ecision today by the nation's highest court that could have major impcations. the unprecedented and historic prosecution of donald trump. the justices announcing they will hearen appeal by a defendant. josepher fisher. he has been indicted on seven charges including obstruction of official proceeding, which is a charge brought by jack smith against dald trump. now fisher is to dismiss that count. central question before the supreme court according to the "new york times" quote, can the government charge defendant in those cases uederal law that makes it a crime to corruptly obstruct an official congressional proceeding. here's how the times lays out the move. theecision to hear the case will complicate and perhaps delay the start of mr. trump's trial. now scheduled to take place in washington imarch. supreme court's ultimate ruling which may not arrive june will likely address the viability of two of the main counts against mr. trump and could severely limit efforts by the special counsel, jack smith, to hold the former president accountable for the violence his supporters committed at the capitol. whatever the justices decide could have a major immacht on the investigation. prosecutors have charged more than 300 with obstruction of official proceeding. the supreme court's decision today just one of many factors that could have ended the case. there's also the matter of trump's appeal on judge chutkan's ruling that trump was not immune from prosecution because he was president at the time the crimes occurred. just moments ago, judge chutkan ordered a stay of all proceedings in the federal election case until trump's appeal is settled and that, and it is a lot is where we start today with former lead investigator for the january 6th select committee and at the table, nbc news justice reporter and author, ryan riley and msnbc legal analyst, lisa rubin. could not think of better people to be with us today. lisa, break down this ruling. what does it mean? >> essentially confirms what jack smith's team told her over the weekend. the trial cannot go forward until trump's assertion of constitutional immunity is resolved either by the d.c. circuit or by the supreme court. at the same time, she's giving jack smith's team what they said they wanted. they are saying to her you still have jurisdiction to enforce the basic rules of this proceeding. that means you can enforce his conditions of release, which are the circumstances under which he's still a free man having been indicted and maybe most importantly, you can enforce the protective order. trump has been given 13 million some pages of discovery in this case and a protective order precludes him from sharing with the public. like regina george. he still needs to keep those materials secret until further order by the court. so this is essentially what jack smith's office told her should happen but now it cements it. it makes it official and means the next step has to be taken by the supreme court or if they decline to take up the case by the d.c. circuit. >> so, tim, given all of that excellent context, what do you think? did a march 4th trial date just become less likely? >> yes, less likely but not off the table yet. there's a scenario by which the supreme court could immediately decide that the significance of resolution of this immunity issue justifies immediate relief. they would expedite briefing in its revolve early in the year and we maintain the march 4th trial date. they could also say no, we're not going to take the case in which case the d.c. circuit has to go first. they could also do it on an expedited basis and then the supreme court could decide not to take it or it could go forward on march 4th even after a d.c. circuit ruling if the supreme court is still considering it. so it's not off the table that march 4th holds. judge chutkan notably didn't vacate the trial date or any other deadlines. she essentially held them in advance as this appeal of the immunity issue moves forward. so i'd say it's less likely than it was before this order but it is not yet a sure thing that it will have to be extended. >> i want to add on to this the news out of the supreme court about joseph fisher. again, if you were donald trump's lawyer, if your strategy is to do everything you can to delay a trial, do you then sense an opportunity right now? >> yeah. absolutely. but it's important to realize that donald trump is in a very different position because of the official proceeding than mr. fisher. he is claiming there needs to be some nexus to documents. 1512 c 2 follows c 1 which talks about destroying a document and his argument is that you have to read c2 in connection with the document issue. the law that was designed to protect documents. donald trump does have involvement with documents. the submission of these fake electoral certificates. even under the theory of 1512, arguably that could be applied to president trump in a way that doesn't apply to the rioters at the capitol. obviously, supreme court interpretation of 1512 has a bearing but even if fisher wins and the government loses, it doesn't mean the 1512 counts go away and he's charged with two counts beyond 1512 which would be unaffected. >> i want to come back to this question of obstruction and how it affects people differently, but your sense of how this affects the election. >> i thought the march trial, that judge chutkan really was getting everything on schedule for it to take place and the date is up in the air with all these new legal developments. they're going to continue down the avenue on this. the impact i'm most interested in in addition to the trump case is this is going to impact other cases. a lot of people are being held, some pretrial. that's one of the charges they're facing. so it really has had this enormous impact and you're going to have to go back potentially and look at each of these cases individually and figure out whether or not time gets shaved off of some. >> why did this not come up sooner? >> it had to work its way through the system. this started because of judge carl nichols decided this shouldn't apply to this sort of activity. the cases he's handling, he's the only judge who did this in the d.c. court, he said this charge cannot go forward. so it had to work its way up through the system. so in the case of two of these individuals who were appealing this to the supreme court, they haven't gone on trial but the other one has been sentenced separately for everything except for that one charge. these are individuals, a lot of whom physically stormed the capitol. joseph fisher, the former cop from pennsylvania, he was involved in this push. there's photos of him at the trump rally. sort of hamming it up with all these celebrities in the maga world then storming the capitol that day. the individual who has been sentenced was a part of the sort of appeal was arrested while he was wearing a shirt that said i was there on january 6th. so yeah. it's a really full spectrum you're getting of the defendants here. >> can i add something here because one of the things an this statute and i haven't focused on fisher's ser petition until today. the meaning of the word corruptly. but that's not what fisher's appeal is about. it's about whether or not it's lawful to charge him with otherwise obstructing or impeding. here's where it's pardon the impression, kind of stinks to be a text dualist. we've seen from the conservative movement that what should matter when we're looking at the meaning of the statute. here, aside from this mutilating or concealing a record, they are prohibiting. they blocked doors. they prevented members of congress in both chambers from safely voting on january 6th. i can't think of any clearer meaning or obstructing a proceeding than these cases. whether it applies to donald trump might be different but at least it should apply to the conspiracy count to obstruct a proceeding on the indictment. >> i appreciate as a person who decided not to go to law school that referencing these statutes can be technocratic, but the 1/6 committee recommended it for a reason. tell us why. >> yeah. so we were relying upon the d.c. circuit which is now being appealed that was consistent with every other trial judge other than judge nichols. as lisa said you can't obstruct a official proceeding, impeding, interfering with or taking steps that are going to make that proceeding less likely to occur. the plain language as lisa pointed out is otherwise applies to this whole other category of conduct between mutilation of a document and that has been the consistent interpretation of every other federal judge and the supreme court will evaluate that. our recommendation was specifically that 1512 c2, this otherwise provision, applies to blocking doors and probably the submission of the fake electors, the attempt to subvert the news that the department of justice, all of the multipart plan, constituted a conspiracy to including documents, obstruct an official proceeding. so again, either way the court goes, jack smith has an argument that donald trump has violated 1512 c2. the other defendants have weren't involved in documents have a stronger way to go. >> you point this out in your piece today quote the supreme court which has a 6-3 conservative majority has often shaped the justice department's broad application of criminal statutes. did they see this challenge coming? >> you know, i don't know. this i think is something that certainly this challenge originally comes from federal public defender in this individual fisher case and the others are from people who hired more lawyers more politically aligned. i think this is a case where the lawyer here is treeing to get the best result for their client and has this cascading impact on the nation and the 2024 campaign. if you move this further from suddenly a march trial closer to the summer, then you're talking about theoretically if this went through, if trump was convicted, even if you were convicted. so it's really all about management at this point and any little hiccup that comes along can throw everything off. the thing i think back to history when we're looking back at this, there's going to be a lot of scrutiny over what was going on at the justice department before the special counsel was announced and the year before we had that appointment made. that's the question of whether or not this could have been avoided add this case been brought sooner and not been so tight on the deadline up until 2024. >> lisa. >> one is that i completely agree with ryan. all of these exigencies of timing are in part due to inaction at the department of justice or at least a failure to appoint a special counsel. my mom used to have a mag nant that said your lack of planning is not -- >> i want to ask you because i know you have followed these 1/6 defendants closely. have they had a response to what we're watching? >> we've seen filings on it already because people want to delay their sentences. there's another cop, a lot of cops around the capitol. a former retired police officer who had a tambourine when she was storming the capitol, got in cops' faces, pushing to the front of the line and yelling in this really excited style and helping bring the mob inside the capitol and she wants to have her sentencing delayed. that would have an impact on her sentencing. i'm expecting when i go look at the docket, we'll see cases. last week, there was another former cop, i say it again, from california, who was convicted and sentenced to seven and a half years or rather 11 and a half years in federal prison. i expect he'll be appealing that, too. he's working pro se. >> i love that you have knowledge of the props an attire that people thought was somehow appropriate during this time. tim, obstruction charges. two of the four counts of jack smith's indictment. talk me through what a trial could look like if it proceeds without those obstruction counts? >> well, let's say even again to be clear if the supreme court rules on behalf of mr. fisher, i think the 1512 counts survive because there's evidence that president trump did alter, mutilate documents given the fake electors. the other counts don't touch 1512. conspiracy to defraud the united states. and deprivation of civil rights, those counts will remain. now the immunity argument you mentioned, the president saying he can't be charged with anything, that's a separate issue. i think the four counts go forward. they may be later but i think jack smith has enough evidence to get to a jury on all four counts regardless of which way the supreme court goes in this specific fisher appeal. >> tim rejects my hypothetical, which i appreciate. i'm still curious about the question though, which is if you were trying this case without the obstruction charges, what then does it look like? >> a focus on, first of all, conspiracy to defraud the united states charge substantively and tim, you disagree with this, but the evidence in favor of that is a lot of the same evidence that you would use for 1512 c charge. it may not include evidence of what actually happened of people blockading the entries to the house chamber and senate chamber, for example, but a lot of the other stuff, particularly the fake electors scheme is nothing but conspiracy to defraud the united states. so to is the campaign by jeff clark to send this proof of concept letter to states begging them to somehow defer their judgment on who the electors should be until after mike pence can make a ruling on january 6th. so i don't know that the ef dench yar presentation changes that much and deprivation of civil rights is essentially what jack smith and his team are saying they tried to take the right away from millions of americans the right to choose their president. again, i don't know how that really changes if you were to remove an obstruction charge. >> all right. no one is going anywhere because when we come back, happening now in court, ruby freeman is testifying against rudy giuliani. plus, the supreme court picking up another important case with huge implications. this time, the very common abortion pill. and later in the show, the evidence free fishing expedition against joe biden will be put to a full house floor vote in the next hour. this as the president's son in a rare public statement called the republicans' attempt to link his behavior to his father's shameless. all that and more continues after this. do not go anywhere. e continues after this do not go anywhere and my friends are nearby. i can do it with the help of a barber, personal shopper and exercise buddy. someone who can help me live right at home. life's good. when you have a plan. ♪ ♪ 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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(♪♪) you're probably not easily persuaded to switch and nutrients f mobile providers for your business. but what if we told you it's possible that comcast business mobile can save you up to 75% a year on your wireless bill versus the big three carriers? did we peak your interest? you can get two unlimited lines for just $30 each a month. there are no term contracts or line activation fees. and you can bring your own device. oh, and all on the most reliable 5g mobile network nationwide. wireless that works for you. it's not just possible, it's happening. emotional testimony underway for a former georgia elections worker -- spouted by rudy giuliani. ruby freeman is testifying now in front of him. she and her daughter, shaye moss, are seeking up to $43 million in damages from giuliani. earlier in court today, the lawyer representing freeman and moss was forced to ask the judge to reprimand giuliani for disparaging remarks he made publicly last night about the trial and about them. we are back with time ryan and lisa. ruby freeman. >> yeah, so she really went through hell i think after all these lies about her as well as her daughter. we heard testimony from her daughter earlier this week and it was really just, watching that -- >> devastating. >> there was the before and then there was the after. she said sort of the lights went off for her in terms of she was this shiny person beforehand and as a result of this, really tearing apart her life. her life will never be the same because of these lies. if we rewind this, where it all started, it was because people who believed in these conspiracy theories about mass voter fraud in cities were looking at videos. it's inherently racist what was happening. they were looking at videos thinking there was criminality. the same thing played out at the tcf center in detroit. there was this call for people to flood into detroit and go to that election center. what you ended up having was a bunch of republicans who weren't comfortable in detroit, who were around people they haven't been before and here we are. so now we're hearing this really dramatic testimony about real life impact those lies had on people and the jurors are going to decide ultimately how much he should have to pay as a result of those lies. >> i want to stick on that point, lisa. this is some of what he had to say about freeman and moss. i want to note none of it is true. >> earlier in the day when ruby freeman and shaye moss and another gentleman passing around usb ports as if they're vials of her heroin and cocaine. >> shaye moss told the committee she was handing her mom a ginger mint. an expert witness testified the cost to repair their reputations, $47.8 million. >> ashley humphries, an expert in reputation costs, essentially on social media, also the expert witness for i should mention e. jean carroll and her trial on defamation, came to court today and tried to quantify their damages. you can't quantify pain and suffering. you can't quantify shaye moss saying my ninth grade son failed out of school. i got a change of haircut and color because i didn't want to be recognized in public. but what you can quantify is how much it would cost to repair their reputations through basically an aggravated campaign to make people like and trust them again and stop harassing them. that's what ashley humphries testified today would cost in her estimation, $47 million to do. >> tim, the judge has found giuliani defamed freeman and moss by baselessly accusing them of election fraud. why would he take the stand? >> it's interesting, before i answer that question, the difference between what we were talking about before the break and now. we spend a lot of time as lawyers wringing our hands about the meaning of 1512. c1 versus 2. they're real victims. real people were affected. they're exhibits a and b of that. this is not simply an esoteric argument about the interpretation of a statute. it's about real people who were threatened with death. you go on to rusty bowers and al schmidt, brad raffensperger, so many people were in this category. look, a lot. to answer your question as a former prosecutor, it is candy when a defendant takes the stand typically. it is very generally good for the prosecutor to have a chance to directly question the defendant in any case. this is a civil case. but i have a hard time understanding what giuliani could say that would benefit his defense. particularly when he's gone out on the steps of the courthouse and essentially doubled down on