Headquarters in new york city. The grand shakeup. A stunning move in the Georgia Elections case against donald trump. But its not about whether d. A. Fani willis stays or goes. The judge dismissing six counts in the sweeping racketeering indictment including three against the former president. What led to the decision . And what it means for trump and his codefendants. Plus The Last Time America pitted the same pair of president ial nominees against each other two elections in a row, gas was a quarter, a burger was less, and donald trump and joe biden were just kids. Now americans have the rematch most say they never wanted but voted for anyway. And it ramps up the veepstakes for trump. What the price of admission could be. And one storm washes away more than half a Million Dollars worth of investment. What an Oceanfront Community is now asking for after watching its brand new protective sand dune disintegrate. A lot to get to, but we start with that Breaking News out of georgia. Judge scott mcafee throwing out three of the 13 criminal counts against donald trump, adding a new dose of uncertainty to a case that already has a ton of it. In all, mcafee dismissed six counts against trump and others, charges that they had solicited georgia officials to violate their Oaths Of Office. Now, two of those charges are related to evidence that to a casual observer seemed strongest. So look. All i want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state and flipping the is a great testament to our country. Now, its important to note that call from trump to Georgia Secretary Of StateBrad Raffensperger has not been tossed but heres what the judge wrote. The courts concern is less that the state has failed to allege sufficient conduct of the defendants. In fact, it has alleged an abundance. However, the lack of detail concerning an essential legal element is in the undersigneds opinion, as in the judges opinion, fatal. So it leaves d. A. Fani willis with two options. Appeal the ruling or resubmit the case to a grand jury. Even as she waits to hear if the judge will even allow her to stay on the case, a decision that is expected soon. I want to bring in harry litman, former u. S. Attorney and former Deputy Assistant attorney general during the clinton administration. Matthew dowd is senior msnbc political analyst. Nbcs Vaughn Hillyard has been following this case for us. And lisa rubin is an msnbc legal correspondent. Both vaughn and lisa are here with me on set. Okay, harry, please explain in more detail about why the judge said these charges had to go, because in legalese, im going to read it again, he said, the lack of detail concerning an essential legal element is fatal. What happened here . Okay. The essential legal element is how exactly they violated their oath of office. So in these six counts it says that defendants tried to push them to violate their Oaths Of Office. Mcafee says look, their Oaths Of Office say one thing only, ill follow the u. S. And georgia constitution. Thats a really big document, and there could be hundreds of ways that you could violate it, and if theyre not sure they cant prepare their defense. In the federal system and most other state systems, chris, it would be easily remedied. The prosecution would just come in and explain, okay, heres how you violated the oath. Heres the clause that they pushed you to violate. It so happens that remedy is not available in georgia, which the judge lamented in a footnote. So now the options are just as you say. She can refile in a new grand jury. She can just drop them. Or she can appeal. I think she may just drop them because the overt act, the evidence itself, remains. The Big Rico Charge remains. Its just these particular charges that say you made State Officials violate their Oaths Of Office and mcafee saying youre just not clear enough about what they did and its too openended. We know the facts but we dont know exactly how they violated the constitution. And thats not enough at this stage. This, lisa, wasnt even on my bingo card, to be honest with you. How unusual is what just happened here, to reject charges in this way . Well, its sort of unusual on two levels. First of all, defendants file motions to dismiss part or all of an indictment all the time, but very rarely do they succeed. So lets start there. But the second way in which this is unusual is as harry just highlighted, in federal courts a defendant can ask for something called a bill of particulars. Its basically detail for me how it is that i was supposed to have violated the law at issue here. Explain that to me so i can adequately defend myself at trial. And as harry just referenced, in a Footnote Judge mcafee basically says federal courts have achieved greater efficiency with respect to this but Under Georgia law we cant remedy it through a motion for a bill of particulars, the only choice available to me where i see a deficiency like this is to dismiss the charges and to give the d. A. Either the option of appealing my ruling or to give her six extra months to try and convene a new grand jury and reindict on these specific charges. Yeah, its hard to see a world in which the d. A. And her team, vaughn, are going to say sure, lets just push this back six more months. But have we heard anything from the d. A. At all . No, we have not heard anything from the District Attorney at this point. A source familiar tells our Blayne Alexander Down in georgia that they are currently reviewing this decision here by the judge. But look, theres different decisions that could have come out today. Right . The rico charge could have been tossed or fani willis could have been disqualified from this case entirely here. So for the trump team they can call this a partial victory, to have in the case of donald trump specifically 3 of the 13 charges against him dropped. At the same time they are still waiting for that decision, which we expect to come by friday, On Whether Fani Willis will be able to oversee the case in its entirety Going Forward. Harry, when you look at this, did the d. A. Drop the ball here, not cross all the is cross all The Ts And Dot All the is . Is this an error that could and should have been avoided . I think the answer is yes. Because Under Georgia law as lisa and i were just saying youve got to get it all in the indictment, its the idea that the grand jury must put it. They could have been in the grand jury and explained heres what trump was pushing on raffensperger to do, heres the oath of office they say, and here, this is the missing piece, is just how they violated or were pushed to violate their oath of office. Just when they say i will do thus and so, heres what they were pushed to violate. Its a pretty essential piece. And i think given the way georgia practice works, yeah, it is certainly at least the crossing of a t or dotting of an i, even something a little bit more. It doesnt look great for them. I do want to again say, though, the Practical Impact is probably slight. But i agree, it reflects on them and this is a time of trouble generally for the case. Yeah, this hasnt been a great period of time for the District Attorneys office. Thats for sure, lisa. I want to talk about how this impacts the rest of the case because the order also says this. These Pleading Deficiencies do not apply to the corresponding overt acts listed in count 1, thats the violation of the rico act. Specifically overt acts 22, 55, 102, 112, 156. Overt acts alleged as part of a conspiracy are not held to the same Pleading Standards as statutorily based offenses. Plain language, police. While its not the case the d. A. Can sustain independent criminal charges based on each of these episodes of the defendants trying to get Georgia Election im sorry, georgia elected officials to violate their oaths, that doesnt mean that evidence of each of these episodes cant come into the case. In fact, where a rico charge is concerned, prosecutors typically allege a series of overt acts taken in furtherance of the conspiracy. And what mcafee is saying here is you cant, for example, charge donald trump with soliciting Brad Raffensperger to violate his oath of office but you sure can use that call as part of the evidence in favor of the rico charge and you can consider that to be one of the required overt acts taken in furtherance of the conspiracy. Overall, chris, this doesnt have a ton of impact on this case. Each of the six defendants here that moved to dismiss on these bases, none of them got rid of all the charges against them. The one who ended up i think best off is mark meadows, who only had two counts against him. That was the rico count and the count regarding the january 2nd, 202 1 Brad Raffensperger call. That Raffensperger Call is out against him but theyre still facing the big kahuna the rico call. Zblnts huge but its also complicated stuff. Is it the kind of thing you expect trump to take on the Campaign Trail and say look, here you go, these people brought these charges, even the judge who he hasnt exactly had friendly words to say about, even the judge said this case is weak. I mean, i dont think i disagree with one part of this, that the Trump Campaign will describe this as a partial win. Thats not what the Trump Campaign will do. The Trump Campaign will describe this as a huge victory. Right . Whether it is or not doesnt matter. Hes going to describe it that way. Im also sort of taken with this, as i have been over the last few months, is we are at a point of time in our American History where judges arent going to save our democracy, lawyers arent going to save our democracy, juries arent going to save our democracy, its up to we the voters to save our democracy and preserve the constitutional principles that exist there. To quote gandhi in this from more than 80 years ago, we are the change that we seek in the world of this. Because any little tiny crack, however we describe it, may be small, doesnt impact the majority of the case, donald trump is going to go to his base and say see . I told you. And even though it only applies to maybe 1 of everything that is going against donald trump, hes going to say it applies to everything, this is all a sham, this is all a fiction, and the judge has thrown out these thrown out these indictments against me and you should ignore all of it. Thats what hes going to do. So ultimately in my view as i observe the landscape Going Forward whats going to ultimately decide what happens with donald trump in the country is the voters. Yeah. And i hear that more from democrats, vaughn, worried about people who say im just going to wait for one of these trials to knock donald trump out of it. Thats not the message that democrats want. We said this earlier. This is not the case that we followed so closely, which is will fani willis be able to continue, will she no longer be on the case. Where does that stand right now . We are waiting for judge mcafee and we expect that decision to come within the next 48 hours or so now. Look, this has been a turbulent seven months. Standing outside of that Fulton County jail there when Donald Trumps motorcade came in. And fani willis was hoping to have this case be heard even before the 2024 election. Thats not where we find ourselves. And to Matthews Point here, for donald trump its not about the overall performance. Right . If youre on the balance beam and you have a little tilt here or there, right . Theyre going to call it out. And even if judge mcafee doesnt throw fani willis off the case, he will use that on the Campaign Trail like he has at every single rally since that evidentiary hearing to call out that this is a romantic relationship that was purely motivated to get donald trump. Right . So it doesnt even if the case is not dismissed in its entirety from fani williss hands, theyre still going to try to use this, which over the course of those seven months if wed said wed be at this point now, its the last thing the District Attorney or anybody hoping for the prosecution of donald trump would have wanted. Lisa, do you glean or should we glean anything from the fact that the judge and he said two weeks ago by next friday, meaning two days from now i expect to hand down my decision about fani willis, that he decided to put this out before then . Its a little bit of judicial housekeeping i would say. Right . Sometimes judges are trying to sort of narrow the case before them, really clarify what the case is about before it moves into a different phase of pretrial proceedings. So chris, one part of me says he did this so that when he decides that fani willis can remain on the case she knows what shes dealing with, she can hit The Go Button again and start preparing to try the remaining defendants on some other timeline other than august. But theres another part of me that says he did this so that an indictment as culled by him can also be handed to the Prosecuting Counsel of georgia and some future prosecutor will understand fully what the case for them will look like. I could go either way on that. I just think youve got judge scott mcafee trying to figure out what this case looks like Going Forward because the motion is to disqualify her, not to get rid of the case entirely. 48 hours we should know. Vaughn hillyard, harry litman, lisa rubin, thank you. Matthew, youre going to stay with me. In a different legal case for former President Trump, his former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen is right now were told in the manhattan d. A. s office preparing for the hush money trial. That one set to begin in just 12 days. He is expected to be the star witness, and prosecutors are prepping him for both direct and cross. That should be interesting. In 60 seconds, an historic president ial rematch. What voters are already saying in two very critical battleground states. I do not support either donald trump nor President Biden. Im not happy with either one, and ive not seen anything from either party that makes me feel confident or happy. Y. ella fashion moves fast. Setting trends is our business. We need to scale with customer demand. In real time. jen so we partner with verizon. Their solution for us . A private 5g network. ella we now get more control of production, efficiencies, and greater agility. marquis with a custom private 5g network. Our customers get what they want, when they want it. jen now were even smarter and ready for whats next. vo achieve enterprise intelligence. Its your vision, its your verizon. 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Are you ready to win this election . But today for all the strength that joe biden and donald trump have shown by gliding to their nominations, finally finishing it up last night, both show stark vulnerabilities for the general election. Biden weakened by Voter Discontent over the economy, immigration, the war in gaza. Trump plagued by lackluster fundraising, four criminal cases and a long track roared of losing. The 2020 election about 60 lawsuits challenging those results. And 2022 losses by candidates he backed. And voters dont frankly like either of them very much. I do not support either donald trump nor President Biden. Im not happy with either one, and ive not seen anything from either party that makes me feel confident or happy. So voters get the rematch they dread. Expected to be won or lost in perhaps just half a dozen states. And to redefine bitter, nasty expensive campaigns. By the way, in 1956 in that other rematch the incumbent president , dwight d. Eisenhower, again defeated Adlai Stevenson in a landslide. And they really didnt like each other either. Nbcs Blayne Alexander is reporting in atlanta. Nbcs marissa para is in doral, florida. Blayne, in georgia some democrats are brace forget a tough fight ahead. What are you hearing there . You know, chris, in the wake of the 2020 elect