Crimes and an insurrection and where we go from here as a nation. In fact, these two stories that i just mentioned to you tonight, theyre linked. How does President Biden work with a party that has some of its prominent leaders lying about his lawful victory and some, and to be precise and fair not all, but some elected republicans minimizing the violence that left five dead at the capitol. How do you do negotiations over the basics when you dont have any understanding on the fundamentals . There are a lot of Smart Thinkers whove studied these types of issues in different societies and a lot of progressives right now around the Biden Administration who say there can be no unity, no true democracy under the rule of law, unless there are facts and accountability first. Keep that in mind as you see this news tonight. Former President Trump wants to exploit the upcoming trial as a chance to double down on the election lie that partly fed the insurrection. He wants to take on the truth that President Biden won the race and instead push lies about it. As a matter of law and logic, i always try to keep it straightforward with you. So ill just tell you whats going on. It makes no sense as a matter of logic to repeat at your trial for inciting insurrection that youre still pushing the lie that led at least partly to the insurrection. But as a matter of brute force, amoral politics the strategy here looks like embracing the growing autocratic wing of the Republican Party. And trump as a Defendant Daring top elected republican senators to oppose him on that. So for those who ask whats the point of even holding this trial next week, well, tonight you see one part of the answer. At a time when some in the gop would like to pretend they quietly opposed the insurrection without actually opposing the insurrection, without actually standing up to the lie at the center of it, well, they will have a harder time. This trial may bring out more hard truths about how wide that support may be for americans to know, to make informed decisions. There are elections in the future as well. And this may be a hard process that is worth having for them and for us. And i mean us in the broad sense of us, as a nation going through this together. Meanwhile, as donald trump previews his strategy and adds some lawyers including one who worked for a convicted trump aide who trump pardoned, its that kind of legal party over there, theres also new evidence emerging including how donald trump was secretly plotting to illegally steal the election after this reality began to sink in. We can now project that former Vice President joe biden has been elected president of the United States. In the middle of a pandemic, almost 150 million americans voted, and joe biden and Kamala Harris will receive the most votes of any president ial ticket ever. That was in public. We all remember it. But these new reports tonight im telling you about show you that within days of the election being called Donald Trumps main or initial legal team was privately telling him they didnt have a single legal case that would change the national outcome. And new leaks from inside that process reveal trumps response was basically fine, if theres no legal way to win, no legal way to win, find an illegal way. Now, some of that may sound familiar, i admit. We did all trump try to steal the race in public and fail to steal the race in public. But heres the new reporting from inside those secret plotting sessions. The New York Times reporting as trumps flimsy long shot legal effort to reverse his loss turned into Something Else entirely, an extralegal campaign to subvert the election. That report adds to evidence that the insurrection was actually a final and partially planned step in what the times calls in this new bombshell an extralegal plot. Now, again, let me help everyone if you dont know the difference because the times is being very nice. Theres legal and illegal. We dont have a third category under law in this country. And they are referring to the illegal plot which came from the white house including new evidence that the infamous plan to march toward the Capitol On January 6th came actually from the white house because many of the people and maga supporters who went to the mall were initially planning to stay at the mall ellipse until the counting of the state electoral slates was completed. But the Trump White House had the idea to have them march on to the capitol. Donald trump memorably saying so at his appearance. And lying to his own supporters, by the way, because to pump them up he claimed he would march with them. And he didnt. But the new account here is that what we saw transpire was partly the product of the white house changing the plan. What was ultimately a battle plan. Thats bad. Constitutionally it does not technically prove that donald trump incited the insurrection. That is actually what the Senate Trials supposed to determine. And if we are going to follow the rule of law in this country, what you or i or anyone thinks about it is separate from what the constitution requires. That if there is evidence of a high crime by a sitting president the senate adjudicates this. But all of this adds to the evidence that the man who tried to steal an election and end democracy, who continues to run the gop, was involved in some of these premeditated steps that led to an insurrection that left five dead. This is not a time for predictions. We all live through predictions in 2016 and other eras that didnt prove out so well. This is a time for substance and the rule of law. And it is worth the federal governments time to get all the evidence on this and figure out what if anything to do about it. Im joined now by mara gay from the New York Times and melissa murray, law professor with new york university. Welcome to you both. Professor, walk us through your views on what is partly a trial on process and partly constitutionally different, but if were going to take it seriouy senate and the nation to go through this evidence which as i report some of it is still coming out. Well, as you say, impeachment is not like an ordinary legal process. Its not like an ordinary criminal trial. There are different standards of proof. There are different evidentiary standards. There is an element of political theater to this. And certainly everything thats emerged with the New York Times reporting also has an element of political theater to it as well. The other issue about the impeachment i think is very different and relevant here is that many of the individuals who are going to be jurors passing judgment on whether or not the president deserves to be convicted of the articles of impeachment were witnesses and so having all of this come out, noting the reporting that links the president specifically with the decision to march to the capitol, to wreak havoc on the capitol, all of that i think is incredibly important not just for the public to hear but to see how those jurors respond to it as they make their decisions about whether impeachment is warranted in this case, or conviction is warranted. Mara . I couldnt agree more. The reality is that donald trump is very good at using any stage he is given to his advantage. So thats an inherent risk. But there needs to be accountability. And i think the important thing is that unlike in the past four years there are going to be adults in the room who can give a Reality Check really to what donald trump is saying. So this is a risk that we really need to take, and i also think its important because it needs to be part of really Holding Accountable everybody involved and also really forging forth on a 9 11style commission to really understand what happened and to start looking at domestic terror groups. So this is just one piece of what needs to happen before we can move forward. Right. As you remind us, there are multiple levers in the government. This trump trial, which starts in a week, is one. Our panel stays as we bring in neal katyal. The update on next week is these managers want to build an elaborate and emotionally clear case. They say they will use the Video Evidence, potentially witnesses. They want to make republican senators uncomfortable if they are going to try to minimize the facts. And joining our panel is neal katyal, former acting solicitor general of the United States in the obama administration. Neal, your view of what were learning about the presentation of those facts. And i want to say, and i think all three of our panelists are on the same page here on this, the evidence we get we have to respond to. If there was new evidence from the times or the process that showed that on the day before the trial the white house intervened concerned to try to prevent violence or donald trump personally said wait a minute, i dont want the march to get out of control, we would factor that in too. It would be good for the country to get that. It happens, i think people know, that the president s doubling down and the evidence is going the other way. But neal, walk us through all of the above. Yeah so, thats exactly right. And thats why a fast trial has always been good for donald trump because i dont think anyone realistically thinks theres some evidence thats going to exonerate him thats going to come to light. All thats going to happen with additional time is more evidence is going to come out about his misdeeds. So i expect the prosecution to make, ari, exactly that emotionally compelling case based on Video Evidence and other things. The real question is what the Defense Strategy is going to be. And here we learned that trump lost all five of his Impeachment Lawyers over the weekend and the story isnt totally clear but at least the New York Times is reporting the reason why they quit is because trump wants to argue in his defense in this trial next week that the election was in fact stolen. And look, lawyers are going to defend a lot of things. But this argument was so beyond the pale evidently that he lost all five of his lawyers. And that isnt of course really a defense of Donald Trumps conduct. Thats really an admission of his guilt. I mean, this theory that theres a big lie and the Election Fraud happened is really just saying the violence was justified. And really the only thing its good for is an admission that donald trump is cuckoo for cocoa puffs. And maybe it will set up an Insanity Defense in some sort of criminal proceedings. But i dont think anyone in the real world thinks this is a legitimate defense. And thats why evidently he lost these lawyers. The question is now what are his two new lawyers going to run next week . Well, and thats such a great point, neal, that bears unpacking a little bit. Ill go back to you and melissa on. Which is this is not a denial of hey, it didnt happen, denying the insurrection would be difficult on video. Denying whether he incited or not is part of that trickier evidence that the senate has to weigh. But if you take this in three parts, what they felt about the election, what they did about it, and whether trump caused it, right . You have him closing the circle. As you said, on one of the guilty parts. What they felt hes going to double down on, which sounds like a mitigation for the act. But it doesnt work if its a blatant lie, neal. Exactly. And id be really curious about melissas views on this. But for me as a lawyer if im sitting there trying to put myself in trumps lawyer shoes the idea that i would go and stand up and say as my defense, well, this actually happened and the election was stolen after 63 different courts ruled against it and the Supreme Court said they had no didnt even touch this with a tenfoot pole, i think is a disastrous strategy. And so its not surprising to me that these lawyers quit. Even on the eve of trial. Which one of the most ethically fraught things you can do as a lawyer is leave your client right on the eve of a trial. But they did. And i think for good reason. I have no i dont quibble with any of that, what neal has said. As lawyers, as Law Professors we teach our students that there are difficult circumstances where you have to tell a client news that he or she does not want to hear. And this is certainly one of those occasions. To the point of the Election Fraud as a defense, though, this again is right on brand. Again, a year ago we were in another Impeachment Trial where this president chose to obfuscate and say this was not about his call to the ukraine but rather about hunter biden and his dealings in the ukraine. So again, rather than confronting squarely the question did the president enable this particular insurrection on the capitol, we are instead talking about a lie that has since been discredited, and roundly so. Yeah. And so thats the law. I turn to mara on the larger logic and being a talented writer we look to you to make sense of even strange world events. This is where again the trial could be clarifying. There are people who still want to minimize what donald trump is doing. At the risk of i dont want to trivialize anything because a lot of this is important. But everyone remembers that great aaron sorkin scene in his view of the facebook story in Social Network when the zuckerberg character says, well, if you invented facebook you would have invented facebook. And thats got to be a moment for this to paraphrase neal this cocoa puffs strategy of the expresident having his lawyers go into the senate and look at everybody and say donald trump won and is president. If you were president , you would be president. If you won the election in a rule of law society, youd be president. Youre not because youre a cocoa puffs liar. Mara. Yes, ari. All jokes aside, though, the problem is that there are . Americans, a small but very dedicated group of americans who actually believe that lie. And as long as the disinformation gets a hearing in open court so to speak, in this case in the halls of congress, its going to be taken more seriously than it should. But this is whats required in order to have accountability. And thats very frustrating. I also think that donald trump is a master of what aboutism, which is to say hes not necessarily going to spend a lot of time denying, as the three of you said, that there was an insurrection at the capitol. But hes going to say, well, what about antifa, what about all these violent leftists . Hes a Master Manipulator in that sense. And i think the gop in general has become very good at that. So thats something to look out for. And that people need to be prepared for in a really bipartisan and serious way. If we can see folks like Mitch Mcconnell act in the coming days as much with as much seriousness and gravity as they did in the hours after the insurrection, i think that the country will be in good shape. All important points as we kick it off here. Mara gay, melissa murray, and neal katyal, thanks to each of you. We have a 30second break. But new reporting. Were learning about what happened in this biden covid meeting today. Also the investigation into a disturbing video of Police Using Pepper Spray on a 9yearold girl. We have an Accountability Report on that later. And how republicans are trying to clamp down on voting. Plus later tonight novelist Bret Easton Ellis makes his beat debut. Weve got a lot coming up. Ill be back in 30 seconds. Econs to actively repair and strengthen enamel. So you dont just brush to clean, you brush to build. Pronamel intensive enamel repair. Dad, its a video call. Hold the phone in front of you. Hows that . Get. Get mom. [ding] power e trade gives you an awardwinning app with 24 7 support when you need it the most. Dont get mad. Get e trade and start trading today. Breaking news on the ongoing battle to get covid and economic relief. At this moment we can tell you Ten Senate Republicans are still inside this highstakes meeting with President Biden at the white house. Theyre pushing an aufshlt smaller covid bill. We can hear from them soon. You can see everyone set up in that snowy spot outside of the white house to see what comes out of the meeting. Let me tell you exactly whats going on, though. Democrats have basically about a 2 trillion bill. It includes the 1400 Stimulus Checks which they say are crucial, state and local aid which was lagging under trump, and 170 billion for schools. The republican plan doesnt come anywhere near that. Its about a third of the size, smaller checks. Theres really no state aid to speak of. And the school aid is 150 billion less. Now, republicans say the reason for this is not just whether they want to support those things but they are talking up debt. Of course they were mostly silent when they were part of a trump spike in the debt of over 7 trillion in the last four years. Now, Many Democrats have been looking to a moment like this. Theyve won those two seats in georgia. They took control of the senate and demoted Mitch Mcconnell. And they want to go big. Many progressives say its time for democrats to learn from the obama experience. You can go all the way back to 2009. That yes, they want to welcome republicans to their plans but they dont want to change everything for nothing. Now, this is a conversation you might see online, you might talk about it at a dinner or barbecue, but its really got main line you that dont see this every day. A politician ad