diverging paths in accountability for Donald Trump's failed coup and Insurrection and that includes some bad news for Trump in the RICO case today where he just lost an effort to dismiss it a judge rejecting the bizarre legal claim that indicted crimes would be okay because Trump claims they were his Free Speech now that's not the actual law in fact plenty of crimes may include people talking but the First Amendment does not protect words used for blatant criminal conduct fraud imminent threats
as the judge reminded Trump's lawyers now that R new ruling against Trump and that coup case along with the other cases against Trump and the gen6 plotters does show how on One path in the courts there are tough prosecutions and punishment for the coup it's a court process that has escalated over time after the doj was initially slow to go up the line in these Casey you can come back to me that's not the right yeah I'll show you that headline in a few minutes but what I want to explain is initia
lly you had all of the efforts around Jan 6 slowed down and delayed they didn't even open an inquiry into the role of the leader and beneficiary of the plots to overthrow the election Donald Trump the election loser for over a year that was until Jack Smith took over when Jack Smith took over the doj then you had of course an acceleration of that process and I think we've all lived through that first there was was an effort to get the top people who actually physically invaded the capital many o
f them are now in prison and some Trump AIDS have now been convicted that's something we couldn't say this time last year other Trump AIDS await trial one recently became the first White House Aid to go to prison from a January 6 probe so there's huge process on that legal track even as the current Speaker of the House goes farther than well any probably since the Civil War to openly Embrace convicted seditionists and that's the other path a congress siding with convicts who invaded Congress and
we'll cover that part of the path in a moment but here's the point I want to make in our kind of special report opening the program tonight the wheels of Justice are moving forward after a slow start we are seeing a lot of accountability on the legal path to deal with the Insurrection so I'm going to show you exactly what we're seeing on the evidence and it starts very simple we're going to fill up this chart for you over time as we sometimes do but it starts there with the very top of this cha
rt where after a slow start the first conviction came about a year after the 20121 January 6 attack in March 2022 a convicted attacker got a Stern 7-year prison sentence and that was the first time anyone was sent to prison for that then in the next year for the first time top AIDS and lawyers for Trump were indicted some were outraged about it others folded and pled guilty if I knew then what I know now I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges I look bac
k on this whole experience with deep remorse they put me in handcuffs they bring me here they put me in leg irons they stick me in a cell are you pleading guilty today because you agree that there is a sufficient factual basis that there are enough facts that support this plea of guilty I do how do you plead to count 15 conspiracy to commit filing false documents in indictment number 23c 188 947 guilty so the courts went as I mentioned on the far left when it first happened from nothing to slow
to tough working their way up the line over the years and then as everyone knows Trump was indicted for January 6 conduct in two different jurisdictions the attack on our nation's capital on January 6th 2021 it was fueled by lies lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a Bedrock function of the US government that accountability has continued on the legal track Mr Navaro who I mentioned there is now very recently began serving a prison sentence after being convicted for hiding evidence abou
t January 6 and on the far right you see the running count 450 plus convictions for people who attacked the capital that day and that Court accountability is grinding on even if people are used to the kind of talking points or memories of saying it initially started slow these are just selected key points this chart doesn't even include other measures like the Victorious and painful defamation Victory there against Giuliani for election lies and all the Trump lawyers facing disparan proceedings
which can end their career and warn future creol law ERS of major consequences even before you get to a criminal trial so after the slow start you have the legal accountability for the coup you have people who are now in trouble or in jail because they were trespassers or plotters or they were thugs attacking police or they were lawyers hiding evidence and so the consequences and penalties from left to right over time have only gotten more real and severe for these people and that matters especi
ally as a deterrent for future cou plotters let's put that up back on the screen y this matters as legal accountability we're seeing an opposite Trend though in Congress and on the political side where Republican leaders were who were actually once critical of the convicts who stormed the capital this is how they first sounded this failed Insurrection only underscores how crucial the task before us is for our Republic the violence destruction and Chaos we saw earlier was unacceptable undemocrati
c and an americ the capital was in chaos police officers were attacked guns were drawn on this very floor a woman tragically lost her life no one wins when this building and what it stands for are destroyed now that's how it started you might notice those are some pretty top Republicans sounding emphatic that was back when in public Kevin McCarthy sounded like Liz Cheney and I told you tonight we're going to walk through on the evidence these two paths I showed you the court accountability path
now I want to do the same thing and walk through our new reporting here based on all the evidence of the political path because it began here with Republicans condemning the obvious crime spree what you see on the lower left is marking that over time that is a quote from then rep Republican leader McCarthy Democrats and independents of course join in the cond condemnation they've stood by it through today what's different what we're charging here is how Republicans over time went from calling th
at unamerican and unacceptable to going soft on crime and the Insurrection within a year the National Party formally declared that it claimed January 6 was quote legitimate political discourse when that happened that Drew outrage over that lie in an effort to embrace and defend convicted seditionists and trespassers hard to imagine if Al-Qaeda or Isis stormed the capital that a year or two later you'd have one political party going from calling it terrible and un American to quote legitimate Rep
ublicans rejected the chance to treat January 6 like that kind of other attack or follow say the precedent of a 9/11 investigation instead they actually ousted the party members who stood up against this addition we all know they excommunicated people like Liz Cheney and congressman kinsinger who had been in Cheney's case in their very leadership and soon enough the speaker who replaced McCarthy was falsely arguing January 6 defendants were being persecuted he got himself in a scandal when he sa
id he would hide the fugitives and blur their faces from doj he backtracked on that but as you can see on our chart went on to defend them as quote innocent this week which is why the is back in the news Johnson falsely claimed those people who stormed the barricades and clashed with police to get in Were Somehow innocent he said that others who were walking through the capital were just kind of ended up there he knows that claim is false because it wasn't open that day and so Mike Johnson went
from just pushing lawsuits to overturn Trump's loss which however misleading is a activity that you can legally engage in you are allowed to file losing lawsuits even absurd ones in America but he went from there to going well beyond that last speaker to openly making common cause with these convicted attackers so um I made a commitment uh immediately after I got the gam that we would start releasing that originally we were trying to blur some of the faces to protect the innocent you know people
who were just there and just happen to be walking through the building and so here we are people who happen to be walking through the building is a lie which he knows and again you might not want to spend all your time living in a country where you have to compare Kevin McCarthy as the standard and Mike Johnson is below it but this is why I'm showing you this tonight that as the legal accountability on the top Lane increases which is a very real thing on this bottom Lane you go from a speaker c
alling this unamerican to a party calling it legitimate to the new speaker declaring them quote innocent and then on the very far right hand corner you have the party again as it hires people for the next 6 months heading into the November election there are all these reports that their screening involves only taking election deniers help wanted but election deniers only and so party leaders Now Praise these insurrectionists as innocent Heroes even as the people in government face increasing and
sometimes irreversible legal accountability you may know several of these different points we put them together this way including on top of speaker Johnson's outrageous and false claims this week to chart why the legal and the political are taking such disperate paths and what that means for America and this coming accountability election hey everyone MSNBC has a new and improved app you'll get realtime alerts and Analysis live blogs in-depth essays video highlights and the best 2024 election
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