Indicting Trump: Jack Smith tells Nicolle about Trump's DANGER to midterms (Melber Report)

[0:00] And he tells you tonight that we are facing this attack on the rule of law that is different. [0:05] This is not sometimes there are crimes and sometimes there are people in office [0:09] who have been caught committing crimes in both parties, as he was careful to know, [0:12] but this is something different. We have just that short bit. I don't know if it jumped out [0:16] to you in the moment, but let's listen to that for your response. [0:20] I think we are facing an attack on the rule of law that is different in kind and scope [0:27] to anything I've seen in my lifetime. [0:29] What does that mean to you that he wants us to know that? [0:33] Well, look, in some ways, there's so much gaslighting in our politics [0:40] and there's so much sort of an attempt to intimidate people covering the facts as we see them with our own eyes [0:48] that it was reassuring that he sees what we see and what we cover [0:52] and that from his extraordinarily high perch inside the department [0:55] and with all of his years of experience, he views it as dire as as I do. [1:00] It was, I would say, equally striking that when I asked him, you know, if you were looking at our country [1:09] and just assessing it in terms of whether the rule of law were alive or dead, is it still alive? [1:14] He said, absolutely. [1:15] I mean, that he knows of sort of more pockets, I guess, the things that aren't in the headlines inside the department that are still. [1:23] And he said, you know, they're not throwing sand in the gear. [1:25] They're not part of the resistance. [1:26] They're just in there doing their job. [1:28] But then he did say, I said, but what if what if doing their job, you know, ran afoul of Mr. Blanche or others? [1:36] And he said, yeah, well, that would be the fork in the road. [1:38] I mean, what what was interesting to me is that it is both as bad as it looks from the outside, [1:44] that weaponization is the central organizational theory for the Department of Justice, [1:51] that the examples that he lifted up were Danielle Sassoon. [1:55] That's who he was talking about there at the end, who left over the perfectly predicated case against Eric Adams, [2:01] the folks who have, you know, left before bringing the cases against Jim Comey, Eric Siebert and others, [2:09] the people in Minnesota, he mentioned, who refused to investigate family members of a shooting victim. [2:15] What is, I think, still I think the work for people like us is to do what he's talking about, [2:21] to lift up the people who are sort of paying the price of their life's work, [2:28] of people who grow up and want to do this work are some of the very ones who rose to the top. [2:34] And those ones at the top were the ones that worked on his cases. [2:36] So I think I had a greater appreciation for the loss, the loss of experience, the loss of the cream of the crop. [2:44] The people that have been purged were not necessarily the first agents in. [2:49] They were the best of the best, the ones who understood the sensitive nature of the cases against Donald Trump, [2:54] the ones who had enough clearances to even work on the Mar-a-Lago documents case. [2:57] He couldn't say anything about that one and didn't bite when I asked him if he thought A. Lincoln would be nominated to the Supreme Court. [3:04] But I think it was both reassuring that he sees the direness of the moment, the way you and I think largely cover it. [3:14] And it was ominous to think about all the experience that's been axed for political purpose from the Bureau and the Department. [3:23] For the first time, the first prosecutor to ever indict a president, Jack Smith, who ultimately did it twice because he said the evidence supported it, [3:33] speaking out in his first journalistic interview, included about those controversial January 6 pardons. [3:41] What do you say about the facts that you developed that you see, I know you don't watch a ton of news, [3:49] but that you see enough to know that the basic principle of recidivism likely applies to the election case? [3:56] The things that you charged are a lot of the same kinds of stories we cover. [4:00] What is the cost of someone not being held accountable for their crimes? [4:04] Yeah, I mean, if you talk about the pardons of these people convicted for the violence on January 6th, right? [4:12] There's all sorts of costs. [4:13] There's the obvious cost of just recidivism. [4:16] These are people who committed their crimes in the name and in the interest of Donald Trump, [4:21] and he's returned their favor, right, by pardoning them. [4:23] That sends one message to them. [4:26] A message I'm equally concerned about is the message that it sends to law enforcement. [4:32] Supporting law enforcement should not be a political issue. [4:35] Jack Smith speaking forth rightly there on two points. [4:39] The second, as you heard, is that Donald Trump sided with violent criminals over police, [4:44] that he is an anti-police president. [4:46] The pardon is a power that the president constitutionally has. [4:50] No one is saying that it was itself illegal. [4:53] Smith is saying, however, that it is anti-police, anti-law enforcement. [4:56] The first point he made was admittedly a little more legalistic. [5:00] He referred to recidivism. [5:01] What he's saying in plain English is, if you let people get away with it, they'll do it again. [5:06] And that maybe Donald Trump wants to do it again, to have another violent insurrection or other violent crime committed on his behalf. [5:13] Recidivism is why you have strong penalties and deterrence under the law, [5:18] something that prosecutors like Smith basically devote their lives to. [5:21] And he's saying, for the first time in the modern era, it's the president undercutting that on behalf of criminals. [5:28] He also spoke about the midterms. [5:29] I'm very concerned of what's going to happen in the next election. [5:34] Absolutely. [5:35] Do you see, again, in things that are covered and things that are public facing, [5:41] conduct ahead of the midterms that you investigated in the January 6th case? [5:46] Well, I've been thinking about it more in terms of what needs to be done based on what we saw happen last time. [5:52] And, you know, it's a different situation now based on, you know, the people who perpetrated January 6th. [5:58] They probably learned from how they did that. [6:01] My personal view is I think the state attorney generals have a tremendous role to play here. [6:07] They can make sure the rule of law functions in their state. [6:10] And I would also say that I think a thing that all of us can do is support election workers and election officials. [6:17] The last time around, we saw that those people stood firm and they were, in many cases, the difference. [6:25] It's clear to me, anyways, that what I've seen publicly, that those people are going to be put under great pressure. [6:31] And my experience, not only just as special counsel, but, you know, I was the chief of the public integrity section at the Department of Justice for five years, [6:40] had a number of cases with election officials. [6:42] These are people also, they're not tooting their own horn. [6:47] They're not self-promoters. [6:48] They just care about our democracy. [6:50] We need to show them that we have their back. [6:55] Smith, speaking out clearly there in this new MSNOW exclusive interview, [6:59] when he mentions the public integrity section, which has been, of course, completely decimated under Donald Trump, [7:04] that's the part of the DOJ that deals with the important but sensitive cases of anti-corruption [7:09] and potentially indicting or prosecuting lawmakers, politically connected individuals, important politicians. [7:16] To run that section, you have to have kind of the gold standard of being evidence-based, nonpartisan, and having integrity. [7:25] It's kind of the fulcrum of pressure inside the DOJ. [7:28] And when he was there, for example, he pursued famously a case against Democrat John Edwards [7:32] because he said the evidence supported it and ultimately, as we know, concluded that there was enough evidence to go after Donald Trump. [7:39] I mentioned a case of a Democrat and Republican. [7:41] So when Smith then now draws on that credibility and his entire career to assess the so-called enemies list [7:50] or some of the cases that the Trump DOJ has brought on his personal demand, it comes with great credibility. [7:55] Most people may only know Smith from prosecuting Trump, and that might even overweight how you look at him. [8:01] But he is kind of, like I'm telling you, the legal gold standard for these cases. [8:05] So when he says, as we just learned he did, I'm going to play you the excerpt, that so many of them lack any merit, [8:10] that is kind of the ultimate slam dunk against some of the Trump DOJ's revenge cases. [8:16] Take a look. [8:19] I, from my perspective, have seen a number of cases. [8:22] James Comey, Letitia James, Jerome Powell, I mean, right? [8:26] Um, there's not criminality here. [8:30] I mean, seashells? [8:31] I mean, so the only reasonable explanation is the president has it out for these people, [8:38] and he has people who are his former personal lawyers who are going to do what he says, regardless of the factual law. [8:44] Going after people regardless of the law will get you a lot of trouble in court, might get your case tossed. [8:53] And if some of those folks are doing it knowingly, below the legal standard of what it takes to indict someone, [8:59] they could be disbarred or worse. [9:01] Jack Smith, again, the expert on that. [9:03] So that's not nothing. [9:04] And for those who say, well, when is it going to matter? [9:07] Well, it could matter very soon if Congress changes hands, [9:10] and it could matter a lot in just over two years if the White House and DOJ change his hands. [9:15] He's sort of telling you how it is tonight. [9:17] Now, I want to just remind everyone, we are here in an extraordinary place. [9:24] A few years ago, it would have been unthinkable that a prosecutor would be on television talking about [9:29] not one but two federal cases against a former president. [9:33] It had never happened before. [9:34] So let's remember how we got here, because what started out with lawsuits [9:39] turned ultimately into the insurrection in the 2020 plots. [9:43] Some of them we've marked for you green or yellow because they were effectively legally allowed. [9:48] But as Trump got more desperate, and those things didn't work, [9:51] when you get to the Congress overturning votes, the requests on Pence, [9:55] the aborted plan to have a military plot or coup, [9:59] and then ultimately the final era we all know, the illegal sabotage of January 6th, [10:05] those were the plots that accrued. [10:07] And Smith ultimately was tapped as one of these special counsels with extra independence to pursue them. [10:13] And as you know, I'll remind you, as we plotted this, he indicted many of them. [10:17] And won convictions against, we saw at the state level, over the overlapping plots. [10:24] The federal cases, of course, were truncated by the Supreme Court.