Nicole Wallace

So what I thought about was how successful Trump's been in moving the Overton window, but I watched this with a lump in my throat, thinking about, nostalgically, about what the department was.

The other thing I thought of was he is the most senior Justice Department official to defend what we kind of shorthand as rank and file, but the people that have been purged from the Justice Department were the best of the best.

the most senior prosecutors, the most senior FBI agents who have been pilloried reputationally, threatened legally, faced death threats by and large if they've been named and outed and smeared in the right-wing press, and they have hollowed out the Department of Justice.

Merrick Garland hasn't defended those people.

Lisa Monaco hasn't defended those people.

Joe Biden hasn't defended those people.

Today, Jack Smith, right after that clip you played,

described the real danger and the threats and efforts to intimidate him to his team.

And he really defended the integrity of the work they did.

And I think some of what sinks in when you watch this is that we're all here today because this is extraordinary.

We all know that this...

doesn't happen inside the Justice Department.

No one says what he said today to the public in that Congress, to Pam Bondi or Todd Blanch or Emil Bobe.

And if they did, if Danielle Sassoon or Liz Oyer or any of those people did, they've been asked to leave.

That's right.

And what is so, I think, painful about this is,

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.

He worked for the country.

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.