legislation than anything passed -- anything passed at least the last two democratic presidents. legislatively in terms of its progressive reach, in terms of its reach to make things better for people who need the most help. it is definitely on par with the affordable care act, with obamacare. but this bill, what the senate passed this weekend, what the house will pass tomorrow, what president biden is about to sign, will hit a wider target than the affordable care act ever aimed at. as huge an accomplishment as that was to reform the absolutely broke and broken u.s. health care system to try to improve it in a fundamental way, this bill is bigger. it is aiming at more. it will strike what is hoped to be a decisive blow against the pandemic in terms of funding a coherent technocratically skilled national response. everything from testing to the vaccine rollout. we are in the middle of the largest vaccine rollout in the history of the country. this is how we're going to fund it. it will cover all of that. plus basic research. plus the cdc getting its act together on data and analytics and so much more. it will expand the reach of obamacare. for millions of americans, this thing that will pass tomorrow, it will reduce your health insurance premiums. and actually for the people at the lowest end of the income spectrum, people with health insurance thanks to the affordable care act, a lot of those folks will see their health insurance premiums go to zero because of this bill passing tomorrow. this bill radically increases access to health insurance in this country. particularly for the people who can least afford it. it is expected to cut child poverty in half in this country through direct aid to families and through big, sustained tax credits for families with kids. it is expected to add 7 million jobs to the economy. it will direct $130 billion to u.s. schools. i mean, just take that piece of it. even if that's all this bill was doing, especially after what schools have been through this past year. just that school funding alone, that $130 billion for schools alone would have democrats putting on their best twin sets and shining up their shoes tonight in anticipation of what they'll pass tomorrow. just the school funding alone is a really big deal. for everybody who has been waiting on the direct stimulus payment that will come as part of this bill, apparently if the house passes it tomorrow, and there isn't a delay in getting it to the white house for the president's signature, those direct $1,400 payments may start going out next week. people who have direct deposit set up will see the money arrive first directly in their bank accounts. people who are getting a check instead of direct deposit will get it soon thereafter. the white house explained that president biden is not planning on putting his name anywhere on the check when the checks go out. and that, you know, probably shouldn't be a surprise. it's not his style really. it is a petty move for a president to do something like that. but honestly, as i get older, as i live through more and more years of republican governance, i'm getting more and more petty all the time about stuff like this. only because republican presidents put their name on everything. democratic presidents are the ones who are all modest. right? if i was a democratic president, i would put my name on that check with a big hologram on it too. so it glowed when you open the envelope. like a greeting card that plays a song when you open the envelope and would it sing my name. bling at you, sing at you. i would do anything. i would put sequins on the thing. it would be all about remembering which party made this happen and which party all voted against it. but like i said, as i develop an increasingly severe case of the o-l-d, i'm getting cattier and pettier with each passing day and biden is not doing that. it is why he is president and nobody asks my advice on these things. get petty for once. it's okay. this is a big "f"-ing deal, as somebody once said. but tomorrow will be a really big day. while democrats prepare for that big, big day, as president biden plans his big primetime speech on covid on thursday night, which should also be a big deal, thursday will be the country, our country and every country, marking the one-year anniversary of the global declaration of the pandemic. as we head toward that on thursday, as more capitol rioters get arrested every day, including two in the past two days who apparently spent the morning of the capitol attack with former president trump's friend and political adviser, roger stone, who trump pardoned for multiple federal felonies. two of the men he spent january 6th with, who have been arrested for their roles in allegedly taking part in the capitol attack. as one of the appointees of the state department was ordered by a federal judge to remain in custody going into trial because of that man's leadership role in directing capitol rioters to attack capitol police that day. as president biden's new attorney general merrick garland is finally slated to be confirmed tomorrow. so the proverbial autopsy can finally begin as to what the wreckage is at the justice department under bill barr. so someone can take the helm of the sprawling january 6th capitol attack investigation and start once again informing the public where things are going with that. with all of these things simultaneously under way, today and tonight and into tomorrow. we are keeping our eyes on all of those things. there's been a lot of developing news over the day and the evening. i'm not sure how the show will go because we are expecting continuing breaking news throughout the hour. but even as we're keeping an eye on that, there is something else that i want to direct your attention to. because to me, this is something that was already shocking at a lot of levels. but it has just veered off in a quite unexpected direction. one that i thought was farfetched at first glance which i am now starting to realize is not nearly as farfetched as i thought. all right. the year 2000, there was a sheriff's election in dekalb county, georgia. it is a really big county in georgia. it includes a big chunk of the atlanta metro area. on the east side, the county seat is decatur. in 2000 in the sheriff's election in dekalb county, the incumbent sheriff was voted out to the relief of a lot of people. the incumbent sheriff who lost that election, his name was sydney dorsey. i say it was a relief when he got voted out because he was widely perceived to be very corrupt. he was under investigation for a whole bunch of corruption allegations at the time. having his sheriff's deputies do not only personal work for him and his family but making his deputies moonlight for his personal security business on the side. there were investigations into the contracts that he had doled out for the gigantic dekalb county jail. and whether he had corrupted those contracts, too. so he was a sheriff with a terrible reputation under investigation for a lot of things. and he was up for re-election in 2000 and he lost. he lost to a guy who specifically ran against him on anti-corruption platform. his opponent saying he would come in, clean it up, fire deputies involved in these alleged schemes with the existing sheriff. it was a close race in dekalb county but the incumbent guy lost. then after the election, before the new sheriff was sworn in. actually three days before the new sheriff was due to be sworn in, the new sheriff, the anti-corruption crusader who had won the election and ousted the incumbent sheriff, he was walking up the driveway of his house in dekalb county. it was his wife's birthday. he was carrying a dozen roses for her in his arms. she heard him drive up. she knew he was home and she heard what sounded like fireworks in the driveway. and when she went out to see what was happening, there was her husband laying in the driveway dead. he had been shot 12 times. murdered in an ambush attack three days before he was due to be sworn in to start his new job as the elected sheriff of dekalb county. and the sheriff who he had defeated is the person who was indicted for arranging his murder. the outgoing sheriff who had been under investigation anyway for all those corruption charges, he was hit with state charges of felony murder, theft, violations of oath, and racketeering. racketeering. under georgia state law. ultimately he was convicted and the sheriff got life without the possibility of parole for the felony murder charge. but then on top of that, life without possibility of parole, there is nothing on top of that really but they added additional years on top of that. the violation of oath charges and the racketeering charges of which he was also convicted put an extra 23 years on his sentence in addition to life without parole. racketeering. now, racketeering is something that we associate with the mafia, right? with prosecutions of mob bosses and big, ongoing, highly structured organized crime outfits. that's what we think of as racketeering. but in state law, in georgia law, particularly, it is applied to a much wider set of crimes than you might think. it is, i'm oversimplifying here a little bit, but it is basically applied to crimes where prosecutors think they can prove a pattern of linked criminal acts. not just one-off offenses that aren't leading toward any particular aim. and i am oversimplifying that and i am not a lawyer. do not cite me in your defense if you're picked up. but you can see the way the rico charges are used in georgia. in the headlines when there are high profile cases, and those are the charges brought. the murder of the new sheriff by the corrupt outgoing sheriff, that he had defeated in the election, that was prosecuted, as i said, both as a murder and also as racketeering. convictions on both fronts. the prosecutor who litigated the case, john floyd, defended that conviction of that georgia sheriff all the way to the georgia supreme court including the racketeering charges, defended it all the way to the top level in state law and the case stood up. and that disgraced sheriff and now convicted murderer sydney dorsey is still in prison for that crime. convicted murderer, convicted racketeer. you see racketeering charges brought in georgia in also the kinds of cases that maybe seem more intuitive. there was a big set of arrests in georgia in october. targeting a street gang. they called it operation caged doves. which seems a little melodramatic. about 46 people were arrested. and a huge, big, long string of charges brought against all of them. between them, there were four charges of felony murder, four charges of kidnapping, 24 charges of aggravated assault, 3 charges of heroin trafficking, 3 charges of meth trafficking, 3 charges of various kinds of financial fraud. but look up at the top. 92 charges of racketeering. they rolled up this whole street gang. and charged them with lots of individual crimes and then charged all of them with violations of the rico act. and it is still, you should think of it as a mafia thing, something that is used against gangs but it is more than that. in december in georgia, there were racketeering charges brought against a bunch of officials. it was a sprawling, corrupt gambling ring. centered in some convenience stores and mini marts in georgia. in 2018 there was this tidy little thing. charges brought in white, georgia. the police chief, his son-in-law, and his wife. charges were brought against the police chief and his son-in-law who was the town's only other police officer, and his wife who was also the town manager. they were, the allegations were that they were basically involved in a planned scheme to give people bogus citations, radically overcharge them for those citations, and then pocket the money. it helps to have the patrol officer, the chief of police, and the town manager all in a scheme like that. they were brought up on racketeering charges for that. racketeering charges. it is a pattern of criminal acts all leading toward a criminal purpose. and that charge is a really serious one in a state like georgia. like, 20 years in prison serious. but that charge turns up in cases of all kinds, including lots of cases involving allegedly corrupt public officials. perhaps the most surprising and most high-profile case that they turned up in was one that you will remember. the atlanta schools cheating scandal. do you remember this? this was national news. the top of the national news. when 11 educators were convicted in georgia state court in that cheating scandal in april, 2015. >> from nbc news world headquarters in new york, this is "nbc nightly news." reporting tonight, lester holt. >> good evening. it's bad enough when kids cheat in school to get ahead. but the teachers themselves, today in atlanta, nearly a dozen former educators were convicted on racketeering and other charges for their part in one of the nation's biggest cheating scandals. prosecutors say it was a massive conspiracy to make sure students passed standardized tests, even if it meant giving kids the correct answers. the scandal dates back a decade. it involves dozens of schools and a lot of grown-ups who apparently failed one of the first lessons we were all taught. >> nearly a dozen former educators convicted on racketeering and other charges. racketeering charges there, too. they weren't a gang. these are educators. corrupt educators, as was proven in court. but this was 12 teachers and other educators put on trial. the sprawling case, accusing them of basically a systematic form of cheating on standardized tests. one of the 12 teachers put on trial was acquitted. but 11 of the remaining 12 were convicted. convicted among other things on, racketeering charges. all of them. with that harsh penalty looming for all of them of up to 20 years in prison. that trial in the atlanta cheating scandal was the longest jury trial in the history of the state of georgia. and i'm not talking about the overall proceedings from the first arrest to the first court hearings to the trial to the sentencing and all the rest of it. i don't mean how long the whole thing took to be resolved. i mean just the trial itself. the day after day, in the actual courtroom fighting it out. the trial itself took six months. there has never been a longer trial in the state of georgia with a dozen defendants. an incredibly ambitious charge. the prosecutor who led the team, who got those convictions in the atlanta cheating scandal was at the time, an assistant d.a. named fani willis. here she is. the tape that we've got from that time. the elected d.a. is at the microphone leading the press conference. you see fani willis there. she led the prosecution team on the right side there. and interestingly, when they decided to pursue that case that way, when they pursued those charges against the teachers and principals and administrators who were all caught up in this cheating scandal, the prosecution team under fani willis brought in a special prosecutor specifically to make them, to help them make the case in the racketeering case. for that specific, very serious felony charge, and to see it through to conviction. that's the man, the specialist they brought in there, the guy on the left. his name is john floyd. whose name i just said a moment ago because that's the same john floyd who obtained the conviction, the racketeering conviction against the crooked sheriff sydney dorsey. in that case where dorsey murdered his would-be successor after beat him in an election in the year 2000. john floyd is the one who got that conviction, including the racketeering conviction, and then defended it all the way to the supreme court. tacked 20-plus years, tacked 20 years on to a sentence that was already life without parole because of that racketeering conviction. years later, fani willis was leading the teacher corruption scandal prosecution in atlanta, she went to him. she brought in the state's racketeering prosecution expert. she brought in john floyd to get the racketeering convictions against the teachers. and it worked. however unlikely it might have seemed to have those kinds of charges in that kind of case, he did it and it stuck and it worked. and now not that many years later, fani willis is the elected district attorney herself in the largest county in georgia, in fulton county. and fani willis has announced a criminal investigation into efforts by former president donald trump and others to corrupt the results of the presidential election in georgia. she said when she announced the opening of that investigation, that racketeering was one of the crimes she was potentially investigating in conjunction with efforts to corrupt the election results. now reuters is first to report, and willis' office has confirmed that willis has gone back to the same guy. she's gone back to john floyd who has had a hand in the highest profile and most unlikely seeming rico prosecutions in recent georgia law. john floyd who has since gone on to become a nationally respected expert on prosecuting rico cases under state law. this is his book. he literally wrote the book how to prosecute rico cases. rico, state by state. a guide to litigation under the state racketeering statutes. he literally wrote the book on how to get convictions on state racketeering laws. reuters has said that willis has including the trump investigation. the dean of mercer university law school in macon, georgia, says about this quote, it's not a stretch to see where fani willis is taking this. if president trump engaged in two or more acts that involved false statements that were an attempt to falsify material fact like the election results, then you can piece together a violation of the racketeering act. it is a felony and it can carry penalties up to 20 years in prison. the dean says there are not a lot of people who avoid serving prison time on a racketeering offense. it is honestly a shocking thing that the immediate former president of the united states is facing multiple live criminal investigations. by new york state prosecutors, by georgia state prosecutors. cnn and "the wall street journal" and other news organizations have recently reported on even more trump properties and developments and financial entanglements that have been subpoenaed as part of a new york prosecution. the new york investigation has itself brought on an experienced mob prosecutor as a special prosecutor to help them with their work there. but if georgia is looking at a potential racketeering case against the former president, now with the help of a specialist prosecutor who does this for a living, who has already successfully brought super high-profile racketeering prosecutions in that state and earned convictions on those charges, this just feels like a different level of the sort of drama and risk stratosphere here. there is a lot going on in the news right now. this is mind-blowing, though. joining us now is david cook. he's the former district attorney for the macon judicial circuit in georgia. he has known fani willis for decades. he's also known john floyd, the attorney who will help in her investigation of donald trump as a special prosecutor. i really appreciate you making time to be here tonight. thank you. >> thank you for having me. >> so i am not a lawyer. i'm not an expert in famous georgia public corruption cases. so i want to give you a chance, if i explained any of that wrong or if i blurred something that should be sharply defined there. i want to give you a chance to tell me i'm wrong. >> no, you pretty much hit the nail on the head, especially when it comes to john floyd. having john floyd on your team in a racketeering case is kind of like having the teacher help you write your term paper or having the author of the book, having the author