Transcripts For MSNBC The ReidOut 20241003 : vimarsana.com

MSNBC The ReidOut October 3, 2024

And if you're not, i'm going to be very disappointed in you. I'll tell you right now. A new filing from special counsel jack smith reveals bomb shell never before seen evidence about donald trump and the election interference case. Also tonight, the damming nonanswer when jd vance refused to say that trump lost that 2020 election he tried to steal. Plus, while vance was acting normal at the debate, trump was spiraling out of control, with increasingly confused, nonsensical, meandering remarks. But we begin tonight with the 2020 election. And special counsel jack smith's newest legal filing that lays out in clear terms how candidate trump in his personal capacity lost that 2020 presidential election and resorted to crimes to try to stay in office any way. This brand new filing came after leonard leo's six blessed donald trump with broad immunity as a former president for official acts taken while in office. With this document, the special counsel is trying to convince u. S. District judge tonya chutkan that trump's crimes are not protected by presidential immunity because they were committed as a private citizen, or as a candidate for office. While we have known about the alleged crimes, today's filing outlines stunning new details of how trump and his allege coconspirators perpetrated this crime against all americans. According to smith, what fueled the multiple crimes was trump's deseepts and desperate efforts to use knowingly false claims of election fraud to disrupt the electoral process. Trump knew the election was close. He knew it would take time to count ballots. And that his lead would vanish. Privately he told the vice president's chief of staff, that he would simply declare victory before all the ballots were counted. And every lie after would work towards the same goal ending the american democratic process. According to smith, in the immediate post election period while the defendant claimed fraud without proof, his private operative sought to create chaos. To that point, smith explains how a campaign employee who is at a ballotcounting location in detroit, michigan, ordered a colleague to, quote, give me options to file litigation, even if it's b. S. The colleague then suggested that there was about to be unrest, reminiscent of the brooks brother's riot, a violent effort to stop the vote count in florida after the 2000 presidential election. Trump campaign staffer responded, make them riot. Do it. A few weeks later, a lawyer for the republican national committee told the rnc spokesperson that one of trump's nevada lawsuits regarding dead voters had little chance of succeeding because the claims were substantiating, that accurate, legal analysis was forwarded to a trump that accurate legal analysis was forward to a trump white house staffer five days before trump amplified the lies in the lawsuit. That same rnc lawyer was highly critical of rudy giuliani, who was trump's personal lawyer and spearheading the very public legal campaign boosting false allegations in court. The rnc lawyer said, what giuliani and others are doing is a joke. And they're getting laughed out of court. According to smith, rudy didn't like that and threatened to have trump fire him. Days later, rudy called rnc chair ronna mcdaniel and had him relieved of his duties. All these examples link individuals who were working on behalf of trump, in his private capacity as a candidate. And they all knowingly lied to undermine the election with the goal of decertifying on january 6th, which brings us to former vice president mike pence. In this newly unsealed document smith explains to chutkan how he intends to prove that conversations between trump and pence were not conversations about pence's official responsibilities but rather in private capacities as running mates. This will be a key argument since pence was a primary witness to trump's illegal activity. Currently cloaked in protection thanks to the leonard leo six. What judge chutkan decides will determine if the case survives. But what you decide at the ballot box will determine if donald trump will ever be held accountable for his crimes against our democracy. Joining me now is katie phang, trial attorney and host of the katie phang show. Hugo lowell correspondent for the guardian and michael steele, the former chairman of the rnc. Katie, i want to start with you. Here is the filing. I've been reading through it as fast as i can. I'm sure you're got an lot further than i have and understand it a lot more thoroughly. Tell us what is new here and what is new here that judge chutkan will have to deal with in determining whether these are official acts? yes, joy. It's a 165page filing. We knew that. We knew that because previously jack smith as special counsel indicated that he had complied with instructions to be able to file a redacted version of the document. And it had to be filed under seal. Meaning we could not initially see it because until judge chutkan made a determination, none of us will be able to get the contents. Frankly the redactions are not really a lot. And what judge chutkan did was say, wholesale, i agree with you, jack smith. What you are seeking is not only legal but appropriate in this case. What's interesting is donald trump didn't disagree with jack smith. He wanted further redactions and hypocritically because he said he was in fear for the safety of prospective witnesses, et cetera, the hypocrisy abounds. Most importantly what we see here is a very tight, very wellwritten document that allows the american public to fully explore the extent of the criminality of donald trump. To your point, we knew that crimes were being committed. But you had to operate f you're jack smith, within the confines of the supreme court. And you had to tee it up in a way that allows judge chutkan to do your job to make factual findings as to the conduct of donald trump. And the law is clear. And what jack smith does is he weaves in the law. But you got 85 pages, joy, of straightup facts and evidence as supported by the appendix, meaning the exhibits that were filed by jack smith. But after those 85 pages, jack smith makes it clear that the law does not allow a private citizen or a candidate for office to be able to get immunity for that conduct. And so there is new information that is contained within this filing. But what's not new is theematically the idea that donald trump would stop at nothing, would commit crimes to ensure that he cheated the american people of their vote in 2020. Right. I mean, hugo, you can go through it. The smith filing, white house staffer says he overheard trump say, win or lose, you have to fight like hell. There's p15, white house aide, and trump's body man in the west wing name is nick luna, testifying before federal grand jury in 2023. Luna overheard trump said to melania, daughter and sonl and jared and ivanka while aboard marine one, smith considers the statement to be private. He heard trump overtell family members it doesn't matter if you win or lose the election, you have to fight like hell. What this indicates to my reading of it is that donald trump was told numerous times he lost the election. He knew he lost the election but that his strategy going in is i'm just going to say i won. Look, among the new parts of the evidence that was presented in this brief was, number one, trump was talking with all sorts of people, preelection, october 2020, that he was going to do this, that he was going to sew doubt in the outcome of the election regardless of what happened. If he won, great, he won. If he lost, this was preplanned. Jack smith goes to great lents saying this is clearly a conspiracy if even before the election you are going to say you're going to basically say i won any way. That was number one. Number two, there is this theme that jack smith comes back to over and over again in trying to show that they can continue with this case to trial. And that is trump consistently used other people to do his dirty work. And if you're using other people, private actors, to do your bidding, to get, for instance, pressure pence to object to the certification on january 6th, that is a crime. And by the way, that's not in the confines of the official conduct of the presidency. Yeah. Because presidents don't get private actors to go do their things to commit crimes. That's a theme that comes other and over. Nick luna, for instance s a really interesting example you bring up. Nick luna now is on jd vance's team, back with the trump campaign after taking some time out. So these people are coming back into the fold. And this is a reminder of just what they went through and what the situation was in 2020. And by the way, michael steele, the pence part of it is really interesting because we have all of these numerous instances after the election in which pence is sort of walking donald trump like he's a 2yearold in saying, you know, it's fine that you want to do your lawsuits, you want to do your thing. But at a certain point, big boy, you have to try to be a big boy and admit that you lost. And he keeps trying to sort of walk him gently to this point. To which donald trump responds by saying, if people want to hang mike pence, they should just do it because he's too weak to help me. Yeah. In many respects that's probably one of the more stunning moments. There are many. That's saying something. Because you have trump being told what's happening. And he's basically, well, i don't care. So what. So what. So what they want to hang him. Good riddance. Yeah. He didn't do anything for me. He didn't help me. He didn't do what i wanted him to do. So that is very, very damning. It gives you a sense of exactly going back to what hugo was saying, this space that donald trump had created long before we get to january 6th. And with which he laid down the predicate for what was going to happen that day. That he was so callous in his thinking that he didn't care. He would never care. When you start out by saying, well, i know you're telling me that you know, this is the way the process is. I know you're telling me, you know, mike pence or legal team or fill in the blank, what you think this is. But i'm telling you what it's going to be. It doesn't matter if i win or lose. Because this is going to be the outcome i want. And so i think that what you see jack smith doing here, saying, all right. You've tried to screw with this case at every turn. And we're here now because your lawyers wanted to protract this thing out and push it back, hoping that the whole thing would just blow up under its own weight in the judicial system. But he carved out that space. Right? it's like this raging storm of appeals and the b. S. That jack smith had to go through. He said he went through and carved out all of these pieces. And he is intricately linked them together to show, all right, you want to talk about personal acts? you want to talk about nonpresidential acts? well here they are, judge chutkan. And supreme court, you can choke on this. Because here it is. Yeah. It's amazing what's in those 160 pages. Let me just december 21 private lunch pence encouraged the defendant not to look at the election as a loss, just an intermission, filed later in the day by a private discussion in the oval office which the defendant asked pence what do you think we should do? pence said after we exhausted every legal process in the courts and congress, if we still come up short, the defendant should take a bow. Jack smith claims these conversations like these hugo don't relate to pence's role. This seems obvious. Because you know, what john roberts essentially did is to say, total immunity and to try to get trump out of this problem. But the problem is, when you just read the plain facts of what trump was doing, there's nothing about that that's the job of the president. Yeah. Or the vice president. 100%. And all the way through the 165 pages jack smith goes to great lengths to say, look, the supreme court laid out this test. This is the law of the land now. Presidential immunity exists. But as long as trump was acting as a candidate for office, everything he does under that moniker is not covered by presidential immunity. So he goes through the list. He goes through january 4, for instance, when trump meets with pence and john eastman and they exclude the white house counsel from that meeting, as they're trying to pressure pence to object to the certification. Jack smith goes there is no clearer definition of private conduct when you're excluding the white house counsel and having a personal lawyer. Same again on january 5 on a phone call, trump and pence and john eastman trying to pressure pence. Again, they exclude other people from getting on the call. Only trump personal attorney on the call. Katie, what are the chances this gets appealed, somehow this goes through the process, judge chutkan makes a ruling saying this trial can move forward. Does this wind up in the hands of john roberts? what jack smith did is he gave it all. He put it all out there in this filing because he knows what's going to happen is chutkan is almost 100% agree with his assessments set forth by him. And because of that, despite trump's protestations otherwise, it's going to get appealed. The decision by chutkan will go to the d. C. Circuit. The d. C. Circuit already determined that there's no immunity for donald trump in this capacity, meaning there was this whole issue of misconduct. So now you have to get it back to the supreme court. But what jack smith did which is so beautiful and elegant, is he cites to amy coney barrett when it comes to fake elector schemes and the fact that she said that cannot be private conduct when your doing this with the fake electors. And the other thing that really hurts donald trump is the following two things, one, there's forensics on his phone that we're learning about that has been done by jack smith that was included this n this filing. And mark meadows. Tried to remove this from state court to federal court. Findings from mark meadows conduct done wasn't official is being boot strapped by jack smith into this filing to show that what donald trump did, especially in georgia, was not official conduct and so he doesn't get immunity. Our panel will stick with us for much more on this damning trump filing and in light of this news, one debate answer from jd vance that's truly concerning to our democracy. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. When we started feeding bogie the farmer's dog, he lost so much weight. Preportioned packs makes it really easy to keep him lean and healthy. In the morning, he flies up the stairs and hops up on my bed. In the past, he would not have been able to do any of those things. () looking good, guys! thanks! vacations are better with the credit gods are on your side. I'm coming up! rewards once available to the few are now accessible to the many. Earn points for travel with

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