00:00 Rachel Maddow To my mind, if you only took away one thing from the hearing today, it was this next exchange between Jack Smith and a Vermont congresswoman named Becca Ballant. 00:12 It was an exchange about basically what it means to be Jack Smith right now. 00:17 in 2026, to have done the investigation that he did, to have found what he found, to have served your country by sticking to your guns, even when that meant the leader of the United States government and his party and his supporters would try to destroy you for it. 00:36 Soundbite Trump has said that you, Mr. Smith, should be investigated and put in prison. 00:41 He called you a disgrace to humanity, a radical left Marxist, a criminal. 00:45 In fact, Trump has used the words deranged Jack Smith 185 times on Truth Social. 00:54 How do you think that these statements have impacted you, your staff, and your investigation? 01:04 Jack Smith With respect to me, I think the statements are meant to intimidate me. 01:11 I will not be intimidated. 01:13 I think these statements are also made as a warning to others what will happen if they stand up. 01:20 And I am, as I said, I'm not going to be intimidated. 01:24 We did our work pursuant to department policy. 01:27 We followed the facts and we followed the law. 01:30 And that process resulted in proof beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed serious crimes. 01:36 I'm not going to pretend that didn't happen because he's threatening me. 01:40 Soundbite And Mr. Smith, do you believe that President Trump's Department of Justice will find some way to indict you? 01:49 Jack Smith I believe they will do everything in their power to do that because they've been ordered to by the president. 01:57 Rachel Maddow Jack Smith, I will not be intimidated. 02:00 I'm not going to pretend those serious crimes didn't happen just because he's threatening me. 02:05 As I said before, I will not be intimidated. 02:09 Nicole Wallace, what did you take from this hearing today? 02:12 Nicole Wallace Well, what I took from my own reaction was that this was so extraordinary. 02:17 But before Trump destroyed the Department of Justice, there were hundreds of Jack Smiths inside the Department of Justice. 02:24 He was the arch type of the kind of person who chose that life. 02:29 INSTEAD OF, YOU KNOW, BEING A PARTNER OF PAUL WEISS AND HAVING MULTIPLE HOUSES AND OCCASIONALLY PLAYING PRIVATE. 02:35 I MEAN, THIS IS WHAT DOJ WAS MADE OF. 02:37 SO WHAT I THOUGHT ABOUT WAS HOW SUCCESSFUL TRUMP'S BEEN IN MOVING THE 02:44 thinking about nostalgically about what the department was. 02:48 The other thing I thought it was he is the most senior Justice Department official to defend what we kind of shorthand is rank and file. 02:55 But the people that have been purged from the Justice Department were the best of the best. 02:59 The most senior prosecutors, the most senior FBI agents who have been pilloried reputationally 03:05 threatened legally, faced death threats by and large if they've been named and outed and smeared in the right-wing press. 03:12 And they have hollowed out the Department of Justice. 03:14 Merrick Garland hasn't defended those people. 03:17 Lisa Monaco hasn't defended those people. 03:19 Joe Biden hasn't defended those people. 03:21 Today, Jack Smith, right after that clip you played, described the real danger in the threats and efforts to intimidate him. 03:30 TO HIS TEAM. 03:31 AND HE REALLY DEFENDED THE INTEGRITY OF THE WORK THEY DID. 03:34 AND I THINK SOME OF WHAT SINKS IN WHEN YOU WATCH THIS IS THAT WE'RE ALL HERE TODAY BECAUSE THIS IS EXTRAORDINARY. 03:42 WE ALL KNOW THAT THIS DOESN'T HAPPEN INSIDE THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT. 03:46 NO ONE SAYS WHAT HE SAID TODAY TO THE PUBLIC IN THAT CONGRESS, TO PAM BONDI OR TODD BLANCH OR 03:55 IF DANIELLE SAYS SOON OR LIZ OYER OR ANY OF THOSE PEOPLE DID, THEY'VE BEEN ASKED TO LEAVE. 04:02 Rachel Maddow Which is the dark and terrible side of the Justice Department professional ethic that says if you are asked to do something unprofessional or wrong, you resign. 04:12 We have seen people resigning like whole forests of them falling all at once. 04:19 And what it means is that the Justice Department, as you say, doesn't have those folks in it anymore. 04:23 That's right. 04:23 Nicole Wallace And what is so, I think, painful about this is 04:28 I THINK IT IS NOT THAT JUST JACK SMITH'S WORK THAT HE DID ON BEHALF OF NOT A PRESIDENT, NOT A PARTY, BUT ON BEHALF OF THE COUNTRY. 04:36 HE WORKED FOR THE COUNTRY. 04:37 HE WAS A TAXPAYER-FUNDED PROSECUTOR WHO CAME OUT OF A DIFFERENT POST TO DO THIS EXTRAORDINARY JOB AT A POINT IN TIME WHEN THERE WAS LITERALLY NOTHING TO BE GAINED AND AS HE STATED AT THE END, HE FACES THREATS AND HARM AND HE'S ALL BUT CERTAIN HE WILL BE INDICTED. 04:52 THEY WILL ATTEMPT TO PROSECUTE HIM BECAUSE DONALD TRUMP WANTS 04:56 I THINK THAT'S WHAT I THINK IS THAT NOT ONLY DID HE NOT SUCCEED IN BRINGING A CASE 05:05 Chris Hayes Chris? 05:06 Yeah, I, like Nicole, also felt like I was watching this human embodiment of all that's been lost and all that is crucial and central to really the entire functioning of American democracy, like this kind of a person who's a serious, smart, capable person devoted to public service who is doing their work without fear or favor, which they really want to destroy. 05:26 I mean, they're quite explicit about that, right? 05:28 They want to turn it into... 05:30 the U.S. government into basically Tammany Hall with nukes. 05:34 They want a complete machine that's also like the global superpower where like everyone has a job because you gave Donald Trump some money or you know him, right? 05:43 And this is like the ultimate rebuke to them. 05:45 Lawrence O'Donnell And what you do with your job is serve the machine. 05:47 Don't forget, Tammany Hall also tried to do some good things. 05:51 Chris Hayes You're right. 05:51 Rachel Maddow Actually, you are actually correct. 05:53 We're in Lauren's defense. 05:56 Chris Hayes That is actually an important and good point. 05:58 Rachel Maddow There was some like pothole filling. 05:59 No, they actually did do it. 06:01 Chris Hayes You know, the second thing, I mean, the other very lukewarm take I have is like, boy, it really, I mean, he was guilty as hell and it was a real mistake. 06:07 We elected him again. 06:08 The final thing I thought was just watching it, the sort of optics, take a step back, is like someone used this term that we're in the midst of a clicktatorship. 06:16 Yeah. 06:16 This sense that everything they're doing in the Trump administration is spectacle, the sort of spectacle of menace, that when an ICE officer actually shoots and kills an American citizen in her car, he has to move the cell phone from his hand to the other hand so he could keep recording as he shoots her. 06:31 Because the generation of content is so important. 06:34 Today, we got reporting that when Charlie Kirk was killed, Kash Patel inside the FBI, the first thing he was concerned about was what he could tweet and coordinating with Dan Bongino about what he could tweet, that he wanted to tweet pictures from Windsor Castle with his girlfriend that actually would expose MI5 agents. 06:47 It's all New York Times Magazine today. 06:49 This obsession with spectacle. 06:51 And here's Jack Smith is like the ultimate opposite of that, right? 06:54 Like a sober, solemn, serious person facing down this kind of carnival of 07:00 absurdity that has now become again. 07:02 And that's always been part of politics hearings, as you will attest, right? 07:05 They're always theatrical theatricality is part of politics. 07:08 I have no problem with that. 07:09 I talk for a living. 07:12 But what is totally absent is any sense of seriousness or moral compass right now in the government we have. 07:18 And here's this person who just feels like 07:21 I DON'T THINK IT'S A PART OF THIS ARCHEOLOGICAL FINDING. 07:23 FROM ANOTHER ERA. 07:25 Nicole Wallace TOTALLY. 07:26 Rachel Maddow I MEAN, THE ASTHETIC OF IT, HIS ASTHETICISM, HIS STOICISM IS ITSELF PART OF THE MESSAGE. 07:38 Ari Melber that he had the evidence, that the case was moving forward, that he could prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. 07:43 Even Republicans seem to acknowledge that he is a strong and aggressive prosecutor, which is what prosecutors are supposed to be. 07:49 Donald Trump belongs in prison. 07:51 That's really something for the country to still see and hear from this person. 07:55 Second, to echo others, Jack Smith is a sober guy in a drunk bar at 1 a.m. 08:03 And he stands out more that way. 08:06 And our job is to try to make sense of this. 08:08 And you just presented some of those key highlights. 08:10 People can take it in. 08:11 People can go online later tonight, tomorrow, watch more. 08:15 What I saw there, on the scale of public servants, was an especially sober, fair person. 08:22 If someone was watching and they're super political and they wanted to see him spar and rebut every type of Republican question that was a little leading or a little over here, he didn't do that. 08:32 Why did he do that? 08:33 Because that's not who he is. 08:34 But they need to discredit him because even with the case closed, 08:39 He still comes off very credible. 08:41 Rachel Maddow Yes. 08:42 And more of the case is going to come out if volume two of his report is unsealed by the court. 08:47 And a lot of people argue that part of the reason this whole hearing might have happened today was to try to muddy him up before the country gets a whole new dose of information based on the evidence that he gathered. 08:58 Lawrence O'Donnell Well, you know, for me, whenever I'm watching congressional hearings, I mourn for the day when they actually used to work. 09:06 So one thing that was on display was the decline and fall of the congressional hearing. 09:11 We used to have hearings like this in which both sides were actually trying to find the truth. 09:19 The Watergate hearings were the example of this. 09:21 There was a certain slight amount of Republican defensiveness for Richard Nixon through the beginning of the Watergate hearings. 09:28 But as the evidence mounted, members responded to the evidence. 09:34 And what you saw today was this utterly nonsensical display that there's no amount of evidence that could ever be proof to any Republican on that committee of anything. 09:46 And this is where 09:47 Donald Trump is not to blame for Donald Trump. 09:50 There could be no Donald Trump without those people. 09:53 Those are the people, the Republicans in Congress, they are the people who gave this country Donald Trump. 09:59 They are the people who decided we're not just going to tolerate him. 10:03 We are going to try to become him. 10:06 And so what you saw today were Donald Trump's best students, students in Trumpian lying. 10:12 They just think they can go into a committee hearing and lie and lie and lie. 10:17 And during our lifetimes, that was absolutely impossible. 10:21 If you got caught in a hearing in the center of the House saying something that could be proved to be untrue during the hearing, which was hard before the Internet, but if that could happen, 10:33 If that could happen, that would be the end of that person on that committee. 10:38 The chair would go to the speaker and say, we have to get him off of this. 10:42 He can't be here for this. 10:43 And so here we are. 10:45 The enabling party of Donald Trump was on display today. 10:49 Rachel Maddow Yeah, I couldn't help but think that, you know, 10:51 BACK IN THE DAY, IF YOU WERE LIKE A KID WHO PLAYED HOOKIE FROM SCHOOL TO WATCH A CONGRESSIONAL HEARING, YOU COULD PRETTY MUCH ASSUME THAT THAT KID SOMEDAY WAS GOING TO BECOME A CONGRESSIONAL STAFFER OR RUN FOR CONGRESS. 11:07 This is like whatever the opposite of an advertisement is for whether this is a good line of work. 11:12 Lawrence O'Donnell There's this famous Moynihan quote of you're entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts. 11:18 He would say that in a Senate hearing approximately once a year because he would be pushed to the point of saying that exactly once a year. 11:27 That's how much we accepted the same facts and then argued off of the same facts in those days.