Watch The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell Highlights: Aug. 1

you're too honest those words appear in quotation marks and special prosecutor Jack Smith's newest indictment United States of America versus Donald J Trump the witness who spoke those words in the grand jury in his testimony was obviously Donald Trump's vice president Mike Pence that is the only way those words could appear in quotation marks on page 33 of today's indictment you're too honest page 33 contains a description of quote several private phone calls in late December 2020 and early January between the president and vice president of the United States the only person who could possibly have told Jack Smith and the grand jury about those phone calls is Mike Pence the January 6th committee invited Mike Pence to testify but he refused January 6 committee did not bother to issue a subpoena to Mike Pence since they knew he would ignore it just as some other elected Republicans ignored subpoenas from the committee Mike Pence could not ignore Jack Smith's subpoena Mike Pence went to court in what he knew was a legally hopeless attempt to block Jack Smith's subpoena Mike Pence went to court to try to show Trump's supporters whose votes he wants in the presidential campaign to think that he was forced by judicial process to testify to Jack Smith's grand jury Mike Pence didn't just testify to Jack Smith's grand jury he became the star witness and he will be the star witness when the case of United States of America versus Donald J Trump is presented to a trial jury in Washington D.C they will be the first jurors in history to see a former Vice President of the United States raise his right hand and take an oath to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the criminal defendant sitting in front of that jury the former president of the United States when the former vice president is under oath on the witness stand testifying against the former president Mike Pence will deliver the testimony that he obviously delivered to the grand jury and is described for the first time in today's indictment on December 25th when the vice president called the defendant to wish him a Merry Christmas the defendant quickly turned the conversation to January 6th and his request that the vice president reject electoral votes that day the vice president pushed back telling the defendant as the vice president already had in previous conversations you know I don't think I have the authority to change the outcome obviously the quotation marks around that sentence mean that Mike Pence gave those words exactly those words to the grand jury under oath in another private phone call that only Mike Pence was a witness to on December 29th the defendant falsely told the vice president that the justice department was Finding major infractions and then came January 1st New Year's Day the jury in this criminal trial of Donald Trump will hear Mike Pence testify quote on January 1 the defendant called the vice president and berated him because he had learned that the vice president had opposed a lawsuit seeking a Judicial decision that at the certification the vice president had the authority to reject or return votes to the states under the Constitution the vice president responded that he thought there was no constitutional basis for such Authority and that it was improper in response the defendant told the vice president you're too honest that is going to be a very dramatic moment in this trial that line you're too honest will be the headline in that day's coverage of this trial you're too honest from Donald Trump to Mike Pence will go a very long way if not all the way to proving Beyond a reasonable doubt that Donald Trump knew that he was lying about Mike Pence's power to overturn the election throughout today's indictment Jack Smith confidently writes he knew those words he knew appear applying to Donald Trump and the fact Jack Smith believes that he can prove Beyond a reasonable doubt that Donald Trump knew that everything he was saying about the election in December and January was a lie on page six Jack Smith refers to them as prolific lies Jack Smith uses all Republican Witnesses in this indictment to prove that Donald Trump knew that everything he was saying about stolen votes or machines switching votes or dead people voting was a lie if you're one of Donald Trump's criminal defense lawyers sitting at home tonight wondering how you were going to fight this evidence you already know that you can't fight most of it because the only person who can dispute what Donald Trump said in his phone calls for example with Mike Pence is Donald Trump if Donald Trump wants to testify under oath in his own defense then he can get on the witness stand and deny that he ever said you're too honest to Mike Pence he can do that but if Donald Trump gets on a witness stand under oath everything about every day of his public adulthood that we know about him tells us that he will commit perjury he will lie under oath he will leave the witness stand having committed more crimes on the witness stand and so no no experienced legal observers expect Donald Trump to testify in his own defense at any of his trials and what that means for some of the accusations in today's indictment is that Donald Trump may have no apparent defense to many of these accusations the indictment describes a Donald Trump crime spree that officially begins according to the indictment on November 14th one week after this network and every other news organization called the election for Joe Biden and ending after the January 6th attack on the capitol the calendar day during that crime spree which contains more criminal conduct described in that day in this indictment than any other day is January 6th the indictment in effect in its description of that day holds Donald Trump responsible for the attack on the capitol the indictment holds Donald Trump responsible for doing nothing to stop the attack on the capitol while it was going on and the indictment describes Donald Trump and some of his co-conspirators including Rudolph Giuliani continuing to commit crimes after the attack on the capitol when the Congress had returned to the building to complete the certification of the election the very last criminal conduct described in the indictment occurs at 11 44 pm on January 6th when one of Donald Trump's co-conspirators quote emailed the vice president's Council advocating that the vice president violate the law and seek further delay of the certification co-conspirator 2 wrote I implore you to consider one more relatively minor violation of the Electoral count act and adjourn for 10 days to allow the legislatures to finish their investigations as well as to allow a full forensic addict of the massive amount of illegal activity that has occurred here you will recall that the front man for that crime in the United States Senate that night was Senator Cruz of Texas who was asking for an adjournment of 10 days that would have been a violation of law and the Trump co-conspirator who's asking the vice president's lawyer to do this is acknowledging that it would be a violation of the law the co-conspirator calls it a relatively minor violation it would have been the biggest constitutional crime in the history of the country If the vice president had done that but Donald Trump and his criminal co-conspirators at 11 44 pm on the night of January 6th when the country was finally confident that the certification process was back on track and progressing smoothly Donald Trump and his co-conspirators were still at it the man who almost never speaks spoke for the second time today in his role as special prosecutor when he laid out the criminal case against Donald Trump he began with the last day of Donald Trump's crime spree the attack on our nation's capital on January 6 2021 was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy described in the indictment it was fueled by lies Lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a Bedrock function of the U.S government the nation's process of collecting counting and certifying the results of the presidential election the men and women of law enforcement who defended the U.S Capitol on January 6 are heroes they are Patriots and they are the very best of us they did not just defend a building or the people Sheltering in it they put their lives in the line to defend who we are as a country and as a people Congressman Schiff uh so much of what we read in this indictment today that reads as familiar to us is because of the work of your committee like that testimony from Rusty Bowers which is right there in the indictment as part of the charged crimes uh what is your feeling tonight about the way Jack Smith took what you handed to him well you know I think all of us on the committee feel that our work mattered that the facts that we brought to the public attention that we brought to the attention the justice department were integral to their decision to charge and how they charged I think that the special counsel did what he did with the Mar-A-Lago case which is charge it conservatively not charge everything that he might but charge the strongest uh counts where the evidence best fit the facts and the law I think that's exactly what he's done this is also kind of a a interesting situation in that the public has seen a lot of this evidence through the January 6 hearings so it's unusual in that the the country doesn't usually get to see a trial before the trial takes place but we've seen a lot of these Witnesses already we've heard their testimony we've been able to evaluate some of their credibility and perhaps it's appropriate here because as Professor tribe was pointing out there'll be a trial on this the there'll be a verdict we hope on this but ultimately the American people may have the finals say so as we've seen before there are two juries there's the jury that's going to try this case and then there's the jury of the American people that may be called upon to decide do they want someone capable of committing these acts in the Oval Office who would be there for you know capable of undoing Justice that may be served in this trial you know I find myself thinking in the first few minutes of having this indictment in my hands today and reading it where would we be tonight if speaker Nancy Pelosi had not appointed a special January 6th committee well you're absolutely right Lawrence that was the foundational decision that made this possible the decision to create that committee when you'll remember there were bipartisan negotiations around a commission the Republican and Democrat who were in charge of those discussions came to an agreement and then it was rejected by McCarthy I'm sure at the urging of trump and what they got was this select committee I had that commission gone forward the rules were that either party could have essentially vetoed any subpoena but instead we had a select committee with real teeth the speaker also made a hugely consequential decision not to seat two of the would-be insurrectionists Jim Jordan and Jim Banks on the committee and instead to see Liz Cheney and Adam kinzinger and that made all the difference because suddenly Witnesses would come forward who would not have come forward otherwise the hearings were worth watching because these Witnesses came forward and it didn't evolve into the usual kind of congressional circus so you're right in so many ways had Nancy Pelosi not been speaker I shudder to think what would have been of our democracy in its entirety but certainly I don't think we would have gotten to today where the work of that committee was so much a part of this indictment we have more detail uh in this indictment than your committee was able to get because they could this Jack Smith could compel uh vice president former vice president Mike Pence's testimony under oath and so we now have that but it fits and it's exactly what we kind of expected it to be there's some new quotes uh like Donald Trump telling Mike Pence you're too honest uh but were there any surprises in this indictment for you uh other than small bits of dialogue that we hadn't come across before you know Lawrence of the surprise if anything was how closely attract the work of our committee uh the new information as you say came from Witnesses uh Pence cipollonia others who either wouldn't talk to us at all in the case of Pence or in the case of cipolloni wouldn't answer questions about the direct conversations with the president I think what stood out to me uh you know is is the same as what stood out to Andrew and probably because I'm a former justice department person and that is Jeffrey Clark uh just the arrogance of saying uh you know in response to being pointed out by one of the council that if you try to stay in office they're going to be riots in every city in America his response is well that's what the Insurrection Act is for just the arrogance of that the the willingness to put the country through that uh frankly it reminded me of something Bill Barr said before he decided not to cross uh you finally found a line he went cross when he was asked about how history would reflect on his work and his answer was something that effective well we'll be writing the history a lot of that hubris really came out in this indictment and a particular that conversation with Jeffrey Clark a professor tribe uh Andrew weissman's still with us here in the studio we all shared public doubts about how Merrick Garland was handling this before he appointed Jack Smith uh what are you what's your sense of how Merrick Garland has handled this case thus far well I think the appointment of Jack Smith was a brilliant stroke his experience at the Hague made it clear that he was ready for this and he's proceeded as fast as he could I do think that Merrick Garland did not proceed as fast as he might have I think much of what many of us fear namely that this will drag on that even if there is a verdict a conviction for example there could be an appeal that would last into the next presidency and if the next presidency is held either by Donald Trump or by one of his acolytes or by virtually any Republican there is the horrible prospect that this will all be wiped away and that it will be relegated to a kind of historic footnote it will never be just a footnote because as your guests have all correctly said this is Monumental but unlike some of the other Monumental cases like the ones that Neil katjao mentioned Dred Scott Barbara V Madison Brown be born none of those were subject being simply erased by the results of a political election what is quite unique here is that however brilliant and however well grounded in facts and law this indictment is and I certainly agree it couldn't have been better and I agree with Andrew Weissman that it's it skirts the First Amendment problems that might have existed if it were focused on incitement however brilliant it is it is subject to being wiped out and that really makes me think about how vulnerable and fragile our legal system is how slow it is how even the fact that the dramatic picture you paint when you read this indictment the fact that all of that is going to be hidden from the American public unless we can somehow convince the judges with power to make the decision that this should be a televised trial which I think it should be it can all be hidden and that points up the ways in which our legal system is vulnerable the rule of law is powerful it can Prevail and preserve democracy if this trial is allowed to reach a firm conclusion and I think the conclusion of the facts in law appoint to is a conviction in all likelihood but if it goes too slowly or if there are interferences or if as Andrew Weissman says politics overtakes it all and the ultimate Court of public opinion if that includes people who just don't care who basically say yes he did it but we don't care we don't trust our institutions enough to care about preserving them and then we're in real trouble so we have a system that might go too slowly it might be too opaque and a system that is not at all guaranteed to triumph over politics so that's my overall view of where we are [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: MSNBC

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Id: CuIB31_p1gI

Length: 20min 20sec (1220 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 02 2023