing today, the first break they took was to go take votes in the House.
40:17And one of the things they voted on was whether or not senators who had their phone records subpoenaed by
40:25Jack Smith should be able to get a half million dollars each from the Justice Department.
40:29And the vote was unanimous that senators should not be able to get money from the Justice Department for having
40:35their phone records subpoenaed by Jack Smith.
40:38Somewhat undercutting their own Jeremiah on this point.
40:42This line of questioning was not believable.
40:44To believe it, you'd have to think that the congressman and Jim Jordan and everyone are more concerned that a
40:51judge oversaw the government coming in and picking up some phone records.
40:56They're more angry about that than a bunch of violent later convicted thugs came into Congress to kill them and
41:03to hang Mike Pence and to do everything else.
41:05It doesn't compute, but it does have a real, hey, it's all about me vibe and the public will make
41:12up their own mind.
41:13But the idea that with democracy under attack and what Trump's getting away with and whether he's lining his pockets
41:19with crypto that's legal and whether we want a functioning Justice Department or not.
41:22And all you're saying is, oh, my God, there was one tangential way this reflects on me.
41:28I really felt like Jim Jordan, if you especially the opening and then they moved on to other things.
41:32But when Jim Jordan kept going on and on about his stories, to me, it was very much he was
41:36the Blake Lively of Congress today.
41:39And it's like things are happening in the real world.
41:41You're friends with Taylor Swift.
41:42But eventually, if you follow that story, and I forgive anyone who's busier with more important stories, Taylor Swift said,
41:48you know, Blake Lively, like, it's not all about you.
41:50Yeah.
41:50And I'm Taylor Swift.
41:52And so with Jim Jordan, it's like, with everything that happened and you got cops who are sitting in the
41:57audience who were attacked by the thugs that Donald Trump freed from jail to say, no, it's OK.
42:03You are violent because apparently they don't care about cops lives.
42:06And you're talking about your own phone record.
42:08Yeah.
42:08I mean, the other thing is these conspiracy theories are the micro of the micro.
42:14New York Times polling came out today that has Trump underwater on every single issue.
42:17More unpopular than it's sort of the most scary part of COVID.
42:21And so they're not even speaking about an issue that reanimates the people they've lost.
42:2771 percent of all Americans think the country's out of control.
42:30His approval is down mid-30s.
42:32So they're not even talking about an issue that, like, juices that 30.
42:36They're talking about an issue that's, like, 2 percent of the 10 percent.
42:40Yeah.
42:40Like, even though a lot of people on the news mics don't know what this is.
42:43And I would just say another, like, brilliant political stroke by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to schedule a
42:48vote during this hearing that directly undercuts the case they're making about something they're supposedly so mad about at that
42:55hearing.
42:55Mike Johnson scores again.
42:57All right.
42:57Much more of our primetime recap of Jack Smith's testimonies today ahead, including our exclusive interview with Congressman Jamie Raskin.
43:03Stay with us.
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