the survivors of the sandy hook elementary school shooting, graduating from high school. they were just first-graders when they tragically lost 20 of their classmates in that massacre 12 years ago tonight they still feel the weight of that loss this is such a monumental guy and we all can feel what we ve lost should been all royal classmates 391. one last time. and i just can t i gave you that. i can never be that. i think we all are carrying your memory through us and making sure that they re walking stage right there with us. the school s principal reading the names of all 20 students who were murdered in that attack, also leading a moment of silence and honoring, of course, the six teachers and administrators were also killed wearing white and green ribbons on their gowns, each inscribed with forever in our hearts to remember the victims it is a tragedy that has understandably shape the course of their lives. many of the survivors now activists, some of them meeting recently with vice president kamala harris to push for gun control thanks so much for joining us tonight. america hill, ac30 60 starts now tonight, not 360 breaking news, a gun, eight clips two axis, one, weighted whip, knives handcuffs, a stun gun one suspect. all we are learning about the man arrested in new york with all this in his suv. and what authorities think he had planned for it. also tonight, what happens when the attorney general of the united states is held in contempt of congress and the effort is led by a congressman famous for defying how subpoena and later this will both fill your heart and break it. randy k. with surviving first-graders of the sandy hook massacre. now, high school graduates john berman here, infer anderson and we do begin with the breaking news and i just want to show you again what new york police officers found in the back of a ford explorer, they pulled over early this morning in the city s queens borough. it is frankly terrifying seen as john miller himself, a veteran of the nypd and fbi, joins us now, along with former fbi deputy director andrew mccabe and john just just tell us what more authorities are learning about this man and what they found in his car? while they re doing the deep die, if you ve got the nypd detective bureau, but also the nypd s intelligence bureau, which specializes in counterterrorism matters and the joint terrorism i m taskforce with the fbi all peeling back as life on one hand, what you re not finding yet and may never find is that he was radicalized, that he was in contact with an overseas terrorist group or that he had a plan to commit an act of terrorism. the concerning fees, as you have very well-framed with pictures is that he was driving around in a car equipped to do so. not only the weapons, but a collapsible button with the words carved into it in arabic god forgive me. a social media page that displays, and this isn t secret information. i went to his social media page and looked it has a flag that has been used before by al-qaeda in one of the images. so they have to figure out what s going on with him from family members, what their hearing is troubled, having problems with drugs hugs perhaps meth paranoid, and somebody who who may just be going through some mental health issues. but the danger is clear. do they just pull this guy over randomly they saw that his license plate were covered by one of those plastic things you can buy them at auto stories, it s basically meant to thwart the red light cameras in the speed cameras on the traffic violation. they looked in the car and they said they saw a knife on the seat, asked him to step out of the car so a taser and then a gun also between the front seats. and that led to the arrest for weapons charges in the search of the car. so not complete luck that they found it, but it s certainly something that could have slipped through heading on the license great example, an andy mccabe will tell you this. i m how routine police works sometimes better than the best intelligence is. what can keep your head of one of these incidents, andy, that arsenal, that this man had in the suv can bind with the qualities that john just described there, how much damage couldn t have done oh, i mean, john, there s a there s really no no limit to what this guy could have done with that sort of arsenal. and the thing that really jumps out to me is the nine magazines, nine loaded magazines to go along with the glock semi-automatic pistol. i mean, that is someone who is ready to shoot oh lot. so even if there is no connection to terrorism here, even this is, if this is a lone actor, these very heads up on the ball, police officers may have stopped a mass shooting, may have stopped some sort of a stabbing spree in a large group of people which you can find anywhere on the streets of manhattan, pretty much anytime you want. so what they may have stopped here, well, we ll maybe never know. but no question. john s absolutely right. this is the result of really solid police work. taking a look at something that s clearly illegal, doing this sort of reasonable investigation that follows from that picking up on all the signs and taking a step to really make sure that new yorkers are safe. i can tell you that my former colleagues, john s former colleagues at the joint terrorism task force. i m sure all over this right now, they re john said peeling this guy s life back. but what they re most concerned about right now, john is who this guy may have been talking to. they want to fully frame out his network of associates, people, he s corresponding with on social media. what were those conversations in those communications like to the extent that they can be recreated, they want to know if this guy has anyone else in his orbit who is similarly armed or similarly inclined andy said the clips or what, what s most concerning, what about the mta vested in the police bulletproof vest? what does that indicate? that s interesting. the two least two deadly items on the table could be the ones that tell us the most an mta vest that will get you into restricted areas in the subway believing that you re a subway worker the police bulletproof vest is not the standard best it s the heavy, vest, it s the plate carrier that is meant to stop heavier weapons and he has put an nypd patch on it so we re talking about someone who is driving in a black suv that kind of looks like an unmarked police car with this other indicia you wonder what it was for nand just finally either is a day after that sources tell cnn at eight tajik nationals with potential ties to terrorism and possible links to isis members over see is were arrested in the us. again, the ipd stress is way too early to determine if this arrested eight has any connection to terror groups but you do get the sense that authorities right now are on alert for a potential attacks john this is a beacon. it should, it should really get people s attention to the fact that even though we re not talking about stuff like this, every day, our intelligence folks are law enforcement folks, people who are focusing on the counterterrorism targets and threats they are at a very high state of alert. we know this because what the leaders have told us recently fbi director christopher wray testified recently about the increased threat awareness from the community in this country that may be inspired by or connected to hamas actor. so there is a whole broad range you very concerning threats and we re fortunate to have those folks watching those things closely and became great to see a john miller will get you back to digging, find out what you can. thanks very much. more breaking news on capitol hill late today, the republican controlled house made attorney general merrick garland, the third attorney general to be held in contempt of congress. garlin now joins obama attorney general, eric holder, and trump attorney general william barr in the history books. in this case is for refusing to turn over audio recordings of interviews that president biden did with a special counsel, who later declined to prosecute him. but vote was both politically driven and somewhat rich in that one of those pushing hardest for this house judiciary chair, jim jordan fight a subpoena to appear before the house january 6 committee with us now, from capitol hill, seen as meloni s the nose. so how did the vote breakdown today, melanie, will john this vote fell almost entirely along party lines, just one republican that s dave joyce of ohio, voted against this contempt the dilution, while all republicans voted for it. and of course, all democrats voted against it. so now it s really up to the doj to determine whether they re or actually going to prosecute attorney general merrick garland, which of course is very unlikely to happen, especially since price on and biden did assert executive privilege over those audio recordings which were of his interview with the special counsel in relation to the classified documents case. but speaker mike johnson said, regardless of what ends up happening or not happening, this was an important step for the house to take. just listen. we did our job on the contempt i think it sends an important message. we re defending article one and ariff, the wording for oversight, and we have to do that we ll see what happens next. but i the house has to do its work and i m pleased with the outcome. so again, this is a largely symbolic vote. it s much more likely to end up in federal court than it is in a prosecution, but it is a dramatic escalation in the feud between congress in the doj with merrick garland now become just the latest attorney general to be held in contempt. the congress john. so we did mention that the congressman jim jordan, defied a subpoena to a b appear before the house january 6 committee. did he ever face any consequences for that? yes. so he never complied with that subpoena to appear before the committee to talk about his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election in the house, which was run by democrats at the time, opted not to hold him in contempt of commerce. so no, jordan did not face any repercussions for his decision to defy that congressional subpoena. but speaker mike johnson was asked at a press conference earlier this morning, how can republicans hold merrick garland in contempt for oh, congress for defining a congressional subpoena when several of their own republican members have done exactly that. but johnson just responded by attacking the january 6, but committee and falsely calling it an illegitimate panel. john, we ll get to that milliner zone with thanks for being with us. appreciate it with us. now, maryland democratic congressman jamie raskin, congressman. thanks so much for being with us what s your reaction to the house vote to hold the attorney general in contempt in your mind? what helped could the audio recordings provide that the transcripts cannot well, it s a ridiculous motion in a ridiculous decision it s really the first time in american history that someone has been held in contempt by the us congress for complying with a subpoena from congress there s been overwhelming compliance in this case. what they were interested in was president biden s testimony before the special counsel the attorney general, the department justice, turned over the entire testimony verbatim, the entire transcript. they turned over all of the correspondence related did to it, and they even produce the special counsel himself, robert hur, who came over and spent several hours testifying and answering all questions about it. so they were saying they wanted to audio tape like they wanted the e-book. it wasn t enough to have the book itself. they wanted the audio book to go with it and everybody on capitol understands that they are looking for in president biden s more than five hours of testimony, which he gave during the time right after the terrorists to try cities on october 7 some verbal lapses, some mispronounced words or some ohms, or some us or something like that. and that s all for the purposes of creating a political tv attack ad. and everybody knows that that s what it s about. about and it s a ridiculous waste and abusive congressional resources and it was particularly rich as i think you said, and as i said on the house floor today, that this is coming from people who did not support contempt citations against people who really completely blew off congress and produced no documents and no testimony. people like steve bannon and some of those members who spoke on the floor on behalf of holding the attorney general united states in contempt themselves had never responded in any substantive way. to the subpoenas that were sent to them by the bipartisan january 6 select committee, which by the way, was found to be perfectly legitimate by multiple courts when our jurisdiction or authority was challenged in any way, let me play let me play what house speaker mike johnson had to say about that, specifically the idea of jim jordan who did not come comply with your subpoenas, you were on that committee. listen oh, i m so glad you brought up the january 6 committee. we ll be talking a lot more about that in the coming weeks. there s been a lot of investigation about that committee. i don t think it was properly constituted. i don t think it was it was properly administered. and now we know that apparently some of the evidence was hidden and some maybe even destroyed so you ll see, you ll hear much more about that in the days ahead. you talk about apples to oranges. there couldn t be a more clear contrast between that and what we re talking about here. do you see this is apples and oranges and respond if you d like to his charge that your committee was on lawfully constituted yeah, it s of course the exact opposite of what speaker johnson just said every federal court to look at this said that the january 6 select committee, which was a bipartisan committee with the democratic chair in a republican vice chair was completely lawfully constituted and lawfully operated and none of the people who tried to litigate against us, one in any way, they re just repeating a bunch of stale obsolete charges that have already been repudiated by federal courts and jamie are asking, we do appreciate your time and i thank so much for being with us you ve got my pleasure and then looking ahead to the former president s meeting with republican lawmakers on capitol hill tomorrow with a party. now, almost totally remade in his own image. and the latest don john on kings all over the map series tonight, he talks with deeply divided auto workers in the swing state of michigan about their presidential choices in november you give, and you give, now you get with straight talk wireless, you get unlimited data and you get to choose who gets on your family plans starting at just $25 a line, doesn t have to 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after when he said that it was almost two months later, february 25th, but just 12 days after the attack, he said this there s no question nod. their president trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day lindsey graham will also meet with the former president, now, a convicted felon here is what he said the evening of january 6, trump and i we ve had a hell of a journey. i hate it then this way. oh my god, i hate it. from my point of view, it s been a consequential president. but today first thing you ll see all i can say is count me out enough is enough actually for him. it wasn t. he later claimed that what he said there did not really mean what plainly does. then he endorsed the man almost unconditionally and just to underscore something you said earlier if he is convicted, you will still support him in both for him absolutely the former president is also expected to meet with house republicans tomorrow and separately, members of a business roundtable. well, this down new york times senior political correspondent, maggie haberman, also former colorado republican congressman ken buck. maggie, first you what would is on the agenda for this meeting, particularly the senate meeting? what does donald trump and the trump campaign hope to gain from it? they ve been pretty vague about the specifics of what they re hoping to talk about. it s been left sort of in broad strokes about policy the border medicare, social security. and i expect we will hear a lot about that. but i think this is mostly as one lawmaker put it to me about trump trying to garner enthusiasm the senators in particular, as you know, this is the first time he s going to be in a room with mitch mcconnell s since 2020 and the senate republicans, unlike house republicans, have been a group that have been not more resistant to him, but certainly less pliant in turn because of his demands. however, we have seen in the days since his conviction in manhattan is a pretty broad array of republicans, including senators, rallying around him and saying that this conviction tonight s improper or that democrats should be investigated or prosecutors should be prosecuted and i think this might be a different tone of meeting than we ve seen him have with senators for you know, congressman in 2017 when trump took office, the first time, there were some republican members of congress who went their own way are pushed back on some controversial statements or some policies that he had at the time are there any of them really left doo doo non trump republicans have any power and congress anymore well, one, i think this is going to be a great opportunity for president trump to be surrounded by republicans after felony convictions and show that he is still the leader of the party and is still generates a doozy asm. i think that there are some republicans who are running in biden districts, districts of president biden won in 2020, that will be concerned about being too close to president trump. and i think president trump understands that they have to win their races so while they won t push back verbally, they won t push back publicly they will certainly have some distance before they re election in november. so omega, as we said, mitt romney, lisa murkowski won t be there, i guess not for them specifically, but maybe others who haven t been fully in the trump camp. what outreach has there been from trump or the trump campaign? do they do the outreach thing they do actually do the outreach thing. they have people who worked in trump s world or close to trump s world, who do a lot of congressional relations. brian jack before he ran for congress himself, did a lot of that work. there are others who have taken over the political work there are people who work for trump directly, who have their own relationships. they do do outreach. but again, it s not always the kind of traditional political outreach we have experienced before. in the past are seen in the past. in some cases it is. i mean, one thing i will say about trump is he has been working the phones a lot himself. i mean, there are republicans who to have been shown over and over as these primaries took place, that trump is dominating and he s not going away and he is the presumptive nominee now and yes, there are some people who have races that it is more sensitive to be close to trump and they need some distance from him, but they recognize that he is potentially going to win the polling at the moment is showing him slightly ahead in a number of polls, not all of them, but in a number of them. and so there are cognizant of the fact that he is faring well and the message is clear to them that they may not want to be so at odds with the leader of their party. congressmen, as we mentioned, in addition to the congressional meetings, he s going to speak with ceos and business roundtable. i want to play you a portion of a speech he gave in new jersey and get your reaction i ll give you a trump middle-class, upper class, lower lower-class business-class, big tax cut you re going to have the biggest tax cut so big tax cuts across the board, including new business tax cuts, i guess on top of the 2017, 2018 tax cuts, is that even possible well, anything s possible it depends on who has majority of the house and who has a majority in the senate. if the republicans are in the majority of both and president trump wins reelection, then certainly something s possible. you only need a majority vote in the senate to pass a tax cut as we did the last tax cut, i m not sure what the appetite is going to be for a big tax cut. i think that he may want to play around the margins, but it ll be interesting to see if he can get a majority of republicans if there s especially if it s a small majority in either the senate or the house to go for a big tax. good. so in the senate, maggie, tomorrow you ve got jd vance tim, scott, marco rubio, and the house side, byron donalds. these are all people on the vp list, at least the ones that we know about how much auditioning do you think might be going on in public? but behind closed doors for everyone to see i don t think it s going to be that different than what we ve seen in public. john, i mean, what we ve seen in public is a number of these folks, not all of them, but a number of them show up at the manhattan courthouse where trump was on trial. we have seen them hold press conferences and denounce the charges against him. we have seen them defend him. i mean, i think there were few defenders that donald trump has on television anyway, who are as vocal as jd vance and i expect you will continue to see that. but the jockeying has been gone going on in private in public. i don t think it will be a massive change in private tomorrow. i do think you will see trump do what he often does, which is work the room talking, taking informal polls praising this one, praising that one, it will very much be a topic life is an audition. maggie haberman, former congressman chem luck, right to see you both. and i thank so much. thank you quit programming. okay. don t miss the source with kaitlan collins. her guest is former fulton county special prosecutor, nathan wade, who resigned from the former president s georgia election subversion case. and that s right here at the top of the hour coming yep. can t president biden rely on union rank and file members to help him squeak out another when in michigan, john king has the reporting for his all over the map series that s next this. is carbonic and this is how you can sell us your car. visit carbonic. answer a few questions, will give you a real offer. then sat a time for us to pick it up and hey, you on the sayyed your car the easy way with carmona you can expect to find crystal clear audio expensive display space and more comfort for everyone but we still left room for all the unexpected things. you ll find handout here. the new 2024 grand 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a chance to frame it for you. the most anticipated moment of this election and the stakes couldn t be higher. the president and the former president one state to two very different visions for america s future. the cnn presidential debates thursday, june 27th, nine live on cnn and streaming on max part of her all over the map series with john king, which seeks out crucial voting blocs and battleground states. we have reported on president biden s struggles in mush, when michigan, last month, john spoke with younger voters, upset with the president s role in the israel-hamas war. john has returned in michigan this time with a focus on what had once been a reliably solid democratic voting block. union workers. the united auto workers, for instance, has endorsed president biden, but donald trump has made clear in inroads into that. once unquestioned support and john king is with this now, so john, you spoke to auto workers. what are they had to say about the election? number one, they re very happy with the new contract they got last year after a strike. most of the auto workers told us they got more than they expected. most of them very happy, very proud. the president not states joe biden came out to walk the picket line. that was a little bit history. no president had done that, but inside the factory, the president showing up to help in the contract fight does not translate into universal support. donald trump still has a lot of blue collar appeal 30 years at the same job means you develop a routine. so when the united auto workers called the strike last fall tone, urine, khan was a little lost we were scared it was weird because none of us ever thought we d actually be out on strike and we didn t know what to expect and i mean, in living memory for it hadn t been on strike. i think it was the early 70s shoulders, knees, hips, right yeah. hard work for six weeks. the local 900 union hall was to place to get a meal. now, you can grab a biden harris yard sign. the president s pro-union record included joining the picket line. it showed solidarity with everyday men and women that are putting their lives on the line and putting their paychecks on the line for a better living it mattered. did it change the conversation about him at all inside the plants? no, i don t think it did if you had a secret ballot in there, how would it come up in the rankin file? it goes about 50, 50. maybe it ll move a small percentage in michigan is a state where small percentage is matter. so maybe it ll be 51, 49, but no doubt for you. no doubt for me now i m supporting president biden in this election. it s way down from detroit s heyday, but 134,000 members still makes the uaw a force in battleground, michigan crus via tally works in engine development at chrysler and believes president biden s push for more electric vehicles hurts business. the government seems to be appeasing the coasts everyone who lives in manhattan thinks everyone should drive an electric car vitale, he says he will again ignore union leadership and vote trump a third time hoping to end the ev mandates and to get better trade rules. i ve watched this region go from the arsenal of democracy loom. now, we re happy if we can get a sports stadium or we re going to sell wheat or fireworks or whatever it s absolutely pathetic. what we have sunk two now, our politicians just, they re, they re good with it he isn t. so that s the difference. build ova voted trump in 2016 and 2020, likely trump this time first though, he wants to study robert f. kennedy jr. and the michigan election math. if i would really rather have kennedy, but by voting for kennedy it means i think biden would win. i might have to vote for trump. go va is a 25-year ford worker and uaw member. this is a side business using dry ice to clean car under bodies and engine parts. he pours his savings into the business and is about breaking even right now. we re going to use dry ice to remove all that stuff, go va calls himself a middle of the road conservative, doesn t like what some people call him for trump. the powers that be labeled me as some far right white supremacy maga, republican. and you re still entitled to your opinion. but i just don t see him as the anti-christ or hitler at this ridiculous, bob king worked at ford for more than 40 years and served a term as uaw president when the industry was trying to recover from the 2008 financial crisis he ties trump s support among union auto workers two years of lost jobs, and lower wages. people feel like the government and the establishment hasn t been delivered for them is there like better now than it was ten years ago or worse? and for many, many working people, it s worse. their standard of living has deteriorated in some cases, their communities deteriorated. walter robinson, junior bets about 40% of his ford coworkers are for trump. he s never done a hard day s work, not physical work. like you re doing a plant. he has a solid gold toilet at home so how can he really empathize with your life and when you say wait, joe biden walked a picket line with us. joe biden spin a pro-union precedent they say that you know, guns gays, the bortion sleepy joe hunter biden, robinson says the new contract wins were impressive, but didn t fix everything. gas prices are still pretty high. food when you go to the grocery store, every time this is just me and my wife and his $200 every time i go to the grocery store inside job meet dj furious, helps pay the bills but robinson says he does it mostly for font and to make people happy no matter their politics what great discussions they re john looking back at the past two electrons, how did union members in michigan vote? well, let s take a look. john will move this over first big picture. this is 2020 look, michigan, wisconsin, pennsylvania, the blue wall, right? joe biden, flip them back from 2016, michigan, wisconsin, pennsylvania, donald trump won them and the rest of course, was history. so let s come back to 2020 with that map up there and take a look. the union vote was a big part of it. let me stretch this out for you. forgive me for turning my back, but just to stretch it out so you can see a little bit bigger. hillary clinton won, but with just 53% to 40% for trump in 20169 points better joe biden gets 62% in 2020, part of his coalition that helped him win in michigan. now, look, trump only went down to 37 percent, so it s not just a groundswell of union votes for biden, hillary clinton lost a bunch of those blue color votes to third party candidates. that s one of the big questions a can president biden keep that number, keep a close to 60% in 2020? or remember, third-party candidates didn t matter much of 2020, they might this time, so not watched, not only trump john, why? watch to see if the blue-collar voters trickle over to the third-party candidates were talking about or i m john can great to see you. thank you very much. david axelrod, former senior adviser to president obama, joins us now, david, let s talk about john behind his back and his report that we just saw there what do you make of that that you have these union leaders, the uaw leadership, very pro biden, but rank and file with a mixed response. first of all, i love what? i love what john s doing out there, so we can talk behind his back. its were spent so much time sitting behind desks, blow violating about what people are thinking out there. and he s going on i m talking to him and i think it s really, really valuable. this this trend is not new. i mean, the fact is that this has been going on for some time for deterioration of the democratic support among union workers even though democrats have advocated for the interests of union workers, more readily than donald trump or other republicans. but this has been going on and it s cultural, as john mentioned in many ways listen, there are 44 new factories in construction. i was just up in michigan, 44 new factories and construction under construction in michigan. asked anyone up there if they re ours have improved it s from 2019 to 2000 2024. and the answer is yes because there s more going on, there s a manufacturing renaissance, so biden has a good case to make what he can t be doing is trying to job own people into thinking that this is the greatest economy we ve ever had. and he tends to do that. he and this country is doing better than others in terms of recovering from the pandemic. but that s cold comfort to people who as that one gentleman said, go to the store and find the groceries are 20% more than they were a few years ago. and biden needs to recognize that make common cause with that target the things he s fighting for to reduce costs, many of which donald trump opposes and set up a contrast by the way, the support of shawn fain, there is not inconsequential. he is a very, very popular figure among his members, and i think his advocacy in this fight down the stretch could be meaningful for biden, talk more, delve into this a little bit more a day because you ve been talking about this for some time about how you think that there are things president biden needs to claim credit for without spiking the football as yeah, this is not a time for spiking the football people. the data is very impressive, but data doesn t buy groceries. data doesn t buy pay for the rent and there is a sense that the economy isn t as strong as the data was suggested is in terms of people s experience. joe biden s great superpower as a candidate and a politician has been as empathy joe from scranton who understands how everyday people live. we need to see more of that from him he needs to show more of that in order to win some of these voters he doesn t, he doesn t, he shouldn t be president biden from washington trying to jawbone people into feeling better. he ought to be joe from scranton advocating for people in a challenging economy when it comes to cost of living. david rohde, who never blow v8 i thank you so much for being let s say, i wouldn t agree creator that, but okay. thanks. raise yet it just ahead. a cold war flashback and a real-time thread. these russian warships, including nuclear-powered submarine and warship, entered havana harbor today, putting the button 90 miles from florida, we have images and interviews from inside cuba plus the story from inside russia. next looking hotels.com to find your perfect somewhere. you have chronic kidney disease. you can reduce the risk of kidney failure with parse sega because they re places like to be for segal can cause serious side effects, including ketoacidosis that may be fatal, dehydration, urinary tract, or genital yeast infections and low blood sugar a rare life-threatening bacterial infection in the skin perineum could occur, stopped taking four sika and call your doctor right away at the symptoms of this disinfection and allergic reaction or ketoacidosis whether you re moving across town or 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certain wednesday, cnn celebrate juneteenth, which special performances by john luck i did hadi lewbel, smokey robinson. we still have a lot of work to do. juneteenth celebrating freedom and legacy next wednesday at 100 and cnn it is likely no coincidence that just as president biden is touched down in italy for a g7 meeting this evening with new sanctions against russia. plus according to sources, they knew long-term purity packed with ukraine, which recently got the okay from the president to return fire inside parts of russia. that for russian navy ships arrived in havana, cuba, about 90 miles from us shores. they include in nuclear-powered submarine as well of one is as well as one of russia s most modern warships it s a live picture looking at right now. it is a not so subtle reminder of cold war era geopolitics and russia s continue nuclear threats matthew chance reporting from moscow has more onlookers line to seafront in havana to welcome these powerful russian vessels, including the flagship of the kremlin s northern fleet, the admiral gorshkov the nuclear powered submarine, the qizan. the message for many cubans that moscow, it s cold war ally, is back from last week. we have historical ties with the former soviet union and now with the russian federation it says this havana residents, something that in my opinion is very important for the country. may never seen something like this so close says another. such a large ship of that magnitude. i m very impressed. she adds but the real message is aimed at washington russian defense officials say the strike group. now just 90 miles of the us coast has been practicing the use of high precision missiles against the mock enemy. us officials have downplaying any threat, saying they don t believe the russian vessels or armed with nuclear weapons. but us officials tell cnn that ships and planes have been deployed to monitor the russian exercises and the naval deployment comes at a time of worsening us-russian relations. just weeks after president biden greenlighted, ukrainian attacks on russian territory with us supplied-weapons with vladimir putin warning russia could arm us enemies in response. the easily i knew postalveolar if the west supplies weapons to the combat zone and calls for their use against our territory. then why shouldn t we mirror these actions? i am not ready to say that we will do and morrow, but we of course, should think about it there s no plan to supply cuba with the kind of weapons these modern russian warships usually carry but the kremlin could still make trouble. in america s backyard and matthew chance joins us now from moscow. matthew, what are you hearing from russians they re about these naval ships in cuba will john, i think russians are following this quite closely. certainly russian state television, which is controlled by the kremlin, has been giving this considerable coverage at one point, the state news anchors were saying the pentagon doesn t even know where are submarine is located as it was, as it was going across the atlantic. that doesn t track of course, with what us officials are saying, which is that they d been following this detachments of russian ships from the outset. in its whole journey, but it does point to the idea that this for russia is very much the country flexing its muscles on the international stage. matthew chance so great to have you inside moscow reporting. thank you so much for being with us next day. bittersweet milestone, the sandy hook school shooting survivors who lost 20 first-grade classmates and six staff or isn t the 2020 massacre? they graduate from high school and remember number those, they will always miss with two survivors told are randy k, that s coming up we talking about cash back, kevin hart, not again i m talking about cash greg, we talking about cash balance not talking about bragg. know. we talked about cash back and we talk about cash. we talking about cash we ve been talking about 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norman, bad news. i never graduated from med school. what? -but the good news is. xfinity mobile just got even better! now, you can automatically connect to wifi speeds up to a gig on the go. plus, buy one unlimited line and get one free for a year. i gotta get this deal. i know. faster wifi and savings? .i don t want to miss that. that s amazing doc. mobile savings are calling. visit xfinitymobile.com to learn more. doc? free. go to deal dash.com right now and see how much you can save. this election season. stay with cnn with more reporters on the ground. and the best political team in the business follow though voters follow the results, follow the facts follow. cnn tonight in connecticut, a graduation ceremony for the 2024 class of new newtown high school. two major milestone in any student s life. but this comes with mixed emotions. 20 of their classmates never got to leave the first grade, let alone may college plans. they along with six staff members were killed at the sandy hook elementary school massacre almost 12 years ago. tonight, each of their names was called out in remembrance, and two of the graduate spoke with our randy k on the eve of their graduation super excited about heading to college. it s definitely a very bittersweet kind of emotion bittersweet because grace fischer is graduating newtown high school without 20 of her classmates, they were killed in the massacre at sandy hook elementary, nearly 12 years ago emma ehrens was there that horrible day two and lost her best friend thinking about all the what-ifs of what if they were sitting next to me at graduation, what if we were still friends? where would we be? both emma and grace, we re just 6-years-old in 2012 and seated in there first grade classrooms when the gunmen stormed into their school, we thought it was construction because it s been going on for the past couple of days on the roof and then a guy armed came into my classroom and started shooting all of my friends and my teachers and my classmates, his gun and had been jammed and of friend of mine, jesse lewis had yelled at us to run and that s what we did. we sectioned ourselves into the cubby area, which is kind of like an indent. so from the door were absolutely hidden. i remember feeling like i was endangered emma remembers bumping into the gunman in her rush to get out. the boy who yelled to her and others to run jesse lewis was fatally shot on the spot. when you believe he saved your life? i do. i really in the hallway right by the main entrance, there was chairs in front of the office and under the chairs were people because because of the force of impact of the bullets, they were blown under the chairs when we got to the firehouse, we had to line up by grade. and that s when my teacher was really like, this is really not ok. because when we lined up by grade, half, our grade was missing and everyone else was there in the year since both girls have struggled to cope with the memories from that day, i ve gone to therapy for like six or seven years i have survivor s guilt, ptsd. it definitely still like a lot of fear in me. and even now, i don t think i ve been to a single column concert and my entire life just because i m really worried about that big crowd of people and not knowing where to go in case of an emergency. they ve turned some of that anxiety into action. i want to live in a nation that values children more than guns both are members of the junior newtown action alliance, which promotes gun safety. i do not want future kids of america to have to be spared in the classroom. we really are pushing obviously for a federal assault weapons ban ball. so we do shift our focus to safe storage laws and also mental health resources. they ve met with members of congress about gun laws. and just last week, vice president kamala harris. and yet school shootings continue. it s definitely like a knife to the heart when you see it happen again and again after fighting so hard on graduation de the names of those lost were red and ribbons marking the day of the massacre worn in there, honor, because their lives were lost so early and i went through that such an early age. i feel like it s my purpose to continue my life in honor of them i know whatever i do, they will be proud of me. i like to believe that on the most recent anniversary of the shooting, emma posted this photo on her instagram writing in part. i just want to live in a safe world. i miss you guys every day. i hope you are happy in heaven. the picture shows emma with her best friend avl richmond, who died in the shooting i hope you are happy and evan and ready. k is with us now. what strength they all showed there. what are the plans for after graduation? they have plans for college. this fall i m is going to go to roger williams university and she plans to study legal studies and grow race is going to hamilton college and she plans to focus on law and justice. they both really wanted to help people, but my guess is john, that even though they re going away to college, that new town isn t going to be very far from their thoughts. even emma told me during our interview that she still runs this five key and honor of her teacher who was killed every year. and they still visit the memorial on a regular basis. they re in so i think even though they have big plans, there ll be a way new town will be in their hearts. i have to believe that i hope they have a wonderful future. thanks so much, randy k well, you right back sharp. that s the until june 16 and get up to 30% off father s day gifts to go beyond the classic go-to c1 personalized year. and other things. dads do when you want a one-of-a-kind gift has shown, he s number one. etsy has accusing a treatment for your chronic migraine 15 or more headache days a month each lasting four hours or more can be overwhelming. so ask your doctor about botox dots prevents headaches and adults with chronic migraine before they even start. it s the number 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police chase. it was remarkable and terrifying. the bus swarming uncontrollably through rush hour traffic and hitting cars, then barreling on investigators said today it all started with an argument between two passengers, one of them was killed killed when according to police, the other grabbed his gun and shot him investigators say the suspect then threatened others in order to driver to get on the road. this as passengers frantically texted loved ones and call 911 for help. thankfully, police finally stop the bus and arrested the suspect. but that s not all police now say the main and a convicted felon was at the scene of a shooting earlier in the de he spoke with our local
seats of government, the seats of power, and embarks on a campaign, a political intimidation, in order to secure outcomes that personally benefit him. and that at the core is part of the sticks of our democracy that are before us today. because once rule of law goes out the window, it is not something that is easy to get back and it is very much a part of the decision that we have to make before us in the next few months. congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez, congressman jamie raskin, thank you for your time tonight. i really appreciate it. that is all in on this tuesday night. alex wagner tonight starts now. we have new exclusive audio from the supreme court historical society that lauren winsor has given us and we will be playing that in the hour, so stay tuned. i will pick like i said, exclusive never before heard audio recordings of justice samuel alito speaking to an undercover progressive activist. that is what we have tonight. that is in addition to the bombshell recordings that were released yesterday and we will definitely want to hear these recordings when we play them. if you have been wondering how those secret tapes were made in the very first place, how activists and judges on the highest court in this land, how they came to mingle behind closed doors? the answer to that begins almost 10 years ago to this day when the supreme court handed down a major decision. reporter: supporters of the hobby lobby cheered today s victory. the oklahoma family that owns the chain of 500 craft stores claims that providing insurance coverage for some forms of contraceptives under obamacare would be the equivalent of paying for abortion. the court called the rolling startling and said it will allow companies to opt out of any law they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs. the hobby lobby decision. the majority opinion was written by justice samuel alito and it was one of the first signs that conservatives on this court were willing to go after reproductive freedoms no matter the consequence. in the wake of the dobbs decision 10 years later, hobby lobby seemed sort of like the canary in the coal mine in more ways than one. in november 2022, the new york times offered key reporting about how the hobby lobby decision came to be. for years before the court heard the case, conservative christians have been engaged in a campaign called operation higher court. that operation was to personally court and influence the supreme court s conservative justices. that effort was spearheaded by a man named reverend robert shank who would recruit christian couples who he called stuff missionaries to gain access to the judges and to impress upon them the importance of conservative christian values. here is how the new york times described one of their strategies. reverend gave his stuff missionaries close instruction, the justices were more likely to let their guard down at the supreme court historical society annual dinners because they assumed attendees had been properly vetted. ca justice, boldly approach, schenck told the couples according to a briefing document reviewed by the times. if given the opportunity, bear witness to biblical truth, but don t push it, he said. your presence alone at the historical society events telegraphs a very important signal to the justices. christians are concerned about the court and the issues that come before it. that strategy appears to have paid off. according to the times reporting, some of schenck s stuff missionaries were able to build enough of a relationship with justice alito and his wife, martha and, that they obtained advanced notice of the court s hobby lobby decision before it came out. that breach of that unprecedented breach foreshadowed the leaked dobbs decision striking down go versus wade two years later. that specific strategy of using the supreme court s annual historical society dinners as a way to gain access to supreme court justices, it turns out that too is relevant again, just this week. they historical society dinner is a yearly event where wealthy donors give money to a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the court s history. in exchange for their money, those donors get to rub shoulders with some of the justices and their spouses. as it turns out, conservatives weren t the only ones in on this arrangement. last week, progressive activist lauren winsor who happens to be a member of the historical society, bought a ticket for the event. she got in, she pretended to be a conservative donor attending the event with her husband. ms. lender then approach some of the conservative justices and secretly recorded her conversations with them. and busyness has not heard the full tape of what is recorded so we cannot say for certain where edits were made if any were actually made. tonight we have some brand-new, never before heard audio from that event to play for you and when you hear these new tapes, he will hear something familiar to what was on the tapes released yesterday. a justice in this case, justice alito, who is aggrieved and frustrated, who is nakedly partisan and totally unconcerned by appearing to be all of those things in front of a total stranger. remember what we heard yesterday. as someone who really cherishes my face, i just don t know that we can negotiate the way that needs to happen for the polarization to end. i think it is a matter of, like, winning. i think you are probably right. on one side or the other, one side or the other is going to win. i don t know. i mean, there can be a way of working, a way of living together peacefully. but it is difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can t be compromised. they really can t be compromised. so it is not like you are going to split the difference. and that is what i m saying. i think that the solution really is, like, winning the moral argument. like, people in this country who believe in god have got to keep fighting for that, to return our country to a place of godliness. i agree with you. i agree with you. member, at this closed-door cocktail party, winsor was also able to get justice alito s wife, martha and, to explain her deeply personal motivation for flaying two insurrectionist flags in front of their homes. that is a story that has just scandalized this court and is reporting this week would seem to suggest that mrs. alito has no shame about what she has been doing , in fact, quite the opposite. after deriding who have been critical of the scandal, she made clear that these flags she flies are explicitly her form of resistance and response. i know what i want, i want a sacred heart of jesus flag because i had to look across the lagoon at the pride flag for the next month. and he is like, please don t put up a flag. i said i want to do it because i am deferring to you but when you are free of this nonsense, i am putting it up and i am going to send you a message every day, maybe every week i will be changing the flags, i made a flag in my head, this is how i satisfy myself, i made a flag, it is white and yellow and orange flames around it. in the middle is this word. in italian, it means shame. just to be clear here, justice alito has publicly stated his wife did not fly these flags to associate herself with the stop the steal movement or any other group. but it seems quite clear from the clip that his wife very much sees these flags as a form of political expression and a response to what she believes are liberal attacks. perhaps most concerning in these recordings, though, is martha-ann alito s five-year plan for revenge . it is okay because if they come back to me, i will get them. i m going to be liberated, and i m going to get them. there is a five-year defamation statute of limitations. i don t know what you mean by they. the media. okay, so martha-ann alito, the wife of a supreme court justice, that she has a plan to get back at the media by suing for defamation. and she thinks she will have the opportunity to do that in the next five years, when she is free of all this nonsense. is samuel alito s wife telling us something here about justice alito s retirement plans? and how concerned should we all be that a supreme court justices spouse is talking about the american media with open contempt? tonight we have grand brand- new audio from that same event where justice alito himself tells us what he thinks about the press. the other voice you will hear on this tape is an associate of lauren winsor s who was also at this event. i just wanted to ask you, why do you think the supreme court is so is being so attacked and being so targeted by the media these days? well, i think it is a simple reason. they don t like our decisions and they don t like how they anticipate we may decide some cases that are coming up. that s the beginning and the end of it. and there are there are groups that are very well-funded by ideological groups that have spearheaded these attacks. that s what it is. like who? propublica. propublica gets a lot of, you know, gets a lot of money, and they have spent a fortune investigating clarence thomas, for example. everything he s ever done in his entire life, and they ve done some of that to me too. but, you know, they look for any little thing they can find, and they try to make something out of it. and be seen is reached out for comment from both samuel alito and his wife, martha-ann alito, but we have not heard back. joining me now is lauren winsor, progressive activist and the executive producer of the undercurrent. thank you for being here, i know you have had a busy week so far. we are so appreciative of all that you have set this far and all you have to share with us tonight. first, start with a new sound that your organization or your colleague has given us. there are two parts of this new tape that strikes me as concerning. the first is justice samuel alito saying that the media is attacking him because the media doesn t like how they anticipate the court has decided cases and may decide upcoming cases. was that a window into what may be coming down the pipe in the next two weeks? how did you interpret that? i mean, i definitely interpreted it as being a harbinger for bad things to come. did you get the sense when he was talking about the media and specifically citing propublica, for example, and their expensive investigators reporting about clarence thomas, that these stories are very much being shared behind closed doors at the supreme court? his media awareness seemed to be relatively high. it is very high, and he already had a sense of grievance when i first spoke with him in 2023, but it was much more pronounced this year i think in the two conversations that both allie and i had with him. can we talk about the context here? the fact is, you and your colleague both had conversations with the alitos. for those who have not been to historical society of us, is this what happens at them? we know two bombshell series of reports about conversation, advocacy campaigns that are happening between attendees and the justices on the supreme court. it is interesting, i had actually read that initial report in the new york times about reverend schenck and that is part of what played into my going in the first place but i did not read that report and think i should become a member now. it really was incited by the propublica reporting on clarence thomas and it is interesting that justice alito wants to rail about the money taken by propublica for investigating public servants while clarence thomas is not disclosing millions of dollars of gifts from gop donors and i have no idea what propublica s finances are but as someone who is an independent journalist, i would imagine that the money that clarence thomas is taking probably read the budget of propublica in any given year. is such a good point, what did you hear in justice alito s explanation for that? did you hear it almost seems as if there is certainly no contrition, but there is not even an acknowledgment that there was any wrongdoing on the part of clarence thomas in accepting potentially millions of dollars in unspecified gifts from conservative donors? it is not verbatim, but it is almost for meeting verbatim, making something out of any little thing. i don t consider any little thing to be buying my mother s house or paying for my nephew s tuition or getting a free rv loan. and these are all things he has accepted from gop donors. so, it would be a much different story if this were just about vacations he was taking with his wife and the family, most people would write it off as, it was a trip. most people would not consider traveling with friends or associates as being something that is that big of a deal, that is not actually what we are talking about with clarence thomas, is it? no, it is another order of magnitude, it would seem. and it has been going on for years. i guess some part of me is surprised that you, not knowing the alito s, you re just a random member of the historical society, is able to even get within shoulder rubbing distance of a justice and then draw him into conversation about some of the most incendiary topics in this country, which is a partisan divide. how did it actually unfold when you were in the room with the justice? it should be stated that in the guidance for the events, the historical society says, if you broach topics that are before the court, it may be grounds for you to be kicked out and so there is definitely a deliberative process in, how do i approach someone that, you know, not only are judges supposed to be really the height of discretion, the height of, you know, judgment, right? this is the highest court in the land, this is the supreme court justice, so i definitely went into this assuming that i was not going to get anything newsworthy. in 2023, i did not get anything newsworthy. but, i thought, you know, throughout the year that transpired, the media s scrutiny on justice alito has intensified so much and his grievance level is probably so much more peaked, that unlike clarence thomas who did not show up to this dinner but has been reported to have shown up to it many times, and he did not show up in 2023, by the way, that justice alito would probably attend anyway, even though he was undergoing this very intense media glare and sure enough, he was there and i think, you know, it was just something that i can t say what was in his mind so i don t know if in 2023, he had the same level of grievance and, you know, it changed over the course of the year? there are a couple options there. did it change or was it always there and he just felt more comfortable? was it hard to get him to talk? at the very end of this conversation, he says, are you a lawyer? i think he is talking to your colleague, i am not sure if it is you or her but it wasn t like you had offered any biographical information other than you had a husband who is not in the room. and i wonder why you operate that piece of information? how did you actually get into conversation with him? did you go up to him and start talking to him? the reason why i brought up my husband was that in 2023, i came with a male friend. the context of it was, we had a conversation after dinner, in 2023, my male friend was with me , he was not with me in 2024, so when i saw justice alito solo, it was one-on-one. it was, hi, there, my husband really wants to let you know that we are rooting for you, that you really have all the grit. the reason why i said you have all the grit, if it does not stick out to people, this is because donald trump had treated something out about how , you know, there should be more justices like samuel alito , with the grit that samuel alito has, so i felt like it was kind of a flag, if you will , to justice alito, that it was a safe space for him? a safe space, yes. i was trying to signal to him very coyly without saying trump because it goes back to the way the conversation to bridge a conversation with someone who has the highest level of discretion come you can t talk about partisan politics, if i had locked up in answer to talking about joe biden or donald trump, he would have shut down. so talking about polarization was really a way into the conversation that wasn t as aggressive but also indicative of what i was really trying to get out, was, is he acting on bias? and i really do believe that the american people deserve to know, is the supreme court so compromise that we do not really have impartiality, the bedrock of our judicial system? i think hearing it from his mouth, that he cannot be impartial, there are things that cannot be compromised, that needs to be fuel for journalists and for congress to say, tell us, what are the things that can t be compromised? lauren, look. you brought us into a room that few people are ever in and i think these tapes are revelatory and they are coming at a time of crisis for this court. we are not in having this conversation, thank you for bringing some of that conversation to our air, we are really appreciative, thanks for spending some time with me tonight. thank you, alex pick coming up this hour, we have new details about donald trump s presentencing meeting with his probation officer. it turns out he is being treated differently, just maybe not in the way he would like you to believe pick for scott hunter biden today joined donald trump in becoming a convicted felon facing possible jail time. does that mean the system is now en route? we will get into the republican response, coming up next. next. chewy, a citi client, uses citi s financial expertise to help drive its growth and keep its supply chain moving, so more pet parents can get everything they need. right when they need it. keeping more pets, and families, happy. for the love of moving our clients forward. for the love of progress. if you have chronic kidney 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we could all unsubscribe and switch to xfinity. their connection is unreal. and we could all un-experience this whole session. okay, that s uncalled for. president biden s son, hunter biden, was found guilty today on three felony gun charges. given this news you might have thought maybe the conspiracy about president biden rigging the justice system, maybe you thought that is going to collapse. it did not. today is the first step in delivering accountability for the biden crime family pick we have been saying two-tier system of justice for some time. the president son being convicted on three counts [ inaudible ] it doesn t, every case is different and clearly the evidence is overwhelming here. do you think the department of justice is still left nice against conservatives even though we see this verdict today? absolutely, when they tell school moms they are domestic terrorists because they don t like what is being taught in their classroom and other things, we can go into it, but we can go into it, but we want. atrial campaign statement released today callcenter better s trial nothing more than a distraction from the real crimes of the biden crime family. and in lockstep with the party front-runner, the chairman of the house oversight committee, republican james, said the work will not be done until the department of justice investigates everyone involved in the the biden s correct influence peddling schemes. joining me now is the cofounder and editor at large of the bulwark. thank you for joining me. this criminal conviction is apparently a distraction from the real crimes of the biden crime family pick is that strategy going to work? today s conviction was awkward, right? it is awkward for the talking point that it was all right, that biden justice department was weapon eyes only against republicans. but we live in a world in which the reality and the fact have a hard time catching up, you can see how deeply invested republicans are in there talking point about the biden crime family pick so it is not a shock that they are going to continue to repeat those talking points over and over and over again. but, i do think the contrast and the reaction to the conviction of donald trump in the conviction of hunter biden has been very, very telling here. again, it is always difficult to know how it is going to play out. we may see this at the debate. and other biden folks think this is going to come up at the debate and you know donald trump is going to try to make an issue of the fact that the president s son is a convicted felon which will be offered, being a convicted felon himself . but democrats have been making this point and let me even make the point that there are a number of democrats who are facing indictments under the biden justice department, not just the president s own son, but a democratic senator, senator menendez, henry cuellar, down in texas, these are all democrats. if the system is so rigged, how do they explain that? the answer is, they don t feel the need to explain that at all. they are just going to go with a spin. i just wonder who the spin is for, right? you talk about the reaction, this was a statement from the president of the united states after his son is convicted of felonies. as i said last week, i am the president but i am also a dad, jill and i love our son and we are so proud of the man he is today. so many families who have had loveland battle addiction understand the feeling of pride seeing someone you love, out the other side and be so strong and resilient in recovery. as i also said last week, looks at the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as hunter considers an appeal. jill and i will always be there for hunter and the rest of our family with our love and support. nothing will ever change that. it is a very strong statement, it is a tough statement for a father to make, and i think [ inaudible ] whatever the republican argument here is about biden rigging the system, among the [ inaudible ] i don t think there is any reason to doubt his word at this point. and again, this creates a really significant difference between the tantrum donald trump and his supporters have thrown and the acceptance of the rule of law and the decision of a jury that was represented with all of this evidence. the point you re making is, who is this for right now? almost everything republicans say is for the audience of one, it is for donald trump. this is what the base wants to hear about that is not the group of voters who will be deciding the selection. not to ask too poetic about it but i think embedded in biden s statement is a call to empathy, right? for those who have fallen, for people who have addiction and are trying to make it through a dark period, versus trump, who is all grievance all the time, and i think we think a lot we don t know a lot about where this country is headed, but really, appealing to people s since of forgiveness and empathy does not seem like a political strategy that has an expiration date. am i being too soft here? no, again, it is a very interesting contrast. if donald trump s superpower is his shamelessness, his refusal to ever take responsibility or apologize, joe biden s superpower is his empathy. and again, republicans aren t going to give him any credit for it but i do think there are a lot of americans who are going to say, this is a tragic situation, there are questions about hunter biden s judgment and his behavior, but also what you are seeing from joe biden is, this is what a father, a father who has lost his other son, how they would react to something like that. and i think there will be a sliver of the electorate, a crucial sliver, that is going to look at that and say we understand that seems human to us. that seems like something that we can identify with and admire as opposed to the constant conspiracy theories and the victim cardplaying and really, the vicious attacks on the criminal justice system and the jury system coming from donald trump. it is a real choice i had. this is going to be very, very indicative of who we are as a country. thank you again for your time, it is great see you. thank you. still to come this evening, we have new reporting about what appears to be a coordinated effort to broadcast disinformation about this fall s election on your local newscast. when it comes to donald trump a criminal conviction, republicans need a reality check. we have one, that is next. nex. with all the money i saved i thought i d buy stilts. being so tall definitely has its advantages. oh whoa. here you go, kiddo. thanks. hi honey ready to go? 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(vo) in two seconds, eric will realize they re gonna need more space. (man) gotta sell the house. (vo) oh.open houses. or, skip the hassles and sell directly to opendoor. (man) wow. (vo) when life s doors open, we ll handle the house. i just went through a rigged trial in new york. it is a rigged system, a terrible system, actually, but it is a rigged system. the whole system is rigged. this was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt. rigged, rigged, rigged, rigged. that has been donald trump by the refrain during his criminal trial in new york, the entire system is rigged against him. and yet, the system really seems to be bending in his favor lately as we saw yesterday at his probation interview. trump s interview lasted less than half an hour and trump was allowed to attend the meeting over zoom from his mar-a-lago beach club in florida. with his lawyer, seated by his side. just for perspective here, according to a statement released by multiple public defender groups in new york city, public defenders are deprived of joining their clients for these meetings, the option of joining these interviews virtually by zuma is typically not extended to the people we represent either. joining me now is duncan levin who was a federal prosecutor and served as a senior staffer in the manhattan va s office, he is now a criminal defense attorney. thank you for joining me to make sense of this madness her. first of all, the circumstances of this probation, they sound relatively easy, maybe even cushy but donald trump says that everything is rigged against him. who is right? this is something that is a routine and it typically takes hours. to the extent that there have been things that have been different for him, they have only been different in his favor. most defendants have to come there in person, it is a drab office, these things take hours, there are reports his probation interview took half an hour. this is an opportunity for probation to actually ask the types of questions that a judge might want to know on sentencing that don t come out in the trial. this defendant is somebody who is so well vetted, everybody knows everything, but for most defendants, the judge does not have a sense of who they are as a person. what their family situation is, with her immigration status is, are they using drugs? a lot of people notice about donald trump but you could say half an hour maybe all you need but the fact is, this is them doing their due diligence and to the extent that it is on zoom, the lawyer is there, it is only half an hour, to the extent it is rigged or indifferent, it is only been in his favor picked the other piece of this he likes bringing up is the presence in this case on the da side of amending matthew purkey. they were to the department of justice and now works for alvin and they have literally used matthew to be like, the missing link between job biden, the publisher of the justice department and alvin bragg, the prosecutor that has sought charges against donald trump. for people who aren t familiar with this line of attack, this is how comp talks about matthew. matthew colangelo is a radical left from the doj who was put into the state, working with lakisha james , and then was put into the district attorney s office to run the trial against trump. we will take issue with it put into passive in that statement but you have gone between the doj and the das office, so you know what it is like, i guess, to be a plant. first of all, is that a normal thing that happens? and how in line with reality is this argument? this is something that is also being jammed up on capitol hill a lot. in a letter today, the department of justice said this was conspiratorial speculation. i think it is something a lot more sinister and dark that is going on, this is an attempt to really undermine law enforcement and to so distrust of the public if enforcement function. first off, the manhattan das office and doj walk together all the time, everything today. there are joint task forces on terrorism, on hate crimes, there is a joint task force that looks the filings the banks viral, the suspicious activity reports, there have been drinking since i have been prosecuted by the department of justice and manhattan das office against banks like standard charter, hsbc, ing and barclays, there have been cases every day that rd conflicting between department of justice and the manhattan das office, they don t arrest the same person or step on each other s toes and people go back and forth, and from the manhattan das office to the aspersion of justice and back to the manhattan das office, robert morgan was the most famous manhattan da who served for 35 years from 1975 to 2010, prior to becoming elected as a manhattan da with the united states attorney for the southern district of new york. he was an obama plant quick exactly, a stooge of the ministration. it is preposterous, right? and yet there is no sense these cries of foul play are going to end anytime soon. this is all coming to a head on july 11 when there is the sentencing hearing for trump and i guess i wonder what your expectation for that is and whether there is anything to be done around the cries of foul play in a rigged system that are inevitably going to come up no matter what trump is sentenced to? this is such a hard decision for the judge and you would not wish it on your worst enemy and frankly on both sides, nobody should want him to go to jail or want anyone to go to jail, it is a sad day. that being said it is a tough decision for him to make. the prosecution is virtually going to be asking for jail time. the defense is looking for a conditional discharge saying he has been punished enough by the felony and that is it. it will be an outcry on both sides no matter what it is. this is something that is very difficult decision. i don t know that there is any way to the political thicket of it, other than to say this is a judge who has really been around the block and will be taking this seriously unfairly and i think you ll see a sentence that is free of some of those political considerations, something that he will be, maybe dom amato, but i think both sides will be able to make of it like a rorschach test, if you will, they will be able to argue around it what ever it is. that is not exactly you are not giving me the inside dope on what you think it would be and i would never put you on the spot for that, but for all the we have seen thus far it feels like the volume is only going to increase. thank you, my friend, for being here, helping us all through this. coming up, trump appointee judge eileen cannon tosses out part of trump s indictment in the classified documents case. we are going to get to that but first, some very orwellian messaging broadcast from your trusted local news station, that is next. next. at bombas, we re obsessed with comfort. softness. quality. because your basic things should be your best things. one purchased equals one donated. visit bombas.com and get 20% off your first order. when life spells heartburn. how do you spell relief? r-o-l-a-i-d-s rolaids dual-active formula begins to neutralize acid on contact. r-o-l-a-i-d-s spells relief. our greatest responsibility is to serve our treasure valley communities. eastern iowa communities. we are extremely proud of the quality balanced journalism that cbs-4 news produces. but we are concerned about a troubling trend of irresponsible, one-sided news stories plaguing our country. we are concerned about a troubling trend of irresponsible, one-sided news stories plaguing our country. do you remember that nightmare fuel from 2018? the media organization, sinclair broadcast group, which owns nearly 200 local tv news outlets, had dozens of their local anchors across the country all read the same orwellian script about bias in the media. unfortunately, some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control exactly what people think. this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. today, sinclair broadcast group was caught again, with dozens of local anchors, again, reading the same script. the newsletters public notice and popular information first brought attention to the copycat newscast, which featured a script you might say has a very clear, conservative agenda. the wall street journal calling into question the mental fitness of president joe biden. illustrate journalism with reporting calling into question the mental fitness of president joe biden. is national correspondent matt galka tells us, the issue could be an election decider. the issue could be an election decider. now, the story, these dozens of local news outlets ran with was based on a widely panned piece in the wall street journal last week, claiming that behind closed doors, president biden was showing signs of mental slippage. the only people quoted on the record in that piece to support that reporting were republican officials, including former speaker of the house, kevin mccarthy, who is not at all known for being the most reliable anything. meanwhile, several democrats including senator chris have come out publicly to say that they get quotes to the wall street journal for that piece and the paper chose not to include them. include them. chose not to include them. said he told the journal that biden is someone who is sharp, engaged, and leads the conversation. on aside from the clear partisan edge to all of this, recent polling from gallup says that americans have very low trust in media outlets. just 32% of the country trust the media. but, that is not true when it comes to local news. pew research polling from earlier this year showed that 71% of americans trust their local news outlets. which is what makes what sinclair is doing here snow so nefarious. maybe you don t trust the wall street journal or cable news, but it might trust the station that gives them the weather, and that is the real issue. that issue could be an election decider. election decider. because there are places you d like to be. farxiga can cause serious side effects, including ketoacidosis that may be fatal, dehydration, urinary tract, or genital yeast infections, and low blood sugar. a rare, life-threatening bacterial infection in the skin of the perineum could occur. stop taking farxiga and call your doctor right away if you have symptoms of this infection, an allergic reaction, or ketoacidosis. far-xi-ga they say we should stop eating so much meat. an allergic reaction, or ketoacidosis. so we made meat out of plants. because we aren t quitters. impossible. we re solving the meat problem with more meat. if you have generalized myasthenia gravis, picture what life could look like with. vyvgart hytrulo, a subcutaneous injection that takes about 30 to 90 seconds. for one thing, could it mean more time for you? 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it is certainly not a critical factor. all this means is that it is not sitting in what is otherwise known as a speaking indictment. it is still information prosecutors can bring out at trial, and almost certainly will litigate to make sure they can bring it out, as evidence of a prior bad act strictly in the context of mr. trump s intent, his motive, his desire, his willingness to conceal this information that he knew he knew he had classified documents, he knew he wasn t authorized to have them and he was retaining them at mar-a- lago. this is a minor, little victory for mr. trump. otherwise, the motion was denied. otherwise, the issue, of course, is that it just took so long. this could have been resolved weeks ago. it never needed to take this long. if it is not a significant win for trump, is it indicative, though, of a broader tension between the special counsel s office and this judge? because throughout this case and it seems like it has ratcheted up in recent months there is maybe not a volley because it seems like it is coming from one side, the judge does not seem happy with jack smith or his team. yes, certainly the tensions continue to boil and they have reached the point where in a hearing just a few weeks ago, prosecutors were so upset and frustrated with their attempts to try to explain to judge cannon their view on the case law and how certain legal precedents apply that the judge had to basically counsel them to calm down. none of us were there, i don t know how badly that got out of hand, but it is never a good sign when you are a lawyer and the judge is telling you to calm down. but, let s be honest about where this is going. judge cannon, for whatever reason, has chosen to take a slow and methodical approach. she hasn t granted donald trump anything of substance, yet, at any point in this case. but because of how she has dragged it out, because she is making sure the classified portions in particular are taking forever, it is almost guaranteed this will never see the light of day, it will never go to trial before people go to the voting booth in november. that seems guaranteed, there seems to be a question about whether we will see the trial, period. but, that seems to be based on politics. trump filed another motion to dismiss today, this one says that the fbi destroyed evidence by not preserving exactly where the classified material was in proximity to nonclassified material and trump is arguing he didn t pack the boxes, he didn t know what was in there. how substantive is this? or, does it matter, is it just more delay, delay, delay? i think it is largely a delay tactic, but the hope is that they might get an evidentiary hearing, something big mentioned in the motion, they want a hearing to probe into how this was conducted, how the boxes were organized, this way whether or not there is something to whether there are allegations of bias or improper storage. on the merits, it s garbage. it has nothing to do with anything in terms of destruction of evidence, and it doesn t absolve trump of the idea that he willfully retained the documents. he knew he had them in 2022, when he turned stuff over to the archives. they told him, hey, there s classified documents in this stuff. they knew he had them over the course of the next year, talking to his lawyers telling him, turn them over. and the fbi kept funding stuff in what you are turning over. it will ultimately not change anything, but quite possibly with the way judge cannon handles things, it could drag it out just a little bit more. just a little bit more. we are now at the first anniversary of the mar-a-lago case, the grand jury and bob dikeman came down on june 8th, 2023. anyone s guess if we get to the second anniversary. bradley moss, thank you, sir, for your time tonight. have a good night. that is our show for this evening. now, it is time for the last word , with jonathan k part. lawrence o donnell come in for jonathan.
again, along with obamacare, of course. the funny thing is, trump is using this approach to try to appeal to latino voters, while at the same time promising to bring to america the political style and economic policies of the strongmen leaders of places like argentina and venezuela, which have some of the highest inflation rates in the world right now. make it make sense. tomorrow is set to be a big day for economic news. we will get a new inflation report in the morning and the fed will give an update on interest rates in the afternoon. so is rachel maddow would say, watch this space. and that is tonight s reidout . you can follow me on tiktok and instagram and follow our show accounts on instagram and tick tock. all in with chris hayes starts now. tonight on all in as we deliberated today, we reached a verdict pretty quick. the presidents son found guilty of violating federal gun laws. no one in this country is above the law. everyone must be accountable for their actions, even this offender. tonight, what today s verdict does and does not mean about the rule of law in america. everyone is saying, where is hunter? a two-tiered system of justice we have. and how we campaign led by a convict is vetting potential running mates. certainly like having committed a crime and the scandal that just won t end. i want a sacred heart of jesus flag because i have to look across the lagoon at the pride flag. tonight jamie raskin and aoc together on their push to get answers from the supreme court. can you tell us how the supreme court and specifically the chief justice have addressed these scandals? when all in starts right now. good evening from new york. i am chris hayes. in a political era marked by a never-ending string of historic firsts, here is another today. a rare court decision that conservatives received with glee. hunter biden has been found guilty on all counts in his gun trial, federal trial in wilmington, delaware. hunter biden, the last living son of the sitting president was convicted today on three felony counts connected to lying on a federal firearms application in 2018 by not disclosing his struggles with drug addiction. he had that gun for 11 days. hunter biden now faces 25 years in prison and his father, president joe biden, did not blast the case as a crooked witchhunt. he did not target the prosecutors, the judge and the jurors, some of whom called into major news shows to discuss the verdict with no fears for their safety in this high-profile case. president biden did not shake his fist at the justice system. he put up this statement. as i said last week, i am the president, but i am also a dad. jill and i love our son and we are so proud of the man he is today. so many families who have had loved ones battle addiction understand the feeling of pride. as i also said last week, i will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as hunter considers an appeal. jill and i will always be there for hunter and the rest of our family with our love and support. nothing will ever change that. i have to say i find that genuinely touching. his love of family. also respect of the process. it is an incredibly stark contrast to the ceaseless barrage of absolutely unhinged authoritarian histrionics we all witnessed last month. remember? not just donald trump, but the entire republican party. all of the people dressing up like donald trump who went to the courthouse so he will pick them to be vice president. all of them basically calling to tear down the entire judicial system or casting aspersions on new york jurors or the judge or the prosecutor. everyone. all because their nominee got caught falsifying business records and was convicted unanimously by a jury of his peers on 34 felony counts. this was a rigged trial by a convicted judge who was corrupt. a disgrace. this is like a soviet style thing. show me the person and i will show you the crime. this was a political smear job. this is what you see in banana republics. this is the most outrageous travesty i ve ever seen. this is a justice system that hunts republicans while protecting democrats. this was a hoax, a sham. do we want to become a country where we try to jail are political opponents? what do you think the party affiliation of hunter biden is? and so this hunter biden conviction is as clear a moment of contrast as possible between the two major coalitions, the major parties in the country today. what it illustrates is that one party, under donald trump, and this is important, has placed itself outside the american constitutional order, while the other is trying to defend and uphold it. that was clear as day on january 6, but particularly in the aftermath there was palpable were among republicans. lots of them talking about how horrified they were and resigning from the administration and all of that. and there was a sense the party wanted to distance themselves from trump s lawlessness. that was then. today they are fully united as a party in opposition to the constitution. an attitude by one of the most powerful conservatives you ve never heard of. he wrote portions of the heritage foundation s project 2025 on how to remake the executive branch and a trump presidency. the washington post identified him as a potential chief of staff. he lays out his vision for a post-constitutional presidency to turn the government into a flatly authoritarian project or failing that, just a mafia style. disease more control of the justice department and assert power to withhold congressional appropriations and that is just on trump s first day back in office. meanwhile democrats are not just making statements of faith, they have taken real actions to preserve those institutions and their independence. no better example of this is the prosecution of hunter biden. remember how this started? okay, back in 2018 under david weiss, the u.s. attorney trump appointed in delaware, the fbi probed hunter biden. there were subpoenas, but there were no charges and remember, trump grew angry that his justice department had not publicized the investigation into his opponents son during the 2020 election. after trump lost the election, republicans insisted president biden would obstruct justice to keep his son free and they called for a special counsel to investigate. when a new president comes and it is his right to replace any u.s. attorney they want. they usually do. biden replaced all of trump s appointees except for two. who bill barr had test to investigate the russia probe. and david weiss, who was investigating his own son. that is because the new president, at the pains of a possible criminal conviction of his surviving son in recovery, wanted no appearance of impropriety or interference and infect biden s attorney general merrick garland went a step further and appointed weiss as special counsel to make sure his work on the hunter biden case was truly independent. that was a move that republicans opposed. the house judiciary committee writing, david weiss can t be trusted. this is just a new way to whitewash the biden family corruption. after all that an appeal deal was worked out with hunter biden and ultimately rejected by the courts. weiss ended up charging the president son for an offense so rarely prosecuted that even trey gowdy, the former congressman and prosecutor, could scarcely believe it. i did gun prosecutions for six years. i went after convicted felons. i went after people who were fugitives from justice. i went after lots of different people who were prohibited from possessing a firearm, but i bet there were not 10 cases prosecuted nationwide of addicts or unlawful drug users who possess firearms or lied on applications. i bet there weren t a dozen, which makes you wonder of all the cases you could be pursuing in delaware, why are you pursuing this one? all of this was facilitated by democrats in the white house and department of justice and capitol hill to restore faith in equal justice under the law and the norms of the constitutional order. donald trump flagrantly violated the law, interfering with the department of justice. stewing when he could not interfere further. publicly calling for prosecutions. you may have forgotten that months into his presidency troubles calling federal prosecutors and cultivating relationships with them, including the u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york. and obama holdover who was overseeing the investigation into stock trades made by trump s health secretary. he said those calls made him uncomfortable and he was fired as u.s. attorney less than a day after he finally refused to take a call from president trump. the administration would later tell propublica, trump s personal attorney bragged about getting him fired with reportedly telling trump, this guy is going to get you. the former united states attorney for the southern district of new york joins me now. an interesting study in contrast over the past few weeks. what strikes you about the reaction? when you think about the biden family and how joe biden in particular thinks about his job and not just his job, but his family. upon a conviction or before the conviction, the arrest and indictment of his son, given what his family has been through, you would think every fatherly instinct would ve been to protect him. if you are a father, and i know you are, you love your children more than you love yourself. you try to protect them from harm and you try to protect them from bad consequences. the biden family has suffered lots of bad things as a family and yet there are some things more important than that when you are the commander in chief and basically the president of the country and one of those things is that no one is above the law and the rule of law matters. here is an occasion as you were playing out in the intro, where joe biden had absolute authority. literal authority. he had no authority over robin bragg and did not direct the prosecution of donald trump. it is his justice department. he had the authority to direct people not to prosecute his son. he could have fired the special counsel. he could have directed the special counsel not be appointed in the first place. he could have pardoned his son preemptively. all of that conduct, given that it is his son, it kind of makes you pause and think about ton about how unbelievable that is. in a million years, if the shoe were on the other foot and donald trump was facing his son being prosecuted, by me if i had been held over. a biden holdover prosecutor, not in a million years with that have happened. some of the people on the right, the people who support donald trump, are trying to cast this as some clever program by which this actually proves they yes. i will say it is outlandish imagining don junior getting in trouble with guns and drugs, but stephen miller said this. the gun charges are a misdirection and an easy opt to sell to a quiet media that is also willing to be duped. this is about protecting joe biden and only joe biden. no matter what happens, right, the corrupt deep system is deeper than you realized. if every possible outcome, every possible permutation is arguably a point in your favor, maybe your position is terrible. i used a different word than terrible. honestly i don t even think he was required to keep david weiss on in delaware. honestly, when i say bend over backwards, that is bending over it would have been perfectly reasonable to replace him. obviously it would not be reasonable to say wink wink, nagy nudge. but if you say do your thing. by the way some other features are important to point out and you mentioned some in the intro. the jury verdict came out. they did not dox the jury or attack the judge. he did not say this is a witch hunt. he said what people say. what i used to say when i was u.s. attorney for 7 1/2 years. you win some and you lose some. we say we respect the verdict of the jury. completely opposite to what donald trump said. it was striking. after that trump verdict, i remember judge kaplan in the federal civil trial with e. jean carroll told the jurors, look, you can talk to the press if you want. i would advise you not to. in alvin bragg s case they did not and i think we all know the reason. they would expose themselves to harassment and possible threats and violence. here you had the jurors talking to us, which, great, am a reporter. i like it, but what a contrast. it is a very stark contrast and i think it goes to show that when joe biden and his supporters talk about the rule of law and nobody being above the law, they mean it. you can disagree with joe biden s policies and talk about the border and all of these things that are not in my bailiwick, but on the question of whether or not the rule of law is to be enforced and no favor given to anyone, including the son of a sitting president of the united states. the republicans are full of it on trump side and biden is not. he has walked the walk. my final question for you is about independence in the department of justice. we have a post mix in order. one of the things about nixon and the reckoning at a level of regulation, norms, and that schuetz was the department of justice can t just be a tool in the hands of the executive to pursue vendetta to prosecute and punish enemies to protect friends. the trump vision is exactly that and in fact, explicitly that. they really think we are going to come in and it is going to be like day one, go open an investigation on that person, prosecute them. what they have accused everyone else of doing. there is a great irony. one of the cases pending against donald trump, the mar-a-lago documents case in federal court in florida, donald trump steam has made a number of motions to dismiss the indictment. one of those is vindictive prosecution. there is no evidence that joe biden or anyone else directed the investigation and prosecution and indictment. by saying the things they are saying now that you are pointing out, donald trump is ironically laying out the foundation for a vindictive prosecution motion to dismiss on behalf of all the current people donald trump will be going after. he is announcing his plans before election. all of those statements and those plans, project 20/25 and everything else, will be chapter and verse and asking for those dismissals of those indictments. coming up, congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez and jamie raskin on the litany of scandals rocking the supreme court, but first, what we are learning about donald trump s rude awakening from the justice system, next. system, next. shop etsy anytime for furniture, lighting, and other thoughtful pieces made by real people to bring a little something extra to the ordinary. find handmade items that add wow to your walls, help your party set-up pop, and new things to help you fall in love with your family room again. when you want 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crime, is often on job applications. it is the subject of campaigns to get rid of it, to help former convicts get jobs and reenter society. that question is apparently still part of the vetting of trump s vice presidential pick, where it seems only one member of the ticket gets to be a felon. they asked us for a number of things. i think a number of people have been asked to submit this and that. like your taxes or something? criminal background? have you committed a crime? have you ever lied about this? certainly you have those conversations. he extensively covered trump world including his recent reporting on the juror. it is interesting to watch folks who don t know this and to watch the various implications of being convicted of a felony and all the different types of regulations and things you cannot do. in some states it is disenfranchisement, voting, liquor licenses and the like. being a person of color and a former prosecutor, i am unmoved by these newfound epiphanies on the right with respect to the reality of life in america if you are a convicted felon. one thing i find to be particularly interesting is how the right is scrambling to rearrange the narrative of what it is to be a felon. think of this for a moment. you re talking about the party that planted its flag on the notion of law and order in america, now having to walk out and say it is politically advantageous for our candidate to have 34 convictions on his record. this is a narrative they are not going to be able to square, but it is funny to watch them try. he invited in the bronx on stage, folks who are facing charges for a broad conspiracy with people that includes moving heavy drugs and violent crime. very serious, gnarly stuff. and has them on the stage like hey, this is our thing now. let s be clear, you are talking about whether someone is an associate of new orleans. an associate of felons. the list is long. i think they are trying to be like, it is actually good we are felons and they don t actually believe that. it s amazing how much the tough on crime philosophy falls by the wayside when it is the racist game show hosts turn in the barrel. donald trump and his minions talk day in and day out about a two-tiered system of justice. he is correct that one does exist in this country, it is just he is at this tier and everyone else s at this tier. so many things no other defendant could get away with. including the judge and all that stuff, he would have been put in jail for sure. absolutely and now behind the scenes and in the open he and his maga brain trust are getting ready to exploit parts of the u.s. criminal code to go after alvin bragg, letitia james, jack smith, if he returns to power in 2025. some of this is being cooked up behind the scenes and policy papers, but so much is being done in the open. you ve also got them moving to get alvin bragg before a committee. he will testify with the gop led judiciary committee. one question i had about all of this, does any of this matter in the process that trump was going through? no, it does not. you don t think it matters, talking about it is all rigged? does that matter for sentencing? donald trump s public rhetoric absolutely matters. i thought you were referring to alvin bragg going to capitol hill, which is something i think he should not do. with respect to the things donald trump is parroting in the dialogue around his case, that matters. one of the things the probation officer is going to take into account is what degree of understanding and remorse do you have? i screwed up, i m sorry. exactly. to walk in his office and say that when you have every opportunity with the microphone in front of your face. you ve reported on this and this has been going around the house republican leaders are privately gauging support for legislation that would let current and former presidents move a state case to federal court. have you heard any of that? we reported in rolling stone at the end of last month that trump had been personally calling around to different conservative allies, including republican lawmakers on capitol hill, to lobby them. when i m back in office, wouldn t it be great if you passed legislation that is ready for me to sign to have former and current presidents be able to move their cases to federal court. again, i think they are getting high on their own supply. i feel like that is a bad bill to vote for. for a front-line republican member. right? i m not crazy. if you are a maga lawmaker, certainly there is a cute appeal to it. it is not only moderate republicans on capitol hill saying maybe we shouldn t do this. i ve spoken to cronies who are close to donald trump who have told me maybe we should not go down this route because don t we want to use state a.g. s and conservative district attorneys to go after joe biden or hillary clinton? yes, the principal applying equally would hang them up. there is back and forth about the gun situation, charles. i m sure you have encountered this. what does the law say about whether he can keep the gun in florida? in your crime. he more likely than not will need to turn the gun in in florida. he is going to have a grace period where that is allowed. well technically he might be in violation of the law upon notice of conviction, he is probably going to be allowed but it does not surprise me he has to turn it in in florida. there is an incredible thing happening which is the hunter biden conviction was about a felony conviction. he lied on forms. committing a felony in terms of taking drugs and owning a gun. so he lied on the forms. now we have the ex-president holding a gun, having been convicted of a felony. a remarkable set of circumstances. charles coleman, asawin suebsaeng, thank you both. still to come, samuel alito s wife has more thoughts about flags, amazingly. aoc and jamie raskin on the supreme court legitimacy crisis, ahead. 50 days!? and its refill reminder light means i ll never miss a day of 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the opposite of pride. the alito s have not responded to requests for comment but none of what ms. alito said change the facts that justice alito allowed this to fly over his home while he sits in the highest court in the land hearing cases related to the insurrection on january 6 and sits on the court with his buddy clarence thomas whose wife was interviewed by the committee about her text with donald trump s chief of staff. both refused to recuse themselves, despite the obvious appearance of bias. when faced with an increasingly urgent question, what can be done about the out-of-control court? today democrats held a roundtable on the ethical crisis in the supreme court. i should note that one of the expert legal witnesses there was my wife. leading the panel was jamie raskin, the ranking member of the oversight committee and newark congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez, the vice ranking member, and they join me now. it is good to have you on. thanks for having us. i will start with you and what the agenda was today. obviously you can t call hearings yourself as a ranking member and not the chair, but what were you trying to do today? oversight democrats wanted to respond to the national clamor over this crisis of legitimacy at the supreme court. so we analyzed the ethics crisis. we analyzed the political crisis around what got us into this and the blockaded confirmations of people like merrick garland, nominated by president obama to the court, and then we began to talk about what things could be done in the specific case of justices alito and thomas and generally about the ethical collapse of the supreme court. it is the highest court in the land with the lowest ethical standards. the only government officials in the land who are not governed by a binding ethics code. there is no process by which we can hold any of them accountable, so it violates the essential principle that james madison identified as the heart of our justice system. which is that no man can be a judge in his own cause. so we began to explore different avenues of holding them accountable. congresswoman, you said something toward the end of the hearing that it cannot be the case as a constitutional matter, as an almost intuitive commonsense matter, that they are not subject to any checks. we have three branches. checks and balances move between the positions and justice alito said in the wall street journal interview that congress has no ability to regulate us whatsoever. what should congress be doing? what are you brainstorming basically? what is the conversation about what those can be? of course justice alito s position is laughable in this. this idea that he can be and that the court should be accountable to nobody and that the only person they should be accountable to our themselves. this kind of scouts promise sort of set up for how we should be having ethics standards for the highest and most consequential court in the land. it is completely unacceptable and not only is it unacceptable but to have anyone of our coequal branches be completely unaccountable to the others is paving the path to authoritarianism, tyranny, the abuse of power in the united states. it is structurally, completely unsustainable. so it is not a question of if congress has jurisdiction and power over the supreme court. it is what power are we going to exercise in order to reign in a fundamentally unaccountable and rogue court? one of the beautiful things about today s roundtable is we were also able to call in one of our senate colleagues, senator whitehouse, who has been pursuing extensive investigations into the dark money network that has been exerting influence over the court and we raised and discussed varying measures from term limits to an actual binding ethics standard and also congressman raskin and myself will be introducing forthcoming legislation to even have the supreme court be subject to the same $50 gift rule that he and i are subject to, as are everyone else who are members of congress. that is a great point. my understanding, i was talking to my wife, kate shaw, about this. to give testimony during the hearing. she pointed out to me if i am not mistaken that things, for instance, you can get a book deal as a supreme court justice. that is allowed. but you could not like to be a partner that is something that congress passed a statute to say what you could and could not do, because obviously it would be nuts to be a supreme court justice and have a side gig as a lawyer. we all understand that. congress can pass statutes that say this activity is just not allowed. congress has a ban on outside employment and as aoc was saying, we have a $50 gift ban, so none of us goes anywhere near doing that. you don t do $500,000 vacations? that s the comical thing. members of congress don t even understand that. under what circumstance would a supreme court justice be accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars in foreign travel were paid tuition for family members or a recreational vehicle, motor stagecoach? it is outlandish for us to complicate to contemplate. it is like the normal business as usual at the supreme court that they are collecting millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of dollars from their so-called friends. we need to clean that up. we said we will start with something simple that the whole country will be able to understand immediately and intuitively. we want a $50 gift ban. they make $300,000 a year. pay for your own lunch and pay for your own vacation. that does seem quite clear, congresswoman, and also has the advantage again. there are particular issues to deal with, but in some ways the only way to legislate it or for congress to act is outlining broad principles that are equally applicable. absolutely and as all of us as public servants, whether it is both chambers of congress, any of us are subject to the same or similar uniform code of ethics and the fact that the supreme court, which is already unelected, at least for those of us who run for office we have to re-run for office every two years in the house. for an unelected body of nine people, appointed for life, to not have any sort of binding, strict ethics code to which they cannot only be held accountable, but which can be enforced, is actually ludicrous. and it is almost unbelievable that we are sitting here in the year 2024, over 200 years after the establishment of this country, and that we actually have not addressed this issue. it is long past doing and it is common sense. one of the things we addressed, chris, was how the private corruption of the justices mirrors the public corruption of justice. it is this roberts court, this right-wing court dismantling civil rights laws, civil liberties, women s rights to choose, labor law, consumer law, you name it. as they grow more and more removed from the experiences of the way the rest of us live, the more they are willing to demolish the protections. the there are a bunch of things that happened outside of the ap purview that you have to do with equal justice under law and i wonder if both of you would stick around to talk ul about that, is that all right? 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i mean, it was very presidential and, you know, he showed in his statement love for his son and love for his country including the rule of law. the different reactions between a republican colleagues and our democratic colleagues with the trump verdict and hunter biden verdict, it is just astounding. nobody on our side said that the fix was in, nobody said that it was a travesty, nobody said that the justice needs to be turned upside down. everybody accepted it. hunter biden, like donald trump, had the right of counsel which you exercise, you have the presumption of innocence, he had the right to take the stand which he chose not to do like donald trump chose not to take the stand and they have both had unanimous jury verdicts finding that they were guilty on all counts. so i am saying about that what i said about donald trump s verdict which is, they have a right to appeal and they can do that under due process, thank god we have got that in america. and we are going to stand by the rule of law and the system of justice, for the same reason that we are fighting for a supreme court that restores its integrity and reputation because we need to have that kind of confidence, not just at the trial level in federal court or state court. we need to have it going all the way up. those of supreme court justices are just a complete runaway body. speaking of state court in new york, congresswoman, obviously you represent part of new york, there was a huge amount of insults and vitriol that has been directed at alvin bragg both from donald trump on down and people carrying water for him, that has now escalated. he will now he is being called by the house republicans before the judiciary committee and be grilled by house republicans who have rallied behind mr. trump since his conviction last month. gop lawmakers are perpetuating his false narrative that president biden ordered his prosecution. what you think about the fact that they are not escalating to the point where they will call alvin bragg before congress? what we are seeing here unseld is an outright abuse of power in the politicization of the seats of power these republicans hold in order to intimidate the courts and exact political revenge. we have to just look at this from a basic jurisdictional point of view. alvin bragg is not even this is not even a federal case in the same way. we are looking at a state court. and we are looking at municipal and state courts and we have republicans who are trying to haul them in, on what grounds exactly? this is not federal court, they do not have jurisdiction over it, this is truly just and attempt at public targeting. and we see that they do this, this is in the middle of donald trump, it is in the model of invoking and trying to incite as much anger and intimidation in order for them to get the outcomes that they want. they are so eager to be fans to donald trump that their political judgment is off because that is not where the public is and the public understands, with the hunter biden verdict in the donald trump verdict, the rule of law is just working and they are intervening, as you say, and an estate case in order simply to placate donald trump pics to precisely, what we are also seeing here is the stark contrast between joe biden and donald trump. and in president biden, we have both come yes, a loving father who is there to be supportive of his son, but also a president who respects rule of law and is willing to accept the outcomes of the case even if that outcome is not in favor with his family or his personal outcomes. whereas, you have donald trump who takes and finances the seats of government, the seats of power, and embarks on a campaign, a political intimidation, in order to secure outcomes that personally benefit him. and that at the core is part of the sticks of our democracy that are before us today. because once rule of law goes out the window, it is not something that is easy to get back and it is very much a part of the decision that we have to make before us in the next few months. congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez, congressman jamie raskin, thank you for your time tonight. i really appreciate it. that is all in on this tuesday night. alex wagner tonight starts now. we have new exclusive audio from the supreme court historical society that lauren winsor has given us and we will be playing that in the hour, so stay tuned. i will pick like i said, exclusive never before heard audio recordings of justice samuel alito speaking to an undercover
we can secure our world. don t just use a password alone. mfa sends a call, a text or a code to your phone. learn more at cisa.gov/secureourworld that s how we can secure our world! on that note, i wish you a very good night. from all our colleagues across the networks of nbc news, thank you for staying up late. i will see you tomorrow. tonight on all in. as we deliberate, we reached a verdict pretty quickly. the president s son found guilty of violating federal gun laws. no one in the country is above the law. everyone must be accountable for their actions. what the verdict means and does not mean about the rule of law in america. everyone is saying where is hunter? two tiered system of just a we have. the campaign led by compact is vetting potential running mates. i don t know. certainly, like, you committed a crime. the alito scandal that will not end. you know what i want? i want a sacred heart of jesus flag because i have to look across the lagoon at the pride flag for the month. jamie raskin on the push to get answers from the supreme court. can you tell us about how the supreme court and specifically the chief justice have addressed the scandals? all in starts right now. good evening from new york. i m chris hayes. in a political era marked by seemingly never ending string of historic firsts, there s another one today. a record decision the conservatives received with glee. hunter biden has been found guilty on all counts in his gun trial. federal trial in wilmington. hunter biden, the last living son of the sitting president was convicted today on three felony counts related to his lying on a federal firearms application in 2018 by not disclosing the struggles with drug addiction. he had the gun for 11 days. hunter biden now faces as much as 25 years in prison and his father, president biden, did not blast the case is a which one or target the prosecutors, judge, and jurors some of whom called into cable news shows to discuss the verdict with no major fears for their own safety in this high-profile case. president biden did not shake his fist at the justice system. he put up the statement. as i said last week, i am the president but i am also a debt. jill and i love our son and we are proud of the man he is today. so many families who ve had loved ones battle addiction understand the feeling of pride seeing someone, the other side and be so strong and resilient in recovery. as i also said, will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process is hunter considers an appeal. jill and i will always be there for hunter and the rest of our family with our love and support. nothing will ever change that. i find that genuinely touching. love of family, respect for the process. its income incredibly stark contrast to the ceaseless barrage of absolutely unhinged authoritarian histrionics we all witnessed last month. remember? not just from donald trump but the entire republican party. other people dressing up as donald trump who went to the courthouse so he will pick them to be the vice president and mob chanting for them to be hanged. all of them calling to tear down the entire judicial system are casting aspersions at new york jurors or near justice for the judge or the prosecutor. all because their nominee got caught falsifying business records and was convicted unanimously by a jury of his peers on 34 felony counts. this was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt . a rigged trial, a disgrace. this is like the soviet style thing. show me the person and i ll show you the crime. it was a smear job. it was an attack job. it s what you see in a banana republic. the problem is democrats have crossed the line. it s a justice system the hunch republicans while protecting democrats. this was a hoax. a sham. do we want to become a country where we jail political opponents? republicans and protects democrats. what do you think the party affiliation of hunter biden is? and so, this hunter biden conviction is as clear a moment of contrast as possible between the two major coalitions, the major parties and political polls today. what did illustrates is one party under donald trump, and this is important, has placed itself outside the american constitution while the other still trying to defend and uphold of. that was closed in january 6 but at that time, particularly the aftermath, there was palpable horror among republicans. lots of them talking how horrified they were. re-signing from the administration and all that. there was a sense the party wanted to distance themselves from trump s lawlessness. that was then. today they are fully united as a party in opposition to that. attitude typified by possibly the most powerful conservative you ve never heard of russ vought, portions of the heritage foundation project 2025 on how to remake the executive branch in a trump presidency. this week, the washington post identified russ vought as a potential chief of staff and the trump administration even if he lays out his vision for a post-constitutional presidency to turn the government into a flatly authoritarian project or failing that, just a mafia state. reporting that he is help craft proposals from trump to deploy the military to quash civil unrest, seize control of the justice department, and assert the power of appropriations and that s just on trump s first day back. democrats are not just making statements of faith and the legal institutions, they have taken reelections to preserve those institutions and their independence. no better example of this is the prosecution of one hunter biden. remember how this started? back in 2018 under david weiss, the u.s. attorney the trump- appointed in delaware, the fbi probed hunter biden and there were subpoenas but no charges. remember, trump grew angry at that, quote, was justice department had not publicized the investigation into his opponent s son during the 2020 election. after trump lost that election, republicans insisted president biden would obstruct justice to keep his son free and they called for a special counsel to investigate hunter biden. when the new president comes in, it s his right to replace any u.s. attorney who wants in the usually do. been replaced donald trump s appointees at doj except for two. john durham who bill barr tasked with investigating the rusher probe, trump special. and david weiss who was investigating his own son. that is because the new president, at the pains of a possible criminal conviction of his surviving son in recovery wanted no appearance of impropriety or of fearon s. merrick garland went a step forward. and he appointed david weiss as special counsel to make sure his work on the hunter biden case was independent. that was a move that republicans opposed? the republicans in the house judiciary, david weiss can t be trusted. it s a new way to whitewash the biden family s corruption. after all of that and a plea deal that was worked out with hunter biden but ultimately rejected by the courts, he ended up charging the president s son for an weapons are rarely prosecuted that even trey gaudi, the far right ex- congressman and former prosecutor could scarcely believe. i did gun prosecutions for six years. i went after convicted felons. i went after people who were fugitives from justice. i went after lots of different people who were prohibited from possessing a firearm. i will bet you they were not 10 cases prosecuted nationwide of addicts or unlawful drug users who possess firearms relied on applications. i bet there were not a dozen. it makes you wonder of all the cases you could be pursuing in delaware, why are you pursuing this one? all of this facilitated by democrats in the white house and the department of justice and capitol hill, all to try to restore faith and equal justice under the law and the norms of the constitution. trump flagrantly violated the norms at every turn. stewing we could not interfere further. publicly calling for prosecutions. you may have forgotten this nugget that months into his presidency trump was calling federal prosecutors and cultivating relationships with them including the was attorney for the southern district beat barrera, obama holdover who was overseeing investigation into stock trades made by trump s health secretary tom price. he said those calls made him uncomfortable and he was fired as u.s. attorney less than a day after he finally refused to take a call from trump. people inside the administration would later tell propublica, trump s personal attorney bragged about getting bharara fired reportedly telling trump this guys going to get you. the former u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york joins me now. an interesting study in contrast over the last few weeks. indeed. what strikes you about the reaction today? when you think of the biden family and how joe biden in particular thinks of his job, and his family, upon a conviction before the conviction, the investigation and arrest and indictment of his son given what his family is been through, you would think every parental, a fatherly instinct would ve been to protect him. if you are a father, you love your children more than you love yourself. you need to protect them from harm and you try to protect them from bad consequences. the biden family has suffered bad things as a family and yet there s some things more important than that when you are commander-in-chief and the president of the country. one of those things is no one is above the law and the rule of law matters. this that you have been pointing out, joe biden had absolute authority, literal authority. no authority over alvin bragg and did not direct the prosecution of trump. it s his justice department and he had authority to direct people not to prosecute his son. he could ve fired special counsel and directed them not be appointed in the first place. he could ve pardon has some preemptively. he could still pardon him but he said he will not do that. all of that conduct given it is his son, it s kind of think how unbelievable that is. in 1 million years if the shoe were on the other foot and donald trump was facing the prospect of his son being prosecuted by me if i had been held over, a biden holdover or obama holdover prosecution, not in 1 million years with that have happened. some of the people on the right who support donald trump are trying to cast this as some clever ops program by which this actually proves it to hash i will say it s outlandish to announce don jr. getting in trouble with guns or drugs. stephen miller said it s a misdirection and easy effort doj to sell to appliance media that s too willing to be due. it s about protecting joe biden and only joe biden. no matter what happens, the corrupt rigged system is steeper than you realize. if every possible outcome, permutation is arguably a point in your favor, maybe your position is terrible. i used a different word than terrible. i don t even think he was required even by probity to keep david weiss on in delaware. honestly. when i say bend over backwards, it would ve been perfectly reasonable bend over backwards above and beyond. and it would not be reasonable to say wink wink, nudge nudge. if you say, do your thing. he didn t have to do with. other features important to point out and you mentioned some of them in the intro. the jury verdict came out and they didn t dox the jury or take the judge. he didn t say it s a travesty of justice or a witch-hunt. he said what i used to say when i was attorney and from time to time even though with the you win some and lose some. we respect the jury. opposite of what trump did. one of the most striking things is after the trump verdict and i remember judge kaplan in the federal civil trial with e. jean carroll told the jurors, you can talk to the press, i advise you not to. and they did not. in alvin bragg s case they did not talk to the press. they would expose himself to harassment a possibly threats and harassment. i m a reporter and i like it. what a contrast. it s a stark contrast. i think it goes to show and when joe biden and his supporters talk about the rule of law, they mean it. you can disagree with his policies. talk about the border and other things that are not in my daily work but on the question of whether or not the rule of law is to be enforced in fear or favor to be given to anyone including the son of a sitting president of the united states, the republicans are full of it on the trump side and biden is not. walk the walk. final question, independence and the department of justice. we have a post-nixon order. one of the things about nixon, a level of regulation, norms, and statures was the department of justice can t just be a tool in the hands of the executive to pursue vendetta. to prosecute and punish enemies. to protect friends. the trump vision is that. explicitly that. russ vought, they really think we are going to come in ski and it will be day one open investigation and that person and prosecute them. that which they accused everyone as of doing, they are saying, there is great irony, one of the cases pending against donald trump, the mar-a- lago case in florida, donald trump s team is made a number of motions to dismiss the indictment. one is vindictive prosecution. there is no evidence of that. no evidence that joe biden or anyone else directed that prosecution and indictment. by saying the things they re saying now that you are pointing out, donald trump ironically laying the foundation for a vindictive persecution motion to dismiss on the part of all the current people who donald trump will be going after because he s announcing his plans before election. all the statements in the plans, project 2025 and everything is will be chapter and verse in the briefs asking for the dismissal of those indictments. that s a great point. preet bharara, thank you. coming up congressman alexandria ocasio-cortez and jamie raskin on the scandals rocking the maga supreme court. donald trump s rude awakening from the criminal justice system. l justice system. her uncle s unhappy. i m sensing an underlying issue. it s t-mobile. it started when we tried to get him under a new plan. but they they unexpectedly unraveled their “price lock” guarantee. which has made him, a bit. unruly. you called yourself the “un-carrier”. you sing about “price lock” on those commercials. “the price lock, the price lock.” so, if you could change the price, change the name! it s not a lock, i know a lock. so how can we undo the damage? we could all unsubscribe and switch to xfinity. their connection is unreal. and we could all un-experience this whole session. okay, that s uncalled for. donald trump has been convicted of 34 felonies and now, americans, the ones who don t know at least getting a crash course the way life changes when you become a felon. since his conviction, trump is expected to have his gun license revoked under federal law. convicted felons are prohibited from possessing a gun. that was part of the issue when the hunter trial. it s unclear what it means for guns he has in his possession a. he told the probation officer he has a gun in florida. he could lose his liquor licenses first three new jersey golf clubs. new jersey prohibits any person who is been convicted of a crime of moral turpitude from having a liquor license. have you ever been convicted of a crime is often on job applications. a subject of reform campaigns to ban the box as a way to help former convicts get jobs and reenter society. that question about criminal convictions is part of the vetting for vice presidential pick where it seems only one member of the ticket gets to be a felon. the vast for a number of things. a number of people have been asked to submit this and that. like taxes? i don t know everything. criminal background? have you convicted a crime. charles coleman and civil rights defense attorney. a senior political reporter at rolling stones who has covered trump world. trump hoped would save him from conviction. they join me. it s interesting to watch folks who don t know this to watch the various implications of being convicted of a felony and the different regulations and things you cannot do. in some states it s voting, liquor licenses, and the like. speaking as a person of color and a former prosecutor, i am unmoved by these newfound epiphanies that are occurring on the right with respect to the reality of life in america if you are a convicted felon. one thing i find to be particularly interesting is how the right is scrambling to rearrange the narrative of what it is to be a felon. you are talking about the party that has planted its flag on the notion of law and order in america now having to walk out and say it s politically advantageous for our candidate to have 34 convictions on his record. this is a narrative they are not going to be able to square but it s funny to watch them try. he had invited on stage in the box, two folks broad conspiracy of folks like moving heavy drugs and violent crime. very serious stuff and has them on the state. this is our thing now. you were talking whether someone is an associate of felons. that is donald trump s jam. the list is very long. shockingly long, especially for someone who held the highest office in the country. i think it is a psych job. they re trying to say it s good we are felons. it s amazing how the tough on crime falls by the wayside when it s the racist game show host. donald trump and his minions love to talk to in and day out but two tiered system of justice. he is correct that one does exist in the country but he is at this tier and everybody is below. there s so many things he has been doing lately that no other defendant in a criminal trial could get away with. including the stuff he said about the judge. behind the scenes and in the open, and his maga brain trust prepared to exploit parts of the u.s. criminal code, as we have reported, to go after the alvin bragg sand letitia james and jack smith if he returns to power. some of this is cooked up behind the scenes in policy papers but so much is done in the open. you also have got them get alvin bragg before a committee. he is going to testify at the gop led judiciary committee. one question i have about this is, does any of this matter in the process that trump is going through? no, it does not. ramose, the probation officer? it s all rigged? does that matter from what sentencing? his public rhetoric absolutely i thought you were referring to alvin bragg. with respect to the things that donald trump is parroting and continues to parrot in the public dialogue around his case, that matters. one of the things a probation officer will take into account is what degree of understanding and remorse do you have? i screwed up. i am sorry. when you are in every opportunity in front of a microphone saying what a political prosecution this was. you have been reported on this that house republican leaders are gauging support for legislation that would like current and former president move a state case to federal court. have you heard any of that? oh, yeah. we reported at the end of last month that trump had been calling around to different conservative allies including republican lawmakers on capitol hill to lobby them when i m back in office, wouldn t it be great if you passed legislation ready for me to send that can have former and current president move their cases to federal court? again, i think they re getting high on their supply. i feel like that is a bad bill to vote for. for a front-line republican member. if you are a maga lawmaker, there is a cute appeal to it. it s not only moderate republicans saying maybe we should not do this. i have spoken to extremely maga attorneys close to donald trump with told me, maybe we shouldn t go down this run. we want to use state ag s and district attorneys to go after joe biden or hillary clinton. the principle applying equal he would hang them up. there is back and forth about the gun situation. i m sure you have encountered this. folks have guns. what does the law say about whether he can keep the gun in florida, new york crime. he will probably need to turn the gun in in florida. he will have a grace period or that s allowed. technically, he might be in violation of the law upon the notice of conviction, he will probably allowed some leeway but it would not surprise me if he has to turn it in. hunter biden conviction today was about he lied on a form because you cannot in terms of taking drugs and own a gun. violation of federal law and lied on the forms and of the ex- president holding a gun. having been convicted of a felony. it s a remarkable set of circumstances. thank you both. samuel alito s wife has even more thoughts about flags. aoc and jamie raskin on the supreme court s legitimacy crisis. itimacy crisis. hi, i m janice and i lost 172 pounds on golo. a friend told me that i was the only one holding me back from being as beautiful on the outside as i am on the inside. once i saw golo was working i felt this rush. golo really works. donald trump wins in november his plans including as the washington post reports a plot to convert federal civil service into an authoritarian tool to report friends and punish enemies. the scope of his plan his desire to weaponize the government against perceived foes. one of the most striking example was a trump department of justice lengthy battle to block the merger between at&t and time warner on antitrust grant. there was always a suspicion which is been all but confirmed that trump was trying to block the merger because he did not like time warner s news network cnn. antitrust and trump s hands was another tool of government authority that could be used to corrupt ends. in the latest episode of my podcast series why is this happening with pot 2024 those steaks? i talked with timothy who is the architect of president biden s antitrust policy. we talked about the respective records of donald trump and joe biden as president when it comes to antitrust action. there were indications, genuine bits of evidence, and a widespread perception amongst i think fortune 500 corporate elite that this was essentially, if you are with trump, if you were his friend you could get the merger approved and it you were his enemy you would have a problem. this became this powerful almost unilateral lover for trump to wield against people he did not like and the most notorious case being, and i think it was somewhat surprising, when the doj announced it would block a proposed at&t time warner merger. there is some evidence to suggest that at least partly it was born of the animus trump hat of cnn s coverage of him. that is pretty bad. i think it s a thing where trump didn t think there was a problem with it. no. i think he thought it was within his rights to order the breakup of a company he did not like. his white house counsel sort of restrained were slightly dead and that. there is so much circumstantial evidence that the white house and the presidency were involved in antitrust decisions that it s hard to deny it. you can find the full conversation i had with him who is a fascinating guy and an amazing record in this area by going to why is this happening? the stakes by scanning the qr code on your screen. you can listen to it wherever you get your podcast. ur podcas flight. cirkul is the energy that gets you to the next level. cirkul is what you hope for when life tosses lemons your way. cirkul, available at walmart and drinkcirkul.com. i must admit i was skeptical when supreme court justice samuel alito blamed his wife for that upside down american flag flying at their home after january 6. a symbol adopted by trump supporters who believed the 2020 election was stolen. it seemed like a convenient explanation but it looks like justice alito was telling the truth when he said infamously, quote, my wife is fond of flying flags. i am not. listen to her in a recent conversation secretly recorded and released by activist lauren windsor. you know what i want? i want a sacred heart of jesus flag because i have to look across the lagoon at the pride flag for the next month. and he s like, please don t put up a flag. i said i won t do it because i am deferring to you. but when you re free of this nonsense, putting it up and i m going to send a message every day, maybe every week. i made a flag in my head. this is how we satisfy myself. i made a flag. it s white and yellow and orange flames around it and in the middle is this word. in italian that means shame. shame. the opposite of pride? they have not responded to an nbc news request for comment but none of what she said changes the facts that justice alito allowed the flag to fly over so molly sits in the highest court on the land hearing cases related to the insurrection in january 6 and he sits on the court along with his buddy clarence thomas his wife was interviewed by the january 6 committee better tax with trump s chief of staff. both justice thomas and alito refused to root recuse himself despite the obvious appearance. we are faced with an urgent question. what can be done about us out of control court? democrats in the house oversight committee held a roundtable on the ethical crisis in the supreme court. one of the expert legal witnesses was my wife. leading the panel was jamie raskin, ranking member the oversight committee and new york congresswomen alexandria ocasio-cortez, the vice ranking member and they post join me now. good to have you on. thank you for having us. i will start with you about what the agenda was today to convene this. you cannot call hearings herself as a ranking member and not the chair. what were you trying to do today? the oversight democrats wanted to respond to the national clamor over this crisis of legitimacy at the supreme court. we analyzed the ethics crisis and we analyze the political crisis around confirmations that got us into this and the blockade of confirmations of people like merrick garland who was nominated by president obama that we began to talk about what things could be done both in the specific case of justices alito and thomas and about the ethical collapse at the supreme court. the highest court in the land with the lowest ethical standards. the only governmental officials in the land who are not governed by a binding ethics code. there is no process by which we can hold them accountable. it violates the essential principle that james madison identified as the heart of our justice system which is no man can be a judge in his own cause. we began to explore different avenues of holding them accountable. congresswoman, you said something toward the end saying it cannot be the case, a constitutional matter as an almost intuitive common sense matter that they are not subject to any checks. we have three coequal branches. checks and balances between them three branches in the position alito said in an interview that congress has no ability to regulate us whatsoever. what should congress be doing? what are you brainstorming? what s the conversation about what those checks can be? of course, justice alito s position is laughable. this idea that he can be and the court should be accountable to nobody and the only person that should be accountable is are themselves. this scouts promise sort of set up for how we should be having ethics standards for the highest and most consequential court in the land. it s completely unacceptable and not only unacceptable, but to have one of our coequal branches be completely unaccountable to the others is paving the path to authoritarianism, tyranny, the abuse of power in the united states. it s structurally, completely unsustainable. it s not a question of if congress has jurisdiction and power over the supreme court. it is what power are we going to exercise in order to reign in a fundamentally unaccountable and rogue court? one of the beautiful things about the roundtable today is we were able to call in one of our senate colleagues, senator white house, who has been pursuing extensive investigations into the dark money networks that has been exerting influence over the court and we raised and discussed a varying degrees of measures from term limits to actual binding ethics standard and congressman raskin i myself will be introducing a forthcoming legislation to even have the supreme court be subject to the same $50 gift rule that he and i are subject to is everyone else is, members of congress. that is a great point. i was talking to my wife kate shaw who gave testimony today before your hearing. she pointed out to me that if i m not mistaken, things like, you can get a book deal as a supreme court justice but you could not be a partner of wilmer hail. that s something congress passed a statute to say what you could or could not do. you would be nuts to be a supreme court justice and have a side gig as a lawyer. presumably, you can change data congress can pass statutes that says this is not allowed. congress has a ban on outside employment and as aoc was saying, we have a $50 gift ban. none of us goes near doing that. you don t do $500,000 vacations? that s a comical thing. members of congress don t even understand that. what circumstances would a supreme court justice accept millions of dollars in foreign travel prepaid tuition for very family members or recreational vehicle, motor stagecoach. it s outlandish to contemplate. that s a general level of funds for people over here. the normal business as usual at the supreme court that they are collecting millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of dollars from the so-called friends. we need to clean that up. we said, we will start was something simple that the country can understand immediately. we want a $50 gift ban for u.s. supreme court justices. they make $300,000 a year. pay for your own lunch and you re on vacation. that does seem quite clear congresswoman and has the advantage, there s issues to deal with. in some ways, the only way to legislate for congress to act as outlaying broad principles that are broadly applicable. absolutely. as all of us as public servants of federal public servants whether it s both chambers of congress, the white house, many of us are subject to the same if not extremely similar and uniform code of ethics. the fact that the supreme court which is already unelected, at least for those of us who run for office, we have to re-run for office every two years in the house. for an unelected body of nine people appointed for life do not have any sort of binding, strict ethics code to which they cannot only be held accountable but which can be enforced, is actually ludicrous. it s almost unbelievable that we are sitting here in the year 20 24/200 years after the establishment of this country, and we have not addressed this issue. it is something that s long past doing and it s common sense. one thing we addressed is how the private corruption of the justices mirrors the public correction corruption of. it has been dismantling civil rights law, civil liberties, women s right to choose an abortion, labor law, consumer law, you name it. as they grow more removed from the experiences of the way the rest of us live, the more they are willing to demolish the protections the rest of us need to. there s a bunch of things to happened outside of the purview of this question, the court has to deal with equal justice under law and i wonder if you would stick around to talk about that. love to. love to. are you still struggling with your bra? it s time for you to try knix. makers of the world s comfiest wireless bras. for revolutionary support without underwires, and sizes up to a g-cup, find your new favorite bra today at knix.com craig here pays too much for verizon wireless. so he sublet half his real estate office. and sizes up to a g-cup, [ bird squawks loudly ] to a pet shop. meg s moving company uses t-mobile. so she scaled down her fleet to save money. and don s paying so much for at&t, he s been waiting to update his equipment! there s a smarter way to save. comcast business mobile. you could save up to 70% on your wireless bill. so you don t have to compromise. powering smarter savings. powering possibilities. still with me congressman jamie raskin and congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez, the ranking and vice ranking members of the house oversight committee. today, the president s son was convicted on counts he was charged with. i went to read the president s statement and get your reaction. he said i will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process. jill and i will always be there for hunter and the rest of our family with our love and support. nothing will change that. what did you think of that? i mean, it was very residential and he showed in his statement love for his son and love for his country including the rule of law. the different reactions between republican colleagues and democratic colleagues with the trump verdict in the hunter biden verdict, it s astounding. nobody on our side said the fix was in. nobody said it was a travesty. nobody said that justice system needs to be turned upside down. everybody accepted it. hunter biden like donald trump had the right of counsel which he exercised. he had the presumption of innocence and had the right to take the stand but chose not to do. trump chose not to do. they had unanimous jury verdicts finding they were guilty on all counts. i am saying about that what i said about trump s burdick which is they have a right to appeal and they can do that under due process. thank gut we ve got that in america and we will stand by the rule of law and the system of justice for the same reason we are fighting for a supreme court that restores its integrity and reputation. we need to have that kind of confidence not just at the trial level, federal court or state court, we need it all the way up. those supreme court justices are a runaway body at this point. speaking of state court in new york, congresswoman you represent part of new york. there was insults and vitriol that has been directed at alvin bragg from donald trump down in the people s carrying water for him. that has escalated. he is being called for the house republicans before i think the judiciary committee and be grilled by house republicans have rallied behind trump since his conviction. gop lawmakers are perpetuated the false narrative that president biden ordered his prosecution. what do you think about the fact that they are escalating to the point where they will haul alvin bragg before congress? what we are seeing here unfold is an out right abuse of power in the politicization, the seats of power these republicans hold to intimidate the courts and exact political revenge. we have to look at this from a basic jurisdictional point of view. alvin bragg is not even dad it s not even a federal case. we are looking at a state court. we are looking at municipal and state courts. we have republicans who are trying to haul them in, on what grounds exactly? it s not federal court. they do not have jurisdiction over it. it is truly an attempt at public targeting. we see they do this. it s in the model of donald trump and the model of invoking and trying to incite as much anger and intimidation in order for them to get the outcomes they want. and they are eager to be servile sycophants of donald trump that their political judgment is up. that s not where the public is and they understand what the hunter biden verdict in the donald trump verdict the rule of law is working and they are intervening as you say in a state case in order to placate donald trump. precisely. what we are also seeing is the stark contrast between joe biden and donald trump. president biden we have yes a loving father who was there to be supportive of his son but also a president who respects the rule of law and willing to accept the outcomes of a case even if the outcome is not in favor with his family or his personal outcomes. you have donald trump who takes and weaponize is the seats of government, the seats of power, and embarks on a campaign of political intimidation in order to secure outcomes that personally benefit him. that at the core is part of the stakes of our democracy that are before us today. once rule of law goes out the window, it s not something that is easy to get back. it s very much a part of the decision we have to make in the next few months. thank you for all your time tonight. that s all in on this tuesday night . night . tuesday night. good evening, alex. we have some new exclusive audio from the supreme court historical society that lauren windsor has given us and
you have donald trump who takes and weaponize is the seats of government, the seats of power, and embarks on a campaign of political intimidation in order to secure outcomes that personally benefit him. that at the core is part of the stakes of our democracy that are before us today. once rule of law goes out the window, it s not something that is easy to get back. it s very much a part of the decision we have to make in the next few months. thank you for all your time tonight. that s all in on this tuesday night . night . tuesday night. good evening, alex. we have some new exclusive audio from the supreme court historical society that lauren windsor has given us and we ll be playing that in the hour so stay tuned. will. like i said exclusive never before heard audio recordings of justice samuel alito speaking to an undercover progressive activist. that s what we have tonight. that is in addition to the bombshell reportings that were released poyesterday, and you l definitely want to hear these recordings when we play them. if you ve been wondering how those secret tapes were made in the very first place, how activists and judges on the highest court in this land, how they camehi to mingle behind closed doors, well, the answer to that begins almost ten years ago to this day, when the supreme court handed down a major decision. supporters of the hobby lobby cheered today s victory. the oklahoma family that owns the chain of 500 craft stores claimed that providing insurance coverage for some forms of contraceptives under obamacare would be the equivalent of paying for abortion. the court called the ruling startling. the hobby lobby decision. the majority opinion was written by justice amsl alito, and it was one of the first signs that conservatives on this court were willing to go after reproductive freedoms no matter the consequence. now, in the wake of the dobbs decision ten years later hobby lobby seems like the canary in the coal mine in more ways than one. in novemberys 2022 the new yor times offered key reporting about how the hobby lobby decision came to be. for years before the court heard the case, conservative christians have been engaged in a campaign called operation higher court. that operation was to personally court and influence the supreme court sth conservative justice. the effort was spearheaded by a man named reverend robert shank, who woulder recruit christian couples, who he called stealth missionaries, to gain access to theto judges and to impress upo themes the importance of conservative christian values. here s how the new york times described one of their strategies. reverend schenk gave his stealth missionary close instruction. the justice were more likely to let their guard down at the supreme court historical society s annual dinners because they were sure they d be properly vetted. see a justice, boldly approach, he told the couples. if given the opportunity bear witness to biblical truth but don t push it, he said. your presence alone at had historical society h events telegraphs a very important signal to the justices christians are concerned about the court and the issues that come before it. that strategy appears to have paid off. according to the times reporting some of schenk s stt missionaries were able to build enough of a relationship with justice alito and his wife, marketa anne, that they obtainea advanced notice of the court s hobby lobby decision before the camebb out. that breach, that unprecedented breach foreshadowed the leaked dobbs decision striking down roe eight yearswn later. and that specific strategy of using the supreme court s annual society historic dinners as a way tost gain access to supreme court justices, well, it turns out that, too, is velerant again just this week. it s a yearly event where wealthy donors give money to a non-profit dedicated to preserving the court s history, and in ouexchange for their mon, those donors get to rub shoulders with some of the justice and their spouses. as it turns out, conservatives weren t the only ones in on this tidy little arrangement. last week progressive activist lauren winder who happens to be a member of the historic society bought a ticket for the event. when she got in, she pretended to be a conservative donor, attending the event with her husband. ms. windsor approached some of the supreme court justices and secretly recorded her conversations with them. nbc news has not heard the full tape of what was recorded so we cannot say for full certain if edits were made if any were actually made. tonight we have some brand new audio from that event to play for you. and when you hear these new tapes, you will hear something familiar to what was on the tapes released yesterday. a justice, in this case justice alito, who is aggrieved and frustrated, who is nakedly partisan and totally unconcerned by appearing to be all those things in front of a total stranger. remember what we heard yesterday. as a catholic and as someone who, like, really cherishes my faith, i just don t i don t know that we can negotiate with the left in the way that, like, needs to happen for the polarization to end. i think that it sti a matter of like, winning. i think you re probably right. on one side or the other one side or the other is going to win.oi i don t know. i mean, there can be a way of working, a way of living together peacefully, but difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can t be compromised. they really can t be compromised, so it s not like you re going tomi split the difference. and that s what i m saying. it s just, i think that the solution really is, like, winning the moral argument. like people in the country who believe in god have got to keep fighting for that to return our country tot a place of godline. i agree with you. i agree with you. remember at this closed door cocktail party ms. winder was also able to get justice alito s wife, martha anne, to justify flying the two flags in front of their homes. these recordings this week would seem to suggest mrs. alito has no shame about what she be been doing here, in fact quite the opposite. she made clear these flags she flieshe are explicitly her formf resistance and response. you know what i want?at i want a sacred heart of jesus flag because i have to look across the lagoon at the pride flag next month. exactly. and he s like oh, please don t put up a flag, and i said i won t do it because i m deferring to you. but when you re free of this nonsense, i m putting it up. i made a flag in my head, this is how i satisfy myself. i made a flag, it s white and it s yellow and orange flames aroundd it, and in the middle the word vergonia. vergonia in italian means shame. just to be clear justice alito hasr publicly stated his wife did not fly these flags to associate herself with the stop the steal movement or any other group, but it seems quite clear from that clip haze wife very much sees this flags as a form of political expression and a response to what she believes are liberal attacks. perhaps most concerning in these recordings, though, is martha-ann alito s five year plan for revenge. there s a five year defamation statute of limitations. i don t know what you mean by them. the media. martha-ann alito says she has a plan to get back at the media by suing for defamation and she thinks she ll have an opportunity to do that in the next five years when she s free of all this nonsense? is she telling all of us here about justice alit opg s retirement plans? and how concerned should we be a supreme court justice s spouse is talking about the american media with open contempt? tonight we have brand new audio from that same event where justice alito himself thinks what he thinks about the fourth estate, the press. the other voice you ll hear on this tape is an associate of lauren windsor s who was also as this event. i justis wanted to ask you w do you think the supreme court is so is being so attacked and being soso targeted by the media? well, i think it s a simple reason. theyle don t like our decisions and they don t like how they anticipate we may decide some cases that areom coming up. that s the beginning and the end of it, and there are there are groupst, that are very well-funded by ideological groups that haveic spearheaded these attacks. that s what it is. like who? propublica. propublica, gets a lot of you know, gets a lot of money. and they have spent a fortune investigating clarence thomas, for example. but they you know, they look for any little thing they can find, and they try to make something out of it. nbc news reached out for comment from both samuel alito and his wife martha-ann alito but we ve not heard back. lauren, thank you for being here. i knowk r you ve had a busy weo far. we re so appreciative of all that you ve said thus far and all that you have toou share wi us tonight. let me first start with the new sound your organization or your colleague has given us. there are two parts of this new this new tape that strike me as concerning. the first is justice samuel alito saying that the media is attacking him because the media doesn t like how they anticipate the court has decided decided cases and may decide upcoming cases. was that a window into what may be coming down the pike in the next two weeks? how did you interpret that? te i mean i definitely interpreted it as being a harbinger for bad thing tuesday come. did you get the sense when he was talking about the media and thenou specifically citing propublica, for example, on their extensive investigative reporting about clarence thomas alito is reading that these stories are very much beingor shared behind closed dos at the supreme court? i mean his media awareness seemed to be relatively high. oh, it s very high. and he already had a sense of grievance when i first spoke with him in 2023, but it was much more pronounced this year in the two conversations that both ali and i had with him. i k we talk about the context here? the fact is you and your colleague both had conversations with the alitos. for those of us who haven t been to the supreme court historical society events, is this what happens at, them? we now have two bombshell reports about conversations, advocacy campaigns happening between attendees andpp justices on the supreme court. it s interesting. i actually read that initial report in the the new york times about reverend schenk, and that s part of what played into my going in the first place, but i didn t read that report and think i should become a member now. it really was incited by the propublica reporting on clarence thomas. andngcl it s interesting that justice alito wants to rail about theha money taken by propublica for investigating, you know, public servants why clarence thomas is not disclosing millions of dollars in gifts from gop donors, and i have no idea what propublica s finances are, but as someone who is an independent journalist, i would imagine that the money that clarence thomas has taken probably rivals the budget of propublica in any given year. yeah, i mean it s such a good point. what did you hear in alito s sort of explanation for that? did you hear it almost seems as if there s certainly no contrition, but there s notce en ant acknowledgement that there was any wrongdoing on the part of clarence thomas in accepting potentially millions of dollars in unspecified gifts from conservativepe donors. i mean, you know, it s not verbatim but it s almost verbatim. making something out of any little thing i don t understand any little thing to be, you know, buying my mother s house or paying for my nephew s tuition or getting a free rv loan. and these are all things that he s accepted from gop donors. so it would be a much different story if this was just about vacations he was taking with harlan crow and his wife and family. most people would write it off as, oh, it was a trip. most people would not consider traveling with friends or associates as being something that s that big of a deal, but that s not actually what we re talkingot about with clarence thomas, is it? no, it s other order of magnitude we ve seen and it s been going on for years. you just a random member of the historical society is able to get even within shoulder rubbing distance of a justice and then grow him into conversation about some of the most incendiary topics of this country, which is the c partisan divide. how did it actually unfold when you were in the room with the justice? so it should be stated that in the guidance for the event thate historical society says you broach topics gnat are before the court, it may be grounds for you to be kicked out. so there was definitely a deliberative process in how do i approach someone in that you know, not only are judges supposed to be really the height of discretion, the height of, you know, judgments, right, this is the highest court in the land. this ishe aou supreme court jus, so i definitely went into this assuming i was not going to get anything newsworthy. in 2023 i did not get anything newsworthy, but i thought, you know, throughout the year that transpired, the media scrutiny on justice alito has intensified so much, and his grievance level is probably so much more peaked that unlike clarence thomas who did not show up to this dinner but has been reported to have shown up to it many times, and he didn t show up in 2023, by the way, that justice alito would probably attend anyway even though he was undergoing this very intense media glare, and sure enough he was there. and i think it was just something that i can t say what was in his mind, so i don t know if in 2023 he had the same level of grievance and, you know, it changed over the coursg of the year. sure. there s a couple options there. you know, did it changeorally was it always there and he just felt more comfortable? was it hard to get him to talk? at the very end of this conversation he says are you a lawyer? i think he s talking toou ali, yourki colleague. i mle not sure if it s you or h, but it s not as if you offered any biographical information other than you had a husband who s in the room. and i wondered how you got that piece of information. did you go up to him and start talking tort him? so the reason why i brought up my husband is that in 2023 i came with a male friend, so the context of it was we had a conversation after dinner in 2023 my male friend was with me, he was not with me in 2024, so when i saw justice alito solo it was one-on-one, it was, hi there, my husband really wants to let you know that we re rooting for you, you know, that you really have all the grit. and the reason why i said you have all the grit if it doesn t stick out tot people, this is because donald trump had tweeted something out about how there should be more justices like samuel alito with the grit that samuel alito has. and so i felt like it was kind of a flag, if you will to alito, that it was a safe space for him. a safe space, yes. i was trying to signal to him very coyly without saying trump because itit goes back to the w to broach a conversation with someone who has the highest level of discretion, you can t talk about partisanis politics. if i had walked up to him and started t talking about joe bid or donald trump, he would have shutdown. so talking about polarization was really a a way into the conversation that wasn t aggressive but also t indicativ of what he s really trying to get at, which is he acting on bias? and ie really do believe that e american peopleo deserve to kn is the supreme court so compromised that we do not really have impartiality, the bedrock of our judicial system. i think hearing it from his mouth that he cannot be impartial,nn that there are this that cannot be compromised. that needs to be fuel to tell us, look, what is it that can be compromised? you brought us into an environment and these tapes are regulatory and coming at a time of crisis for this court. it is we re not done having this conversation. thank you for bringing some of that conversation to our air. we re really appreciative. thanks for spending some time with me tonight, lauren windsor. thank you, alex. coming up this hour we have new details about trump s presentencing meeting with his probationth officer. turns out he is being treated differently, just maybeea not i the way he d like you to believe. but first hunterto biden joined donald trump in becoming a convicted felon facing possible jail time. does that mean the system is now unrigged? we ll get into n the republican response coming up next. get int response coming up next. president biden s son, hunter biden was found guilty today on three federal gun charges. you may think the maga conspiracy about president biden rigging the justice system, maybe you thought that s going to collapse. it did not. today is the first step for delivering accountability for the biden crime family. you ve been saying two tier system of justice, and here is the president s son being convicted. it doesn t. every case is different, and clearly the evidence is overwhelming here. do you think the department of justice is still weaponized against conservatives even though we still see this verdict here today? absolutely. when they tell there are school moms they re domestic terrorists because they don t like what s being taught in their classrooms and others things we can go into it but we can go into it, but we won t. a trump s campaign statement said hunter biden s trial nothing but a distraction of the real crimes of the biden crime family. republican james comer said the work will not be done until the department of justice investigates everyone involved in the biden s corrupt influence peddling schemes. this conviction is apparently a distraction from the real crimes of it biden crime family. is that strategy going to work? today s conviction was awkward. it was awkward for the talk this was all rigged, the biden justice department is rigged only against republicans, but we live in a world in which the reality and the facts have a hard time catching up with the spin. and you can see how deeply invested the republicans are about talking about the biden crime family. so it s not a shock they re going to continue to repeat those talking points over and over again, but i do think the contrast and reaction to the conviction of donald trump and the conviction of hunter biden has been very, very telling here. and, again, it s always difficult to know how it s going to play out. we may see this at the debate. i know the biden folks think this is going to come up at the debate. again, democrats have been making this point and the media have been making the point that, you know, there are a number of democrats who are facing indictments under under the biden justice department, not just the president s own son by a democratic senator, senator menendez, henry quer down in texas. if the system is so rigged, how do they explain that and the answer is they don t feel the need to explain at all, they re just going to go with the spin. when you talk about a reaction this was the statement from the president of the united states after his son is convicted of felonies. as i said last week i am the president but i m also a dad. squill and i love our son and we re so proud of the man he is today. so many families who have had loved ones battle adekz understand the feeling of pride seeing someone you love come out the other side and be so strong and resilient in recovery. as i also said last week i ll respect the outcome of this case and continue to respect the judicial process as hunter continues to appeal. jill and i will always lead our family with our love and support. nothing will change that. that a strong statement, a tough statement for a father to make, and i feel that undercuts whatever the republican argument is here about biden rigging the system among the voters that will actually matter this next election. well, there are three things there. number one, the conviction of hunter biden shows the system is not rigged. it also shows this is the way the rule of law looks. and president biden has also said you know, has said on the record he ll not use his pardon power if to free his son if hunter biden gets a prison sentence. and some people were skeptical about that, but i don t think there s any reason to doubt his word at this point. and again, this creates a really significant difference between the tantrum that donald trump and his supporters have thrown and the acceptance of the rule of law and the decision of a jury that was presented with all this evidence. the point you re making is who is this for right? almost everything republicans say is for the audience of one is for donald trump. this is what the base wants to hear, but that is not the group of voters who will be deciding this election. and i think embedded in biden s statement is a call to empathy, right, for those who have fallen, for people who have addiction and are trying to make it through, you know, a dark, dark period versus trump who is all grievance all the time. and, you know, i think we think we don t know a lot about where this country is headed, but really appealing to people s sense of forgiveness and empathy doesn t seem like a political strategy that has an expiration date. i don t know, am i being too soft here? no. and again, it s a very interesting contrast. if trump s super power and his shamelessness, his refusal to ever take responsibility or apologize, joe biden s super power and his empathy. and again, republicans aren t going to give him any credit for it, but i do think there are a lot of americans who are going to say this a tragic situations. there are questions about the hunter biden judgment and his behavior, but also what you re seeing from joe biden is this is what a father, a father who has lost his other son, how they would react to something like that. and i think there will be a sliver of the electorate, a crucial sliver going to look at that and say we understand that seems human to us, that seems like something we can identify with and admire as opposed to the constant conspiracy theories and the victim card playing and the really vicious attacks on the criminal justice system and the jury system coming from donald trump. yeah, it s a real choice ahead, and this is going to be very, very indicative of who we are as a country. charlie sykes, thank you again for your time, my friend. it s great to see you. thank you. still to come this evening we have some new reporting about what appears to be a coordinated effort to broadcast disinformation about this fall s election on your local newscast. plus, when it comes to trump s criminal conviction, republican need a reality check. we have one. that s next. d a reality check. we have one. that s next. are you still struggling with your bra? it s time for you to try knix. makers of the world s comfiest wireless bras. for revolutionary support without underwires, and sizes up to a g-cup, find your new favorite bra today at knix.com norman, bad news. i never graduated andfrom med school.-cup, what? -but the good news is. xfinity mobile just got even better! now, you can automatically connect to wifi speeds up to a gig on the go. plus, buy one unlimited line and get one free for a year. i gotta get this deal. i know. faster wifi and savings? .i don t want to miss that. that s amazing doc. mobile savings are calling. visit xfinitymobile.com to learn more. doc? i just went through a rigged trial in new york. it s a rigged system, and it s a terrible system, actually. but it s a rigged system. it s all rigged. the whole system is rig. this was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt. rigged, rigged, rigged, rigged, rigged, rigged. that s been donald trump s refrain during his criminal trial in new york. the entire system is rigged against him. and yet the system really seems to be bending in his favor lately as we saw yesterday at his probation hearing. trump s interview lasted less than half an hour, and trump was allowed to attend the meeting over zoom from his mar-a-lago beach club in florida with his lawyer seated by his side. just for perspective here according to a statement released by multiple public defender groups in new york city, public defenders are deprived of joining their clients for these meetings. the options of joining these meetings virtually by zoom is typically not extended to the people we represent either. joining me now is duncan levine. he s now a criminal defense attorney. duncan, thanks for joining me to make sense of this madness here. first the circumstances of this probation interview. they sound relatively easy, maybe even cushy, but donald trump says everything is rigged against him. who s right? this is something that is so routine, it typically takes hours. and to the extent there s been things that have been different for him, they ve only been different in his favor. most defendants have to come there in person. it is a drab office. these things take hours. there are courts probation interviewed that took half an hour. this is the opportunity to ask on sentencing that don t come out in the trial. this is defendant so well vetted, but for most defendants the judge doesn t have a sense who they are as a person, what their family situation is, what their immigration status is. are they using drugs, who are they covorting with? so a lot of people know this about donald trump. you could say, well, half an hour maybe all you need, but the fact is this it is them doing their due diligence. to the extent it s all zoom, the extent it s rigged or different, it s only been in his favor. the only piece of this he likes bringing up is the presence in this case on the d.a. s side of a man named matthew colangelo. they ve used him to be the missing link between joe biden, the puppeteer of the justice department and alvin bragg who sought criminal charges against donald trump. this is how trump talked about michael. colangelo is a radical left from the doj who was put into the state working for litigious james and was then put into the district attorney s office to run the trial against trump. we ll take issue with the put into passive in that statement, but you have gone between the doj and the d.a. s office so you know what it s like i guess to be a plant. first of all, is that a normal thing that happens, and how in line with reality is this argument? yeah, and this is something that s also being ginned up on capitol hill a lot. and in a letter just today the department of justice said this was conspiratorial speculation. this is an attempt to undermine law enforcement and to sow distrust of the public and law enforcement function. first off manhattan d.a. s office and doj work together every single time. there are joint task forces on terrorism, on hate crimes. there are joint task forces that looks banks file of suspicious activity reports, and joint cases such as standard charter and ing and barclays. there are cases every day deconflicted between the department of justice. on the manhattan d.a. s office they don t arrest the same person or step on other s toes. robert, the most famous manhattan d.a. who served for 35 years from 1975 to 2010 prior to becoming elected as the manhattan d.a. was the united states attorney for the southern district of new york. so he was an obama plant. exactly. a stooge for the administration. this is all coming to a head on july 11th when there is the sentencing hearing for trump. and i guess i wonder what your expectation for that is and whether there s anything to be done around the cries of foul play and a rigged system that are inevitably going to come up no matter what trump is sentenced to. it s just such a hard decision for judge merchan, and you wouldn t wish it on your worst enemy. that being said it s a tough decision for him to make. the prosecution is definitely going to be asking for jail time. the it was is going to be asking for a sentence of the conditional discharge thing. there s going to be outcry on both sides no matter what it is. this is something a very difficult decision and i don t know there s any way through the political thicket of it other than to say this is judge who s really been around the block and he s going to be taking this seriously and fairly, and i think you ll see a sentence free of some of those political consideration, and it may be down the middle, but i think both sides will be able to make like a rorschach test, if you will, and they ll be able to argue around it, whatever it is. you re not giving me the inside dope on what you think it would be. i would never put you on the spot for that, duncan. but for all the cry we ve seen thus far it seems it s only going to increase heading up to july 11th. thank you for being here. it s helping us all through this. coming up trump appointee aileen cannon tosses out trump s appointment in the classified documents case, but first some orwellian messaging being broadcast from your local news station. that s next. broadcast from yours station. that s next. oooh! i can t wait for this family getaway! shingles doesn t care. shingles is a painful, blistering rash that can last for weeks. ahhh, there s nothing like a day out with friends. that s nice, but shingles doesn t care! 99% of adults 50 years or older already have the virus that causes shingles inside them, and it can reactivate at any time. a perfect day for a family outing! guess what? shingles doesn t care. but shingrix protects. only shingrix is proven over 90% effective. shingrix is a vaccine used to prevent shingles in adults 50 years and older. shingrix does not protect everyone and is not for those with severe allergic reactions to its ingredients or to a previous dose. an increased risk of guillain-barré syndrome was observed after getting shingrix. fainting can also happen. the most common side effects are pain, redness, and swelling at the injection site, muscle pain, tiredness, headache, shivering, fever, and upset stomach. shingles doesn t care. but shingrix protects. ask your doctor or pharmacist about shingrix today. our greatest responsibility eastern with you communities. mid-michigan communities. we re extremely proud of the quality that cbs 4 news produces. we are concerned about a troubling trend of irresponsible one-sided news stories plaguing our country. do you remember that nightmare fuel from 2018? the media organization sinclair broadcast group, which owns nearly 200 local tv news outlets had dozens of their local anchors across the country all read the same orwellian script about bias in the media. today sinclair broadcast group was caught again with dozens of local anchors again reading the same script. the newsletter s public notice and popular information first brought attention to the copycat newscasts which featured a script you might say has a very clear conservative agenda. the wall street journal calling into question the mental fitness of president joe biden. the wall street journal is out with reporting calling into question the mental fitness of president joe biden. as national correspondent matt galka tells us, the issue could be an election decider. the election could be an election decider. now, the story these dozens of local news outlets ran with was based on a widely panned piece in the wall street journal last week claiming that behind closed doors president biden was showing signs of mental slippage. the only people quoted on the record in that piece to support that recording were republican officials including former speaker of the house kevin mccarthy, who is not at all known for being the most reliable anything. meanwhile, several democrats including senator chris coons have come out publicly to say they gave quotes to the wall street journal for that piece and the paper chose not to include them. coons says he told the journal biden is someone who s sharp, engaged, and leads the conversation. now, aside from the clear partisan edge to all this, recent polling from gallop shows americans have very low trust of national media outlets. just 32% of the country trust the national media outlets, but that is not true when it comes to local news. pew research polling from earlier this year showed that 71% of americans trust their local news outlets, which is what makes what sinclair is doing here so nefarious. maybe your neighbor doesn t trust the wall street journal or cable news, but they must trust the station that gives them the weather, and that is the real issue. that issue could be could be an election decider. be an elr a slow network is no network for business. that s why more choose comcast business. and now, we re introducing ultimate speed for business our fastest plans yet. we re up to 12 times faster than verizon, at&t, and t-mobile. and existing customers could even get up to triple the speeds. at no additional cost. it s ultimate speed for ultimate business. don t miss out on our fastest speed plans yet! switch to comcast business and get started for $49.99 a month. plus, ask how to get up to an $800 prepaid card. call today! in an order that otherwise denied yet another attempt by the defense the end the prosecution of donald trump by the handling over his classified documents, judge aileen cannon has given mr. trump a partial win. judge cannon agreed to strike one incident from special counsel jack smith s indictment. the paragraph describing after he left the presidency trump allegedly showed a classified map of a foreign country to the representative of a political action committee while saying that an ongoing military operation in that country was not going well. trump allegedly admitted at the time he shouldn t be showing the map to someone without security clearance and told the person not to-look too closely at it. while the incident illustrates how allegedly cav clear trump was with classified information, prosecutors never charged trump with crimes involving sharing classified information, and now the judge has struck it from the indictment. joining me now is bradley moss, a national security attorney who routine lee represents federal officials and members of the military in matters pertaining to classified documents. bradley, how big of a deal is it for prosecutors that this map incident has been struck from the indictment? it s certainly not a critical factor. all this means is it s not sitting in what is otherwise known as a speaking indictment. it is still information that prosecutors can bring out at trial and almost certainly will litigate to ensure they can bring it out as sort of the evidence of a prior bad act strictly in the context of mr. trump s the intent, his motive, his desire, his willingness to conceal this information, that he knew he had these records, he knew he had classified documents. he knew he wasn t authorized to have them, and he was retaining them at mar-a-lago. this was a very minor victory for mr. trump, otherwise the motion was dismissed i m sorry, denied by judge cannon. the issue, of course, is that it took so long. this could have been resolved weeks ago. it never need today have taken this long. if it s not a significant win for trump is it indicative, though, of a broader tension between the special counsel s office and this judge? because throughout this case, and it seems like it s ratcheted up in recent months, there s maybe not a volley because it seems like it s coming from one side. the judge does not seem happy with jack smith or his team. yes, certainly the tensions continue to boil, and they ve reached the point that in a hearing just a few weeks ago it got to prosecutors were so upset and frustrated with their attempts to try to explain to judge cannon their view on the case law and how certain legal precedents applied, that the judge had to basically counsel them to calm down. none of us where there, i don t know how badly that got out of hand. but it s never a good sign if you re a lawyer if the judge is telling you to calm down. let s be honest where this is going. judge cannon for whatever reason has chosen to take a slow and methodical approach here. she hasn t granted donald trump anything of substance, but because of how she s dragged it out and how the classified portions of in particular are taking forever, this is guaranteed it never see the light of day, will never get to trial before people go to voting booth in november. that seems a guarantee. there s an open question whether we ll see the trial period but that s going to depend on politics. trump filed another motion today. this one says the fbi destroyed exculpatory evidence but not describing what the classified material was in proximity to nonclassified material and trump argued he didn t pack the boxes, he didn t know what was in there. how substantive is this? does it matter? i think it s a delay tactic at best they might get an evidentiary hearing. they want to have an evidentiary hearing to probe into huthis was conducted, how the boxes were organized this way, whether or not there s something to their allegations of bias and improperly storage. on the merits, it s garbage. it has nothing to do with terms of spoilation of evidence or obstruction of evidence, and it doesn t absolve trump of the idea he willfully retained the documents. he knew he had them in 2022 when he turned stuff over to the archives and they told him, hey, there s classified documents in this stuff. he knew he had them over the course of the next year talking to his lawyers and they told him to turn them over. he knew it when the fbi told him we keep finding stuff in the stuff you re turning over. it will in the way judge cannon handles things drag it out just a little bit more. a grand jury indictment came down on june 8, 2023. anyone s guess whether we get to the second anniversary. bradley moss, thank you so much for your time tonight. have a good night. that is our show for this evening. way too early with jonathan lemire is coming up next. this case was about the illegal choices the defendant made while in the throes of addiction, his choice to lie on a government form when he bought a gun and the choice to then possess that gun. no one in this country is above the law. everyone must be accountable for their actions, even