How Coronavirus Transmits helps save their season. All in starts right now. Good evening from new york. Im chris hayes. The first ever second Impeachment Trial Set to start a week from tomorrow, we have a whole bunch of developments in the case against the former president. And was one of the most reckless acts of any president in american history. First, there is the unsurprising upheaval in the former president s legal team. At least three lawyers left the team in recent days after trump asked them to focus their defense on continuing the big Poisonous Lie hes been pushing that the election was fraudulent, stolen. This comes just days after one of those lawyers, butch bowers of columbia, south carolina, said he did not hesitate to defend trump, saying, quote, it is who i am, it is what i do. Former president now has two new attorneys named just last night, bruce castor jr. Who previously declined to prosecute bill cosby and bill schoen who represented a whole bunch of folks including roger stone. We dont know if the new team will go along with the it was fraud and stolen defense, but take a second to think about what that means. It is worth noting that as the former president is being impeached for incitement of a deadly mob that attempted to use violent intimidation as a means of overturning a democratic election, he would be claiming as his defense that the mob had it right. And that is what he and the Republican Party overall appear to think. There has been more and more evidence coming out over the last 72 hours about the relentless plotting that happened, public and private, to make the events of january 6th happen and to make them as dangerous as possible. New york times is out with a special examination of the 77 days between the election and the inauguration when donald trump attempted to subvert american democracy with a lie about Election Fraud that he had been grooming for years. Now, when the former president incited the crowd on january 6th in that infamous bit of tape we have all seen to go to the capitol, come with me, come to the capitol and see if mike pence comes through for us, right, that moment, that was the culmination of an effort he had been cultivating for a very long time. He clearly intended to use whatever means were at his disposal, whatever levers he could find to overturn a free and fair election. And it was a project, lets be clear here, that almost the entire Republican Party signed on to before some of them got a little freaked out and tried to distance themselves. The Times Reports Trump was enabled by influential republicans motivated by ambition, fear or misplaced belief he would not go too far. Hmm. Mitch mcconnell was okay with the plan because he feared alienating a president whose help he needed in two Georgia Senate runoffs that would decide his control of the chamber. He also heeded misplaced assurances from white house aides like jared kushner, mr. Trump would eventually accede to reality. Remember that texas lawsuit challenge the Election Results that 18 republican State Attorneys General signed on to . Right . That was ghost written, drafted by lawyers close to the white house. The lie that the election was stolen propelled forward by new and more radical lawyers and financiers including the former Chief Executive of overstock. Com whose financing his own team of cybersleuths to help prove voter fraud and disgraced former National Security adviser michael flynn. Then, the day arrived, january 6th, the forces that could have, should have protected the capitol had been disarmed. Do you remember shortly after the election the former president removed a bunch of officials at the very top of the Defense Department and in a totally unprecedented move. Didnt really make much sense at the time, and he replaced them with Handpicked Trumpists whose resumes were, well, pretty insufficient for their jobs. Christopher miller never held a senior roll at the pentagon was elevated to acting Secretary Of Defense where he signed this bizarre memo, that memo forbade d. C. National guard members present at the Capitol On January 6th from using weapons or having helmets or body armor or employing any riot control agents like pepper spray or sharing any equipment with Law Enforcement agencies. Keep in mind, the planning of january 6th happened in coordination with people in trumps orbit. The selfproclaimed originator of the rally, now on the lam, publicly proclaimed he had helped from three trump loyalists in congress. I was the person who came up with the January 6th Idea with congressman gosar, mo brooks and andy biggs. We four schemed up of putting maximum pressure on congress while they were voting so that who we couldnt lobby we could change the hearts and the minds of republicans who were in that body, hearing our loud roar from outside. Hearts and minds. He schemed it up with some of the former president s best allies in the body, and now we have some receipts about the extent of coordination, thanks to new reporting from propublica, a trump fundraiser played a key role in planning the rally that preceded the siege. Text messages and an Event Planning memo indicate that caroline rent played an extensive role in managing operations for the event, the records show that wren oversaw logistics. Working in a president ial Fundraising Committee called Trump Victory during the Campaign Last year. A reporter who broke that story for propublica, Michael Spees joins me with luke broadwater, reporting on the pentagon memo curtailing the National Guard for the New York Times good to have you both. Michael, tell us a little bit about who Caroline Wren is and what role she played in trump world . Caroline wren was a Top Republican fundraiser for some time, going back to working with lindh Lindsey Graham and trump world more recently working at the hip of kimnd don jr. Over the last election cycle. And the documents you were able to obtain what do they show . They showed that she was intimately involved in the planning of the january 6th rally. That evolved overseeing budgeting, messaging, making key decisions, making sure facilitating the president s speaking slot, making sure he was going to speak, basically. When she came in it became like a much more real legitimate rally. Was that known before and what was the sort of as tensible story about the rally in which the president appeared . It came together in a strange way. The person who was originally putting it on was a woman named cyndi shavy, affiliated with another group called women for america first, and she was planning an event in december most interestingly, she had been contacted with alex jones, interested in funding said event, and jones at some point put her in touch with wren, who was working with a trump fundraiser who wanted to bankroll the affair. Alex jones put her in touch with Caroline Wren, the long time republican staffer who used to work for Lindsey Graham, now works for Kimberly Guilfoyle and at the nexus of this . Correct. Alex jones told her that she had to get in touch with Caroline Wren, because this particular fundraiser wanted to put on an event or contribute heavily to it. Thats right. Luke, i want to talk to you about your reporting about this dod memo. The memo strikes me as quite strange and quite anomalous, but i dont look at memos like this all the time. My first question is, is it strange and anomalous . Is this sort of pro forma thing you usually get or did this stick out at the time . So this all originates from the d. C. National guards enforcement of black lives matter protests in june. There was some criticism of the guard at the time they had been too aggressive, and they had flown helicopters too low, buzzing the protesters. And so at the time the Defense Department was trying to limit the rough tactics of the guard, and d. C. Mayor bowser had wanted the guard present on january 6th, but had requested they not be as aggressive. So this memo purportedly is for that purpose. What is somewhat worrying about it is as it comes down january 4th, two days before the rally that precedes the riot, and at that same time, Capitol Police say theyre gathering intelligence that white nationalists, other Extremist Groups are going to be armed and are going to be attacking the capitol that day or at least there is a potential for that attack on the capitol. So there is intelligence that exists that there could be this insurrection, there could be this attack on the capitol, and at the same time the commander of the d. C. National guard is being told that he needs aadditional levels of approval to use tactics to suppress a riot. So he testified before a closed Door Committee last week of the House Appropriations that, you know, he felt this slowed him down and limited his authority. There is some question as to whether how much this did slow things down, thats something were still investigating, but certainly he feels that way and thats what he told Committee Members behind closed doors. Luke, how good a sense do you as someone who is reporting on this full time have of like the full story of why they were so underprepared on that day for what presented itself . Well, it was a tremendous failure on many levels. I mean, i think one reading of it is simply they did not truly believe that the trump mob would or the mob of Trump Supporters would attack the capitol, and clearly they didnt prepare for that. Had they truly believed that, i think we would have had a much different response. There is some other indications though that perhaps there was some other considerations at play, there has been some talk that the sergeant at arms didnt want the National Guard there, because of optics, because they thought it would send a bad message, some talk that some in the military did not want the National Guard standing by, they felt it would look bad to have them standing in front of Trump Supporters as they were, you know, outside the capitol. But clearly i mean everyone now realizes this was a huge, huge failure on many levels, and thats what we have seen the resignations we have seen, the Capitol Police chief and the sergeant at arms, and i think this is something that were only sort of beginning to understand everything that went wrong, and were going to continue to investigate and i know congress is certainly going to continue to investigate and theyll be future hearings and investigations to determine exactly why there was such terrible failures. Luke broadwater and michael spies, thank you for sharing your reporting with us. I want to bring in walter dellinger, head of the office of Legal Counsel at the department of justice. Lets start on the reporting over the weekend about the notion of this trial that the president s lawyers presenting this preposterous, invidious lie about the election as their defense. What do you make of that . Well, we dont know why that set of lawyers, you know, resigned from the representation. But, you know, there is a limit to what lawyers can do. And one of the lawyers whom i know, josh howard, a north carolinian, very well respected, one of those who stepped down, there were three possible defenses you could make of the president in the impeachment proceeding. One is that they dont have Constitutional Authority over a former president , secondly that what he said was protected by the First Amendment on the morning of january 6th, and the third was that what he did was right. What he did was right because he was trying to incentivize a group to storm the capitol to stop the greatest fraud in american history. Thats according to reports is the argument that the former president wanted his lawyers to make. Now, first with arguments constitutionality, protected speech, i think theyre wrong for multiple reasons, but theyre respectable lawyer arguments. The third argument is just false. Thats why it is a real dilemma for an attorney to put forward an argue when what the judicial process showed over 60 cases is there was no basis and these are false allegations. Right. It is striking right there, youre sort of bumping up against the boundaries of professional ethics from just a lawyer r standpoint in terms of vigorous defense of the client, former president of the United States, everyone is owed a defense to just saying things you know are not true, which has been what the entire problem has been from the beginning and brought us to this moment. Right. Absolute. Problem. And, chris, it says something good about oural courts that it does kind of wash out untruths because you have ton c affidavits that are sworn to the argument that, for example, republican counters were excluded from the secret counting processes. You put someone on the stand and the lawyer has to answer for it, and the lawyer says in one of the cases the judge says to the lawyer, i am asking you as an officer of the court, were there republicans in the Counting Room as observers . And after a long pause, he finally says, yes, how many says the judge, a number greater than zero. Thats the point at which no matter what they say in a Press Conference in front of the whatever four seasons and gardening shop it is, it is a very different matter than when youre standing in court and i think thats how the truth of the baseless charges came to change. Is an Impeachment Trial more like standing outside four seasons total landscaping or more like being in Anactual Court Of Law . I think it is a mixture. When it comes to presenting evidence that is not the case, you cant put on an affidavit in any context that you know to contain false information. So any argument that, you know, 13,000 trump votes were switched and turned into biden votes is not something that a lawyer can say without being called up upon his State Bar Authority that there is no basis for it. The other two, you know, there is an interesting wrinkle to this, The Other Two arguments are also flawed but they are not false. The argument that the president is no longer in office, but when he was indicted, On January 13th, he was in office. Im sorry, when he was impeached On January 13th he was in office, and judge Michael Mcconnell is arguing very persuasively if you are impeached, while you are president , then clearly they have that authority in the senate has the authority to try all impeachments. So this is not even a case that raises a serious question about that. So the second matter, i think his lawyers will try to put on a case that there was not an incitement per se in his remarks, it was within the zone of the First Amendment protection. Thats beside the point. It is the whole 77 days of conduct that tells convinces a lot of the country that there has been a Theft Of American Democracy that leads to the rioting in question. There is some reporting tonight that the case being put together by the Impeachment Managers as the sort of opening of the show would indicate isnt about what he said specifically devoid of context on that one day. It is the sum total of the actions that led to that moment and then led to the storming of the capitol. Walter dellinger, thank you very much. Youre welcome, chris. Why the Republican Partys problem is so much bigger than Marjorie Taylor greene and bigger than donald trump. Thats next. Aylor greene and bigger than donald trump thats next. Trelegy for copd. 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