good evening. the breaking legal news of the night, which sounds minor is that donald trump's lawyers have already sent a letter to the judge in the case saying today's action by the united states supreme court means the conviction have to be thrown out and i think the sentencing will proceed and the courts will take that up on the appeal but that is the very first legal move they have made since the supreme court ruled today. >> here we go. as far as the practical consequence of that in the new york criminal case, i think the judge will hear arguments from both sides as to whether the sentencing should be delayed and i don't think the sentencing -- he has been convict did by a jury. i think the sentencing, even if it is delayed will likely proceed. if there is substance to it to the request to have the verdict , the jury's verdict thrown out because of today's radical supreme court ruling, i think it is something that will happen at the appeals court. we will see but we are waiting to hear from him now essentially. >> i have everybody we possibly can think of to ask that question two tonight and lawrence will start us off and andrew wiseman can start us off and we have the former clerk and also we have experts all the way and i have to get out of the way. >> all right. i will get out of your way. today the united states supreme court granted donald trump immunity for conduct described in exactly 2 paragraphs of a 130 paragraph indictment with the rest of the indictment against donald trump that still stands as of tonight. the supreme court has ordered the trial judge in the case to hear testimony in the case from a very long list of potential witnesses to clarify if some of the remaining charges in the indictment may now fit into a new category created by the supreme court today granting criminal immunity for some presidential conduct. that could lead the judge to, in effect, be presiding over an examination of the evidence similar to or equal to what would occur in the prosecution and the actual trial of this case. and when prosecutor jack smith would be calling his prosecution witnesses to the witness stand in the courtroom of judge chutkan including mike pence to take an oath and testify under oath, to prove to the judge that the conduct described in the rest of the indictment is in no way immune from prosecution evening with the supreme court's new definition. unlike a trial, donald trump doesn't have to be present for that hearing which could last for weeks. it would in no way interfere with his presidential campaign. the decision identified two different fears on each side of that decision in the supreme court. the majority of the justices seem to fear a president living under the pressure of unreasonable criminal prosecutions, even though that has never happened in the history of the country. and the minority of the justices fear the president may see as in effect sanctioned to break the law and the majority called the minorities view fear mongering on the basis of extreme hypotheticals about a future where the president feels empowered to violate federal criminal law. and what the majority saw about today's ruling and this is what they fear is the more likely prospect of an executive branch that cannibalize is itself with each successive president free to prosecute his predecessors, yet unable to boldly and fearlessly carry out his duties for fear that he may be next. nevermind that no president has ever in any sense prosecuted his predecessor. it is never happened. the majority of the court fears what has never happened. and the minority of the court fears what they have already seen happen in the trump presidency. amy coney barrett who joined this disagreed on one point and that is excluding any kind of their -- evidence that involves an official act by the president. she did raise the question of how that would destroy robbery -- bribery prosecution. she said, excluding from trial, any mention of the official act connected to the bribe would hamstring the prosecution to make sense of charges alleging a quid pro quo and the jury must be allowed to hear about both the quid and the quo. the presidential campaign is now the campaign of a former president who abused his power as president against the current president who has not abuse that power and doesn't want anymore power. here is what president biden said tonight about the supreme court opinion. >> good evening. the presidency is the most powerful office in the world and it's not only to test your judgment but perhaps even more importantly it is an office that can test your character. you not only face moments where you need the courage to exercise the full power of the presidency but you face moments where you need the wisdom to respect the limits of the power of the office of the presidency. this nation was founded on the principle that if there are no kings in america. each of us is equal before the law. nobody is above the law and not even the president of the united states. today's decision by the supreme court of presidential immunity, that fundamentally changed for all practical purposes today's decision and it almost certainly means there are virtually no limits what a president can do. this is a fundamentally new principal and a dangerous precedent. the power of the office will no longer be constrained by the law even including the supreme court of the united states. the only limits will be self- imposed by the president alone. this decision today will continue the courts attack in recent years on a wide range of long-established legal principles in our nation from gutting voting rights to civil rights or taking away a woman's right to choose to today's decision that undermines the rule of law of this nation. and nearly 4 years ago my predecessor sent a violent mob to the united states capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power. but also we sought with their own eyes and we sat and watched it happen that day. the attack on the police, the ransacking of the capitol and a mob hunting down the house speaker, nancy pelosi with gallows erected to hang the vice president, mike pence and i think it is fair to say it's one of the darkest days in the history of america. now the man who sent that mob to the united states capitol is facing potential criminal conviction for what happened that day. the american people deserve to have an answer in the courts before the upcoming election. the public has the right to know the answer about what happened on january 6 before they asked to vote again this year. now, because of today's decision, that is highly highly unlikely and it is a terrible disservice to the people of this nation. now, the american people has to do with the court should have been willing to do but didn't. the american people have to render a judgment about donald trump's behavior and they have to decide whether his assault on our democracy on january 6 makes him unfit for public office. the american people must decide that trump's embrace of violence to preserve his power is acceptable. perhaps most importantly, the american people must decide that they want to entrust the president once again, the presidency, to donald trump now he will be more embroiled to do whatever he pleases whenever he wants. you know, at the outset of our nation, it was the character of george washington, our first president to find the presidency and he believed power was limited and not absolute. that power always resides with the people. always. and now 200 years later today supreme court decision once again depends on the character of the men and women who hold that presidency and we will find the limits of the power of the presidency. the law will no longer do it. i do know i will respect the limits of the presidential powers i had for three and half years, but any president, including donald trump, will now be free to ignore the law. i concur with the dissent of justice sotomayor today. she said that in every use of visual power, the president is now a king above law. and with fear for our democracy, i dissent. end of quote. so should the american people, dissent. i dissent. may god bless you all. may god help preserve our democracy. may god protect our troops. >> leading off our discussion tonight is a professor who can -- has taught constitutional law at harvard. it is summer break but i imagine students returning to constitutional law class in the next semester. what just happened to constitutional law? >> it was rocked to its very bases. when the supreme court of the united states turned to the constitution and put it upside down in a very profound sense. the most fundamental principle on which the constitution rests is that the law binds everybody in the constitution elaborates the structure of that law. although it does contain in some provisions in the so- called speech and debate clause, for immunizing senators and members of the house and certainly in limited circumstances but it doesn't give any immunity from ordinary criminal law to the president, the most powerful figure in our government. on the contrary, it is because he has such enormous power that he, like anyone else, must obey the criminal law. there are some people, including people with the justice department who have written rules that say you have to wait until the president leaves office before commencing a prosecution for crimes he commits while in office. but until today, nobody has seriously claimed that absolute immunity for certain official acts would apply to the president. as justice jackson pointed out in a very powerful dissent, she said in addition to justice sotomayor, justice kagan joined the dissent justice jackson in a powerful dissent said this whole business of drawing the line between official acts and official acts and saying that if you are only on the official side of the line, the president can essentially get away with murder. but it is on the unofficial siding may be prosecuted. she points out how it gets it upside down and it is exactly when the president is that using the official powers that belong uniquely to that office that we should be most worried about the president becoming an autocrat or has -- as donald trump said he wanted to be on day one, a dictator. it is true that the case will go back to judge chutkan. she will hold hearings and some think that is a silver lining because those hearings can begin soon and the nation can perhaps see sooner than it actually would if there had been a trial in the fall and the nation can see more of the evidence of what donald trump did in the fake electorate's game and the violent mob that he riled up and that is a pale substitute for what people are entitled to and that is a verdict of guilty or not guilty. is the president guilty of, for the first time in her history, organizing an effort to prevent the peaceful transfer of power to his successor? that we won't have. people will be going to their voting booths and deciding whether to vote for somebody who was already abused these powers. as opposed to someone who though the powers have been handed to them says i don't want to use them and i believe in the rule of law. so making that choice without that evidence. >> i want to read justice jackson's conclusion of her opinion. she said the majority of my colleagues seem to have put their trust in our courts ability to prevent presidents from becoming kings through case-by-case application of the in determinant standards of their new presidential accountability paradigm. i fear that they are wrong, but for all of our sakes, i hope that they are right. in the meantime, because the risks and power the court has now assumed are intolerable, unwarranted, and plainly antithetical to bedrock constitutional norms, i dissent. dissent language it doesn't get stronger than that. >> the language couldn't get stronger because it deserves to be enormously strong and that language was under just three days before independence day and in several days we will celebrate the nation's survival of a revolution against kings and queens. we have a revolution so we wouldn't have a king and now the supreme court says that is what we are giving you. i don't think we should accept that presently covid it does seem to me that all it does is basically put the court on the ballot this november. we have to decide whether we want the kind of government that donald trump has helped us have by appointing three members to this court because three of the members of the majority were appointed by him. to members of the majority ought to have recused them selves. that is five justices. it is those five who ultimately decided that even the evidence of official acts couldn't be used to show what the president was up to when he used his official powers because motive supposedly doesn't matter but motive is everything whether the president gave a pardon in return for a bribe, depends on whether he was doing it as a corrupt matter, or whether he was giving a pardon because he thought somebody deserved mercy and as justice barrett pointed out, you can't make sense of the quit without the quote but under the in can hear and -- incoherent majority you can prove the transfer of money but you can't prove anything about the pardon still in exchange and that is the kind of thing that makes this decision so incoherent and what makes it really dangerous is that even if we eventually get over it, we will half to rely on the good character of future presidents because the law will no longer serve as a source of inhibition. that is dangerous and that is a prescription for autocracy and eventually for authoritarianism and dictatorship. >> thank you so much for starting off our discussions on this historic night. >> thank you. coming up, we have more conversation about the view of today's supreme court ruling. at care.com, it's easy to get a break, even if you're not on summer 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[cheering] don't panic. gift easy with gift mode, now on etsy. most people call leaffilter when their gutters are clogged and they notice one of the many issues that can bring. sometimes it's the smell of mildew when water has seeped into the interior walls. or maybe they've spotted mold in the attic. but most often it's the more obvious signs of damage like rotten soffit, fascia, or water pooling near their foundation. you can get ahead of costly damage by protecting your home's gutters today. we're in your neighborhood and ready to help. schedule your free gutter inspection today, call 833 leaffilter, or visit leaffilter.com z's baking the house special. arisa's styling a new look. and steve's filling his biggest order ever. with the first ever comcast business five-year price lock guarantee, these business owners get five years of value on gig speed internet and advanced security. all from the company with 99.9% network reliability. so now they can focus on doing what they do best for the next five years. that's a lot of bread. you got this. the comcast business five-year price lock guarantee. switch today for a limited time. joining us now is the forming -- former acting solicitor general and he is a professor at georgetown law and host of the podcast courtside and also joining us is andrew wiseman, the former fbi and general counsel and chief of the individual division and melissa joins us, and nyu law professor and they are the co- authors of the new york times best-selling book, which i used tonight, the trump indictments in the historic charging documents with commentary and all three of course are msnbc legal analyst. with all of your experience, how much of this did you expect? >> the most none of it. this is a decision that i think it's one i think that changed our constitution dramatically in both procedurally and substantively and substantially, the president can do whatever he wants including and up to his sending out navy seal team six to assassinate his political title and it certainly not the constitution that i had ever understood and the constitution of the united states. this decision goes way way way too far in giving the president basically carte blanche when it comes to executive powers. there are some bright silver linings and there for about the presidents rollover state legislatures and assembly of fake delegates, which i think the court leaves possible to prosecute people like donald trump for. but in general when it comes to presidential powers, this isn't the constitution that i have ever understood it to be and procedurally, i would have expect did a unanimous decision or close to unanimous which is the way the court traditionally operates in hot button cases like this. if you go back to the nixon tapes case which is almost unanimous against nixon and in rejecting his claim for presidential privilege, which is just a cousin of what donald trump thought here and even nixon's own appointees to the supreme court ruled against him and here by contrast you have the six republican appointed justices all siding with the republican nominee for the presidency, donald trump and you have the three democratically appointed ones siding the other way and that's not the place the court should be and it's not surprising we already heard from president biden about this. i do expect in the days and weeks to come, the court will become the front and centerpiece of the election. i think biden will run against the court more than he will run against even donald trump although the two now are locked kind of at the hip with trump and the supreme court. this is a tremendously unfortunate ruling and one to which i was shocked. >> i think is so many of us, during our own lifetimes have come to expect so much of the court because we saw the court deliver in circumstances that proved the courts integrity and the republican president, richard nixon, proved the supreme court's integrity. and now the former republican president, donald trump, has disproved it. without that supreme court decision in the nixon case, we wouldn't be sitting here so stunned tonight as we are. >> look. we talked about this off air. in many ways this decision kind of quietly talks about the logic of this tapes case because you have this broad recognition by the supreme court that anything that is within a very expansive view of the core functions or the take care clause of the constitution is completely and 100% absolutely immune. even other official acts, there is a strong presumption where the court sets out a very difficult test to allow the government to go forward. but let me make sure people understand, with respect to that court function what the court said, it is absolutely immune, they say one of the things within that court function is the communications and directions of the president and the department of justice. they do say that when the president orders sham prosecutions, he can do that and not face any criminal repercussions. and just to say it is to be shocked by. i am completely with neil. this is such a transformational decision and finally, the tape you played of president biden is so remarkable because you have this sitting president saying i do not want that power . i should not have that power. that is not how our system works. the sitting president is saying this isn't part of the checks and balances that