This vicious persecution is a travesty of justice. This is a political hit job. Im going to have to sit here for months on a trail. I think its ridiculous. Its unfair. Trump often whines about the unfairness of it all. The two tiers of justice. Well, hes right, there is a tier for trump, who remains a free man, and another tier for the many other americans who go to prison for much less than what hes done. Also tonight, Brave Mourners Defy the kremlin outside the funeral of russian Opposition Leader alexei navalny. Crying out, putin is a murderer, and we wont forgive. Well discuss how their Valor Contrasts with the weakness and capitulation of the putin and trump stooges in americas Republican Party. Plus, on this first day of womens history month, well call up the bey hive to discuss how beyonce who is number one on the Country Music charts is helping Shine A Light on the black pioneers in the genre, particularly black women. But we begin tonight with the wildest of american dichotomies. The United States is the Worlds Largest carceral state. We put more people in prison than any other country on earth. With about 330 Million People in our total population, the u. S. Currently has more than 1. 7 million of those people in prison. By contrast, the second highest Prison Population in the world, china, has 1. 6 million prisoners out of a population of just under 1. 5 billion people. Number four incarcrartd, india, has more than 573,000 prisoners out of 1. 4 billion people. And number five, russia, has more than 433,000 prisoners that we know of out of 146 Million People. Including those three americans theyre holding hostage and political prisoners. But back to the usa. Just to put it in perspective, our Prison Population amounts to about one quarter of the Prison Population of the entire world. And if you go by incarceration rate, the only countries with a higher rate of locking people up per100,000 citizens are el salvador, cuba, rwanda, turkmenistan and the territory of american samoa. In short, the United States is very good at locking people up. But somehow, not this guy. For some reason, the u. S. Is having a really hard time locking up this one person, donald trump. Even just getting him to face a criminal trial feels impossible, as his lawyers seek to delay these cases from proceeding until after the American Public decides whether or not they want him back in the white house. We saw this effort on full display today in two different hearings. First in florida, in the classified documents case where trump is literally accused of stealing national secrets. Trump appointed judge Aileen Cannon did not rule on when the trial should start or even if it should happen before november. And in georgia, a judge heard Closing Arguments on whether Fulton County d. A. Fani willis should be disqualified from that States Election interference case, which if she is, would all but certainly delay that trial until, you guessed it, after the election. But why . Why is it so hard to get donald trump to actually face accountability for these very serious alleged crimes . I mean, if you were one of the thousands of rubes who stormed the capitol on january 6th, 2021, fueled by trumps big lie which he launched because he was going to lose to joe biden, and did in fact lose to joe biden, you are probably in jail or you have spent time in prison it. You have probably lost your job and been humiliated in your local community. In short, your life was ruined by your damn near religious pleef in donald trump. If you live in a red state and seek an abortion, even if youre 10 years old, you doctor can be reprimanded for it, and maybe your uber driver if you live in texas. If youre a woman in missouri and raped and impregnated as a result of that rape and seek an abortion, the state of missouri wants to put you in prison. If youre a woman in ohio, you can face trial for having a miscarriage just in case your miscarriage was really an abortion. Because you know, in our new handmaids tale america as our dumbest u. S. Senator said we need to have more kids. We need to have an opportunity do that. We need people to have the opportunity to have kids. Yeah, except if the kids come via ivf, which the Alabama Supreme Court seems intent on banning. Something that could happen nationwide, too, because the right wing christian say so and theyre in charge of us. If you are the former top prosecutor in baltimore, you can be tried and convicted for taking money out of your own 401 k to buy a Vacation Property or lets be honest, to punish you for prosecuting the cops who killed freddie gray. If you are Donald Trumps former lawyer, you can be jailed for taking out a second mortgage to write a sixfig check to the porn star donald trump slept with, though married, and rejailed for refusing to stop writing a book on why you jumped off the trump train. If youre a form military intelligence officer, youll be jailed for taking classified documents home. But if youre donald trump, somehow, you cant be jailed. Not for stealing classified documents, not for lying about your Property Values to get cheaper loans and cheating on decades of your taxes, and weirdly enough, not even for trying to overthrow the government. Apparently, if youre donald trump, and only if youre donald trump, youre above it law in america. You are unjailable. The Justice Department will slow walk charging you with insurrection for three full years while charging everyone who did the Ground Invasion of the capitol, and the Attorney General will even appoint a Special Prosecutor to charge you, even though youre no longer president , so why would you need a Special Prosecutor when we have a whole Attorney General . If you are trump, and only if you are donald trump, the feds will beg you, beg you for 18 months to please, please, give them back the Nuclear Secrets that youre hiding in your bathroom instead of kicking down your door and taking them like they would any other american. And then, when you do get charged by that same Special Prosecutor, somehow the Random System will put you in front of your favorite handpicked judge who will slow walk the case for you and no less a court than the Supreme Court of the whole United States filled with three more of your handpicked judges plus three other republicans will slow walk all of your cases to make sure they dont happen until after the election, they thad clearly hope will make you president again so you can pardon yourself and get away with everything. And tens of millions of americans will not just cheer for these awful things. They, too, will try to make you president again. So you can kill another Million People in a pandemic and crash the economy and steal migrant babies from their moms again . What a country for donald trump. The rest of us, not so much. Joining me now is andrew weissmann, former Senior Member of the Mueller Probe and msnbc legal analyst. Katie phang, Trial Attorney and host of the Katie Phang Show right here on msnbc, and tim obrien, Senior Executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion and msnbc political analyst. Andrew, i go to you first. Talk me down, my friend. It does seem to me that this one american out of 330 million americans is untouchable. Well, you know, im going to agree and slightly disagree. The thing that i think you are completely right about is in this country, if you are wealthy and white, there is a different system of justice both at the federal and state level. I spent many, many years in the Department Of Justice prosecuting people and companies, whether it was organized crime or corporate crime, who were wealthy white people. And it is just impossible to not face facts that they are given a disproportionate amount of justice. Their cases are reviewed in a closer way. Judges look at them and judges who for many, many years were also in the exact same race and class and wealth would identify themselves with the defendants and not view them the same way they viewed other people. And just to be clear, i am not saying that that is not the appropriate level of scrutiny that should be given to criminal defendants. Its that its not given to everyone. Everyone is entitled to that close scrutiny and its just simply the case that if you are in the group of people that donald trump is in, you have that heightened scrutiny that is not afforded to everyone else. Now, you know, so he is in a group of people that enjoy that. Theres no question that because he is the former president , he is getting an extra dollop just to put it bluntly, of scrutiny in connection with all of his cases, whether its his conduct pretrial where there would be very different Bail Conditions if he was even let out on bail, to the amount of review on appeal, to frankly blatant ways in which judge cannon has referred to the fact that he deserves extra and better treatment because of his former position. She was reversed on that precise ground with the 11th circuit saying no hes not. Hes treated like everyone else, and the d. C. Circuit saying hes Citizen Trump now, but that is a real issue in this country of people not being willing to see everyone as were all the same station. We may be doing different jobs at different points in our lives but we all should be treated equally. Thats hot the law requires. Anyway, i think i have gone on way too long. You have other wonderful guests to speak to this. Well, i mean, look, katie, and the point is very well taken. And katie phang, andrew is right, there are two tiers of justice for rich white guys and everybody else. But sometimes rich black guys can take advantage of it too. O. J. Simpson took advantage of it. He was rich and can afford a good defense. This country actually jailed a former Vice President of the United States, Richard NixonsVice President. This country has managed to put a few rich white guys in jail. But i have never seen anything like the entire system move to benefit one Single Person all the way through the Supreme Court, like it is moving for him. Im going to give you a contrast. Fani willis, fani willis is attempting to do a rico investigation of donald trump. Somehow, her personal relationship, not with the judge, not with somebody on the other side where it would be a conflict of interest, but literally her interpersonal relationships have now gotten trump to be able to delay even that case. And that was the one that was untouchable because its a state case. He cant pardon himself from it. Yet even that case is thwarted, while his clist defense gets to try to humiliate this woman about how much cash she has in her house. So she gets humiliated publicly, and he, again, walks away. Yeah, so andrew weissmann, as we all know, has such an elegant way of explaining things, but i would kind of make it a little bit more blunt because its not just a twotier system or a double standard system. Its actually a different total standard. Its the trump effect. Its the bending over backwards by not only the judiciary but by prosecutors for fear of the political prosecution angle that is being touted by trump. Its this idea that one man and one man only can have a different standard applied to him when it comes to the efficacy of our judicial system, when it comes to how these prosecutions are approached. Its not even just the criminal cases. Its the civil cases too. Are the judges acting like theyre completely impartial and all of the scrutiny that happens, its amazing because the scrutiny doesnt go on defendant trump. Andrew and i prosecuted between the two of us, i dont go how many cases. Some of incredible magnitude. When you looked at the case, sure, you were mindful about potential Jury Nullification issues, mindful about potential witness issues but it was still always a party to the case, a defendant, and especialliane criminal case. Its supposed to be justice is blind. And yet in this instance, the trump effect is created where you now look at a judge like Aileen Cannon who seems to be so sympathetic to the fact the man has to campaign, yet you and i both know no other criminal defendant in the United States would get the leeway afforded to him to go campaign for the oval office, the same office hes now claiming immunity to be able to do whatever he wants from it. It really is infuriating, and in Fulton County to your point, you have lawyers for the defense getting up and talking about how it is so wrong that fani willis went to a church and gave a, quote, Church Speech and how wrong it was for her to talk about race and religion. Yet, thats exactly what is happening here, this completely misconstruction and skewing of what the reality is, that wasnt the point of what she said. She talked about when she went to that church, she talked about the fact that she was prosecuting this case, and she just said, i need grace to make sure that i am doing the right thing. It certainly wasnt what they were saying on the other side. So the irony doesnt escape me that trump wants to talk about and complain about the race card in Fulton County. Yet thats exactly what hes doing. Hes Targeting A Strong Black Female prosecutor, lets be hongest, for dating a strong black male prosecutor at the same time. Really, the evidence isnt there. We know when we take these cases that you have to have evidence, and the evidence in Fulton County isnt there to disqualify her. By the way, just got a note from our producers. Spiro agnew didnt spend a day in jail. Let me go to you, tim. Donald trumps father had a way of getting out of not paying his taxes, he didnt do it either. They own the prosecutors, and they would just make sure they gave a lot of money when the predecessor to the current holder of the office, alvin bragg a couple times ago, they made sure they were good with him. He has grown up, donald trump, never having accountability in his life r and it is wild to me that so many people dont think it is unfair that hes able to get away with alleged actual crimes including trying to overthrow the government, and that they like him because of that. Also, has anyone really ever said the word jail the way donald trump does. Its not jail, its jail. Like the way he said china when he was still in office. You know, its useful, i think, we have gone through a few chapters here of whats askew, andrew laid out, i think, elegantly as katie pointed out, some of the institutional flaws at work here. Katie got at the social trumpian and racial issues that are at play. Another fact you hear obviously is hes an expresident and hes being prosecuted by people that have stepped gingerly around the fact that he held the highest office in the land. That i think was a problem with the Mueller Probe. Andrew and i have spoken about that in the past. I think Robert Mueller himself was overly forgiving or perhaps overly cautious with trump because he was a president , and i think Robert Mueller came out of a world with this institutional respect for the office, which is not a shabby thing, but when youre around Someone Inhabiting that office and polluting it and taking advantage of the powers the office bestowed on him, you have to have a real sense of how to prosecute him. That runs up against institutions, up against the way the laws work, the court works. The biggest factor is the clock in every one of these cases. And then its this whole collision is inhabited by donald trump who has grown up in his entire life with various forms of insulation from accountability. He was born into a wealthy family, and his fathers wealth protected him from his own mistakes in the business world. Then he became a celebrity. And he enjoyed all of the powers that come with being a celebrity, including being able to be predatory toward women and not being held accountable for that. Then he becomes president of the United States. He is an irresponsible ignorant man who has had the safety belts around him his whole life. He never had to learn from his own mistakes. Hes never been held accountable. I think what you have set up in terms of analyzing the dynamics at work around here, i think there are parties involved linof the current prosecutions who are approaching it with good will. I think that Merrick Garland approached the january 6th prosecution with good wil