friend. >> i wanted to come hang out with you, on friday night. >> you need to take a train to do that, but we welcome you on amtrak, and we're here for you. i'm always here for. you have a wonderful weekend. >> thank you. you too, alex. have a great. so >> thank you, and thank you to you at home for joining me this hour. today fulton county district attorney fani willis asked a judge to set the trial date for former president trump and his 14 remaining codefendants in the georgia election interference case. that date, august 5th, 2024. now that date would be stunning on its own or. it's just three months before election day. but d.a. willis asking for an august 4th trial date today is even more of a big deal when you consider that she just said this on tuesday. >> i believe in that case there will be a trial. i believe the trial will take many months. i don't expect that we will conclude until the winter or the very early part of 2025. >> trump's legal team promptly filed its own motion opposing that august 5th trial date. we have no idea how the judge will rule here. but there is a very real chance that former prior president trump could be on trial during the closing weeks of the 2024 election, elected, itself through january six in the election certification process, and maybe even through inauguration. and we remember how that all went down last time, don't we, in 2020? well, this would add a new level of complexity to all of that. this is not the only key date we learned about today. d.a. willis also requested that the judge set a final plea date on june 21st. trump, if you recall, has 14 codefendants remaining. four of his original codefendants have already pleaded guilty, and now d.a. willis is asking to give all the remaining defendants a hard deadline for making a deal with prosecutors. the state will entertain negotiated gilding guilty plea deals up until the final plea date, after the final plea date the defendants will only have the option of non-negotiated please. the state intends to recommend maximum sentences at any remaining sentencing hearings. so many of trump's codefendants feel like cutting a deal and avoiding jail time, the clock is ticking. they have until june 21st. the reason the states matter is because they could very well determine if donald trump will be held accountable at all. trump has been trying to push all four of his criminal trials until after 2024, at which point he might be president again and could make them, for the most part, disappear. and there are already two cases where it looks like trump's delay tactics might very well succeed. the first is the mar-a-lago classified documents case down in florida. this week the trump appointed judge in that case, aileen cannon, made a ruling that has experts speculating that trial might not happen until after the 2024 election. and because of potential scheduling conflicts with other cases, the timing for trump's new york hush money trial, that also looks like it is in flux. so those two cases might not be resolved before the end of 2024, which means that they might never be resolved. but two of the big cases against trump, once with arguably the most serious charges, they do look like they will happen next year. one is d.a. willis's election interference case in georgia, and the other is jack smith's federal election interference case in washington, d.c.. the judge in jackson its d.c. case, judge tanya chutkan, said last month that this trial will not yield to the election cycle. we will not reverse at the trial date. that suggests a very complicated year ahead of her candidate defendant donald j trump. it looks likely that trump's first big trial, the jack smith c. trial, we'll commence on march 4th, one day before super tuesday, when voters in 16 states go to the polls and trump's second bigial, the georgia election interference trial, that might start on august 5 a could last months, meaning donald trump may be on trl just before, during, and after election day. meaning 2024 will be a presidential election year like no other. once those trials start, there's likely to be new information presented that donald trump does not want to come out. last month trump's legal team filed a motion in the d.c. election interference case, and that motion asked the judge to bar special counsel jack smith's team from talking about the january 6th insurrection during the trial. trump's team claim that connecting donald trump and the violence from that day would prejudice jurors against trump. well, today judge chutkan denied that motion, which makes sense. it was a long shot request. it was a hail mary. trump's legal team ask for it anyway. and that is how much they do not want more information about trump's connection to the january 6th riot to become public. but it looks like that is exactly what may happen. now just tonight, hours ago, a judge in colorado rejected an effort to keep donald trump off the states 2024 ballot. that case was based on part of the 14th amendment that virus from running for public office if they had engaged in insurrection. and even though that judge decided to keep trump's name on the colorado ballot, she wrote in her order that the court finds that trump engaged in insurrection on january 6th, 2021, through incitement. man, that is just a heck of a thing to have a court decide, formally. and itrtainly does not bode well for donald trump, as all of these january six cases go to trial in the weeks and months and days leading up to the general election. so buckle up. joining me now is david aaron, former prosecutor with justice departments national security division and lease rubin, nbc legal analyst, the legal wind beneath our wings. every day a new metaphor. lisa, first of all, let's just start with the august 5th trial date that fani willis is requesting. does donald trump have a case to be made? i mean she says look, i'm not considering elections, whatever. but as far as the judge, judge mcafee in this case is concerned, does trump have a case to make that this will make campaigning almost impossible. >> he does. as much as i believe the donald trump should face accountability in fulton county and all the other places in which he has been charged with criminal violations, there is something that is like, there is something it key about preventing a potential major party candidate from campaigning on the basis that he's been subjected to trial. is there anything legally that stands in the way? other than trump's first amendment right to political speech? i can't think of anything. he doesn't have a constitutional right not to be tried simply because he's a political candidate. he will argue, on the other hand, that it is somehow an interference with his political speech rights. that will be a difficult thing for judge scott for a few to balance. as you know, alex, scott mcafee has a background it's more similar to aileen cannon's then to tanya chalk cans. yet thus far he has shown himself to be fair here. it remains to be seen what he will do and how he will balance those objectives. >> all of this is tara igme toe for our judicial system. but it seems like it's gonna be the judge's opinion on how this should be interpreted. >> i think that's right. it's the judges interpretation of how this should be interpreted. and it's possible that his decision could be appealed. but usually judges have a lot of latitude in terms of how they conduct their courtroom, when the schedule trials. so scott mcafee is not just a decision-maker here. he might be the decision-maker here. >> dave, when we talk about the public interest in accountability, as you look at the count calendar, and you look at the various delay tactics being employed by trump's defense team but also the nature of pretrial motions and procedural delays, if you had to bet on one trial in the 2024 calendar, being completed by election day, would it be judge chutkan's trial in washington, d.c.? >> absolutely. judge chutkan is keeping tight control of the schedule, of the calendar. has been willing to impose orders limiting what the defendant can say publicly. she is really keeping this case on track, on pace. and i think that would be, you're absolutely right, that would be my bet. >> what is the appeals process like for something like this? who knows what will happen, but if donald trump is convicted on some of these charges, one assumes there's going to be some extensive appeals process. can you paint a picture of what you imagine that would be and how long it might take? >> how long are my take is going to be a big question. but whether it happens that all depends on the outcome of the trial, of course. a defendant can only appeal after being convicted. so if it's gonna be an appeal by the defendant, the defendant would be convicted. judgment would be entered. and then that's when the defendant can file that appeal, that notice of appeal. at that point, though, appeals, as you say, can take a long time. and in the ordinary course of things it's quite a long time between sentencing, which can happen sometime after a conviction, and the appeal actually making its way to the first level of appellate review. now under some circumstances the court of appeals could expedite that, and certainly under the circumstances that we are talking about, you can see why the court of appeals, and if necessary, the supreme court, would be willing to expedite that. but they do have to give both times both sides of fair amount of time to get their briefs in. >> i think that in the chalk in case the trial is expected to last 2 to 3 months. i'm harping on the timeline here because i can't get past the soria lighty of the beginning, it's super tuesday, having another trial that lasts through election day. in the middle of this we have the republican national conviction, the smith trial could last march, april, may. who knows what happens after that? july is the republican convention. august is when fani willis would like her trial to start. you're talking about, lisa, the entire year, effectively, march until after the election, being filled with courtroom drama for donald trump. >> absolutely. and the one other thing that i would point out, alex, is that fani willis, in her request to have this trial on august 5th, as also told judge mcafee that she wants anyone who's going to negotiate a plea to do so by june 21st, and so that would falls back dab into what we would understand is the interim period between the two trials. >> the interregnum. >> correct. so judge chutkan is done with her trial by june and we're not expecting fani willis to begin to august if she gets her way, the mid-period for the convictions is going to be another decision point about who's going to plead out, because if fani willis gets her way, june 21st is that dropped in time for anyone who wants to negotiate a deal. >> the end of flipping season. you can wear white pants after that. dave, when we talk about what judge chutkan, her ruling today, the evidence relating to january six is gonna be part of this trial. talk about the significance of that, especially as we are talking about a man who's going to be running for president. these are two january six cases with a lot of overlap, and there's going to be a lot of talk about insurrection in a presidential election year. what is the, how meaningful is it the judge chutkan is allowing january six to be central to jack smith's case? >> actually what judge chutkan ruled today, or ruled in this order, isn't about the evidence at trial. it's about what's in the indictment itself. the indictment is not evidence. the indictment is essentially the paperwork by which the government charges the defendant. so there's a lot of information are a lot of allegations in the indictment about january 6th and the connection of the defendant to those events. and the defendant wanted to have some of what they call surplus into the extra stuff taken out of the indictment. really what the judges ruling boils down to is, we can whether we can talk about whether it's relevant, or whether it's inflammatory, because it's in the indictment and it's not evidence going into trial, at this point it's just not prejudicial. it causes no possible harm to the defendant to have it in the charging instrument, because the jury doesn't see that charging instrument. the jury only sees the evidence the judge allows, in imagery only here's the law that the judge gives them. >> can you expand on that a little bit, though? what are the implications for evidence that would be used at trial if it's going to be part of the indictment is on that not mean you're gonna have more january six evidence in the actual trial? would that not be an indicator of that? >> it could go either way. if the government can show why information evidence about january 6th is relevant to one or more of the charges, then the judge would go ahead and weigh, well, is the relevance and the value of that information outweighed by any potential prejudice that could cause the defendant. but really, to get it into evidence, the governments going to have to show that that information supports one of the charges. here the ruling is a little bit different. the judge didn't rule or that evidence or that information is directly relevant to any of the charges in the indictment. the judge didn't address that explicitly. she explicitly said she wasn't addressing that. the judges said here no harm including it even in the indictment even if it is isn't relevant, even if it is inflammatory. that's a decision that's gonna wait for another day. >> i would assume that's going to be litigated further. lisa, it seems to me there's an understanding that including january six in this federal trial is problematic for trump. it's not a coincidence to me that today the speaker of the house, mike johnson, said, the 90 hours of security cameras surveillance footage that we have, we're gonna leave that to the public so everyone can come through it and we won't have to rely on interpretation of small group of people to tell us what happened. >> but it is an interpretation of a small group of people, it'll tell you. why there are 40,000 hours of security footage. that were in the possession of the january six committee. this is mike johnson making unilateral decision, i'm going to release 90 hours of that footage. how that footage was selected, what it shows, what danger it exposes current members of congress and their staffs to, that's something that mike johnson is going to have to answer for. but it's not as if that's the entire body of security footage that we are looking at. and certainly being put into the public domain because they know that january 6th is absolutely going to be part of the narrative of jack smith wants to bring out at his trial because in his view it's critical to how donald trump conspired to obstruct the counting of the votes on january 6th and indeed accomplish that objective. that's the one substantive count that he is been charged for. all the other counts or conspiracy counts, but there is a substantive count against donald trump because that is where he succeeded. >> it's also a visceral reminder for the jury of the gravity of what donald trump allegedly did. just the emotional force of that footage, of recounting that day, i would assume would have an impact on in jury of the presidents peers. lisa rubin, david aaron, thank you both for your time tonight. a lot more ahead tonight, including the 2024 republican presidential primary race. if you thought the result was a foregone conclusion, we are going to show you the candidate who might give donald trump a run for his money. here's a hint, this candidate wears heels. but they are on the outside of his candidates shoes. first, though, companies are racing tonight to pull their ads from the company formally known as twitter. we'll tell you i, coming up next. ng u next your brain is an amazing thing. but as you get older, it naturally begins to change, causing a lack of sharpness, or even trouble with recall. thankfully, the breakthrough in prevagen helps your brain and actually improves memory. the secret is an ingredient originally discovered... in jellyfish. in clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve short-term memory. prevagen. at stores everywhere i was on a work trip when the pulmonary embolism happened. but because i have 23andme, i was aware of that gene. that saved my life. ♪ the winter play was really coming together. ♪ until... disaster struck. ♪ tensions... were high. ♪ luckily, replacement costumes were shipped with fedex. which means mr. harvey... could picture the perfect night. ♪ we're delivering more happy for the holidays. ♪ the ball is out and there's a pile-up. -let's go! -get in the pile! ugh, i'll deal with this tomorrow. you won't. it's ripe in here. my eyes are watering. i'm a busy man. look how crusty this is. shameful. ugh, it's just too much. not with this. tide. tide can tackle any pile. that a tackle pun? 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