Trump's threats and bluster fail to intimidate Americans who see guilty verdict as reasonable
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Thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. I'm really happy to have you here. I have a quick thing to tell you just right at the top here. Do you have your phone with you? Your phone has an app that you may or may not ever use, but it's called Podcasts or some version of that. Whatever kind of phone you have, there is an app on your phone for podcasts. If you open up that app and you search for my name, if you search for Maddow, M-A-D-D-O-W, one of the things that's going to come up is Ultra.

You might remember I made a podcast called Ultra. It did really well. It won a big journalism award, the Hillman Prize. Steven Spielberg bought the rights to it. So Ultra is going to be a Steven Spielberg movie. The screenplay for that is being written right now by Tony Kushner and Danny Strong. Pinch me. Ultra did great. We were all really, really, really proud of it. But the reason I am suggesting you go to your podcast app today is that as of today, the

There is a season two of Ultra. It is finally ready. We just put out the two-minute trailer for season two of Ultra today. So you can listen to that now. You can click there to follow the show. To follow the show means you get every episode when they come out. It's free. This is just going to be eight episodes total. I will tell you, Ultra season two is a little bit scary. It's also kind of funny.

Anyway, trailer's out today. The first episode comes out Monday. So I just wanted to say that right off the top. The trailer for the new season of Ultra is finally up. It's been working on it for a really long time. I hope you like it. I'll tell you more about what it's about next week when we've got the first full episode coming up.

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MSNBC Premium is a new thing. You sign up for that at Apple Podcasts if you want. Okay, now that's really it. I will leave you alone about that because now I want to talk about something crazy that just happened in Michigan. All right. This was on Thursday in Michigan. On Thursday...

Last week, you might remember something was going on. The country was sort of distracted. Yes, every news organization in the country went into warp drive when the jury in the Donald Trump criminal trial in New York announced they had a verdict. And you know the story from there. 34 felony counts. The jury found him guilty on all 34 of the felony charges, whereupon he totally melted down, earning what I think was really the headline for the ages from that day. Quote,

convicted, comma, Trump blames judge, jury, and a country gone to hell. What a nice man. What a leader. But while that was happening in New York on Thursday, there was a big surprise in Michigan. Now, do you remember seeing this tape? If you're a longtime viewer of the show, you might recognize this. This was from right after the 2020 election. It was December 2020, December 14th.

This is the state capitol in Michigan, and we played this on the air at the time that it happened because it really—this really appeared to be a crime being committed there on tape and an important crime. These are Republicans in Michigan showing up at the door of the state capitol demanding that they be let inside because they insisted that they were Michigan's votes for the Electoral College.

And since December 14th was the day all the states were casting their electoral votes, these guys demanded to be let into the state capitals to cast Michigan's electoral college votes for Trump.

which is not the way it works because Trump lost Michigan, Biden won, but nevertheless, these Republicans were pretending to be the real electors and demanding to be let in. And that police officer stopped them. And he was very polite. He was like the soul of patience. He was very kind to them, but he was very, very firm with them. So you're telling us we can't enter? Yeah. Okay, would you say that on your last call? We can't enter.

What did he say? He said we can't enter.

What I've said was, for the Capitol Commission, for the Governor's office, for the Speaker of the House, for the Speaker of the Senate, the Capitol is closed unless you have an office here to conduct business today, or if you are taking part in the electoral college process. Anybody else is not permitted to come into the Capitol? They are here to... They are here to... The electors are already here. They've been checked in. They're also locked in. Capitol is closed.

All 16 electors have been advised by the governor's staff that we're going to be here to vote in electoral college. We've been checked in. We're already here. They've been checked in. They are already here. I know what electors are. They're here already. You're not them. He's so patient, right? But he stops them.

from what they were otherwise intending to do, which was get themselves into the state capitol. That was in 2020. That was the middle of the effort to try to overturn the election results and have Trump stay in power even though he lost. I say that looked like a crime being committed and an important one because those fake electors have since been criminally indicted for what they did there, for conspiracy to commit forgery and conspiracy to commit election law forgery.

The 16 fake Trump electors were all charged with those felony counts. And in that criminal case in Michigan, there were 11 other people besides the fake electors who were listed as unindicted co-conspirators in that same case, including former President Trump himself and his then lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who has since had his law license revoked.

The prosecutor described Trump's status in the Michigan case by saying, quote, he is a part of the investigation, but he hasn't been charged with a crime yet. Hasn't been charged yet in court proceedings on that criminal case last week. Because, again, there are felony charges pending against the fake electors themselves.

Last week, there was testimony from that particular police official, the same guy who had to personally borrow the door of the state capitol against the fake electors when they were trying to get in. And what he just testified in court last week is that

On Thursday, while Trump was being convicted in his New York criminal case, he, this Michigan State Police captain now, he was being interviewed by the FBI and by federal prosecutors from Washington, D.C.,

Wait a second. I thought he was testifying in a state case, a state criminal case that's been brought against those fake electors. Yes, he was testifying in the state criminal case, but he testified that he had just been in touch with federal prosecutors and the FBI.

So in that Michigan fake electors prosecution, Michigan is one of four states where there are state criminal charges pending against Trump's fake electors. In that state, Trump is named as an unindicted co-conspirator. Prosecutor says he's not charged under Michigan law, quote, yet.

That prosecutor in the Michigan state case also says that that state criminal case there is still open, still ongoing. They're still investigating. But now on the day Trump was convicted in his New York case, we find out in surprise testimony that federal prosecutors and FBI agents as of right now, as of Thursday, are interviewing people who saw what happened with the attempted overthrow of the election in Michigan.

There haven't been federal charges brought in Michigan, right? I mean, Trump is already facing federal criminal charges for trying to overthrow the government and stay in power after losing the 2020 election. Those charges were brought in D.C., but it would appear that that federal investigation into that overall matter is still open if federal prosecutors from D.C. and the FBI are still investigating and still interviewing people right now.

If they are doing so, and according to that police captain's testimony, they are, I would guess that the FBI and federal prosecutors are still looking into the Michigan fake electors matter.

presumably with an eye toward a possible new federal indictment. Or, I mean, there's already the federal criminal indictment against Trump that references the fake electors scheme broadly. Maybe these interviews with important figures in this matter in Michigan indicates the possibility of a superseding federal indictment, maybe additional charges for the same defendant who's already been charged, Trump, maybe potentially adding more defendants to it. We do not know.

But that Michigan State case is still open and ongoing, and it's apparently a matter of active investigation by federal prosecutors and the FBI as well. Knock me over with a feather, right? I didn't... That was unexpected for me. It's a reminder that things may not unfold the way any of us is expecting. And you may think you're sort of running through the tape on some of this stuff, and then you just look ahead and you realize there's a whole lot more tape at lots more intervals.

I mean, who knows how this is going to unfold and for how long. This is the first former president to ever be criminally indicted. Then he got criminally indicted three more times. He was the first former president to face a criminal trial. Then he became the first former president ever convicted of a felony. Then he was convicted of two felonies, then three, then four, then ultimately 34. He is named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the criminal case against Arizona Republicans

who helped try to overthrow the election results in that state. He's named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the criminal case in Michigan as well. And now it looks like there is at least the possibility of additional federal charges that may attain to the Michigan shenanigans in particular. Things are not necessarily going to unfold the way we are expecting. And none of this is over. I mean, yes, if Trump gets elected in November, that's one thing. But if he loses in November—

This is all going to go on for a very long time in lots of different places, which is important for us to think about as a country. Because we have a legal system that we use for all sorts of things, including for holding people accountable when they try to overthrow the government.

And we've now got not just Trump and his most rabid followers, but we've now got a whole Republican Party that is on the record, deeply and radically invested in delegitimizing the American legal system in the eyes of the American people. Which means, in practical terms, that the people who end up as part of these cases, the people who end up playing a role in the legal system as it pertains to Trump, you know, sometimes it's by choice, sometimes it's not,

These people are going to need protecting in an ongoing way. Stormy Daniels, to whom the hush money payment was made that was falsely booked in Trump's business records, which is why he was convicted of 34 felonies last Thursday. Stormy Daniels has now done her first interview since the verdict.

And in that first interview, you can see that she's just I mean, it's emotion. It's an emotional interview. But you can see she's overwhelmed in particular by the revelation that even though this one Trump case is over, this whole thing is never going to be over for her. It's not how I feel. It's how I don't feel.

I'm obviously glad of the verdict because in a way it also proves that I was telling the truth. That I was not paid for sex, you know, it was not a prostitution job. I was not an escort, I was not a prostitute. But I guess I just thought that I would put the bow on the package and it'd be all tied up and good. And it's not, it's not really any different.

Except that I, you know, the good part is I don't have to go to court again because that's never fun. You always feel like you're the bad guy even when you're not because just being up on that stand is so intimidating with the jurors and stuff looking at you. And I'm glad that, you know, some stuff came out in court that I wanted to come out. And it proved, like I said, I've been telling the truth the entire time. But at the same time, emotionally and the responses and stuff, it's not over.

It's probably, I realized, God I'm going to start crying again, I realized today that it's actually never going to be over for me. If you could speak to Judge Mechon, who is now obviously considering what sentence to pass, if you could speak to him, what would you say? He has the patience of a saint. And that he's brave, I think.

And my condolences because I know what his life is going to be like, at least in the immediate future. And it scares me. And I fear for the jurors as well.

I fear for the jurors as well. NBC News reporting tonight that the other main prosecution witness in the Trump criminal trial, Michael Cohen, has since the verdict had his whole family doxxed. People have posted street addresses and other personally identifying information for his wife and for his children.

NBC News also reported that in the immediate wake of the verdict, pro-Trump message boards posted a high volume of violent threats toward both the prosecutor and the judge in the New York case, including what purported to be the home address of District Attorney Alvin Bragg and what purported to be the addresses, the home addresses of some of the jurors from the case. This is what it's like for people who are part of the legal system when the legal system is getting Donald Trump in trouble.

And this is an ongoing thing. This is not going away. There's lots of pending cases against Trump. And these threats and the harassment and intimidation of people who are involved in the legal system, people who are witnesses, jurors, prosecutors, judges, court personnel, Trump, I mean, encourages it indirectly every time he makes individual people in these legal proceedings a personal target for his criticism and vitriol, and often his lies.

He's never, ever discouraged his supporters from mounting the kind of harassment and intimidation campaigns that they have against everyone involved in these cases, including, like, the court clerks and the family members of the judges and the witnesses themselves and their families, too. And it's every time, right? It's not just this current case. Last summer, Trump supporters circulated the purported names and photographs and home addresses of the grand jury—the

Members of the grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, after that grand jury voted to indict Trump there. This year, before Trump was convicted, in March and April, Reuters counted at least 152 posts on three pro-Trump websites urging the beating or killing of Judge Mershon or Judge Angoran in New York or Judge McAfee in Georgia. One January 6th convict

who has already served his prison sentence for taking part in the Trump mob attack on Congress. He posted on Twitter a photo of prosecutor Alvin Bragg and a noose. It is terrorizing to the people involved in these cases. And it is systemic. They do it to all of them with all of the cases.

It's designed to make the legal system unworkable when it comes to Trump, right? It's designed to make people unwilling to participate in the system if Trump is involved in the case because you and your family will be put in danger, right? It's designed if you are part of a case involving Trump, if you are considering bringing some sort of legal action, however well justified, that relates to Trump, they want you to fear for your life and for the lives of your family. That's the basic idea behind it, right?

We're all supposed to be so scared of what he'll do. We're supposed to be so scared of how crazy his supporters will go that, you know, to be safe, we should just let him do whatever he wants. No matter what it is, just let him get away with it. Because anything that annoys him, anything that holds him back, anything that punishes him for what he's done, they'll get so mad. And we should be so scared of what they'll do because, oh, you wouldn't like them when they're mad. Trump was asked this weekend about his potentially being sent to prison when he gets sentenced next month.

He said this in response. He said, quote, I don't know that the public would stand for it. I'm not sure the public would stand for it. I think it would be tough for the public to take. You know, at a certain point, there's a breaking point. He's saying, you jail me, there'll be a breaking point. The public won't stand for it. Sounds like a threat, right? It is a threat. It's the same threat he always makes because he wants us all to feel threatened. But he makes the same threat all the time.

All right. September 2022, after the FBI served the search warrant at his home at Mar-a-Lago, he says, quote, I don't know how much more our country will be willing to withstand. Two months later, December 2022, all caps. The people of this country aren't going to take it much longer.

Then he was asked on a radio show about the possibility of him being criminally indicted. He said, "I think if it happened, I think you'd have problems in this country the likes of which we've never seen before. I don't think the people of the United States would stand for it. I think they'd have big problems, big problems. I just don't think they'd stand for it." Then in March 2023, he said if he was indicted, it would "rain down death and destruction" that he said would be, quote, "catastrophic for our country." Death and destruction if he were indicted. Then he was indicted.

Then last summer, after he was indicted, he was asked about a possible prison sentence. He says, quote, "I think it's a very dangerous thing to even talk about, because we do have a tremendously passionate group of voters. I think it would be very dangerous. Very, very dangerous."

So yeah, now he's threatening again that there's going to be catastrophic, Civil War-level violence if anything bad happens to him. Like an indictment, which has happened four times. Like an arraignment, which has happened multiple times. Like a conviction, which has happened 34 times. Like a potential prison sentence, which... stay tuned. At every step of the way,

He has made the same threat. At every step of the way, he has shaken his fist at the country and warned that if anything happens to him, his followers will rise up and level the place. Death and destruction, like nothing the country has ever seen before. It's always the same threat. It is not actually what they do, because it is not actually how the country feels.

If you look at the polling since the verdict in the New York case came down, there's been three national polls on reaction to the verdict so far. All of them show that most people in this country think the verdict was the right thing. The country is not rising up en masse to defend him. By and large, the country thinks, eh, he committed crimes, and it makes sense that he was convicted of them.

These threats that if anything happens to him in the legal system, the country won't stand for it and there will be mass violence and there will be blood in the streets and there will be riots. You'll see it rising up like the country has never seen before. That is not happening. What is happening is his followers are terrorizing individual people involved in the legal process.

And the Republican Party, at the highest level and with almost total uniformity, is simultaneously telling the American people that the American legal system is bunk and they shouldn't respect it and they shouldn't trust it. And Republicans at the state level are not just tolerating and trying to get away with election crimes to help Trump. Criminal election subversion is now being celebrated and rewarded, even in places where criminal prosecutions of these folks are ongoing.

Places like Arizona and Nevada, fake Trump electors are charged with felonies there. But the accused felons have also just been given big new jobs by the state Republican Party in those states. They've been named delegates to the National Republican Convention and state representatives to the Republican National Committee. They've done the same with one of the fake electors in Wisconsin.

where Republicans are trying again to recall a state legislative leader who acted, in their mind, with insufficient fervor to overthrow the election results in Wisconsin when Biden won that state and Trump lost. I mean, in Nevada, two of the state's official electors for the 2024 election will be people who are currently under indictment for what they did as fake electors in the last election.

In the Republican Party right now, January 6th defendants are hostages and heroes who will be fully and immediately pardoned. Fake electors will be new party leaders. Brave souls who said no to the coup, who, you know, people who Democrats and normal people briefly tried to lionize for their bravery, people like, you know, Vice President Mike Pence, they are roundly rejected by their party. While prosecutors and judges and witnesses and jurors are hounded and threatened daily.

This is not something about which you can sort of put your head down and wait it out, because these cases are going to go on and on. But we are in a moment where the burden of intimidation and harassment and threatened violence, the burden of what's going on in the Trump movement is terroristic. It's not mass violence. The burden of what is being threatened against our fellow Americans is falling disproportionately on a very small number of people.

It's falling on individual people they are singling out to try to pick them off in order to intimidate the whole country. There isn't a civil war. There isn't a riot. I was promised there would be riots if Trump were convicted. There were no riots. There hasn't even been a good-sized pro-Trump protest anywhere in years. They are not using mass action. They are using targeted harassment and threats towards specific people to try to cow all of us, to make us all scared.

of anything that holds Trump to account and punishes him for committing crimes. Right? And so the solution to that is not rocket science. Right? It's not complex. It's like a couple of things. Right? Fairly obviously. One, we vociferously defend more than we have been the people who are being intimidated and harassed and threatened, both because they deserve that as human beings, but also because they are standing in for all of us. This small number of people

is being attacked in order to make all of us afraid so that we as a country will change our behavior, so that we will, in the words of Tim Snyder's book on tyranny, we will obey in advance. So we will cower and try to make sure we only do things that make Trump happy because we're so scared of the response. There are individual people who are bearing the brunt of terroristic intimidation

by the pro-Trump movement that is designed not only to ruin those people's lives and get retribution against them, but to scare all of us that it could happen to any of us, it could happen to all of us. If we don't stand up for those people, that will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So that's one. Stand up for those people and protect those people better than we have been. Recognize that they are small in number and they can all be protected. That's one. Second, don't cower, right?

If that means there are going to be yet more federal charges brought, and there might be. We've got a report coming up live this hour from Michigan where that very unusual testimony at the end of last week opened a spotlight on the fact that there might be further federal criminal charges related to the efforts to overthrow the election. We should not cower about the prospect that Trump and his supporters will get mad if Trump is held to account. Yes, they'll be mad.

That's their problem. More federal charges may yet be brought if that is where that investigation leads. If so, so be it. There's no reason anybody should shy away from that. More state charges may yet be brought. There are open investigations, not just in Michigan, but in some of the other states where they have pronounced Trump, for example, to be an unindicted co-conspirator. They have also said the investigation is ongoing. In more states, there may yet be more state charges. If so, if that is where those investigations lead, so be it.

There's no reason anyone should shy from that. We are at a moment when the Republican Party says the legal system doesn't work, the criminals are the heroes, everybody involved in making the legal system work should fear for their lives. Trump says the country will rain down fire if he faces any more legal consequences. The Republican Party is wrong about that and Trump is wrong about that. Our system is strong and so we should feel very confident in standing up to protect it. Our system is strong.

And so are we.

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This is NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, reporting tonight from the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Good evening. On the eve of their big convention, the Democratic Party has been rocked by a bombshell tonight. The head of the Democratic National Committee, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, resigning under fire late today, all in the face of an uproar over a batch of emails made public by WikiLeaks.

I know this feels like a lifetime ago, but that was eight years ago. 2016 election. That's how the Democratic National Convention started. There was already friction in the party between the Clinton supporters and Sanders supporters. And then there was this release of internal Democratic Party emails by WikiLeaks. It was like putting gasoline on a smoldering fire. And the chair of the National Democratic Party quit the night before the convention started.

She's out after a firestorm over party emails posted by WikiLeaks, suggesting that the DNC favored Clinton. It's just something we've all known all along, that it's been corrupt and that they've been hiding things and pushing for Hillary. The Clinton campaign today blaming Russia for what they say is hacking. Other experts are now saying that the Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of actually helping Donald Trump.

Oh, turns out those experts were right. It was a Russian operation. The Russian intelligence services had hacked internal emails from the Democratic Party. They released them through WikiLeaks. It was a tried and true Russian strategy, right? They identified an existing point of friction, sort of normal party friction between competing candidates, and then they exacerbated it to cause maximum chaos to help their chosen proponent.

So as we head into the summer of another election year, with Democratic leaders this year worrying about plans for protests at the party's convention in August in Chicago, there is a growing expectation that—

the same actors that Russia might try once again to exploit democratic divisions. I mean, I say this not just because of 2016, but because of what's going on in 2024. As a reference point, Russia's been really feeling its oats recently in terms of election interference in Europe.

Elections for the European Parliament start later this week. Russian trolls have flooded the zone with fake news sites and damaging deepfake videos. They've been pushing inflammatory disinformation that's aimed at inflaming European divisions over issues like the war in Ukraine. European intelligence services say the Kremlin has funneled hundreds of thousands of euros to dozens of

hard-right politicians in a bunch of different European countries, paying them to plant Kremlin propaganda in Western media outlets, boosting pro-Russia candidates in the process. Russia is really scaling it up in terms of what they are doing for election interference around the world. And we have an election this year, too. Maybe it is not surprising, but still bracing to open up a Chicago paper today and read this.

Russian propaganda push expected in Chicago for Democratic National Convention, experts say. One expert telling the Chicago Sun-Times is Tan Shuba and Frank Mayne, quote, this is just a target rich stew for the Russians to try lots of things and see what works. Joining us now is reporter Tom Shuba. He's assistant criminal justice editor at the Chicago Sun-Times. Mr. Shuba, it's a pleasure to have you here. Thanks very much for being here. Hey, Rachel. Thanks for having me.

So the experts that you talk to, are they expecting this in the abstract or are they seeing things happening in the news environment, in the political environment that make them anticipate this kind of interference with the Democrats?

I think they're anticipating this just generally, right? And we have the DNC, it's coming to Chicago. There's anticipated to be tons of protests. There's battles over permits already happening. And I think the idea is this looks like something that Russia could exploit. And that's what the experts kind of told us here. I,

I know that Democrats have been speaking with confidence, including to you and your colleagues at The Sun-Times, about how they're preparing for everything. They're ready for anything. There's been a lot of focus, obviously, on the expectation for pro-Palestinian protests and protests against the war in Gaza. But is it your sense, or are you hearing from Democratic officials, from convention planners, that they are sort of on the alert

for malign efforts like the ones you and your colleagues described today? We haven't heard that from, you know, planning officials and Secret Service and Chicago Police Department, the people who are kind of like coming up with the protest zone and, you know, where people can protest around the stadium, the United Center. These were more from us having this idea of saying, hey, this

you know, foreign influence campaign had such a huge impact on the 2016 election. What's happening now? And so we started to do research and we started to, as news reporters do, pick up the phone and call very smart people who are experts and kind of hear them out. And a lot of what we heard was, you know,

Yeah, this is like what Max Bergman said, a target rich stew here. Right. We have, you know, protesters, pro-Palestinian protesters targeting the president right now. We have, you know, issues with racial justice and things like that that the Russians have seized on in the past. And so I think what the experts are saying is.

This is kind of the ground is set for Russia to come in and do what they've done in the past, which is meddle in the election. Tom Schuba of the Chicago Sun-Times, thanks for your reporting on this. I'd love to have you back as you continue to track this story. It's a really interesting thing to sort of have on the horizon as that convention approaches. I appreciate it. Sure. Thanks, Rachel. All right. Much more news ahead. Stay with us.

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell. I have an obligation to find a way of telling this story that is fresh, that has angles that haven't been used in the course of the day, to bring my experience working in the Senate, working in journalism, to try to make sense of what has happened and help you make sense of what it means to you. The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, weeknights at 10 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC.

Go beyond the headlines with the MSNBC app. Watch your favorite shows live. Get analysis from live blogs to in-depth essays and the latest updates on the 2024 election. Visit msnbc.com slash app to download. All 16 electors that we've been advised by the governor's staff that we're going to be here to vote in electoral college have been checked in. We're out of here. But these are the rest of the electors. I understand. The capitol is closed.

That was outside the Michigan state Capitol, December 2020. That scene ultimately led to the indictment of 16 alleged fake electors for Donald Trump in Michigan. It led more recently to testimony in a Michigan state courtroom on Friday, this past Friday, as reported in the Detroit News, that same officer who turned the fake electors away at the door to the state Capitol, he testified in court on Friday that he, quote,

had been interviewed Thursday by someone from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and two U.S. prosecutors from Washington, D.C. Thursday, of course, was also the day a jury in New York found Donald Trump guilty in a hush money plot to save his campaign in 2016. We now know that same day, federal investigators apparently were interviewing Michigan law enforcement in a sign that there is an active federal investigation into the Michigan fake elector scheme.

As part of those same court hearings where this news came to light, we also learned that the state investigation in Michigan might not have reached its conclusion yet either. A state investigator telling the court that the Michigan Attorney General's office still has outstanding subpoenas and search warrants as part of what he described as an ongoing state investigation into the Michigan fake electors. He told the court, quote, it's still an open investigation.

He also told the court at one point that investigators were treating the Michigan State Republican Party headquarters as a, quote, crime scene. Joining us now is Craig Mauger. He's a politics reporter for The Detroit News. He's been reporting on the fake elector news out of Michigan. Mr. Mauger, thank you very much for being here. Appreciate you joining us. Hey, thanks so much for having me.

So this is a sort of sprawling case. There's 16 defendants and there's been a lot of court proceedings already, not for all of them, but for most of them that are essentially designed to decide whether or not these charges are going to go ahead. It's a long process. It's a somewhat complex process given the number of defendants. What do you feel like have been the major revelations from the court proceedings that you've covered so closely thus far?

I think you've hit on a couple of them tonight, that this is very much an ongoing probe. The attorney general staff is trying to figure out what the guidance was that was provided to these 16 electors whose signatures ended up on this certificate, falsely claiming that Donald Trump had won Michigan's 16 electoral votes. This investigation is ongoing. There's some element of a federal probe that's looking at this as well that seems very much ongoing, as you mentioned.

The key thing here is the attorney general's office has to prove as part of this case to be successful that these individuals had an intent to defraud the public. The question is,

Did these individuals have that intent or was someone essentially fooling them into signing this document, not letting them know what the true purpose of the document was, and then turning around, taking their signatures and doing something different than what they had told them they were going to do? That's the crux of all of this. And if it's not their intent to defraud, if it's someone else's, the question is, whose was that and why have they not been charged so far?

Right. And to have the state prosecutors in Michigan, the investigators, say, "We've got these 16 defendants, but here's another 11 people who are unindicted co-conspirators," including the former president, including his top lawyer, I mean, it really—they are painting a sprawling picture, but the charges haven't necessarily followed all of the allegations.

At this point, that's Craig. Part of the reason I wanted to talk to you is that I was really surprised by this revelation that you reported in court on Friday, that there does appear to be an ongoing federal investigation here, a federal investigation on top of what's going on with the state. Do you have any sense from what's been disclosed in court, what the contours might be of that federal investigation?

Well, the police captain who revealed this and everyone in the courtroom was surprised by this. The defense attorneys were surprised. Even the judge kind of used the word surprise to talk about this statement that was made by the Michigan police captain. All of a sudden, kind of out of the blue is kind of a traditional line of questioning. Who else have you talked to? And this police captain says, oh, I talked to some people yesterday from Washington, D.C. Everyone kind of froze for a second. What do you mean you talked to someone from Washington, D.C. yesterday?

He said that this interview focused wholly on the electors. This was about the electors. This wasn't some other issue. This was an interview that lasted some amount of time talking about these fake electoral votes that these people brought to the doorstep of the Michigan Capitol on December 14th, 2020. He said that they didn't ask about specific individuals. He read a list of some names that they asked about this person. He said, no, it was fake.

It must have been, from what I could tell from his testimony, it must have been kind of overall, what happened when you were at the doorstep? These people came to the door, you answered. What happened? And it was FBI, FBI personnel and federal prosecutors. And it's now that they're asking him these questions. Exactly right.

Wow. It's amazing. It's very important to keep your old tape when you play tape of something that happens. Hold on to it for longer than you hold on to your tax records because you never know when the FBI will finally follow up on the crime that you aired on your TV show. Craig Mauger, you've really helped us and the whole country follow the nitty gritty of these of these stories as they've unfolded. And they seem to be unfolding in more and more important ways. So we're really grateful for you. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Craig Mauger, politics reporter for The Detroit News. All right, we'll be right back. Stay with us. I mentioned toward the top of the show that what we're seeing from Republicans and Trump supporters in the wake of Trump's conviction on 34 felony counts has been sort of two-tiered. Threats and harassment and intimidation targeted to individual people involved in the legal process who therefore need protection.

but also threats writ large for some sort of retribution. Here's some of what that has looked like in the conservative media. - They're the wolves with the bloody piece of meat in their mouths. That doesn't stop the wolf from coming back for more.

The only thing that will stop him is if he loses a limb of his own. All of these prosecutors who want to take him down, be careful what you wish for. We are a country that that was born of revolution. Revolution is in our DNA. We are fighters. And I hope it's only at the ballot box. We're going to get back up. We're going to regain our strength and then we're going to vanquish.

the evil forces that are destroying this republic. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. And I am going to encourage all of my colleagues and everybody that I have any influence over as a member of Congress to aggressively go after the president and his entire family, his entire crime family. We're going to build a wall around New York City.

We're to close off the bridges and we ought to separate them from the United States of America. And I'm only semi facetious. I think we ought to look into figuring out when Trump's in office, how and if we can do this. Donald Trump should immediately create and publish a list of 10 high ranking Democrat criminals who he will have arrested when he takes office. First on the list should be Joe Biden. Second should be Joe Biden's crackhead son. And in the meantime, Republican AGs all over the country should pursue their own indictments. We mock your fear. We want your fear.

It's going to be accountability. We're going to hold everybody responsible that put this republic in the situation it's in today. We want your fear. We want your fear. Arrest Democrats. Put a wall around New York City. That is how conservative media is reacting to the fact that a former president was tried in front of a jury of his peers and found guilty. And for all that that says about who we are as a country and the challenge that we are facing right now as a constitutional republic—

This is also a clear marker about this next election, right? I mean, this is what one side is offering the public. So for everything else that says about us, honestly, if the Democrats and liberals cannot make something out of that being the character of the opposition this year in this election, we're in deeper trouble than I thought.

All right. That's going to do it for us tonight. It's been great to have you here.

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