tomorrow. so anything much going on in the news? enjoying these sleepy summer days with not much happening? agh. all right, we've got a bunch of stuff to cover tonight. first, the former president of the united states is going to be sentenced for 34 felony convictions next week on thursday. the prosecutors who brought that case and who prosecuted in court that case against donald trump, they were due today to make their sentencing recommendation to the judge. in a new york state case like this, it's not the jury that convicted trump that will decide what his sentence is, it's the judge who oversaw the case. it's judge juan merchan who will sentence trump. the maximum sentence trump could face is four years in prison. it's very possible, however, that he might not get any prison time at all, or if he does get a sentence of confinement, it's possible it could be home confinement, we just don't know. on the one hand, what he's been convicted of, while it is 34 felonies, it's a nonviolent crime, and also he's a first-time offender. here's never been convicted of anything before. those ewould certainly cut against him getting any significant jail time. on the other hand, he does have three other major felony criminal cases pending against him at this moment. he was fined by this judge for multiple violations of the court order in this case that required him to restrain himself from speaking about jurors and witnesses and court staff and the families of the judge and the lawyers in this case. he's also shown absolutely no remorse whatsoever, which is a thing that judges are supposed to consider, so all of those factors serve as sort of aggravating context. those might cut in favor of him getting jail time. who knows? this is why a person with the job title judge makes a decision like this and not randos like you or me. before the sentencing, the judge will get three pieces of advice, essentially, to help him make his decision. he will get a not public facing confidential recommendation on trump's -- trump's proposed sentence from the probation department. he will also get a sentencing recommendation from trump's own lawyer, which will presumably be a nice bag of treats and a cookie because he's a good boy, and recommendations from prosecutors as well. there is no rule about whether the prosecutor's sentencing recommendation is made public, that's up to judge merchan after he tells us what the prosecutors are asking for. i can tell you tonight it's not totally leer when the judge is going to get that sentencing recommendation from prosecutors. it was due in today, but then something happened today. immediately following today's seismic supreme court ruling on presidential immunity, trump's lawyers asked the judge, advised the judge in the new york criminal case that they are going to ask him formally, they're going to file a motion, asking him essentially to set aside trump's guilty verdict despite the jury's verdict in that case after the -- excuse me, after the defense, after trump's lawyers notified the judge that they were going to ask him to set aside the verdict, prosecutors then didn't send in their sentencing recommendations as they had been expected to do. now as far as we know, the sentencing is still on. but there is an element of uncertainty now as to what kind of a hitch this might be. in finishing up this criminal case, in which trump has already been convicted. we can report tonight that trump's lawyers have asked that the sentencing itself be delayed, and we expect that judge merchan will consider delaying the sentence after he gets both that request from trump's lawyers but also after he hears from the prosecutors on that matter. now that prosecutors have delayed submitting their sentencing recommendations, does that mean the sentencing itself will be delayed? does that mean anything else material in terms of the sentence that trump will likely face or when he will hear about it? we don't know. we are waiting to hear from judge merchan. but even with all of this new uncertainty, we are in this remarkable place now, right, we are officially in the middle of this mess for the united states of america where the republican party has nominated someone for president who set off a violent effort to overthrow the government the last time he lost an election, who is starting off the month of july 2024, the month in the republican party's going to hold its nominating convention, he's starting off that month with the cfo of his company serving time in rikers, with his campaign manager and senior white house advisor steve bannon reporting today to federal prison, and who himself may be sentenced to rikers or to new york state prison depending on what sentence he's about to get after his own conviction on nearly three dozen felony charges. excellent job, republican party, great choice. i love how democrats are like, oh, how did we get into this mess? it's true that not understanding how old 81 years old looks sometimes is maybe a democratic party mistake. but democrats are not the party who picked the guy whose charity was shut down as a fraud, whose fake university was shut down as a fraud, whose business was convicted of multiple felony fraud count, whose cfo is quite literally in jail, who had one personal lawyer in prison and the other lost his license, has been charged for whatever this is, including reportedly nuclear secrets, who was found liable by a jury for sexual assault, who has been charged with more than a dozen fell enies under a rico indictment in the state of georgia, and who really has been found guilty by another jury of 30 plus felonies for which he is now awaiting a possible prison esentence. that's who you guys picked. i love that the worry in this instance is the democrats might have made a bad choice for their nominee. only in america. only in america. i will say, in fairness, if the democrats are going to change their nominee, they should maybe get on it, right? don't take advice from me on this, but it seems like common sense that, you know, just waiting a while is the worst possible solution if vice president kamala harris or anyone else is going to take over the top of the ticket instead of president biden, that candidate will need enough time to actually run a campaign and it's july. so i don't know if the democrats are going to replace joe biden at the top of the ticket or if they should. the only person who can make this decision is the nominee himself, president biden himself. but i do know that the window to make this decision is right now and it's about this wide. right? speak now or hold your peace, democrats if you actually want a chance of competing here. meanwhile, the republicans are delighted to be running their felon, the guy who really did sic the rioting mob on congress. they're really running him while he is awaiting sentencing himself for a whole separate set of dozens of unrelated felony charges. the case in which those 34 felony convictions against him were obtained is a case that took years to get into court, in part because while trump was president his justice department ordered federal prosecutors to stop their investigation of trump in conjunction with that case. we know that from the former u.s. attorney in that federal district who wrote about it in his book. they ordered that investigation stopped. they ordered trump's name and descriptions of trump's involvement in that criminal case stripped from public-facing documents in that case. so it took a while to finally get it into court, and it took state court prosecutors to do it. but now thanks to the supreme court's immunity ruling today, we know for sure that that is the only case for which trump will face trial before he is elected, if ever. and it seems important to note because we've now got certainty about that, it seems important to note at the heart of that new york case in which he was convicted of all those felony, the heart of that new york case in which he is right now awaiting sentencing even as he is awaiting the national republican convention and his nominating speech, at the heart of that case is a lie. a lie that he is still telling the american public even as he gets ready to get sentenced for being caught out in that lie and punished for it by a jury. he is sticking with the lie. he is trying to ride it back to the white house. he told the lie again in the debate last week. and so that's the second thing i want to talk about tonight, which is that i'm going to be back here tomorrow at this time. i know you are just getting used to me only being here on monday nights instead of five nights a week, but sorry, i'm here right now. i'm going to be here tomorrow at 9:00 p.m. eastern. and i hope you will come back and watch. 9:00 p.m. eastern tomorrow night, tuesday night, i am doing a special. it is an interview with the woman who is the subject of that ongoing lie from donald trump. she was the center of the criminal case against him which resulted in his 34 felony convictions and that will occasion his potential prison sentence next week. she was subpoenaed by the prosecution and served as the central witness in the prosecution's case. i have wanted to interview her for a very long time. her testimony in the trial was legitimately shocking. she would like to elaborate on that testimony. and so my interview with her is finally happening. my guest tomorrow night right here, 9:00 p.m. eastern, is stormy daniels. this will be her first u.s. interview since the guilty on all counts verdict in the case involving trump's payment to her to keep her from speaking out about her experience with him. again, her testimony at that criminal trial was crucial to his conviction. it was legitimately shocking testimony. she would like to elaborate on that testimony, and she will do so here, 9:00 p.m., tomorrow night. we'll talk about the case, we'll talk about what's happened since the case. we'll talk about what's happened to her because of her role in that case. we'll talk about what it means for what is coming next from donald trump if he is relected to the presidency. again, 9:00 p.m. eastern, tomorrow, tuesday night, i hope you will watch. now, as we await trump's sentencing in that case, this immunity ruling today from the supreme court is at hand. and i'm not a lawyer. it is, as far as i can tell in my layman's understanding, it is as radical as anything i have ever seen from the united states supreme court. i can certainly tell you that it is profoundly worse, it is a profoundly worse ruling than even the most pessimistic observers predicted. there was essentially one substantial aspect of immunity for trump that trump and his lawyers put to the court that they did not get. that was this sort of internally contradictory confusing proposal they made that a president could only be criminally prosecuted for crimes if you first impeached him in the house and convicted anymore the senate. the implication was any failed impeachment effort would effectively immunize that behavior for life. that thing about impeachment being connected in that way to a criminal prosecution, the court threw that out as nonsense, but they gave him everything else he asked for and more. they gave him immunity in every other way that he asked for it, including things his own lawyer conceded weren't among trump's official acts as president. things that trump's lawyer conceded were private acts were described in today's majority ruling as things for which trump might nevertheless potentially get immunity. here's how justice sonia sotomayor put it in her dissent today. she said that the court, quote, refuses to designate any course of conduct alleged in the indictment as private, despite concessions from trump's counsel. she continues, when asked about allegations that private actors helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding and trump and a co-conspirator attorney directed that effort, trump's counsel conceded the alleged conduct by trump was private. she then says, quote, only the majority, meaning only the majority ruling in the court today, thinks that organizing fraudulent slates of electors might qualify as an official act of the president. in other words, trump may be even more protected from prosecution on the fake electors thing than even trump asked for. justice sotomayor's dissent is being cited widely today, not only because of its heat -- and it is considerably hot -- but also because of the light that it sheds on the practical consequences of this ruling from the majority. she says, quote, looking beyond to the fate of this particular prosecution, the long-term consequences of today's decision are stark. the court effectively creates a law-free zone around the president, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the founding. this new official acts immunity now lies about like a loaded weapon efor any president that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain above the interests of the nation. the president of the united states is the most powerful person in the country and possibly the world. when he uses his official powers in any way under the majority's reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. orders the navy sale team 6 to assassinate a political sflooifl immune. organizes a military coup to hold on to power? immune. takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? immune. immune, immune, immune. let the president violate the law. let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain. let him use his official power for evil ends, because if he nigh that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. that's the majority's message today. even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and i pray they never do, the damage has been done. the relationship between the president and the people he serves has shifted. in every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law. she closes, quote, never in the history of our republic has a president had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his offer to violate the criminal law. moving forward, however, all former presidents will be cloaked in such immunity. if the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop. she says, quote, with fear for our democracy, i dissent. justice sotomayor's dissent was joined today by justice kagan and justice jackson. the three of them and through justice sotomayor's writing this dissent they have done us the favor of writing what's kind of a speaking dissent. it spells out not in legalese but in plain english the stark consequences of this ruling today. to his credit, actually, president biden did the same tonight at the white house. he said, quote, today's decision almost certainly means there's no limits to what a president can do. this is a fundamentally new principle, and it's a dangerous precedent. the power of the office will no longer be constrained by the law. even the supreme court of the united states. the only limits will be self-imposed by the president alone. but there are two practical consequences of this ruling that i feel like i need help in understanding tonight. i am worried about both of them, i have to tell you, but i feel like i need expert advice in terms of understanding what they really mean. and so i'm going to ask for some help on two things in particular. the first is this, which is not from the dissent but from the actual ruling. it's -- it's talking about the part of the federal indictment against trump for the overthrowing the government stuff, for the january 69 stuff. the part of the indictment that relates to him trying to use the justice department, trying to employ the justice department basically as a tool in his scheme to overthrow the government and hold on to power after he losz the election. on that point specifically, the ruling says this, quote, the indictment's allegations that the requested investigations were shams or proposed for an improper purpose do not divest the president of exclusive authority over the investigative and prosecutorial functions of the justice department and its officials. because the president cannot be prosecuted for conduct within his exclusive constitutional authority, trump is absolutely immune from prosecution for the alleged conduct involving his discussions with justice department officials. absolutely immune from anything related to his discussions with justice department officials. my question is, doesn't that mean the president, any president here, is being given overt, carte blanche from the court that he or she can tell the justice department to do anything for any reason? and it can never be reviewed for the life of that president? because if so, among other things, richard nixon would like his presidency back, please. if everything that happens between a president and his justice department is absolutely immune from the criminal law, is absolutely immune from not only the prosecution but investigation by the courts as a potentially criminal matter, that means that the president can do things with the justice department that -- what's the limit? my second question is about what happens next in that federal case reference there about january 6th. the justices in the majority today with judge -- with chief justice roberts writing for them said explicitly they want portions of this case sent back to the district court. so not the part that relates to trump talking to justice department officials but the other parts of it. they want those parts of indictment sent back to the district court, meaning back to the courtroom in washington, d.c., essentially for her to determine in her courtroom whether or not trump's actions as described in the indictment were official and therefore immune or were they not official which means charges can go ahead? what does that mean? what are the justices saying should happen in the courtroom and when? can what will that look like to an american public that really is actively considering right now whether to send this particular felon back to the white house thanks to the republican party of the united states. joining us now is nina totenberg, nbc legal affairs correspondent a long time supreme court reporter who was there today for the ruling. miss totenberg, it's a real honor and pleasure to have you with us here tonight. >> i'm very pleased to be here. i hope i have the answers to all your questions. >> let me ask about those last couple of points first. can you explain a little bit about what the justices in the majority, what the ruling said today about a conversation between a president and justice department officials. >> well, what the court said is that the president is unlike -- the presidency is unlike the other two branches of government. the house and senate have hundreds of members. the judiciary has hundreds of judges. and at the top of it are nine supreme court justices, but the president is just one person and he controls the entire executive branch is basically what chief justice roberts said. and that means he controls the justice department too and he can call up the justice department and say do this or don't do this at least as i understood what the chief justice was saying, that is within his prerogative as the chief executive of the united states of america. and it's true that those of us who lived through watergate thought we had seen the supreme court say, well, you can't really corrupt the fbi and the rule of law through -- by ordering various members of the justice department to do corrupt things, but that, in fact, see