0 felt this way. it's like we have been out there in oblivion just so separated from the people we love. >> oh, listen, it is a tough time right now. we know that you are all tired and hurting and facing difficult decisions about the days ahead. and we are not here to be pollyanna about 2021 at all. but good has a way of showing up. proving that kindness and resilience can always prevail, even in a time like this. so be safe out there. riedout fans, we love you, and happy holidays. that's tonight's riedout. "all in with chris hayes" starts now. tonight on "all in," donald trump appeals to the supreme court. jim jordan begins his own delay tactics and why legal scholars are getting loud over the inaction from the justice department. then why the first cooperation agreement for a proud boy could be a big deal. alarming new reporting on the non-stop multi-state pressure campaign to overturn the 2021 election. why the verdict in kim potter's manslaughter trial surprised so many and four months after our last troops left afghanistan why america and the world need to act to end the afghanistan hunger crisis. "all in" starts right now. good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes. donald trump is now trying to run out clock on the investigation into his coup attempt. he wants to stop the january 6th committee from getting access to his records by claiming dubiously executive privilege. now, as i noted there, that claim was already rejected by the sitting president who gets to decide, one would think, president biden, also by a federal judge, then by an appeals court earlier this month. trump was then given two weeks to appeal his case in the supreme court before the documents were released, and so today exactly two weeks later trump's lawyers finally filed that appeal to the supreme court on the last possible day. that is, of course, intentional because it is all part of a larger strategy to drag the process out as long as possible. something that has been incredibly successful throughout trump's long career. to try to stop the delay tactics, the house is asking for the supreme court to expedite its decision on whether or not to take the case. lawmakers are planning to file a brief next week asking the court to make a decision no later than january 14th. if the court were to follow their normal rules, they wouldn't discuss the case until mid-february. even if they expedited that, the trump stacked supreme court, a third of which was appointed by the former president, could still hear the case. it would require formal arguments, if this were the normal schedule, there wouldn't be a decision until june of next year. a further six-month delay for records for the bipartisan committee investigating the insurrection. that's the goal, to delay accountability as long as possible which with is why trump's allies and right-wing media keep pushing this claim of executive privilege. >> we have had executive privilege since 1794. so this is not for protection of the president, not the chief of staff ort white house counsel, the national security advisor and the top advisor. it exists so we, the people benefit of having the conversations. it's wrong what they are doing. >> george washington was president at time that he assert it. but of ours that man giving that justification jim jordan of ohio has motivations for wanting to stonewall the january 6th committee. as we outlined on the show, he was a material witness directly involved in the plotting of donald trump's coup attempt. starting months before the irnz itself, when he suggested that democrats were stealing the election in august of 2020 and culminating in a text message he forward to mark med outlining how mike pence could unilaterally throw out the results of the election on january 6th. just yesterday the january 6th committee sent congressman jordan a letter requesting information on, quote, at least one and possibly multiple communications with president trump on january 6th as well as meetings with white house officials and the then-president about strategies for overturning the results of the 2020 election. jordan, who is has called the committee a sham, will likely ignore that request. we'll see. but committee members have indicated a willingness to subpoena him if he doesn't cooperate because there are questions that jordan needs to answer, specifically about meetings with top white house officials where according to "the new york times" he help craft the strategy that would become a blueprint for trump supporters in congress, announce legal actions taken by the campaign, bolster the case with allegations of fraud. we saw all that play out in real time of course. at a minimum, jordan could shed lye light on the true nature of the effort to overturn the election in question. a kwee question. to what degree did participants fully intend for fake claims of voter fraud which trump and others corruptly pressured the justice department to help validate. it's been, of course, almost a year since the attack on the capitol. so far despite hundreds of cases against the insurrectionists themselves, the people that were actually in that building, there has been almost no accountability aside from a historic second impeachment for the people who attempted the coup incited the attack on the first place. the january 6th committee has been signaling it could go after trump. the latest today, the committee chair telling "the washington post" that trump's inaction for the hours during the insurrection could itself warrant a criminal referral. something that we have been covering here on the program. as of now the department of justice has apparently chosen not to pursue criminal charges against trump and his allies as my next guest points out. it is a chilling effect on the future of our democracy. "new york times" op-ed which he coauthor he says, to decline from the outset to investigate would be appeasement, pure and simple, and appeasing bullies and wrongdoers. without forceful action we will like any not resist what some retired generals see as a march to another insurrection in 2024. lawrence tribe joins me now. professor, first, i guess, let's start with the argument you're making in the piece along with your co-authors. what do you think the department of justice under attorney general merit merit, former student of yours, should be doing that they are not doing? >> we don't know for sure what they are doing because merrick garland is very good at holding his cards close and he is very good at following the normal rules of not revealing things. but by this time in the mueller investigation a great deal had already happened. manafort and gates had been indicted. papadopoulos had been charged and was cooperating fully. bannon and miller had been interviewed according to media reports. so it looks like the department of justice is waiting and waiting is playing into trump's hand. as you pointed out in the setup to this piece, his strategy is to run out clock. the committee itself may not exist after the next election because we are told that if the republicans take over the house, first thing they will do is dissolve the committee. you can stonewall a congressional committee and, as we have seen, trump is running out clock on something as simple as, obviously, invalid claim of executive privilege to withhold presidential papers that every judge who looked at it so far say need to be turned over. it's not so easy to stonewall a grand jury. it seems to me that the key point, because the blueprint for all of the criminal offenses that may have been committed by trump and by others at the top, has already been carefully laid out by a number of scholars and former prosecutors. the key point is not to try to decide right now whether to indict trump. there are all kinds of arguments about maybe should be shouldn't be indicted because maybe a jury would buy his claim, he was so deluded that he thought he won the election. all of that is premature. what we need to do is not to wait before conductk a full-blown department of justice investigation with a grand jury and all of the rest of it. an investigation of everybody at the top, getting the foot soldiers, including some who pleaded guilty as long ago as april, to cooperate. at that point, rather than waiting and waiting and waiting for the january 6th committee to reach its conclusions, maybe criminal referrals, you know, we can have two things going at the same time. when a ship is leaking, you don't say i am going to try to plug the hole, let somebody else do it first. a lot of people say time is really of the essence. it's never too late to start. and if merrick garland is not already begined up a full-blown investigation he should have done so yesterday, if not yesterday, tomorrow. the investigation doesn't need to decide in advance whether all of the down sides of an indictment should or should not prevent us from indicting. that's for a later day. but the investigation has to go full speed ahead. and when you are being investigated for criminal activity and maybe informed that you are a possible target, that tends to focus the mind, and the mind of the country needs to be focused on this because however important other things are, we really are running out clock on democracy itself. the leading expert on the civil wars around the world, barbara walter of the university of california and san diego has a book which she says by all objective measures we are 50% away from a civil war. not the standard blue, you know, blue costumes versus gray costumes civil war, but utter chaos, breakdown of the rule of law. and the rule of law depends on having institutions that we can trust. that depends on the idea that no one is above the law. if you don't start holding everybody at the top accountable at least to the point of being subject to full-blown investigation, then we're really giving up and i don't think we should give up on that democracy. >> so the big question here, right, i mean, obviously, it's a novel -- there is not really great precedent in any direction, right? the actions taken by the president were unprecedented. what happened was unprecedented. so when you are trying to sort of figure out, you know, if you are merrick garland or the folks in the department of justice are approaching this question in good faith, one question is, is there sufficient factual predicate to open a criminal investigation knowing that doing so would be very hard to keep close, right? and my understanding of reading your op-ed and, like, what is entering into the public record, the actioning taken by the president in public are sufficient to open a criminal investigation into specific possible crimes in the u.s. criminal code that he committed. >> it's very clear that there are specific crimes of which even the public evidence is very, very strong. we saw him foment an insurrection. we saw him give aid and comfort to those who did. we watched while, for three hours, he did nothing. we now know that all kinds of messages were reaching him through meadows saying, you've got to do something. we know that he was engaged in a plan or at least it certainly looks like he was engaged in a plan, there is enough evidence to have an investigation, the point of which is to generate further evidence if it exists, a plan to overturn the election. he was asking brad raffensperger, just find me votes. he was pressuring people in the justice department, just say the election was stolen. i'll take care of the rest. he was, obviously, doing any number of things in public that, if they don't warrant an investigation, nothing would. and if any other person in the world did what he did, they would be the subject of a criminal investigation already. so we have to pray that this guy is because he should not be above the law, and what happened last time is going to be multiplied because certainly they've learned lessons from how they didn't do it as effectively as they might. and we've got to learn lessons as well. >> final question for you on the court and the petition for cert interest the president's attorneys. this is not as far as i can tell from the legal minds that i trust, including my wife, particularly close call, but, you know, i guess there is a question of the court could just not grant cert, allow the appellate court's ruling to stand. if it were anyone else they would probably do that. there is no real controversy here. what do you think is the likelihood they will do that? >> if they care more about seeming like a real court, and several of them have indicated over and over again, steve breyer, amy coney barrett, others have said we are not political hacks. we are not politicians in robes. we are real judges. if they want to prove they are real judges, they would do what any court would do with any other precedent in any other circumstance, when non-existent claims of executive privilege are invoked, to keep secret information that is vital not only for exposing and holding accountable but for planning how to strengthen our democracy with new legislation, any normal court would say get out of here. there is no legal claim worth it. now, if this court doesn't do that, that will reinforce my bebelieve that it's hardly a court at all. and that would be tragic. >> professor lawrence tribe, thank you so much for your time. enjoy the holidays. >> thank you. you, too. to. all right. for the first time a proud boy is now cooperating with investigators. what he told them about the group's plan to overturn the election on january 6th and insight into the thousands of other people who showed up at the capitol. >> we, the people, are not going to take it anymore. you are not going to take aware our trump-y bear. you are not going to take away our votes and our freedom that our men died for. we, the people, will never give up. >> from trumpy bear to plea deal, how a salon owner from beverly hills stormed the capitol and what she told prosecutors next. what she told prosecutors next