rosalynn carter was 96 years old. should be mayor berry tomorrow in plains, georgia. all in with chris hayes starts now. all in with ch ris hayes starts no >> tonight on all in. >> i believe it in with themselves over the constitution should never be president of the united states. >> just how close did mike pence come to ending democracy? >> and i hope mike is gonna do the right thing. i hope so. i hope so. >> tonight, new reporting on the plans mike pence abandoned, and the senator who maybe knew all about it. >> this story of government abuse and political treachery is scarier than fiction. it really happened. >> then, no plea deals for trump or rudy in georgia as a republican front-runner returns to a unpopular campaign promise. >> we are going to get rid of obamacare. i will never stop. >> and as hostages continue to be reunited with loved ones in israel, new details on the attempted murder of three palestinian students right here in america, when all in starts, right now. >> good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes, just weeks now voters will cast the first ballots in, believe it or not, the 2024 primary presidential elections. in less than a year the whole country will vote again, not only on o ll be the next president of these united states, but, most likely, on whether to continue the american democratic experiment, at least in its current form. this coming year will also bring at least one trial of the republican front-runner and former president, donald trump, the most important of the 91 felony charges against him, the federal elections case, now set to go before a judge in march. that case serves as a crucial reminder of just how serious the man was about overturning american democracy on january 6th, how close he came to succeeding, and how much he wants to do it again and today we have new information about the attempted coup. on its own, this detail, which i'm about to relate you, it might seem small or insignificant, but it shed dramatic light on one of the most enduring mysteries from january 6th and the run up to it. more importantly, it suggests how prepared the entire republican party might have been to go on with trump's plight of things went in that direction. that was part of the investigation into the attempt to overturn the 2020 election. special counsel jack smith has been speaking with key players as they prepare their case in court. that includes former vice president mike pence. pence, of course, mously issuing talking to the january six committee. according to a new report, smith's team is essed pence on allor of questions, even something as granular as the placement of a calmer in his book. pence wrote in his book that he told trump, quote, youknow, i don't think i have the authority to change the outcome of the election of on january six. but pence allegedly told smiths investigators that comet should have never been placed there. he actually meant to write that he admonished trump, you know i don't have the authority to change the outcome, suggesting trump was well aware of the limitations of pence's authority. special counsel investigators also pressed pence on personal notes he took after meetings with trump. one of those notes, written several days before pence was due to preside over e certification of the electoral votes in ngress on january six, reveals that pence momentarily decided that he would skip the proceedings on january six where he was going to preside altogether. these are notes after meetings with trump. then vice president wrote, quote, not feeling like i should attend electoral count. too many questions. too many doubts. to hurtful to my friend. therefore i am not going to participate in certification of election. mike pence, i think, is smart enough to know that donald trump is not his friend. and, to his credit, he did decide, in the end, to show up and fulfill his constitutional obligation. but those notes indicate there was at least a moment when he was planning to not show up. the reason this is such interesting detail, they're in black and white, reportedly, and the notes from pence himself, as investigators saw, the reason it's such an interesting detail is that it connects to a mystery of what the man underneath the chain of command, the president pro tem port, new, ahead of january 6th. at the time republican chuck -- the man you see there, was the second highest ranking in the senate next to mike pence. he was next in line to preside over the crucial gathering on january 6th, the certification of electoral votes, if pence was not there. and the day before, seemingly kind of out of nowhere, on january 5th, senator grassley told reporters that that is exactly what was going to happen. i quote him here. if the vice president isn't there, and we don't expect him to be there, i will be presiding over the senate. i remember when he started on january 5th. a lot of people were surprised. it raises a lot of red flags. there were already concerns about members of congress objecting to the electoral vote in both houses. a bunch of house members and senators, and what mike pence will do with those objections and whether he would help execute the cute cool or stand against it. when chuck grassley said that to reporters on january 5th, it made it sound like mike pence had decided he would not participate at all, that he would not stand in the way of the coup going forward. chuck grassley, an ardentet defender of trump play that role. obviously that was alarming and damning proposition. grassley's team walked that back, calling it a misinterpretation. they said they were talking about some other portion of the proceedings and saying the vice president pence was expected to preside the next day. so a weird little footnote in this entire drama. grassley's initial statement just left hanging there, tantalizing question. did he misspeak? like i said, or did was there a plan in place behind the scenes in which pence decide at some point he was going to sidestep his duty and let someone else preside over january 6th, presumably someone who would go along with the coup? and it's someone informed chuck grassley about mike pence making center decision that he wasn't going to be there? and for nearly three years we've had nearly no concrete evidence supporting that. but now we do. from mike pence himself. his own contemporary contemporaneous notes obtained by jack smith prove that pence had decided to leave the certification of votes in grassley's hands on january 6th. those notes are evidence suggesting that grassley may very well not have been mistaken and instead was telling the honest truth about what he knew that he had been briefed or told about this decision. again, we still don't know definitively, because there's no smoking gun here. what we do know definitively and this is from the january six committee, is that trump's own coup lawyers wrote out notes imagining a scenario over which grassley survive presided. we know pence came to decision after meeting with trump that he would recuse himself. we have grassley telling reporters that pence wasn't going to be there and he was planning on presiding. grassley still denies he had any idea of these machinations. and yes, this is about a detail about something that happened or nearly happened nearly three years ago and didn't end up happening. but it's so relevant and important in this moment as we look ahead. focus here. as we come down the barrel of this year, because it reveals a key lesson from the trump era. chuck grassley is part of the establishment. he's not one of the colorful pro coup characters, or the overstock guy. he didn't vote to overturn the election on the fateful day went after the violent mob came back into the chamber and had to vote. in the end, chuck grassley and the rest of the establishment will go along with just about anything if they see the wind is blowing that way. no one has stated that more clearly than grassley himself. saying it straight-up, accepting, explaining why he accepted donald trump's endorsement in october of 2021, after the coup. >> i was born at night but not last night. [laughter] so if i didn't except the endorsement of a person that's got 91% of the republican voters in iowa, i wouldn't be too smart. i'm spartan off to accept thate. >> truly one of the most almost comically honest statements i've heard from a politician. he doesn't say i like the guy, i think the guy is good, i think the guy his coup attempt was good, bad, whatever. politically i will accept. that's it. that's the logic. we've seen republicans do this over and over again. after he sucked the mob on the capital, but same chuck grassley, three weeks after january six, kevin mccarthy went to visit donald trump smiling in shaking hands. remember that infamous photo? and in a new book former congresswoman liz cheney reveals carthy tried to explain that away, claiming that trump stamp was really worried about former president, and i quote here, trump's not eating, so they asked me to come see him. he's really depressed. [laughter] the reality, as we have learned, is that kevin mccarthy and chuck grassley and basically the entire rest of them with the exception of maybe mick mitt romney, we're just gonna follow donald trump to the ends of the earth to the ends of american democracy if it helps their chances for power. that's it. they're not saving us, they're not the guardrail. they weren't gonna stand in his way last time, i don't think. we're not gonna stand in his way the next time. keep that in mind. it's the most destructive and dangerous legacy of donald trump and his coup. it's why the stakes of this next year are so very high. and weisman served as fbi general counsel in a senior member of robert mueller's investigative team. now the co-host are prosecuting donald trump podcast, and he joins me now. andrew, the revelation about pence's notes and the grassley subplot don't bear directly, i think, on the government's case against trump. but the access to pence they have does seem to me a material difference in accessed information that no one else has yet to obtain so far who has investigated january 6th. >> that's right, you pointed out that mike pence did not voluntarily appear before the january six committee but you couldn't do the same thing with department of justice which has grand jury subpoena power. so he has had to play ball. but i do think that the notes are going to in some ways helped the government and in some ways help donald trump. the reason i say that is as a trial lawyer i think that it's going to make very palpable that there was so much pressure on mike pence. he is both a witness and an exhibit. he's a witness because he has terribly damaging statements to offer with respect to donald trump. he's an exhibit because he wasn't very much the same position as donald trump. he was running to be the vice president. he had every incentive to think that if it was true and to find if there was real fraud, to say it, and so the jury can compare his conduct to the defendants conduct their. i think that note is going to show just how much pressure was on him and how he overcame it. i think that's going to be the argument. i think the statements there there are so many questions, so many doubts used by donald trump's team to explore their legal debts, were there questions about real concern. i obviously that wasn't ultimately fly because he agreed that he had a duty to the constitution. but i think that's what you would do if you're donald trump. they have to do something with those notes. it gives them a bit of fodder but other i don't think you should carry the day. >> it's so funny because it's a very very weird way for a middle aged man to write. it's sort of strange childlike quality. he's talking about going to his friends bar mitzvah or not. it's like whether he's going to do the coup. so there is that part of it. it's a weird document. >> well, this is washington d.c., where people tend to write notes with an eye toward how they might be use later. so i do think people i mean it's not like are writing a totally personal diary that might never see the light of day. there is a certain amount that i think he was trying to record but his state of mind was at that time that might help him in terms of course of action he was thinking of taking. i do think one of the things that's interesting here as you pointed out as a whole shock grassley story. . we are in a country which is so far from where the founders thought we would be, where you have a sitting senator who has not been called on the carpet to explain what he knew what he was intending, because i, like you, have the same intuition, which is mike pence was clearly not willing to do the deed for donald trump and thus was not gonna show up. well the next person was presumably somebody who was going to be willing to do that in violation of the constitution and the electoral college vote. so there really should be, if there was a justice, don't they should be in accounting from a sitting senator as to what happened. >> yes. and we know, just one more piece of data on this, several memos exchanged, chesebro at one point suggests the idea of grassley doing it, because he was plausibly insulating pants who had self interest, and he's on the ballot itself. eastman writing back, again, december 23rd, all happening around the same time. christmas eve when he decides he's not gonna do it and saying i agree with you just should airy hearing and the constitutional -- should constrain pence or grassley. or grassley? where is that coming from? it's clearly floating around. we're not making this up. >> oh, absolutely. there is a plan a and a plan b. so the idea that this isn't surprising, we always knew that there was some concern about whether pence was going to show up. and here you have it. i think it's going to make him, at the end of the day, a stronger witness for the government. it will show just how much pressure was on him that he overcame it. the story is, as reported, is it was based on a conversation with his son, which really caused him to rethink his obligation, is i think he will say, the constitution. that's a pretty strong thing if you're a government prosecutor, to play out in front of a jury. >> good work. andrew weissmann, thank you very much. coming up, donald trump maybe the republican front-runner, but he still faces a gauntlet of state and federal trials. a lot of news on multiple fronts and those very hot parts of the stove top, what's on deck, next. , next , next >> a brilliant reality! chase for business. make more of what's yours. 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>> you've got to sort of stand your ground. there's also the fact that we've had the final part of this which is the georgia r.i.c.o. case coming into view at least from the perspective of wilmoth's's