“Jack doesn’t want to go in the box”

Summary

Podcast Summary: Deadline: White House

Episode: "Jack doesn’t want to go in the box"
Date: October 23, 2025
Host: Nicolle Wallace with guests Glenn Thrush, Mark Harris, Alex Wagner, Ken Delaney, John Heilemann

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into two pivotal fronts of American political life under Donald Trump’s second administration:

1. The escalating political and legal battle around Special Counsel Jack Smith—his investigations into Donald Trump, Republican attempts to discredit and punish him, and his offer to testify publicly.
2. The shocking and symbolic demolition of the East Wing of the White House, replaced by a massive ballroom, which the panel sees as emblematic of Trump's disregard for democratic norms and American history.

The roundtable of journalists and former investigators discusses the weaponization of the Justice Department, challenges to the rule of law, and the rapid reshaping of American institutions—both physically and institutionally—by the Trump administration.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Jack Smith Offers Public Testimony (01:01–12:00)

• Breaking News: Nicolle Wallace reports that Jack Smith has offered to testify in public before Congress about his investigation into Trump’s classified documents handling and efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He seeks DOJ assurances he won’t be punished for speaking.

• Reason for Public Hearing: Smith’s team states, “Given the many mischaracterizations… Mr. Smith respectfully requests the opportunity to testify in open hearings…” (01:36)

• Republican Accusations: Republicans allege Smith unlawfully tapped Congressional phone records relating to January 6. Smith counters: The toll data collection was “narrowly tailored… from Jan 4-7, 2021” (02:36), focusing only on verifying reports that Trump and his surrogates contacted senators to delay election certification.

• Smith’s Evolution: Panelists note that Smith, typically a “do your talking in the courtroom” prosecutor in the Mueller mold, is recognizing that “we communicate differently now” (Jack Smith, 08:47–10:13) and must counteract widespread public misinformation.

  “He does not want to give Jim Jordan and the House Republicans the opportunity to distort what he says or even to characterize what he says.” —Mark Harris (06:24)
  “If he does not speak out and represent himself, he is going to be in a considerable amount of trouble.” —Mark Harris (07:40)

Notable Quote:

“Trying to stop the democratic process... 1,500 [participants] in January of this year were pardoned by the president because they committed their crimes in his name and in his interest.”
– Jack Smith, reflecting on January 6 and Trump pardons (04:37)

Timestamps:

• Smith's public statement on pardons: [04:37]
• Smith on DOJ tradition of silence: [08:47–10:13]

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2. The Rule of Law and Trump’s Retribution (11:05–22:51)

• Old vs. New Approach: There’s debate among former federal prosecutors about whether the DOJ must now confront misinformation and efforts to weaponize justice.

  “Former prosecutors... are revisiting it and thinking we do need to get the story out.” —Glenn Thrush (11:05)

• Why Subpoena Toll Records?: Glenn Thrush explains it would have been “malpractice” not to track phone calls between the Trump White House and Congress on January 6—“it’s just toll records, date, time, and duration, not content” (13:00).

• Hostility and Purges: Panelists describe a climate where Trump lists enemies, DOJ staff are purged or fired if not compliant, and even basic fact-finding is criminalized.

  “Trump doesn’t give people any choice... [Cash Patel, FBI director]... created an enemies list... to go after political opponents...” —Mark Harris (19:28)

• Speaking Out as Self-Defense:

  “In another decade, they didn’t want to be the story. But if you are really interested in preserving the institution you’re a part of, you have to speak out. That is both tragedy and reality under Trump.” —Alex Wagner (16:48)

Notable Quote:

“Teddy Roosevelt once said, no man is above the law, and no man is below it... When we say we have no kings in this country, that’s what we’re talking about.”
– Jack Smith (18:30)

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3. Political Weaponization of the Justice Department (25:30–32:19)

• Adam Schiff Investigation: Nicolle Wallace and Ken Delaney reveal that federal prosecutors again found weak evidence in Trump’s bid to indict Senator Adam Schiff. DOJ higher-ups are frustrated as career prosecutors resist partisan pressure.

  • U.S. Attorney Kelly Hayes told her superiors the case was too weak; career prosecutors expect possible termination for defying expectations (27:08–30:30).

  “The point is just to have it out there in the ether... saying ‘potential indictment’ and ‘Adam Schiff’ over and over...” —Alex Wagner (30:40)

• Pattern of Firings: Previous prosecutors who resisted weak or politicized cases against Tish James and Jim Comey were ousted, leading to a “gutting, a hollowing out of really essential offices” (30:40).

Timestamps:

• Delaney on Adam Schiff case: [27:08–29:07]
• DOJ purges: [29:30–31:17]

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4. Demolition of the East Wing: Metaphor for Institutional Destruction (01:01, 32:00–46:09)

• White House Demolition: The East Wing has been torn down to make way for a 90,000 square foot ballroom, larger than the residence itself.

  • “The erasure of our history is now unmasked and very much the central mission of Trump’s second term.” —Nicole Wallace (36:22)
  • Only 24% of Americans (and 16% of independents) approve of the demolition (34:54).

• Not His House:

  “It’s not his house... None of this, including neither one of his presidential terms, are about him. You are there to serve the country. The state is not me.” —John Heilemann (36:22)

• Autocratic Aesthetics and Warnings

  • The planned ballroom is compared to those of Russian oligarchs or autocrats, laden with gold, symbolizing personal aggrandizement over public service.
  • Alex Wagner: “To unwind the damage... it’s going to take time... This is systematic destruction that is not easily resurrected... People need to buckle up and dig in for the long haul because that is what it is going to take to preserve democracy.” (41:33)

Timestamps:

• Visual of demolished East Wing: [32:00]
• Ballroom as metaphor and scale comparison: [40:59–43:24]

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Notable Quotes

• Jack Smith ([18:30]):
  “No man is above the law and no man is below it... When we say we have no kings in this country, that’s what we’re talking about.”

• Mark Harris ([19:28]):
  “Trump doesn’t give people any choice. He is pursuing a campaign of vengeance against people...”

• John Heilemann ([36:22]):
  “It’s not his house... The state is not me. That’s the fundamental thing wrong with Trump’s attitude towards governance.”

• Alex Wagner ([41:33]):
  “This is systematic destruction... People need to buckle up and dig in for the long haul because that is what it will take to preserve democracy.”

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Memorable Moments

• "Jack doesn’t want to go in the box"
  Mark Harris, invoking his tabloid past, sums up Smith’s cautious but defiant stance:
  “Jack doesn’t want to go in the box.” (06:10)

• Public Testimony Gambit
  The panel recognizes Smith’s offer to appear in public as a calculated move to avoid GOP-controlled misrepresentation.

• Symbolism of the East Wing Demolition
  The panel uses the destruction as a metaphor for the systematic unraveling of institutions.

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Major Segments (with Timestamps)

| Segment | Time | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------| | Jack Smith's public testimony offer & statement on pardons | 01:01–06:10 | | Panel reflects on Smith's evolving public posture, DOJ investigative tradition | 06:10–12:38 | | Context of January 6th, use of phone records, Giuliani’s role | 12:38–14:37 | | Trump’s effect on DOJ, targeting of perceived enemies, staff purges | 14:37–22:51 | | Breaking: Prosecutors resist weak case against Adam Schiff | 25:30–30:30 | | The symbolism of demolishing the East Wing, panel reactions | 32:00–39:09 | | Heilemann's insight: “It's not his house” | 36:22–39:09 | | Ballroom scale, autocratic design, and wounds to democracy, long-term perspective | 40:59–46:09 |

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Conclusion

This episode delivers a sobering but incisive analysis of the double-pronged threat facing American democracy: the overt destruction and personal repurposing of its physical symbols, and the more insidious corrosion of the institutions and rules that undergird justice and accountability. Nicolle Wallace and her guests consistently warn that while today’s news may seem outrageous, its long-tail consequences for democracy, justice, and national identity will require generational vigilance and restoration.

This summary captures the key events, attitudes, and anxieties of a political era defined by unprecedented executive action and institutional fragility.

Transcript

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[Alex Wagner]

Hi everyone.

[Nicole Wallace]

4 o' clock in New York. Take a look at this. Those are excavators picking through all that remains of the historic East Wing of the White House. In just a matter of days, Donald Trump has reduced the East Wing of the White House to rubble. Amid popular opposition and Donald Trump's own suspiciously shifting explanations and stories as to what it's going to be and how much it's going to cost and who's going to pay for it. We first told you about the start of demolition of the East Wing, the White House on Monday as the first images bursted into public view. Images shot from the Treasury Department. Three days later, it's gone. The East Wing of the White House is no more. We'll have much more on that story later in the hour, but we start with some breaking news. Special counsel Jack Smith is telling Republicans game on in a letter just released from his attorneys to Congressman Jim Jordan and Senator Chuck Grassley, the chairs of the House and Senate Judiciary Committee, Jack Smith is offering to testify, but he wants to do so in a public hearing about the investigations he conducted. Jack Smith's attorneys writing this quote, given the many mischaracterizations of Mr. Smith's investigation into President Trump's alleged mishandling of classified documents and his role in attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election, Mr. Smith respectfully requests the opportunity to testify in open hearings before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. Jack Smith's team added just one caveat. Quote, he's prepared to answer questions about the special counsel's investigation and prosecution, but he requires assurance from the Department of Justice that he will not be punished for doing so. Jack Smith is making this offer to testify in full view publicly because and after Republicans have alleged for weeks now that Jack Smith's team unlawfully tapped the phone records of members of Congress who may have had a role in Trump's effort to overturn his 2020 election defeat. On that issue, Jack Smith defended his team in his investigation. In a letter to Republicans on Tuesday, he writes this quote, as described by various senators, the toll data collection was narrowly tailored and limited to the four days from January 4, 2021 to January 7, 2021, with a focus on telephonic activity during the period immediately surrounding the January 6th riots at the US Capitol. The subpoena's limited temporal range is consistent with a focused effort to confirm or refute reports by multiple news outlets that during and after the January 6 riots at the Capitol, President Trump and his surrogates attempted to call senators to urge them to delay certification of the 2020 election results. In other words, Jack Smith, the investigator was doing what investigators do. He was doing his job, investigating efforts by Donald Trump to get his allies to stop the election from being certified. The attacks from Republicans are part of a steady but increasingly loud drumbeat to target people on Donald Trump's enemies list. And of course, the only federal prosecutor to indict Donald Trump and indict him twice is high on Donald Trump's list. Jack Smith, for his part, has been increasingly public about what he is watching happen to the Justice Department in which he served and to the rule of law more broadly in this country under Donald Trump. Here's what he said back in September about the pardons of those who stormed the US Capitol. It's video first obtained by the Bulwark.

[Jack Smith]

Trying to stop the democratic process, trying to stop the lawful transfer of power, vandalizing our capital, intimidating lawmakers and assaulting police officers. This is a moment 1500. In January of this year, they were pardoned by the president because they committed their crimes in his name and in his interest.

[Nicole Wallace]

They committed their crimes in his name and in his interest. Special counsel Jack Smith speaking out about the rule of law and against Donald Trump is where we start today with some of our favorite reporters in France. Mark Harris is here, former senior investigative counsel for the House select committee on January 6th joins us. New York Times Justice Department reporter Glenn Thresh is here. My friend and colleague, MSNBC senior political analyst and contributing host to Pod Safe America. Alex Wagner is with me at the table for the hour. Her new weekly podcast, Runaway country, premieres today. So excited about that, we'll save some time to talk about it. Thank you. My friend, Glenn Thrush. Let me start with you, Jack Smith. You and I think we're on the air together. When we first heard his voice in a public interview, it was in conversation with my colleague Andrew Weissman, who was one of the first people to investigate Team Trump and the Mueller probe. What do you make of this? I'll call it a solvo. Back to Jim Jordan. Yeah, I'll testify, but I'm going to do it in public. With the lights on and cameras rolling and public witnesses.

[Mark Harris]

I will invoke my tabloid past and say, Jack doesn't want to go in the box.

[Nicole Wallace]

I love that.

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I just had to get.

[Mark Harris]

I just had to get that out there.

[Nicole Wallace]

That's good. Thank you.

[Mark Harris]

Well, look, you know, we've known for a really long time that Jordan and the House Republicans do not want Jack Smith testifying in public. So to some extent, this is kind of a chess move in order to sort of keep them from doing what they did to a couple of the people with whom he worked, Tom Windom and another former one of his staffers. So what he wants to do is have his voice heard in public. He does not want to give Jim Jordan in the House Republicans the opportunity to distort what he says or even to characterize what he says. And I think what we're seeing here is an evolution of Smith from being a guy who realized that silence when he was in the employ of the Department of Justice was his guiding principle and his friend, to realizing now that he's in an entirely different environment. Books are coming out that are going to be discussing what he has done. Republicans are attempting on. On various fronts, both in Congress and in the Department of Justice, to accuse him of doing a politicized investigation. And I think he realizes that if he does not speak out and if he does not represent himself, he. He is going to be in a considerable amount of trouble. So to some extent, Smith, who is a guy who got the job initially as special counsel because he was viewed as an expediter, as somebody who was impatient to take action in whatever he did, whether he was going to decline a prosecution or proceed with the prosecution, you're seeing that same level of grabbing the bull by the horns.

[Nicole Wallace]

Mark, let me play you some of this evolution that Glenn describes from Mueller, like in Jack Smith's own telling to reading the room in very much a similar journey. I think that President Obama, in a different context, in a ex president context, has articulated from not speaking out very often picking his moments. He's now one of the tips of the spear in protecting democracy and involving himself and encouraging people to get off the sidelines. Jack Smith, in some ways has taken a legal journey that parallels that. Let me play you his explanation.

[Jack Smith]

The Robert Mueller view of how to do this. That's where I come from. That's my view. And that's really how the Department of Justice does it. I've seen throughout my career. And there's a reason for it. The reason is you do not want to be saying things before trial that are going to make it hard for the defendant to get a fair trial.

[Nicole Wallace]

Right.

[Jack Smith]

You don't want to be sort of polluting the jury pool in your favor saying things that they because the usual case is a case where the government has a lot of power and has a megaphone and the defendant often, most often doesn't. And so those rules, that way of doing things has been a department tradition. And in fact, a lot of the local rules of the courts that we practice and say limit what you can say as a prosecutor. And so in my role as special counsel, I handled things very much as I did throughout my career. It's like we often say, do your talking in the courtroom, not on the courthouse steps. And so that's how I did things. I think that it is worth a conversation going forward about how we move things and how we handle things and how we think about these things. Now, I'm not arguing in favor of a sort of wholesale, you know, one side blasts something out on social media and then the other side does and we do that, that sort of thing. But I do think we need to think about it differently because we're in a different age now and we communicate with each other differently.

[Nicole Wallace]

Mark, again, I don't know what was on his mind there, but one, one of the failures of the public's understanding of the Mueller investigation is that the public has no understanding of the substance of the Mueller investigation. One of the successes of the congressional probe into January 6 is that it was so effective at informing the public, with Democratic and Republican members of Congress helping to do the storytelling, helping to elicit truthful testimony out of witnesses, all of whom were in Donald Trump's inner circle, none of whom were, you know, anti Trump figures. Some of them were out of the arena law enforcement. But tell me what you think of this sort of public rumbling with how to communicate about one, Donald Trump's conduct around January 6 and two, this moment we're in now.

[Glenn Thrush]

Well, I agree with Glenn mentioned it earlier and what Jack Smith said in that interview, that the tendency for federal prosecutors, in particular in the Department of Justice, that I'm familiar with, I spent many years as a federal prosecutor, and I've been even since I've left the U.S. attorney's office, interacting with federal prosecutors for decades. And the, the ethos is to not to let, let the facts in court do the talking. That's for reasons, as Jack mentioned, Jack Smith mentioned that interview, that you don't want to poison the case, but it's also just not what we do. And so I understand the reticence. I understand the fact that, that you, he referred to or you referred to as the Mueller approach is sort of the way things have been done in the past. I won't speak for Jack Smith. I've never met him. I don't know him. I don't know why he's taking the position he's taking. But I do know that a lot of federal prosecutors who are used to that, former federal prosecutors who are used to that approach, are revisiting it and thinking we do need to get the story out. And that's why you're seeing multiple times in the last several months letters signed by hundreds, if not thousands of former prosecutors to speak out about the attack on the rule of law and so forth. And this latest, this latest effort by Jim Jordan, who, by the way, refused to comply with the subpoena to come talk to Congress when he was asked and had relevant information in connection with January 6th, I think really did call out for some type of response to set the record straight on this ridiculous claim of wiretapping of GOP senators.

[Nicole Wallace]

Mark, can you just be our time capsule and take us back in time just to help us understand why this was part of the investigation into January 6, what Trump was doing. I remember some of the dramatic testimony. I remember the dramatic congressional hearing about the phone logs and chunks of time. But just tell me why this would have been part of Jack Smith's probe and why it was part of yours.

[Glenn Thrush]

Right. So the TikTok of What happened on January 6 was obviously critical to what the January 6 committee was doing and also became important in Jack Smith's investigation about whether there were efforts directed by President Trump or others in the White House to impact the results of the election. You may remember during the aftermath of January 6, it came out that Rudy Giuliani was making phone calls to members of Congress on the night of, I think the Capitol had not yet even been cleared yet of rioters, and he was Calling senators in order to get them to hold the line, stall for more time, do something to allow the president and his associates to try and overturn the election. And there was a somewhat humorous voicemail, I think, a member of Congress or Senator elite or not leaked, but shared with the media, where Giuliani had accidentally called one senator when he thought he was calling a different senator. So there was all that information that calls were being made to members of Congress to try to further this effort to impede the transfer of power. That was the January 6th committee knew about it, it made its way into the report, and it would have been malpractice for Jack Smith not to subpoena the toll records. By the way, it's just toll records. It's date, time and duration of a call, not what was said during that call. But it would be malpractice for an investigator not to try to get that information, to find out exactly who from the White House was calling who on Capitol Hill in the aftermath or while the events of January six were taking place.

[Nicole Wallace]

Alex, Jack Smith is, I'm sure, in a mold of all of the prosecutors we've come to know because of the extraordinary dynamics of the last nine years. A president who was under investigation because his national security adviser lied to the FBI about a conversation with the Russian ambassador Kislyak. I mean, so we've had more of sort of an intersection of Donald Trump and his inner circle doing things that invited reluctant, reluctant criminal scrutiny and then even more reluctant communication with the public. And the result of that is that you now have large swaths of the country that say, ah, everybody does it. These are, these are, these are the facts of what Donald Trump was indicted for doing. The defendant pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results. In doing so, the defendant, Donald Trump, perpetrated three criminal conspiracies. Each of these conspiracies which built on the widespread mistrust the defendant was creating through pervasive and destabilizing lies about election fraud targeted, a bedrock function of the United States government, the nation's process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election. Maybe one of the reasons Jack Smith is speaking out is because Donald Trump is doing a lot of these things in full view now.

[Alex Wagner]

Again, Yeah, I mean, I would say yes, for sure. It's not like the country's on a better course. Under the stewardship of Donald Trump ahead of the 2026 and 2028 midterms, he's installed election deniers in key posts, he's pressured red states to redistrict and give him effectively more seats in the House and undermine the will of the people. And his profligate use of the National Guard and the militarization of American cities, especially blue ones, and gives you a terrifying maybe insight into what could happen in 2026 or 2028 if people try and exercise their Democratic right to vote. Right. The storm is very much on the horizon. I also think, and I talked to Andrew Weissman actually this week for my podcast about that moment when you flip from someone who is used to being very circumspect, very quiet, doing your job, keeping your head down, to I need to speak out. And Andrew, who is also the subject of Trump's and has been targeted by the President of the United States. And for me, I'm a legal analyst on msnbc, this is not in my nature. I want to give unbiased, you know, legal advice. I don't want that to be tainted by any sense of sort of personal investment one way or the other. And I don't want Trump to steal that from me. It's hard to come out and talk about this stuff for Jack Smith. He's comporting with the rules of the road set by FBI directors like Robert Mueller and countless books. That is not what you do as a representative of the institution of the Department of Justice. But we live in extraordinary times. And everyone from, you know, special counsels like Jack Smith to local reporters in red states are being targeted by conservatives and this president who are intent on destroying institutions. And in another year, in another decade, they didn't want to be the story. But the time has now come that if you are really interested in preserving the institution that you are a part of, you have to speak out. And that is both a tragedy and reality of life under Trump.

[Nicole Wallace]

And I mean, to exactly Alex's point. Glenn, Glenn, Glenn. Jack Smith seems to be reading this moment, and maybe he always read it right? Maybe as an investigator, he knew exactly what he was dealing with and he saw the results of the Supreme Court immunity decision coming before any of us did. But to your first point, when we first talked about him speaking out, none of us knew that because he was only in that time speaking through his filings. Here he is at George Mason. This is before the no King. This is between the two no Kings protests. Let me show you what he said there.

[Jack Smith]

Teddy Roosevelt once said, no man is above the law and no man is below it. Nor do we ask any man's permission when we require him to obey. When we say we have no kings in this country, that's what we're talking about.

[Nicole Wallace]

Has a distinct echo to Mark Milley's dramatic departure speech where he emphatically talks about how generals and men and women of the military rank and file do not pledge an oath to a king or a wannabe dictator. Which has an echo to one of John McCain's last speeches where he talks about those kinds of politics belonging on the, quote, ash heap of history. I guess I wouldn't have had Jack Smith on my bingo card to follow John McCain and Mark Milley in speaking out about what the beating heart of our democracy is. And it's the rule of law.

[Mark Harris]

Well, Trump doesn't give people any choice. I mean, he is pursuing a campaign of vengeance against people. And by the way, there's a lot of folks on the Hill I'm old enough to remember. Actually, a two year old would be old enough to remember Lindsey Graham telling Donald Trump to forget about January 6th and move on with his life. Right. He is not doing so. And now he has an entirely compliant FBI. More than compliant, Cash Patel, the FBI director, is somebody who essentially created an enemies list or a list of targets based on Trump's grievances who are now compliant with his, his agenda to go after political opponents and people he describes as personal enemies. So this is just an example of Trump is bending the steel of the system. The system is adjusting and the people who formed the infrastructure of law and order and criminal justice in this country are having to bend or they will break. Smith doesn't really have Andrew Weissman Smith. None of these people who are targeted, I think particularly have a choice in the matter. If they don't speak out and defend themselves, they're going to face a very dismal fate.

[Nicole Wallace]

I think the other thing is if they don't speak out, Trump will target the people who make up, the people that a lot of these people hold as dear as family members. I mean, these people get into the trenches. They by and large do not speak to the press and they bring their teams along with them. They work these high stakes cases. And but for Jack Smith defending his work, Donald Trump has already targeted people that worked on those probes. As you know, Glenn, you've done all this great reporting at the FBI and the Department of Justice. I imagine there's a part of them that speaks out to say, you want to gut the department, the people that worked on my cases, you got to go through me.

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[Mark Harris]

I mean, one of the things that I remember being in the courtroom in Miami after Trump was his first court appearance after he'd been charged in the documents case was Smith, who was sitting a couple of rows in front of me in the courtroom. Trump and his entourage left outside through the back of the courtroom and Smith walked onto onto the floor near the witness tables where there was a line of FBI agents who worked on the case. And he shook everyone's hand one by one in a very sober way. Smith viewed these people as his team. A lot of those people I've written about two individuals who were targeted by Patel for firing, perhaps illegally because they were not given due process as former veterans. There has been a winnowing of the folks who worked on those cases and also in the U.S. attorney's office where there was just essentially forced retirements or firings of everyone who worked on J6. The one thing I just want to make a point here is this is not just sort of about vengeance, achieving vengeance. It's about rewriting history. And I think that's what Smith was trying to say in his George Mason speech, that by moving the priorities of the government to go after the individuals who prosecuted these cases, you are in a sense attempting to rewrite history to say that what they did on January 6th was not only legal, but justified.

[Nicole Wallace]

Glenn Thrush, Mark Harris, thank you so much for starting us off on this breaking news. Alex sticks around. When we come back, we have more of it. More breaking breaking news that is in Donald Trump's retribution campaign seeking to prosecute another one of his so called political enemies. This time it is about Democratic Senator Adam Schiff. Main justice might not like what they hear from the prosecutor who's been investigating him. She has weighed in on the strength or lack thereof of the case. We'll bring you that reporting next. Also ahead, we showed you the now completely demolished east wing of the People's House. The White House probably project much more extensive and expensive than even Donald Trump told people. And now also incredibly wildly unpopular and alarming to the American people later in the broadcast. It may very well be the biggest sports scandal in decades. It includes players and coaches and online betting platforms and even mobsters. We'll bring you that bombshell of a story and much more when Deadline White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere. Today. The connection between the guests on the show is the show. All that we do is put together people who are smart, people who are brave, people who are honest and lots of times people who've never met each other to have a conversation that has never happened before, but on that day deepens everyone everyone's understanding about the moment.

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[Nicole Wallace]

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[Nicole Wallace]

There is more breaking news to tell you about this hour. Prosecutors once again have told Donald Trump there's no there there, no grounds to prosecute one of Donald Trump's most prized targets for retribution. Our friends and colleagues Kendallane and Carol Linnick are just now reporting that the federal prosecutor in charge of investigating whether Senator Adam Schiff should be charged with mortgage fraud recently told her bosses in Washington, D.C. she did not think that the case was strong enough to move forward. That's according to two sources who are familiar with the matter. Speaking to MSNBC, Kelly Hayes, the U.S. attorney in Maryland, met in recent days with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch, telling him she does not think the case against Schiff was strong. That's according to two people. The two said Ed Martin, a controversial senior Justice Department official, is pressing to keep the case alive. A third person familiar, said the investigation is very much ongoing. Schiff is just the latest example where attorneys have expressed doubts about the weakness of an investigation up the chain of Command@ DOJ. Prosecutors had previously warned that the cases against New York Attorney General Tish James and former FBI Director Jim Comey were not strong enough to move forward and take to a grand jury. And we all know what happened. They've both been indicted. Trump later ousted the US Attorney who refused to indict Comey and also thought the Tish James evidence was too weak. I want to bring in the reporter behind all these stories, my colleague, MSNBC justice and intelligence correspondent Ken Delaney and Alex is still here. Ken, tell us what you're learning.

[Ken Delaney]

Nicole, Carol and I learned today that Kelly Hayes, the US Attorney in Maryland, she's a career prosecutor, but she's Donald Trump's pick to be to lead that U.S. attorney's office. She came and met with Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, and explained that in her view and in the view of her team, they just don't have enough evidence to prosecute Adam Schiff, that this case is essentially stalled out. There just isn't there there, as you said, on these allegations of mortgage fraud. And remember, this is about Adam Schiff, like many members of Congress, has two homes, one in his district and one in Maryland, where he raised a family, and both are listed as primary residences. And he and his lawyer, Preet Bharara, say that that was perfectly legitimate. There was nothing improper about that. And they also say, by the way, that the statute of limitations, even if there was a case, has lapsed because the last time they refinanced was. But nonetheless, Bill Pulte, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, made a criminal referral, as he did with the Tish James case. And the Justice Department was investigating, and the case was assigned to the U.S. attorney's office in Maryland. And so that's where we are. Kelly Hayes, the top prosecutor there, is saying there is no case. But Ed Martin, that controversial figure who was the U.S. attorney briefly in D.C. but couldn't be confirmed there because of his ties to January 6th defendants, now he's leading this weaponization working group. He's also the pardons attorney. He, we are told, is pressing to keep this case alive, and they are continuing to investigate. But when you hear that phrase continuing to investigate, it makes you wonder, what exactly are they investigating? There aren't witnesses here. This is a paper case. There are mortgage documents, and there's what Adam Schiff represented on the mortgage documents. And there's a question of whether he made a mistake, and if he did, did he intend to make a mistake? And it seems to me that, you know, it wouldn't take very long to get to the bottom of those questions. And it looks like a team of prosecutors poured over it and didn't find evidence of a crime. But nonetheless, the Justice Department is pressing on.

[Jack Smith]

Nicole.

[Nicole Wallace]

So, Ken, when we reached this juncture in the Comey and James investigations, this was the part in the story where Eric Siebert was forced out of the Department of Justice, along with a sort of a wide blast radius of other departures from the eastern district of Virginia, is that tension brewing in this U.S. attorney's office?

[Ken Delaney]

Well, yes. And we are told that Kelly Hayes is prepared to be removed. She believes that that is one possibility that could happen here. I guess the question is for the Trump administration is can they continue to do this? Are they at all concerned about the perception of just continuing to fire prosecutors until you get the result you want? How long can you continue to do that before the public sees clearly, even some of your own supporters, what's going on here? And you know, Todd Blanche and Pam Bondi are experienced lawyers who've been around in Pam Bondi's case, the Florida attorney general's office, in Todd Blanche's case, he's worked for the Justice Department. They know how this looks in the legal community. So they can't be happy with the idea that you just fire an experienced prosecutor who tells you there is no case. And then the other question is, this is not the Eastern District of Virginia. This is Maryland. Can they get past a grand jury in Maryland with the evidence that they have? That is another open question.

[Nicole Wallace]

Nicole, Adam Schiff has driven Trump crazy loco for years. What's your sense of whether this persists or goes away?

[Alex Wagner]

Well, I think part of the point is just to have it out there in the ether and just to be saying the words potential indictment and Adam Schiff over and over and over again. But I think what we're also, what is becoming abundant is that turmoil unfolding in these U.S. attorney's offices where these career prosecutors are like there is no there there. And then they are usually either forced to resign or they are summarily fired. And you have a, you know, a gutting, a hollowing out of really essential offices. And instead you get Lindsey Halligan. You know, you have people with zero experience to do the bidding of the president. And that should disturb everybody who cares about justice. You know, this is not good for rule of law, law in this country.

[Nicole Wallace]

Which means like the drug dealers in your neighborhood.

[Alex Wagner]

Exactly.

[Nicole Wallace]

Criminals in your, you know, it means it's, it's really, it's beyond Washington. Kendallaney and more amazing reporting from you and Carol, thank you for joining us to talk about it. Up next for us, Donald Trump promising his new and enormous and terribly tragic looking new pet project. The new White House ballroom won't cost the American taxpayers a dime. Last thing he said that about was the wall. Much more on that story next.

[Glenn Thrush]

There's a lot of history that has.

[Nicole Wallace]

Taken place in the East Wing and it was just destroyed without any conversation in the American public without any consent of Congress. It was absolutely illegal. And yeah, that visual is powerful because you essentially watching the destruction of the rule of law happen as those walls.

[Mark Harris]

Come down, it is just a symbol.

[Nicole Wallace]

About how cavalier he is about every single day acting in new and illegal ways. Behind me, you can see the destruction of the rule of law that Senator Chris Murphy just referred to. Instead of the White House background that's usually there, there are images that Donald Trump doesn't want you to see. The first images came from the Treasury Department and he forbid, they forbid more photos to be taken from Treasury. The demolition of the cornerstone of the people's House. The destruction is such a critical part of not just our country's history, but the thing that people think about when they think about our country's seated government. First lady, one first lady put it like this, quote, if the West Wing is the mind of the nation, then the East Wing is its heart. Here's what it looks like right now. It's gone. Whatever happens next in the Trump story, or in the story of Washington or the story of the White House, the East Wing is gone. It's been demolished. It has been reduced to rubble. And a pile of rubble is still there being cleaned up. As you can see where the East Wing once stood, the debris still being cleared a few feet away from the rubble. Donald Trump is using every trick in his book to lie about this and hide the reality of what he's doing. There's the broken promise that the soon to be built ballroom that will replace the East Wing, quote, won't interfere with the East Wing. East Wing's gone, so I don't even know what that sentence means. Trump now says that the price tag is 300 million. That's up from what Trump said the first time when he said it was 200 million. And Trump keeps saying publicly, insisting, in fact, that he and private donors, we should disclose that that includes our parent company, Comcast, will cover all the costs of this. Trump suggested that if his $230 million shakedown of the taxpayers from the Justice Department goes through, he's actually going to use our money, taxpayer money, to pay for the ballroom. See, he never really, he said this, quote, if I get money from our country, I'll do something nice with it, like give it to charity or give it to the White House while we restore the White House. Of course, those funds from doj, again, that's our money we paid for by the American taxpayer who already hate what they're seeing. They hate these images behind us. New polling from YouGov shows that just 24% of Americans approve of the demolition and destruction of the East Wing of the White House. Among independents, that number falls to 16%. And not even a majority of Republicans like the destruction of the East Wing. Joining our coverage, chief political columnist, host of the podcast In Politic for Puck, MSNBC national affairs analyst John Heilman. Alex is still here. I always feel like this is a reunion that I get to sit in on. I love having you guys together.

[Alex Wagner]

Less booze.

[Nicole Wallace]

Less booze and absolutely no food. Heilman.

[Thumbtack Advertiser]

We could fix that, though. We can fix that.

[Nicole Wallace]

You have to actually come here and not be watching, and not be watching Shohei Ohtani and the Dodgers. But that's. I always get off on a tangent. Halman, you. I mean, we've all been inside the White House, but that isn't really the point. Isn't about any of us. It isn't about the people that work there. It's about everybody else. It's about the way we see our country. It's about this iconic place where presidents welcomed the public. This was where tours came and went. This was where visitors to the White House entered. This is where pictures of all the presidents and their dogs were showcased. The history of the White House. And back to a point Glenn Thrush made in the first conversation we had, the erasure of our history is now unmasked and very much the central mission of Trump's second term.

[Thumbtack Advertiser]

Yeah, and I think, you know, Nicole, it's not just about. It's not just not about the things you just said. It's not about a lot of other things that are really important. I mean, you hear people, who's going to pay for it? You know, who's going to, what are the people, donors who paid for it, what are they going to get? You know, what did Trump, Is it illegal? You know, I agree with all the metaphors that have been thrown around the notion that he's doing to the White House what he's doing to the Constitution or doing to the rule of law or doing to all those things. I'm not taking issue with any of them. None of them are. The point. The point is it's not his house. It's not his house. It's not. I mean that literally. I don't mean that metaphorically. I mean, he's a renter, you know, and honestly, if you owned a home, as I know you do, Alex owns a home. I know she does. You know, if you rented your house out to someone and you came back to Find that your renter was building a giant new addition to your house. You wouldn't. The argument that it's going to be really nice, your house value is going to go up, it's better than it was before, you don't have to pay a penny for it. None of those things would matter to you. Your response would be, it's not your house. And I think that it's. The most profound thing about this is that that is the thing that Donald Trump doesn't understand. He's never been able to understand that none of this, including neither one of his presidential terms, are about him. You are there to serve the country. You are a vessel. You are there to. You do these larger things. It's not about you. It's not. The state is me. And that's the fundamental thing that's wrong with Trump's. His attitude towards governance, his attitude towards the presidency. It leads to all of the excesses. It leads. That's conception. I can do whatever I want because this is my government, because this is my Justice Department, because these are all these things that are all mine. That is the wellspring from which, like every Trumpian, abuse springs out of the basic misunderstanding of what this job is and what is demanded of it, what it entitles you to. Some things, but not all the things he thinks. And one of the things he clearly thought here was, I live in this house, therefore it's mine. I can do whatever I want to it. And that's wrong. And it's, as I say, it's reflected and refracted in everything else we see in Trump's two or one point, almost one point, one and a quarter terms in office so far. I guess we're nine months in, 10 months in. It's everywhere. But this is the. It's the perfect expression, the simplest, most easy to understand expression of everything that's wrong about the way he sees the presidency.

[Nicole Wallace]

Yeah. It's also in this betrayal of who he ran as. Right. We are so far from Bannon viewing Medicaid recipients as our people. You know, we are now knocking down the People's House to put in a ballroom the size of which I'm going to ask both of you to help me articulate. On the other side of a short break. Don't go anywhere. Well, I'll be right back.

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[Nicole Wallace]

The connection between the guests on the show is the show. All that we do is put together people who are smart, people who are brave, people who are honest, and lots of times people who've never met each other to have a conversation that has never happened before. But on that day deepens everyone's understanding about the moment in which we gather.

[MSNBC Promo Announcer]

Deadline White House House with Nicole Wallace, weekdays from 4 to 6pm Eastern on MSNBC.

[Nicole Wallace]

We're back with John and Alex. I mean, Alex, it's not his house. It's probably the single best distillation of what's so unsettling about this, but it's also un American. What he plans to do, right. Like what's going to go up in its place is not anything that we're used to seeing here. Here's a side by side of Trump's rendition of a ballroom with the Winter Palace Ballroom in St. Petersburg. Russia.

[Alex Wagner]

Yeah, Russia, Russia, Russia. I mean, autocrats have a similar aesthetic. They like a lot of gold. It's going to be 90,000 square feet, Nicole. The White House itself, the residence is 55,000. It's going to be the world's largest corporate event space on the White House grounds. I guess I will say the White House preemptively or at the same time has issued a fact sheet about how other presidents have changed the White House. And they note that like President Obama and my ex husband put in a kitchen garden and President Obama put in a basketball court and Calvin Coolidge renovated the attic and Nixon put in a.

[Nicole Wallace]

Bowling alley ball field on the arm.

[Alex Wagner]

And it's like this is dramatically different. But it does, I think, raise the sort of central thing here is that we all need to stop thinking about the Trump presidency in terms of election cycles and in terms of decades. Not that he's going to necessarily be president for a decade, but to unwind the damage and to begin to rebuild both the White House and the country is going to take time. This is systematic destruction that is not easily resurrected. And, you know, there is a lot of history in that house and to sort of, you know, see what he's doing to it is, I think, a revelation that the destruction being wrought in these four years is profound and it is lasting. And people need to buckle up and dig in for the long haul because that is what it is going to take to preserve democracy and rebuild the institutions that he is pretty effectively tearing right now.

[Nicole Wallace]

It's such a good point, Hellman, because I think it's sometimes hard, as journalists covering this moment, to articulate what's wrong with letting measles come roaring back. And what's wrong is that our kids are the ones that are going to be eradicating measles a second time, winning Nobel Peace Prizes for eradicating long eradicated diseases like polio and measles. What is wrong with turning the military into an organ that carries out potentially extrajudicial strikes without providing any evidence to Congress or the public? What is wrong is that it will take a generation to make the whole country trust the military again. What's wrong with going ahead and prosecuting all of your enemies, even when you purge the department because so many people quit, is that it will take a generation to have public trust and confidence that prosecutions are predicated on facts. And to your point, do you have any doubt that at some point in our future this won't stand? I mean, there's no way that Americans in the future are will want this monstrosity to represent the people's House.

[Thumbtack Advertiser]

Well, no. And I think to go a little further with Alex's point, just for the point of fact, 55,000 square feet is the White House residence. Previously, when the east wing still existed, if you added the East Wing and the West Wing, which are not part of the White House residence, you add, that's another 40,000 square feet. Okay, so just for a sense of scale, he's building a ballroom that's not just bigger than the White House. Residents buy a lot. It's the same size as the previous totality of the White House complex. He's now building a ballroom that's that big. You're looking at that picture right now. Just think about that. That picture is basically 95,000 square feet. He's building a ballroom that's 90,000 square feet. I mean, the taste. I'm with you guys. Like the whole gold leaf gilt stuff, all the gold, the obsession with gold, not my jam. But the truth is that on the fact sheet that Alex cited, the reality of nobody really complained, even though a lot of us were like, this is a downgrade. When he turned the Rose garden into an auburn pen patio. And this is ridiculous on an aesthetic basis, it looks crappy and it's a downgrade by. I would say most people with taste would say it was a downgrade. But no one kicked up a giant fuss because that's like building a basketball court or putting in a bowling alley. It's not building another alternate White House on the side of the original White House that looks like one of those churches in St. Petersburg. And I would say, Nicole, in terms of the duration of these things is again, to go back to the central point. You know, we hope that it will only take a generation to fix all this. Because the thing about precedents, when people, when presidents arrive and do things, especially self aggrandizing, egomaniacal, narcissistic things and they set a precedent, something that was previously inconceivable becomes conceivable. There is a chance that that precedent will be taken up by somebody else, whether it's a follower of Donald Trump's or a crazy, narcissistic, a sociopathic left wing nut. In the future, someday, we don't know what's going to happen. But all you know is that once you do it, once you break the seal and other people say, oh, that's possible, people tend to do things that they think are possible. And so I'm hopeful we can fix all this in one generation. That would be great. But I'm not 100% convinced that we will.

[Nicole Wallace]

Oh, you too. I know we really needed the booze for this. Food and booze at the table. Next time, Halman, we demand it. Thank you. Thank you for being here for the hour. Thank you, my friend. Up next for us, why Trump is holding off on sending the National Guard to San Francisco. For now, at least. What's next? A dramatic reversal from Donald Trump today. Now deciding to hold off on deploying federal agents to San Francisco. Donald Trump changing his mind because he said this afternoon, quote, some friends of his who live in the area called him last night to ask him to not go forward with it. Don't know whether to laugh or cheer. That apparent backlash from his, quote, friends, according to his own social media post, came from tech leaders including the CEO of Nvidia and the CEO of Salesforce, who Donald Trump said told him that, quote, the future of San Francisco is great and they want to give it a shot, end quote. Trump had been teasing what was supposed to be a surge of San Francisco by the National Guard this Saturday. Now Donald Trump is saying he's going to focus on Chicago instead. But, quote, stay tuned, whatever that means. When we come back, how Democrats are not going to let the new gerrymandered congressional maps go unanswered. Answered, we'll show you what's being done to fight back we're back after a very short break. Don't go anywhere.