DOJ Vet Jack Smith Stands by Cases to Jail Trump

0:00At Healthcare Associates Credit Union, our auto loans run on compassion so you can move with confidence. Whether you're buying a new or used vehicle or refinancing your auto loan from another lender, our low rates mean affordable financing with no payments due for 90 days if you qualify. Spend less time worrying about your car payment and more time getting to the things you love. Auto loans from Healthcare Associates Credit Union, the healthy way to bank. Learn more at HACU.org. Federally insured by NCUA. APR equals annual percentage rate. See website for requirements and details. Hattaday presents in the red corner, the undisputed, undefeated Weed Whacker Guys!

0:37Champion of hurling grass and pollen everywhere! And in the blue corner, the challenger, extra strength, Hattaday! Eye drops that work all day to prevent the release of histamines that cause itchy, allergy eyes! And the winner, by knockout, is Hattaday! Hattaday, bring it on! Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melber. And get comfortable because we have quite a bit of reporting and video you're going to have to see tonight, right now, drawing on that new bombshell testimony by the one federal prosecutor who ever indicted then-former President Donald Trump. We are reporting, of course, on what was by any account unusual historic testimony by former Special Counsel Jack Smith, the first federal prosecutor to ever indict a former president.

1:31Smith, who has sterling nonpartisan credentials, famously made the case that having looked at the evidence, there were two different reasons to prosecute and if convicted, jail, then former President Trump. And he's back before Congress today discussing. Special counsel, including my decision to bring charges against President Trump. Discussing exactly that. Those two separate probes involve, of course, classified documents, which Trump was caught holding. He was literally caught with stolen material and alleged election interference. I will remind you, as everybody knows, any defendant is legally presumed innocent, and those cases were not finished.

2:12They were dropped because Donald Trump, in this unusual scenario, ended up getting elected back into that post. He was president-elect, and under the rules, you don't have an ongoing criminal case by the same government led by that defendant. Smith doubling down on the charges. He told the Senate today they had the evidence. There were also a range of questions, what you might call attacks, and at times downright outbursts from some apparently upset Republican lawmakers. Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation.

2:53I will not be silenced by continued threats of prosecution from the president. You told Judge Garland, here's what I'm about to do. You don't think he checked with President Biden to see if it was okay? I have no idea what he did. Javert from Les Mis would look at you with astonishment. Do you believe in the tooth fairy? I do not. How about the Easter Bunny? I no longer believe in the Easter Bunny. Is it your view? Is it a crime to be a Republican? Absolutely not. There is no role for politics in the proper administration of justice. That is some of what we saw today. I want to bring in really one of the best experts you could ask for on this story, Andrew Weissman, of course, former FBI general counsel, meaning he handled actual legal advice, where the lines and constitutional rules were for the then FBI director.

3:54He also served as a top prosecutor in the Mueller probe and was a federal prosecutor in his own right in New York. I'm listing some of the accolades and credentials, Andrew. I want to tell viewers, I want to get right to it with you. And then we have more clips from this. So we've sort of done some of this work to show people, as you know, a lot more from today. But first, your top line thoughts, given your background at DOJ. You've also had an interview or colloquy with Mr. Smith at what he was getting across today in this formal setting. Sure. Well, I think one of the things that I think viewers should try and take away from all of the noise is that when all is said and done, and after four hours of a hearing, the Republican attack on Jack Smith was not about anything to do with the evidence against Donald Trump in the insurrection case in D.C.

4:49or the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. In other words, there was almost a studiously avoided topic, which was the facts about what happened. And the problem is that if you're going to say this is a political witch hunt, it would really help that theory. If you could show that this was all made up, that he got the facts wrong. Instead, all of the attacks were sort of around the edges. And I'm sure we're going to get to one of the sort of big attacks that just fell flat in real time by one of the senators who just made a complete mistake. We have that. Before we get to that, what hangs over all of this is that the main defense, which we tried to cover fairly at the time, for example, in the Trump Jan 6 impeachment, was that he wanted a rally, not an insurrection.

5:48And in any criminal case, you have to take seriously defenses as well as prove intent. Now we're in a world where Donald Trump didn't just pardon some of those people, didn't just pardon the ones who perhaps, quote unquote, merely trespassed. He pardoned the worst of the worst, the convicted violence, seditionists, those who attacked the police. Smith spoke about that today. How does that again, not in the courtroom where I've been careful to point out he wasn't convicted. Right. But in the public evidence that we have, how does that strengthen the case against Donald Trump that he was indeed involved in the crimes that day?

6:24Sure. Great question. And so in terms of the court of public opinion, you know, you could imagine a president saying, look, what happened that day is nothing that I intended and it's deplorable. And there's, you know, I thought I won, but you don't go about exercising that belief by committing crimes and attacking police officers. But that's not what Donald Trump's doing. He has actually, as you pointed out, embraced the people who have done these really heinous crimes. And to me, that shows that to the extent that the president was trying to have a defensive, you know, that's them. That's not me.

7:10His behavior, I think, on January 6th and up to today is that they are one in the same, that these are his people and he is protecting them. Yeah. And in all fairness, we looked at that. And Donald Trump and his aides and lawyers at the time made the argument, the defense we just referred to. And that one's been blown up because he's embraced them. He's helped them to the detriment of police safety and national security. You mentioned where we saw the desperation. If Jack Smith were caught with public evidence that suggested a credibility issue, we'd report on it. Indeed, I could tell you that'd be very newsworthy.

7:49But this man has been covered, fly spec'd, and there's been a political operation to go into all of it. And I'll remind viewers, you know, Republicans and Democratic senators, they have large staffs that do research that pour over. They've poured over everything. Here's what they came up with in a botched airball trying to question his credibility. Did you go to an NBA game between the Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks on February 3rd, 2024? What city would that be in? Atlanta. No. What would you say if I had a series of text messages from your team that said you were in Atlanta at a Warrior Hawks game on February 3rd, 2024, the day after Willis and Wade announced their affair?

8:31I don't think you know that we have this stuff. So I'll give you a second to process it so you don't perjure yourself. You just took it down really quick. I think you've already perjured yourself. I recall going to a University of Maryland basketball game. You could check if that was the exact date. It was Maryland playing Iowa. Could it then be that University of Iowa is the Hawkeyes? Perhaps you should have looked at it more carefully. People should have their facts straight before they accuse someone of being a dirtbag and not get the team. I stand by that statement. Andrew. So this was, I think, so indicative of the Republican strategy.

9:13So the theory was that Jack Smith was colluding with Fannie Willis in Atlanta, the sort of two prosecutors, the federal and the state prosecutor. And the senator there, Senator Schmidt from Missouri, was saying, I've got proof that you were in Atlanta at a Hawks game. But he messed up. I mean, he blew it. And he had confused the Atlanta Hawks with the Iowa Hawkeyes, who were playing in Maryland. And of course, as Jackson said, he was with the Marshal Service at the time. So there are witnesses around him. And he can show he was actually in Maryland at the Hawkeye game in Maryland and not in Atlanta.

10:02So this was sort of spectacularly exploded. And to me, it's indicative because it's like this is what the Senate Republicans were doing is they were trying to figure out any way to discredit Jack Smith and to say he was committing perjury. and instead of actually trying to focus on real facts. And so, you know, it is a testament to Jack Smith's fortitude and courage that he has continued, this is his third time testifying, where he knows darn well that the Republican strategy is to try and trip him up, even on something as ludicrous as this sort of, you know, gotcha. And to me, that sort of tells you this isn't really a serious inquiry that was going on.

10:58It's a political one. Yeah, it was worse than unserious. It's people in sloppy or even bad faith ways trying to question his credibility while they get their facts wrong. I mean, they even had the back and forth of, oh, I put this stuff up and Smith, you know, used his platform to say, well, actually, you took it down very quickly. It seems like you're trying to trick and plot. And that, as you say, is a distraction from what this really comes back to, which is that after the DOJ did pursue what was the greatest violent conspiracy against the Capitol we've ever seen, and thus the seat of our democracy, Trump pardoned them all.

11:34And because of this sort of strange time we're in, that hasn't faced any larger reckoning or accountability. We may hear, if Trump continues to lose his hold on power, later claims by people that they were quietly against it or it bothered them, too, or they're not as anti-police as the president is. Because you're obviously anti-police if you side with the violent people who attack them. I mean, that's what it is. And that brings us, of course, to the violence on the Capitol that day. That was, of course, not lost on Jack Smith or on some of the other senators who discussed that the crime scene included the building they were in.

12:12President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power. Donald Trump incited a mob to attack us. We came to this very room on that day seeking safety, finding refuge. We also had law enforcement officers who sought to defend this Capitol, who put their lives on the line for our democracy. Those two would be very powerful witnesses. More than 140 were assaulted, correct? Yes. Andrew, so much of that is known, and part of bearing witness is dealing with that. even when we face liars and propagandists and disinformation online that would have us forget what we all lived through.

13:00I want to just go to the part that you can speak to that most people can't. What do you know about Mr. Smith and how much he cares about this from the perspective of police and the rule of law, not any potential other implications? So one of the things that Jack said today was that history teaches that you generally don't lose the rule of law in one fell swoop. It sort of chipped away. And I thought that tells you a lot about him and why he is speaking out. He actually talked about that and said that he should have been speaking out more. And one of the things that he does when he speaks is it is not about himself.

13:47You will not hear him talk about how he has suffered or what this is meant to him or his family or the attacks on him. What he talks about is the men and women who worked for him, the men and women at the FBI, at DOJ, whether they're agents or prosecutors, the career people who take their oath of office seriously. And I think if you're trying to figure out what's going on inside him and why he is doing this, this is a person who is a career prosecutor at the state level, at the federal level. And that is something that he is who he is. It's what he believes. And it really this is something he would never say about himself.

14:36He is so much sort of man for our times in terms of being courageous and speaking truth to power. And when he said, look, I'm not going to be cowed, you know, whether you like him or not, it is an impressive person because he knows darn well what has happened to other people when there's been no evidence. I mean, think about what this administration tried to do with Jerome Powell or six members of Congress or with Abrego Garcia, who the court said has been vindictively prosecuted by this Department of Justice. So he knows the threats are real to him and he still is standing by his principles. Absolutely.

15:22I mean, we hear these words sometimes overused or misapplied. profiles in courage, which goes back to Kennedy truth to power. You just reminded everyone they are abusing the very DOJ that he once served to intimidate people, to investigate people, and to potentially try to jail members of Congress. That's the country we're in right now. And again, we can't prejudge a case that didn't finish. It's my job as a legal reporter to say we would have followed that trial and seen what the jury said. But we can assess the strength of the evidence, which, as Mr. Smith pointed out and you've alluded to, only got stronger because the big element in law and criminal law, the intent has been cooked.

16:07Donald Trump has told on himself in that respect. We've booked you for a long enough time to do this justice, so to speak. One of the other things that was revealed for the first time today was Jack Smith discussing a potential star witness had they gone to trial. It's someone everyone's heard of. It's someone that would have upset then-Defendant Donald Trump very much so, and we're going to show that moment when we're back in 90 seconds.

16:35Most ice cream is good, but not Jenny's. Jenny's ice cream is more like an obsession. What you get from over two decades of tasting and tweaking and throwing it out and starting over, chasing flavors until they feel alive. That might sound crazy, and that's because it is. Jenny's. Often imitated, never duplicated, always splendid. The most memorable gifts aren't found, they're made. Zazzle is a custom marketplace where you pick any product, a mug, a card, a tote, a phone case, and make it personal. A photo, a name, an inside joke. The kind of gift that actually fits the person. That's what 30 million customers have been coming back to Zazzle for over 20 years to find.

17:21Right now, save 25 % on your first order at Zazzle.com. That's Zazzle.com. Make it z-amazing. Hey, I'm running out to drop off a stack of letters and packages. Need anything shipped while I'm gone? Save the gas. Stamps.com lets you print postage and schedule pickups right from your desk. Sync your contacts into the address book, get detailed accounting insights, and get notified the moment your certified mail is delivered. All from my desk? All from your desk. Join the 4 million businesses using Stamps.com right now with code podcast and get your free welcome gift. Stamps.com, code podcast. Taxes and fees apply.

18:04We're back with DOJ vet Andrew Weissman, turning to another moment in today's hearing where the former Trump prosecutor Jack Smith was discussing the case he has, including he had an interaction with Darlene Graham, who is the sister of the late Senator Lindsey Graham, who has been on both sides of the Trump question many times. And Smith was actually using this exchange here, and it's under oath, you know, before the committee, to assure her that Graham was not only not a target of his probe, Republicans have been upset about some of the evidence gathering, but how he actually might have been against Trump, a star witness.

18:42Do you really believe that Lindsay was going to destroy evidence that was not even in his possession?

18:52No, I believe your brother was a patriotic public servant. He was not a target of our investigation. And in fact, he likely would have been a witness in our case. Jack Smith saying Graham would have been a witness. advice, Andrew, that would mean that he had potentially factual evidence or knowledge of things that the government wanted to show in order to convict and potentially jail Donald Trump. Now, people may remember Graham, of course, making a lot of noise for Trump back in the day and recently in the second term. But I also want to remind people why Smith might be thinking that, because this was during a period when someone as learned as you, Andrew, might call an interregnum, wherein Donald Trump's stock had fallen measurably and Graham and others had been quite public in the initial anger and concern over that violent insurrection about being done with Trump.

19:52This is Graham basically that night, overnight on January 6th. I just think it's a uniquely bad idea to delay this election. All I can say is count me out. enough is enough. Andrew, tell us about your view of that testimony today. So one of the things that, as I mentioned, the Republicans wanted to do was not talk at all about the facts, what Donald Trump had done, what he was charged with doing in the insurrection case, in the classified documents case. And the Democrats brought out, and Jack Smith was given the opportunity to talk about the fact that the case was largely, if almost exclusively built, on Republican witnesses.

20:42And so the clip you played of Lindsey Graham, he's not the only one who at the time was not where they are now, who were saying, I'm done with this. Mitch McConnell famously saying, you know, the criminal law can deal with this. I'm not voting for impeachment, but there's a criminal resolution that can be had. There were many people who were victims of what was going on in January 6th who were like, count me out, exactly what Lindsey Graham said. And those people and people at the White House, people in the government, whether it's Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, were all people who were likely going to be witnesses in this case if it ever went to trial.

21:27And so that really counters the idea, one, of this being a witch hunt. It's a witch hunt brought by Republicans. You know, this is not, it's hard to say this is a Democratic witch hunt when the witnesses are Republican. But it also is so, I mean, dispiriting and disheartening is an understatement when you see where the senators are. And we saw this when the House was holding its hearing. And these are people who, I hate to say this, but really are not taking their oath of office seriously because it's not tethered to the facts and the law. And their own words, in many cases, are a testament to that because they have done a complete 180 from where they were at the time.

22:16And now they are kowtowing to power. Yeah. All important points, Andrew. Thank you for joining us on this tonight. I appreciate it. When we come back, we look at Bill Gates doubling down on his AI warnings. We have a Facebook co-founder turned critic policy expert on the real big tech agenda. But on the midterms, we see the speaker saying something that actually could wind up in the ads by Democrats nationwide. Plus, the prices amplifying Republican fear. I'm not sure we're close to reopening the Strait of Hormuz. I mean, it's been four months and Trump still can't reopen the reflecting pool.

23:05When are the midterms? Well, depending on where you live, they have technically begun because voting starts earlier these days. That is happening. Early voting in several states, Republicans on defense, even in more conservative areas. The war in Iran has diesel surging and that reverberates across the supply chain. We just need to get fuel prices cheaper because everybody uses it. Everything gets hauled. And it just, the trickle-down effect is tremendous. I've been doing this a very long time. And for a while, it was halfway lucrative. It's not anymore. We got to do what we do to put diesel in the bus to get kids to school.

23:46You're broke. You max out your credit cards. And you hope to get to the next pay period. Once the fuel prices come out, there's very little left. It's getting to the point where it's not worth it. You can't put fuel in it. You can't run. This is the real world, people's real lives, and no amount of lying out of Washington is going to change that. And you can tell how many people in the Trump administration and elsewhere just don't care. They really don't care about Americans who are in this jam. Now, on the ground, we all know, if you follow politics at all, all separate from party, that local officials, governors, are much closer to the day-to-day than the folks who go back and forth to Washington, let alone the White House, let alone this White House.

24:36So take a look at even in certain areas how people on the ground are trying to respond more quickly. Texas governor declaring a state of emergency as a way to try to help folks in that state. Mind you, it's not like Donald Trump is doing anything on par with using federal powers or emergency powers for this. He cites emergency powers for tariffs and other things that have actually made the problem worse. In red Alaska, gas is over 10 bucks a gallon and Dems think it could help them in that Senate race, something that would have been truly unthinkable a year ago. Iowa's pretty red Republicans say they could lose everything because farmers appear aware that the problems are Trump-caused and that he's not trying to solve them.

25:19As for the Speaker of the House, who has technically the power to disagree with and do his own thing, right? I mean, it's a co-equal branch of government. He's got his own job. And if he stays in that job, he would outlast, of course, the current president. And yet this is how he sounds. We have to do more of that work across the labyrinth of the federal government. But what we would do in the next two years is exactly what we have been doing already. And that is putting the conditions in place for a strong America. You are listening to the sound of a gaffe. Again, not a political partisan thing.

25:56In 24, people were mad about high prices under Biden-Harris. And it was, understandably, a big gaffe. When asked what she'd do different, Harris basically struggled to say anything. And she was tied to Biden. Again, to emphasize, Johnson has his own job, his own separate branch of government. He could easily say, well, like the Texas governor, who's a Republican, well, we got to do some things different because these prices aren't acceptable or this war isn't working for the American public. Instead, you just heard. He said they're going to keep doing the same stuff. That has Republicans concerned.

26:30Here's what they're saying in red Florida. I will probably vote Democratic this time. America's not great again? No, it's not. They've run it to the ground. I'm a registered Republican, and I'm not voting for Byron Donalds. Feel like I've been let down. I'm probably going to go with the Democrats. They seem to look out more for the common person. I really don't base my vote on different party lines, But the people in the Republican Party following Trump, I can't go for this. That's people at the gas stations and in the street. That's what we call anecdotal person on the street reporting. The polling, though, overall, has Democrats taking a historic double digit lead on the congressional ballot.

27:19Trump is losing support and he is surrounded by Republicans in Washington who are saying more of the same. They promise to do more of the stuff that has everyone this upset. So what does history teach us right now? Well, it is a Che Day. And that means we bring in Che Comanduri, Obama campaign veteran, for a little historical political perspective. Welcome back, Che. Good to be back, all right. What insights and lessons do you glean here? And was that a gaffe by Mike Johnson? Well, you know, the columnist Michael Kinsley said many, many years ago that a gaffe in Washington is when somebody accidentally says the truth.

28:04And I think that's exactly what you saw Speaker Mike Johnson do. He accidentally told the truth. He said that if reelected, we're going to do more of the same. That is exactly the message that Donald Trump is pushing out. That is exactly what will be done, because the Republicans cannot explain what policy changes they will make if the midterms go well for them. They have already cut taxes. Americans are suffering economically despite that. They have cut spending by a huge amount, including to Medicaid, to rural hospitals, to things people need. Americans are suffering. There has been no great conservative Cato Institute style free market utopia that has resulted from the big, beautiful bill.

28:52OK, they have closed the border. OK, they have done that. They've closed the border. They have brought down immigration. They have touted this morning that they cut immigration severely from Muslim majority countries. All right. Beyond the scope, beyond the morality of that, beyond what I think is very much the bigotry of those policies. Have they really improved anybody's lives? Has that actually. You're talking about. Yeah. You're talking about a results election rather than a symbolic one. Go ahead. Yeah. I mean, I mean, you know, for all of the complaining about immigration, they have done exactly what they said they were going to do on immigration.