Meet the Press NOW — June 8

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Conditions apply. Offer includes 1% loyalty rate reduction for qualifying customers. Visit hyundaicand.com or your local deal for details. Thursday special counsel Jack Smith signals criminal charges against Donald Trump to be imminent, warning the former president's legal team that he is officially a target of their investigation.

Plus a supreme surprise on voting rights as the conservative leaning high court strikes down a Republican drawn congressional map in Alabama for discriminating against black voters and fire in the sky. The toxic wildfire haze wreaks havoc across the northeast and beyond on the continent, forcing the White House to cancel an event tonight. A baseball game was cancelled in D.C. today and millions of people are warned to stay inside because of dangerous airplane.

Hello there. Welcome to the press. Now I'm Jokt reporting from New York. At this hour, the political world is on indictment watch and amid mounting evidence that the special counsel Jack Smith and his investigation into the former president of the January 6 in the documents could be coming to a head at least in one of the cases, if not both.

Two sources have confirmed NBC News that Justice Department prosecutors did tell Mr. Trump's attorneys that he is a target of the special counsel's criminal investigation, specifically right now into mishandling of classified documents. That may be the clear sign yet that prosecutors are wrapping up that investigation ahead of potential indictment. Of course, a DOJ spokesperson declined to comment on the reporting.

Mr. Trump was repeatedly denied any wrongdoing is escalated his attack on the credibility of the investigation. After being officially told he was a target, he took his social media accused an unnamed Justice Department official of bribery, citing no Evans. Meanwhile, we've been keeping a close eye on the action in both Miami and Washington.

Both have active grand juries for Jack Smith. And we now know special counsel has had to deploy two grand juries as part of his investigation appears one is focused on January 6 and one is focused on the documents today. David Harbach, one of the special counsel Jack Smith prosecutors was spotted at a federal courthouse in Miami and that's where that grand jury has been meeting. And special counsel Smith K was also seen this morning at his office in Washington where NBC confirms a grand jury hearing.

Evidence from his investigation in January 6th also met today. We don't know what the nature of today's session was about. We also have new developments in the special Counsel investigation into January 6th as two sources of NBC News that former Trump White House official Steve Bannon has been subpoenaed for documents and testimony. As the former president prepares for potential criminal charges, his rivals and ally from the capital of the campaign trail are bracing for what comes next and the potential political fallout.

We all none of us know just what the fallout would be from a federal indictment. We will dive into their reaction, what it could mean for 2024. In a moment, we're going to begin with the very latest legal developments of Journey now from Miami's our Justice and Intelligence course on Kilanya Von Hillier is outside the former president's golf club at Bedminster, New Jersey, and also with his criminal defense attention. NPC legal analyst Dann, start with you down there in Miami.

Is it safe to say now the Miami grand jury is the Mar A Lago documents grand jury. That's sure what it looks like, Chuck. And we have a variety of data points going that direction. One, you have David Harbach, a senior figure in the special counsel investigation who Normally works in D.C.

walk into court this morning after we learned that Donald Trump has been told that he is a target of this investigation and his lawyers came in and looked like a final meeting for the Justice Department. Yet we've seen no evidence that the grand jury in Washington, D.C. that we know has been hearing evidence in this case. We see no evidence that that grand jury has met in weeks.

Now. It's different from January 6th grand jury, by the way, Washington, there's two. Right. So that one appears to have gone dormant.

And now we're sort of learning. I'm doing some reporting, talking legal experts about what the reasons behind that may be. And that has to do with a very technical legal issue around Menu. But the bottom line is most of the conduct in this case happened here in South Florida.

And as much as Jack Smith would have liked to have tried this case before a D.C. grand jury full of Democrats, it appears that they conclude they have to bring it down here in South Florida. So this is where we are expecting any indictment to be returned, Ken. Normal grand juries here, multiple cases, indictments all over the place.

Why couldn't one grand jury handle both? No, you're absolutely right. That's true. But we saw the Mueller case.

Sometimes investigations are so complex that they demand their own grand jury. There's so many witnesses. There have been potentially hundreds of witnesses in this case, in the documents case alone, 22 Secret Service agents alone. So a lot, a lot of testimony complexity.

And so that can take up the time of a grand jury. Normal grand juries here, dozens of cases, murders, robberies. But often in a complex case, you get one that stands alone. Do we know how long this current Miami grand jury has been paneled?

Is it possible it's been paneled longer than we've known about it? Well, that's a great question. There's been some reporting that it really started to tick up in the last month or so, right around the time that the D.C. grand jury went dormant.

So, reading between the lines, you know, I'm talking to legalized First Corps officials. What they believe happened is that appellate lawyers at the DOJ, maybe the solicitor general, weighed in and said, Look, Mr. Smith, I know you'd like to bring this case in Washington, but for these legal reasons, for venue reasons, you really have to come down to South Florida. And that's when they started moving the show down here.

And we, we all missed it, essentially until this past week. Right. Kendall, any down in Miami, one of the more iconic courthouses actually in the skyline that you could be at. Ken, thank you.

Let me move up to Bedminster, which isn't very far from where I am right now. Mr. Hilliard, what do we believe Donald Trump's been told by his lawyers about the meeting? We know that they have been told at this point here that they're a target of the investigation.

The extent to which the lawyers themselves even are aware of how far along this case is, though, in this investigation is, is still unclear. Donald Trump is here in Bentonminster, where he will spend these summer months. He is no longer residing at Mar A Lago. When the club down there shuts down, he makes his way here to New Jersey.

That is why he is here. We know, though, that Donald Trump, in social media posts over the course of the last hours, has been firing away one early this afternoon made the allegation that there was one of the prosecutors in the special counsel's office, supposedly a bribe, tried to bribe a lawyer who was representing one of the witnesses in the case of the judgeship. To be very clear, there is no evidence that we have been made aware of. There were no specific details provided by the former president.

Yet he is using that to make the case of prosecutorial misconduct and that the ent of the investigation and if the nightmare should be thrown out. This is Donald Trump's playbook. We have seen it in the past, we are seeing it now again where he wants just the entire process to go away because of this idea of prosecutorial misconduct. Do we?

Obviously one of the reasons why justice will inform somebody that they're targeted is also invites them to go before the grand jury if they'd like. I assume we should not expect former president to take up that offer. We see an offer made to him in the Moor probe. It was made to him on the January 6 Select Committee on Capitol Hill.

We saw it in Manhattan District Attorney touch money and payment case. That offer made. Donald Trump has never agreed to testify under oath. There's little reason to believe that he would do that.

Now. They told us that he has an edmonster here today as well as tomorrow before two political events in Georgia and North Carolina on Saturday. So there's little reason to believe that he will take part in this. We know though that still including Taylor, but yesterday going before the grand jury for about an hour, these are individuals who were key aides post presidency to him.

And I was, you know, talking to source Miller who suggested that while they believe that maybe they're getting to the point of checking some final boxes, they're still asking questions in Trump world of how many witnesses have they not talked to that they still want to bring back in. Vaughn, you're a keen observer of who's in and around him in this moment. Do you get a sense that he's bringing in some allies to rally with him, that he's bringing in people to stew with, that he's, you know, trying to establish a bulwark of allies in this moment. I know Marjorie Taylor Greene for one is going to be flying on Saturday with him when he goes and speaks before the Georgia GOP convention on Saturday.

But you know, the support system around him for so long was largely Republican elected officials around the country. And you saw the last year in the search warrant execution in August took place at Mar A Lago. You saw the likes of Rick Scott Marco both stand up and Defend him because he was Donald Trump. But you've increasingly heard more muted responses in Manhattan district attorney's case.

But also now, the question here is just how much of a robust defense system will he have around him? Or is it really going to be him and his phone on social media firing away and the extent to which his lone loyals can help him in this case, Gone. Thank you. Let me bring in somebody else.

All right, Dan, you've. On the defense side, you know this stuff targeting really well. How often, what's the timeline for being told you had a client was target for the indictment itself? Most of the time.

That's the average length of waiting period there. First, the significance of being identified as a target cannot be understated. Generally, there are three categories. As a defense attorney, when your client is part of an investigation, mentioned his name uttered in an investigation, you want to find out where he fits.

Is he a target? Is he a subject, or is he a witness? And I have to tell you, Chuck, even when you are at the lowest level of culpability, a witness, you are terrified. And in fact, there are many reasons to even not want your client to testify when they are merely considered a witness.

Because as you can imagine, a witness can turn into a target in about five seconds if they say the wrong thing at a grand jury proceeding. But once you are in target land, you simply cannot cooperate. So the idea and effort is reported that Trump may have been offered the opportunity to come speak now that he's a target. That will never, ever happen.

I barely would advise a client to do it if they're merely a witness. If you're a target. I gotta tell you, Chuck, for months, maybe years now, I've had a personal embargo against saying things like, any day now or the walls are closing. And the reason for that is I started saying it back during a Mueller investigation and it keeps your adrenaline at a certain level.

You just can't maintain. So I realized, look, it's going to happen if at all when it's going to happen. But this any day now stuff, it just wasn't happening the next day or the next week. Now that we're in target land, the calculus changes.

For me, at least I understand that we're targeting and we have an active bridge. So is that you assume at this point the grand jury is there to hear the indictments, not to hear any more testimony just because there's an act of grand jury. There could be other potential targets other than Donald Trump. I held out that possibility for many months.

I Mean, we have grand juries in other federal investigations that involve Donald Trump. Remember with the Mueller investigation, other people got indicted. It was always breaking news when this person or that person would be indicted. And yet at the end of it, Trump was not.

So there is that possibility. Let's move over to the documents case because we know Mark Mellows. Yes. Given that he was the final chief of staff, it's possible that he also has criminal closure here with a classified document, correct?

That's possible, yes. The fact that he's testifying makes me wonder because as lawyers say, oh, you testify, you won't be a target. Yeah, but see, that is. That is a catch 22, and that's why these grand juries are so secret.

If you haven't picked up the phone and called a U.S. attorney to try to get information about an investigation against your client, that's not a fun phone call. Because they know how to have a phone call without imparting any information. They're mostly collecting.

Which, by the way, Chuck, in light of the reports that Trump's defense team met with government lawyers and of Jack Smith's team. Well, of course Jack Smith's team wants to do that. Why not get new information, hear what the defense has to say. You might get something juicy.

So listen, I've never heard of those meetings changing the mind of prosecutors. When the defense comes in and maybe makes an argument why the client should be charged. That's not to say that if you have the opportunity as a defense turn, you should take it. Anything you can do for your client.

But low success rate. By the way, everything in federal prosecution for the defense is a low success rate. Look, we're all tea leaf reading here, and you're more familiar with the legal world. It does seem as if when I saw Fan who's the Fulton county prosecutor, she laid out a timeline of potential.

We know when the courthouse might need security and she seemed to move it to closer to the end of the summer. Yes. That doesn't seem like a decision that's made in isolation. The likelihood that she and either Merrick Garland are at least coordinating timing, maybe don't coordinate, maybe not sharing testimony yet.

Although I guess that's. That certainly is not a no. No. Is it possible you think that they're communicating on time?

Yes. And I believe it's possible that Fanny Willis is being mindful of what she understands from the federal government to be their timeline. But make a mistake about it. The federal government deals like scrapping their timeline.

Whether or not that Fanny Willis is Requesting to shut down a courthouse. They won't care one iota. I think in that cooperation it's really more of a one way street. Fanny Willis is more subservient to the federal government.

Bottom line as you every assignment desk editor in America has a hair on fire wondering is tonight the night? Is tomorrow the day? Is it? Is it a?

Is it a. Are people overreacting or are we in that window? See Chuck, you can make me say it again. Are we embargo?

Are we in the window? I just said I won't say it but here I will not. He's already wanting to say it. I want to say it but I have made a private oath, Chuck.

But I do think in light of target information. Here we go. The end is nigh. Probably it's going to be happening soon.

I did it. You got to do it, Chuck. 85 years over 6 million is a short amount of time too. Thank you.

Come on. We're going to have more on the political indication of a former president's only legal issues had. But first it out into the breaking news of the Supreme Court holding surprising a lot of people. Keep up the voting Rights act striking down Alabama's congressional man and potentially flipping control of the House of Representatives in the process.

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There was a big decision out of the Supreme Court today. The Supreme Court shut down the Republican drawn congressional math in the state Alabama. It was a map that civil rights advocates had already discriminated against. The state's black residents ruling up held a key part of the Voting Rights Act.

It was something of a surprise rule from the Supreme Court that it signaled skepticism about the Voting Rights act in the past. Especially because it was Chief Justice John Roberts majority opinion along and Justice Brett Cattle breaking with their conservative colleagues to join that majority opinion. Justice Roberts writing for the majority said a lower court had correctly concluded that the Congressional act violated the voting rights law because it diluted black voters into white majority districts practically. The ruling needs of the Alabama congressional map will need to be redrawn to likely create a second majority black congressional district politically and legally.

It opens the door for challenges to congressional maps in other Republican led states, including Louisiana and Georgia. And it could leave that door open for Democratic gains in those states in 2024. I throw in Florida there too. That also essentially got rid of a majority African American district in the northern part of the state.

That likely. Now we'll see a challenge. I'm joined now by NBC News as senior legal correspondent Gorge. I also have Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Democratic Reg, one of the organizations that support the plaintiffs in this case.

And I have the political reports House editor Dave Wasserman, who put some of these decisions into a political context. But Laura, let me start with you. John Roberts arguably has been the biggest advocate for guiding the Voting Rights act than any other justice. And to see this majority opinion in a politically charged case like this, I'm going to take a step back and conspiracy theory conspiracist in me says, boy, this is John Roberts definitely wanting to show this court is not predictable at a time when their sort of integrity as a body, as an institution is in question.

I understand that argument. Let me give you the counter argument. Please do it on the map that on the law itself, this decision is sort of clear cut. They're simply following what has already been on the books for decades, even though this is something John Roberts himself said he was against.

That's what's so odd about this. He seems to be following the law that he doesn't agree. Correct. But at least the job is the job, at least on paper.

And I understand there's, there's reason to be cynical about it and there is reason to be suspicious about the motives and sort of reading the teens and why they do this at this moment. But if they're just going to follow the law, it actually shouldn't be surprising that this is the decision that they reached. There was never a time in which you were required to show that the state intentionally discriminated. That was Alabama's argument.

Okay. We used our computer module and we came up with just this one congressional district for black voters. But we didn't intend to do it. So no harm of foul.

That's never been the law. And so Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Gianna Day merely told them we're just follow the law. And the law says all you have to show is a discriminatory impact, the discriminatory effects. And it's as simple as that.

So motive didn't matter here. It had a discriminatory impact. So one assumes this does open the door to a whole bunch of other challenges. 100%.

I think, as you mentioned, litany of states, and especially Louisiana, which is argued to have a second majority black district, which is the same argument that the voting rights advocates have marshalled here in the Alabama case, should apply in the case of Louisiana. Should we read anything into that State legislature challenge with the North Carolina state legislature and state legislative supremacy, which has all sorts of potential impact. Should we read anything into this? No.

I think my money is they're gonna duck that decision and say the whole thing is root. Because in that case, the decision that they're actually reviewing reverse itself. Because, of course, the political makeup of the court actually changed in North Carolina. And so because the political makeup on the court changed from Democratic to Republican.

So I think the high court, the Supreme Court, is gonna say, I'm not gonna touch that one. It's a whole wall of mess. And there's not another case that could somehow bring that legislation? No, there is.

There is. There's a case in Ohio that's been right behind it. And a lot of the justices said, let's just decide this now. It's clearly we should.

Let's decide before 4024. All right, we shall see. Let me bring in Marina Jenkins here. As I introduced you, Marina, you're on the side of the plaintiffs in this case, and you're working on a lot of other potential challenges.

So first, let me get your reaction to this decision. You heard Laura's analysis. You heard my conspiratorial cynicism there. I'm not saying that's what I believe, but that's certainly in the ether.

What do you think of this decision? And you feel as if it's a. It's a solid opinion in your favor, not just a. Not just an outcome in your favor?

Absolutely. Laura's absolutely right. This case should have been a very easy case for the court to decide. Should have been.

I know, based on existing precedent, the. The law under section 2 of the Voting Rights act has been solid, has not changed significantly with respect to redistricting for decades. And so this was another instance where we were wondering whether the court would stick to precedent or whether do something different because they wanted the law to be different than it is. And so, you know, I understand the curiosity around the motivations behind sticking to the law as it exists, but when we brought this case in 2021, and an iteration of it in 2018, it was very clear that this is a straightforward win under existing law.

And the three judge panel with two Trump appointees agree with us. And now the Supreme Court has agreed as well. Now Marina, though you said you were still you were shook by this decision. So you seem.

Oh, of course it was. They did exactly what we expected. It doesn't sound like you did expect this, but you know, it's been an emotional day, I have to admit. You know, I think the emotion comes from, you know, the confluence of understanding where the law is and what it should be and that we should get a straightforward result but having real doubts about, you know, the fealty of this court to the rule of law.

And you know, I think based on last summer's, you know, outcome in jobs, it's, it's a fair place emotionally to be to really wonder, you know, whether they're just, you know, everything's game and it's all up in the air. So based on this opinion where you believe you have the ability to force some remaps in some of these, in some we know about Louisiana, Georgia's out there is Florida, is South Carolina or any other southern states. So the three states in addition to Alabama that have active Section 2 litigation are Louisiana, Georgia and Texas. So those are states where there already are cases moving.

I think Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia are almost certain to get results in favor of voters. But in time for the 2024 election, Texas is, you know, Texas always is more complic. There are a lot of different things happening there. Florida, there's no active section 2 case.

We have a state based case under the fair district amendments in Florida. There is a racial gerrymandering case in federal court in Florida. So there's some other, some other remissions, some other things happening in Florida. So a section two challenge that would be new would take a little more time to develop.

Right. And you're right, there's a whole potential on the whole whether that constitutional amendment of fair districts in Florida, whether it's constitutional in the state constitution. Let me bring in a political impact here. Dave Wasserman, you've already changed some ratings here.

Look, you heard the places where this is most likely to impact. It sounds like you already think there's three to five Democratic seats here possibly just pick up just on a redrawn map. Yeah, look, not all these seats are end up in solid Dem, but I think two of them are one each in Alabama and Louisiana. For all the talk of this being an application of long Term, legal precedent and the jingles test from the 1980s.

This is a political sea change because keep in mind that Alabama and Louisiana have had only one majority black congressional district dating back into 1992. There have been some exceptions in the 90s in Louisiana, but in other states it's murkier because, for example, in South Carolina, it's really not possible to draw two black majority districts without some really ugly. The state population would demand it, would it not? It would, but that doesn't itself lend itself to neat majority minority districts.

In cases where black populations really dispersed, it could be possible to draw additional black majority districts in metro Atlanta, but Republicans could convert an existing Democratic seat like Lucy McPass into a majority black district without costing themselves a seat. And then in Texas, the challenge is really that there are a lot of places with melting pot suburban populations where one minority group can't escalate, make up a majority of a single district's population. So that could be hard to prove. And keep in mind, the Supreme Court did not embrace plurality or coalition districts here.

They stuck with the precedent of if a group is politically cohesive, can make up more than 50% of the district population, and there's sufficiently racially polarized voting, then it should be drawn. So, Dave, just to close this out, I think, is there five states we're gonna have new maps or six? I mean, it's sort of absurd. That looks like we're getting a massive redistricting due over here before November 2024.

How many do you expect? We know New York sitting out there. Could Ohio get redrawn, too? Look, definitely North Carolina, Alabama, virtually, certainly Louisiana.

I think the other states, it's much more complicated. And New York's process is not at all straightforward. Ohio's got a lot of gamesmanship in Columbus with a power sharing agreement in the state house. And it's possible that court there could just, you know, let the map survive for another two years until 2026 when it expires.

So this is a game changer in the sense that it puts Democrats in closer contention for the majority in 2024. I think it's already there anyway, expecting North Carolina with Republicans or gerrymandering lines there, but there's a lot of legal process still to play out. Amazing how much your job is courthouse cases these days, Wasserman. More so than ad spending.

Let me bring it back to the courthouse here, Laura, in the opinion. You know, the last times I've dealt with the Voting Rights act, there's been a lot of lectures from The Supreme Court to Congress. You guys need to update this. You need to, you know, if this law is kind of out of date, you should be any of that in this opinion.

No, because Congress had updated it and they updated it in response to bad Supreme Court decisions, in their view. And so this is the decision where they're essentially reaffirming what con did. Certainly Congress could take steps on its own anytime it wanted to try to shore up voting rights. It doesn't seem like they have the political will or the wind to do that.

But no, the language in this opinion does not have sort of, sort of sweeping rhetoric we've seen. And there are certainly other decisions from the Supreme Court on the table where you might see that. And Maria, look, there's been a big movement on the left to try to, if you get enough political power in Congress to rewrite the Voting Rights act, given this result, does that will end? Sol think so.

I think, you know, the, the fact that we are on pins and needles to understand whether the court is going to take away, you know, fundamental rights and protections for voting that have been in place for a long time, I think is reason enough for everyone, you know, for all of us to keep moving forward on this fight to really lock in the protections we need to bring back the protections under Section 5. You know, there's a, that we can do to make sure that we're not every couple years wondering what's going to be taken away next. Yeah, I mean it only just makes people like they watchmen are not happy that we handicap races all the time. But that's probably not very good for the actual voters in this case.

You always wonder now what district am I voting in every two years? Lord Jerry Jacobs of the National Democratic Producing Committee and the cookbook reporter Wasserman, thank you all for helping us sort this story out. Still ahead, if you're one of the millions of Americans experiencing this dangerous and disruptive wildfire smoke, we're going to tell you when you can expect to breathe fresher air. I'm going to say it's necessity to be fresh, but to be fresher watching the.

Welcome back. If you're on the east coast, this is all you're talking about. Smoke. And has continued to linger in the air across the northeast of Atlantic regions.

With roughly 120 million Americans under severe air quality alerts, New York City skyline was unrecognizable yesterday, leaving many indeed Philadelphia racing for the worst. While today it was the nation's capital that had issued his first ever code Purple warning that air quality had reached unhealthy levels for everyone in the city. They got rid of baseball games. They got rid of a lot of stuff.

Ripple effects across the capital region. Even the White House, which had to reschedule a major Pride Month event to Saturday when conditions are expected to improve. The haze continues to disrupt air travel as well. The FAA is ground delays from Newark, LA and airports all due to low visibility.

So far, at least 84 flights in the United States have been canceled due to this and more than 3,000 others have been delayed. Speaking of the White House, after President Biden said he and spoke with Prime Minister Jeff Centau and has directed US Agencies to promptly respond to Canadian requests for additional help with fighting these fires, including with people and other suppression acts. Join me now to find out when we get some relief for the outdoors is our own meteorologist here at MBC, Mr. Bill Garrettville.

And when do we get to breathe again? Saturday, I think a little bit tomorrow afternoon, evening. But really on Saturday, everyone go outside the blue skies. Okay.

This is what we're more used to. Yeah. So let's get into the impact areas the hardest. Now, almost all locations have hit their peak.

So that's good. Doesn't mean the area is great, which means it's getting a little bit better. Everywhere in red is still what we call unhealthy. That's for all groups, not just people with issues, with respiratory issues or elderly, and the young, but areas in purple.

Only a few left that are very unhealthy. Earlier today, the worst that was right over dcc gone from purple to red. A little bit of improvement here at 180. At one point it was in the low three hundreds.

New York is at 157. Yesterday at one point it was nearing 400. So things have improved. But notice Detroit.

Detroit, all of a sudden your area is getting worse. The wind direction has shifted off the fires in Quebec and now it's blowing more towards the Great Lakes in Michigan. So you have Chicago now in the unhealthy area. So it's not going to be like what happened in New York City.

But you will notice sunrise and sunsets, that little glow, the reddish hues, that's from the smoke coming from Quebec blowing all the way back into the Great Lakes. So here's how we are this evening at 6pm as we go through the night, we're still tracking again, it's heading into the Great Lakes and then it's swinging through the Mid Atlantic D.C. friday morning, it's not going to be Great. Once again, all the way to Philadelphia.

But from New York City northwards, your air may be crystal clear blue skies or regular clouds without any smoke in it. By the time we get to Friday evening, we're starting to see it breaking up a little bit, but still not the best around dc. That's why I mentioned by the time we get to Saturday is when things begin to dramatically improve. If we want to kind of end this entire threat, we need to get some of these fires out.

430 active fires, 235 of them burning, what we call out of control, uncontained, and notice all of them here in Quebec. That's why we've had so much smoke blowing down from wet that. And so we need rain during such remote areas, it's really difficult for firefighters, whether they're Canadian or our country or other countries, to put them out. Over the next seven days, you see a little bit yellow and oranges here, maybe an inch, inch, inch and a half.

That's not enough to put them out. So anytime that wind blows from the north, those fires will bring the smoke back. So a month ago, we had this massive pollen outbreak in the mid Atlantic, and it was all due to the dry winter. How dry was the winter in Canada and how much, obviously that has to do with this.

How unprecedented. May was one of the warmest Mays they've ever had in Canada, and they didn't have a lot of rain either. So the snow melts, it's a hot May, everything's dry and everything else. And so it can burn quickly.

And now we're dealing with this because I can't remember in my lifetime when Canada had this kind of a problem. This is one of the worst early seasons they've ever had. And the last time, by the way, that we saw the smoke blown from Canada, 2002. So many of us can't remember that.

Literally a generation of parents. Thanks very much. What the looming Trump and Nightman could mean for the race of the White House. That.

Welcome back to last time former President Bateson died, the other Republican running for president largely and loudly came to his defense. Now the former President faces potential charges from Special Counsel Jackson's two pronged investigation into both Trump's handling classified documents and his actions in and around the January 6th insurrection. So what will it be this time? Well, let's consider my pence.

He launches campaign history with a forceful condemnation of Donald Trump's action on January 6th. And his PAC is now running an ad saying Trump failed the test of leadership. But then here's Pence a few months ago urging the Justice Department against charging his former boss and current campaign run. I would hope the Department of Justice did not move forward, not because I know the facts, but simply because I think after years where we're receiving a politicization of the Justice Department, it's undermined confidence in the American people, inequal treatment of the law.

The unprecedented action of a federal indictment for former president of the United States I think would be would be extraordinarily divisive in our country and I think it would send a terrible message to the wider world. I would hope that it would meet the very high threshold for the unprecedented action of a federal indictment against a former president. In that sense. Join me now.

It's on set. Jay Johnson, former Homeland Security secretary under President Obama. He's also former federal prosecutor as well. Noah Rothman is a senior writer for the National Review.

Look, it's a good place to start where Mike Pence is saying I think the bar has to be essentially higher if you're going to die. Even a former president, do you think actually agrees with everything he said? Well, that amounts to two different standards of justice and I'm not sure I agree with that. I would say, however, that before you take on the high profile indictment of a former president, we should, you know, have our ducks in order.

Make sure we've thought through all the evidentiary issues, all of the other issues that, you know will be thrown at them pretrial. But in terms of standard of proof, there should not be separate levels of justice in this country. For Delphi, no, because of Donald Trump was at the Darth Vader test and it's this. Remember Darth Vader for the over.

I remember. Not Luke Skywalker, not Merrick Garland, not the judge. You see where I'm going here, which is if you're going to move on from Donald Trump, somebody inside Trump or the voters, whatever it is. I've heard that argument.

What do you make of what Pence is saying? Is it and if that is the decision that's made? Well, we would have charged anybody else, but he's a former president. We're going to let the court of public opinion decide this is healthy or not healthy?

Well, there may just actually be real principle at stake here. I mean, we want to talk about this as though everybody's making political calculations, but it's quite possible that we have to assume that the indictment comes down if it's a document's case, that it's focused on instruction. What's the focus on documents. You can get a whole lot of very high profile individuals.

The Donald Trump is going to make case of selective prosecution and maybe his opponents subordinate their instincts to use this as fodder in their campaign. The bloods are already off and say, well, yeah, he's had a point. There is selective prosecution going on here. Hillary Clinton had an email serve 30,000 emails under congressional subpoena destroyed.

Nobody prosecuted that, except there was no criminal intent there. I could see. Well, that's not for us to decide. That's for a prosecutor to decide when the prosecution here is going to go for this prosecutor in order to avoid conflict of interest.

But conflicting interest. Is that the president anymore. They clearly understand that. I do think, and I understand, I do think that Garland put himself in a fox when he decided to go a box of sorts.

Because if the special counsel comes to him and said, yes, there's a case that I intend to bring, you either have to go along with it or in a very high profile way, disagree with it. I'm going to take the flip side. What Noah said. How do we let pass what former President Trump did in Mar A Lago while prosecuting this kid in the Air National Guard in Massachusetts for violation of the Espionage Act?

How do we let the former president have a pass on January 6th when you have Oath Keepers going to jail for 18 years? And so this, in my judgment, is a different era from when Ford pardon Nixon. And I do think that the credibility of the rule of law and the credibility of our criminal justice system is on the line. It could be a race, Noah, among presidential candidates, to say, I'll pardon former President Trump?

I don't think so, honestly, but that would be very clever. It would be a clever way to introduce someone to Santos. Right. Like, isn't that the way to say, well, I mean, festoon with legal baggage and yeah, that would be a way to get into the nap to the public imagination.

That would also be declared by half. And the President, the former president would express his disapproval of that in ways I think might enlighten the Republican base. Look, the Republican base does like this guy. They do side with him.

They do believe he can persecute. This case has always seems to have impacted more people than the Manhattan case. Right. We saw his numbers went down after the Mar A Lago news came out.

They didn't go up among Republicans. This is. Yes, among everybody. It went down, not immediately, but then after a couple weeks, people saw it and then of course, it wore down.

I tend to believe there's going to in a rational world anyway there should be a tipping point where after indictment number two or three or four the average voter even the average Republican voter says you know what this is too many cases which is there a straw here and is he a kill I mean after the Mar a Lago Ray there was this push to renomate Donald Trump by acclamation in the first week I didn't say that but remember as more details and now we did see it suddenly his affairs disappeared. Yeah you could see that it'll take some time to work its way out of the Republican bloodstream. What do they say look this is good for me in my campaign even though I have misgivings about what Justice Department is doing here it benefits me politically. Emphasizes what do you think of Mike Pence saying he thinks he's unfit for office but he supported his I think he's a party man and party men have vested an interest in advancing the political party's agenda.

Now Donald Trump will not observe the same rules. He's not inclined he's not going to be inclined to do that. And response to this where he said look I'll treat that pledge that I have to sign in order to get on the debate stage with as much support and forthrightness as my son which is to say none whatsoever. How do you feel as if Garland has managed all these investigations so far.

This was never easy. It's why he's there. The whole point that Biden wanted to put in there over the objections clearly a whole bunch of people judge there to say they don't know how to politics they don't have to do modern media. Right.

There was all these things kind of complaints but behind his own head thought well if you're going to deal with him you might you want somebody that credibility I think he's helped well let's I start with this. I think Merrick Garland has done a lot to restore the credibility of the Department of Justice. When you look where it was under Trump and how politicized it had become putting a former federal judge in the job I think has done a lot to restore credibility. Notwithstanding all of the person attacks we see every day with the with the FBI.

I wonder whether appointing Jack Smith was truly a good idea because he's still under Merrick Garland's supervision and there are still plenty of very objective apolitical federal prosecutors out there to do the job that door then the question is well why do you need a special counsel? Why do you need to do a special counsel? It feels like once you open that door it starts a whole bunch of. I've never been a big fan of special counsels to begin with.

When you have one mandate in one case as opposed to hundreds or thousands to weigh they can risk taking on a life of their own. I'm not saying that's true here, but there is that risk. Your historian of the conservative Pat Robertson's influence with Abbey I feel like he's a founding father of the evangelical political movement almost more so the J. Paul But I'm curious your thoughts.

Yes, I agree with you. And the evangelical political movement of the Pat Robertson era is no more interesting. It is a completely different animal. It has subordinated its moral foundations to the pursuit of political exceedance.

Now I think a lot of its members would certainly object to that frame of reference morphed into appealing to that new version of the Pat Robertson has remained consistent and people who are truly evangelicals in the religious sense as opposed to the political sense would agree with that. Have a moral center and fortitude. There's a particular brand of evangelical Christian political philosophy, nationalism. I wouldn't go that far, but I would say that it's political insofar as it's less more to values and more and more towards a more engaged in political combat and advancing its political agenda which is very distinct from having a religious philosophy.

Thank you. Next, our politics, religion and controversy. We have a little bit more on the legacy of South Angeles and Pat Roberts, what it says about the future of conservative. Senator, are you watching me?

Welcome back. Pat Roberts, the minister and television broadcaster who led the transformation of evangelicals into political force in American politics, died today at the age of 93. He's the son of a former senator. Robertson's 1988 presidential run mobilized evangelicals to the conservative cause on a scale that had not been seen in modern politics.

And it brought him to a shockingly strong second place finishing Iowa caucuses back then. Here's Robertson amid the press just before he became an official presidential candidate. Is that your intent to convert every American to Christianity? Certainly not in the political realm.

Teddy Roosevelt had this rather interesting statement. He called the presidency a bully pulpit. And it's a place where he you can draw together a moral consensus for noble goals. I think if there's one job a president can do, then what others can't do is to elevate the people and draw consensus.

And I don't think that's the same thing as converting everybody to Christianity. His presidential defeat only turned his Christian Coalition into a more potent for Struggling turned for conservative candidates in that historic 1994 midterm election and turning evangelicals into a key constituency of the gop. Robertson also uses his long running television program to make many outlandish and sometimes hateful accusations such as blame Hurricane Katrina on God's anger over abortion and concurring with some remarks made by Jerry Falwell on the September 11 attacks. Robinson also told viewers a Godwinner v during Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

Coming down on set, NBC News national political correspondent Steve Kornack. He's also author of the book Red and the blue of the 90s and the birth of Political Tribalism, which deals with this era of American politics. Steve, a lot of fun to talk a little history with you. My first introduction to Pat Robertson.

I remember watching this ad with Roy Rogers in 1986. Folks, we all know this nation's freedom was founded under God. So join d me as members of the National Committee to draft Pat Robertson for president. He's capable, he's qualified and he cares.

America needs Pat Robertson. So let's prove to Pat that we're ready to help Roy Rogers. Back in the day, Trigger was his horse. He was sort of a western.

I don't know how else you would describe him like that's a west pop culture back. Back in the day. And he and his wife d there, they were a variety show staple back in the day or maybe back then with them. Right.

That was all new to us back in the 80s. And then you wrote about how powerful Robertson really turned it into a force. Yeah. And you mentioned at the moment the high water mark for Pat Robertson quickly with the Iowa caucuses in 1988.

Nothing else after that campaign. Yeah, he had some strong polins and everything. But what it did was it marked the arrival of evangelical Christians as a distinct force in Republican politics. It's been coming for a while.

Jerry Fowler started the Moral Majority in the late 70s. Robertson obviously had been involved. Arguably Jerry Carter won because he was an evangelical believer or born again. Right.

Not. And he vocalized the evangelicals on his side. And the disappointment of evangelicals like Jerry Falwell in Jimmy Carter as president led him to Ronald Reagan. And ironically I equipped that 88 second place finish.

Put that in context. Second place. Why was that so significant to start? Third place was the sitting Vice President George H.W.

bush. And that Robertson defeated Bush, nearly derailed Bush in 1988. I don't think George H.W. bush is the amount of time to think about that.

But think about also the change in 1980. The Iowa caucuses for both parties date back to about the 70s. 1980 they have the Iowa caucuses. Evangelical Christians just starting to become a force.

Bush wins the Iowa caucus. Bush in 1980 is pro choice. He is the last pro choice Republican to win a major primary caucus in the 40 years since then. And by 1988 Bush has changed point.

But you see the tide is changing. By 88, Iowa, the same state that sided with pro choice quotation 80 gives Pat Robertson second place. Television Pat Robertson now this shit took place. And now look at the last three open Republican races and arguably you could say four because I couldn't put in their night in 2000.

The winner had to be essentially an evangelical or evangelical adjacent. Yeah. 64% of the electorate in the 2016 Iowa caucuses identified as evangelical or born again Christian. 10.

Cruz won them by 11 points. Cruz won the state by three. He won the state because of the evangelical Christian vote. And ironically that Christian Coalition has never been there as an organization.

I think there's a big question too about. Yeah. With Trump 2024. You see Guy pens come in.

He thinks there's civil lane for evangelical Christians to stand there on those grounds. It's an interesting text deny while that electorate might split three or four ways. Right. Which we have not seen before.

Always pleasure to do this review Steve. Happy to see. Thank you all for being with us this time. You see news now coverage continues with Hallie Jackson.

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