Welcome to the beat everyone. I'm Ari Melber and we're beginning this week with a pretty big show tonight. All eyes on the Supreme Court and we have former Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer joining us tonight. He recently retired you may recall and created the vacancy for his former clerk Justice Jackson so he's here

tonight and the former co-author of the art of the deal Tony Schwartz returns with insights on Donald Trump's life as a defendant

and a warning for any possible second term.

Our top story though is the latest in the legal problems that are swirling around

defendant Trump. Consider right now he begins this week facing new testimony in the

criminal trial tomorrow. A ruling on those gag order violations alleged by the DA.

Fall out from new indictments of 18 allies for election crimes out in the states,

an outrage over his own Supreme Court lawyers claims about this so-called

license to kill in the historical arguments which we got at the end of last week.

So the problems are breaking through in many different ways.

In fact, here's one way to put it.

For defendant Trump, the collision of so many cases within a five day span

underscores the challenge that candidate Trump will face.

That's how the AP put it, noting the intended message that he has has been repeatedly

overshadowed.

It's a reminder that because defendant Trump has insisted on running for office,

something many people who are criminal defendants don't do, because he's doing that,

he's also playing against his own campaign, stuck for weeks in court and having all of this affect him no matter what the outcome is of the New York case.

As for all this stuff together, well as we begin the week, here is how it's piling up.

Tuesday is going to kick off the third week of this criminal hush money trial.

The first ever criminal trial of a former president.

This week was a lot.

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