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tv   Alex Wagner Tonight  MSNBC  August 2, 2024 6:00pm-7:00pm PDT

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over but a new chapter is beginning. the rest of their lives, and these first days and weeks, there will be hiccups along the way, some of them may not be ready to speak publicly about their experience, and that is okay. we should give them the space and the grace and the time to understand and process what they really think about what happened. and on a much more bureaucratic side of things, you have a lot of things that happened to you while you are locked up, bills go into collection, and i think the u.s. government needs to help more with that. >> jason, thank you so much for taking the time. we really appreciate it. that's all in for tonight, chris hayes will be back next week and i'll be back here on msnbc, for the weekend, starting at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow morning and again on sunday. the first, alex wagner,
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tonight, starts right now, good evening, alex. >> michael steele, do you realize that chris hayes when he was last on air, joe biden was still at the top of the democratic ticket. he's like our media version of rip van winkle. he's going to wake up and he's going to come back from a much needed rest and rejuvenating family vacation and he won't recognize what's happening here. >> he's going to sit here and go, who's the nominee of the democratic party? >> say what? >> the vice president? >> anyway, talk about a lot of unopened mail on his desk. it's great to see you, have a great weekend. okay, have you been watching the olympics? if you have, then you know yesterday, simone biles, the american gymnastics phenom took home her sixth gold medal for team usa, that in and of itself was awesome but it's also an amazing comeback story. biles and her earlier battle
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with mental health led her to withdraw from team competition from 2021 from the olympics and as of yesterday, simone biles is officially the greatest of all time, the g.o.a.t., the most decorated u.s. olympic journalist -- gymnast in history. and as part of her big moment, ms. biles shows to redirect a little of her spotlight onto donald trump. not in a good way. earlier this week, if you recall, trump double down on his claim that immigrants are taking what he called, black jobs, he said while he was speaking to the national association of black journalists. and today, simone biles turned trump's comment on its head celebrating her olympic victory with a tweet reading, i love my black job. that clap back, is the capstone to what has already been a very bad week for donald trump. by contrast, trump's opponent, kamala harris is having what
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could be called a banner week, starting a survey, the democratic party has been holding its virtual roll call, to select its nominee. as of this afternoon, vice president kamala harris has secured the necessary 1976 delegate votes to become the democratic nominee. technically, vice president harris does not officially become the nominee into the rollcall finishes on monday, but you can consider this last official unofficial mile marker that she has to pass on her way there. here she is on a webcast with her supporters earlier today. >> i'm honored to be the presumptive democratic nominee for president of the united states. and i will tell you the tireless work of our delegates, our state leaders and staff, has been pivotal in making this moment possible. so of course, i will officially accept your nomination next week once the virtual voting period is closed
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but already, i'm happy to know that we have enough delegates to secure the nomination. and later this month, we will gather in chicago, united as one party where we are going to have an opportunity to celebrate this historic moment. >> so the nomination is hers, and so is a very sizable war chest, this week, both campaigns release their fundraising totals for the month of july. remember kamala harris only entered the presidential race at the top of the ticket in the third week of july, and the harris campaign still raised a record shattering $310 million. that is more than double the $139 million raised by the trump campaign after a wave of donations following the trump assassination attempt and the republican national convention. those were not small things.
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this means the harris campaign now has more total cash on hand, then the trump campaign. and that's all before democrats hold their convention in chicago later this month which is almost certain to continue what is being called the kamalamenon. before that happens, harris has yet another opportunity to generate more enthusiasm, by next week, vice president harris is expected to announce for highly anticipated choice of a running mate. nbc news reports the final contenders for that position are pennsylvania governor josh shapiro, minnesota governor tim walz, illinois governor jb pritzker, kentucky governor andy bashir, arizona senator mark kelly, and transportation secretary pete buttigieg. so kamalamenon, keep practicing that phrase , the harris campaign is feeling very positive about the momentum here. today polling expert nate
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silver officially changed his assessment of the 2024 race saying he no longer believes that donald trump is favored to win the race, he considers this contest a tossup. the harris campaign is clearly looking for expanded path to victory potentially opening up the electoral map to include some of the states that barack obama won in 28 and 2012 today harris hired several legendary veterans of obama's campaigns to round out her own campaign staff, those new hires include david plus, obama save -- farmer campaign manager and jennifer palmieri, the former communications director for both hillary clinton and barack obama. so with each day it becomes clear that the thing the internet has dubbed the
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kamalanomenon that that thing is real and showing no signs of going anywhere anytime soon. the new york times michelle golder traveled to the recent rally in atlanta where she interview people in the crowd and spoke to 156-year-old woman of color named tracy who described what she is seeing in her community since kamala harris rose to the top of the ticket. i'm telling you something she told them, i go on my walks in the morning, i see women of color and we just look at each other and we just smile like yeah, says, we got this. we got this. joining me now is michelle goldberg, and with me is nbc news political reporter jonathan allen. it's great to see you both, thank you for being here. michelle, i was so struck by the anecdotes that you have in your latest column about kamalanomenon, a phrase i'm still practicing too little success but can you talk about what you saw and what you are hearing on the ground and the
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impression it left you with? >> i think that we all had some sense that there was this incredible outpouring of enthusiasm, the internet told that story, but i always think that there's something you can only learn by being there. the first thing i noticed, this is a huge auditorium, so we are not used to seeing in this race, these massive rallies, 10,000 people, every seat, full, people lining up, it's really hot in atlanta now people were lining up earlier in the day, to get in for a rally that would start around 5:30. actually, the first person i spoke to was a pre-k teacher
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who told me she had previously not been planning to vote, and now, not only is she planning to vote, she is going to her first political rally and several of the people i spoke to were at their first political rally or in one case, her second rally, because she previously had gone to an event that bashir held for harris a couple of days previously, so there really is this you know, this energy that has been unleashed, currently because democrats no longer have to carry the burden of trying to prop up a candidacy that seemed increasingly untenable to them but also, because for a lot of people, who you know, a lot of people just connect with kamala harris, a lot of younger people can connect with harris in a way they could not necessarily connect with joe biden. >> i want to get to the differences between the 2020 kamala harris and the 2024 kamala harris but john, from a political campaign strategy standpoint, the fact that there is campaign is bringing on mitch stewart and david plus and stephanie qatar, i mean how do you read the tea leaves on that, that seems like they think they can and they just might re-create that sort of
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groundswell of magic for the democratic party and that was last seen in the obama years. >> they are describing this as the 18, i'm sure that folks who are working for biden before felt like they were the 18, it's not that uncommon at this point in the counter, basically, where you would be moving from a primary to a general election to bring in some folks who would layer some of the top department heads and get people a little more experience, so we will see if this is a last hurrah for some of these folks coming in or a moment of glory where they come back in and have a comeback, we've seen a lot of comebacks with the olympics this weekend i think that is what they're hoping to do with kamala harris, to continue this momentum she is having. >> it feels like the democratic
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version of the cheers bar where it's like norm! to the notion of years past versus today. kamala harris is a different candidate than she was in 2020, the landscape is different. i feel like there are a number of factors that have led to this groundswell of excitement, so chief among them seems to be she's got more comfortable with her past and the landscape in 2024 is more dire on a host of issues that she's been on front of like abortion, the landscape is different than it was in 2020. >> obviously, i mean, i think she was uncomfortable trying to stake out this lane on the left along with elizabeth warren and bernie sanders back in 2020, you saw her try to take positions on the single-payer
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healthcare and then come up with plans that were complicated, trying to thread the needle because she didn't actually believe in doing away with private health insurance. you know, this is someone who before, she was a national political figure when she was a california political figure, was, you know, fairly centrist, at least by california standards, someone who believes for example that public safety was a precondition for any chance at criminal justice reform, and so, i think the environment right now, where there's much less appetite for ideological battles, much more conducive to that, the other thing i would say and i wrote about this in my column was that, this is the first time we are ever seeing this kind of unabashedly enthusiasm for a woman presidential candidate, with hillary clinton there wasn't this sort of enthusiasm but even the women who really were excited for the first
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woman to have a major party nomination, a lot of them felt like they had to keep it to themselves. they organized in a facebook group called pants nation but it was secret and invite only, so i remember talking to women, after the election, who were shocked and some of them motivated to get politically involved because they were so horrified, they would say things like i didn't know there are other democrats on my block. you know now you have none of that, you have people being joyful and proud of their nominee and away we haven't seen, in a way that we didn't see in 2016. >> and you have cultural spokespeople around the world whether it's charlie xe x or simone biles or beyonci, it is a kamalanomenon . in a way that we haven't seen with any other female presidential candidate. john, you know, we talked about whether, you know, what kamala harris, what makes her different now versus 2020, and
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a study suggests that she's less concerned about the progressive wing of her party then she has been or was, in 2020, and i wonder, if you agree with that and how you think that filters into her decision-making around her running mate. you have new reporting on who is in the mix and what might happen. can you talk about that? >> i think, there are a few things at work, number 1, she was on a ticket that pushed back on the left, particularly when it came to law enforcement, police reform and spending on police, that was a major issue during the summer of 2020, joe biden, effectively said i'm not going as far as the left wants me to go so i think she watch that work for him. she's been in an administration that sometimes has appealed to the left and sometimes appealed to the center, there are issues
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where they did not appeal to the left, so i think there's some experience in that and i think the major difference for harris between 2019 or 2020 and now, is that she has been in this role now for you know, basically four years as the understudy to a president of the united states of that has given her an opportunity to hone her speechmaking skills, to hone her ability to deflect bad questions and answer good questions the way that she wants to. i mean, she has developed in this role, so i think that's important, too. i'm not sure who she's going to pick for her vice presidential candidate, but i do know this. she will probably look to do no harm and may be as important if not more important, is try and keep the energy and enthusiasm that she has right now and that will be a tension point with the progressive wing of the party, they have come out very loudly against josh shapiro, the governor of pennsylvania. and there are some issues there, one has to do with
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israel, and his support for israel, and the way that he talked about protesters on campus, another issue is labor, they don't like what he did with regard to charter schools, what he would call school choice. and, so there's a moment where we will find out, to the progressives, do they win by knocking down this candidate in pennsylvania or do they get brushed back by kamala harris, i know one thing her campaign is saying a lot now is that she is a pragmatist and that's a way of trying to narrow the gap between what she said before and what her policies will be in the future. >> got to keep the main thing the main thing, as they say. great to speak with you both, thank you for your time this friday night. still to come this evening, blockbuster reporting about a secret investigation into whether donald trump's 2016 presidential campaign got a gigantic and illegal cash infusion from a foreign government. we will get the details from the washington post plus happy
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birthday jd vance? as the republican vice presidential candidate turns 40, the internet has gifted the rest of us by digging up even more of his controversial past. that is next. ear... and sprays can leave grime like that ultra foamy melts it on contact. magic. new ultra foamy magic eraser. >> no application fee if you apply by august 29th at university of maryland global campus, an accredited university that's transformed adult lives for 75 years. you're not waiting to win, you're ready to succeed again at umgc.edu. (tony hawk) skating for over 45 years has taken a toll on my body. you're not waiting to win, you're ready i take qunol turmeric because it helps with healthy joints and inflammation support. why qunol? it has superior absorption compared to regular turmeric. qunol. the brand i trust.
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i turned 40 tomorrow, i'm not excited about it. >> my wife is taking me out to dinner, our favorite spot in cincinnati and then we are going swimming afterwards, it'll be fun. >> that was jd vance yesterday explaining his plans for his birthday bash this evening and the plans do not apparently include continuing to deal with the fallout from his childless cat lady thing. if that was not enough for the now 40-year-old vance to deal with, this week has seen even more resurfaced audio from his past did a 2021 podcast appearance where vance calls pregnancies resulting from incest or rape, inconvenient. >> should a woman be forced to carry a child to term after she has been the victim of incest or rape. >> it's not whether she should be forced to bring the child determines whether the child should be allowed to live even though the circumstances of the child's birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to society . >> and then there is this 2021
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clip where vance takes aim at gymnastics phenom simone biles after she dropped out of the gymnastics competition in tokyo for mental health reasons. >> did she let down the country ? >> i think it reflects pretty poorly on our therapeutic society, that we try and praise people not for moments of strength or heroism, but for their weakest moments. >> just for the record, simone biles said yesterday that she went to therapy right before winning the all-around gold medal and became the most decorated american gymnast in olympic history, so not sure what that says about our therapeutic society. or jd vance, for that matter. it seems at least one person in trump's orbit . predicted that picking jd vance as a running mate would not go smoothly and really wanted to stop it from happening. kellyanne conway reportedly said trump would have to take vance, over her dead body, so happy birthday jb?
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mark, i'm fascinated by the schism that seems to be coming to public light inside trump world over the pic of jd vance, annual reporting sheds a lot of light. one of the things that kellyanne conway, a flag she was raising was that she didn't think he had been thoroughly vetted and it really feels like she's kind of a bit of a cassandra on that one. are you surprised by you know, the vetting process, as it has seemingly, you know, reared its head, if you will, in the jd vance nomination. >> according to the trump campaign and kellyanne conway,
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they expected anyone picked by trump to get dog piled. that having been said, one of the things that kellyanne conway said behind-the-scenes was marco rubio, who had been vetted more thoroughly because he had already run for president, he's a three term senator or doug burgum, the north dakota governor were more safe pics, and therefore, she advocated for that much were vociferously behind-the-scenes than she did for vance. one of the interesting things about this moment in time, is that in my process of reporting out, whether or not the reports were true that trump allies were already growing cold to the idea of vance for a pick of their having buyers remorse, i couldn't find a lot of evidence for that but a lot of people said look, we don't think that but kellyanne conway is out there saying this about the vice presidential pick of trump and she is trashing the campaign. she denies that but what it tells us is this, just as in 2016 and during his white house.., trump had a campaign and structure characterized by infighting and backbiting and a
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lot of backstabbing. it looks like those old bad habits are coming back to hot the trump effort. how long that lasts and how deep it is, we don't know but it's clear that for the first time and the most serious time for the trump campaign, they feel like they are knocked back on their heels, that is in the primary when he ran, when he had an assassination attempt, when he stood trial on criminal and civil matters, it wasn't as serious as this for the campaign. >> i mean, and it's you know, out in the open and it's not by the way just trump operatives. you make a point of mentioning the tucker carlson tweed where he goes after lindsey graham, let's get the tweet up on the screen. lindsey graham is a liar, this is tucker carlson's tweet, nobody lobbied harder against vance than he did and in the sleaziest way. he was doing it this morning. this is why everyone hates washington because people like lindsey graham are happy to lie right to your face. it's disgusting.
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i mean, do you have a sense of why jd vance is the hill that various factions of trump world seem ready to battle on, it's a catalytic moment it seems, for the trump team and to some degree, the republican firm around the trump team. >> trump likes vance the most out of the various candidates, he had the closest personal relationship with him and trump's son and namesake, don jr. advocated for vance and in addition, vance has more or has had more of that in their words, that america first, maga mindset and ability to carry their message board. some of those clips you played, from the podcasts which are coming back to haunt him, are
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what the maga base once to hear, those are a lot of the america first policies and discussions in tone and tenor that they want to adopt going forward. that's the candidate they got, and now, they are going to be tested to see how well that fares in this general election. >> right, that's the thing, we are pivoting to the general right now, we are not in the primary season and it's not just jd vance, it's project 2025 where there seems to be, some trepidation about how hard the bearhug was, they are trying to distance themselves from 2025 at a moment where the democrats are using every weapon to try and latch project 2025 to the trump campaign. >> one of the dirty little secrets in media was that the biden campaign -- they found some unpopular measures about abortion, incidentally, the things about abortion in project 2025 aren't what trump is campaigning on. the biden campaign did a good job of hanging that around trump's neck even though, for
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instance, he says he didn't support a nationwide abortion ban, he wouldn't sign one nevertheless project 2025, he got saddled with that and eventually it became untenable for them and they got sick of it and finally, i wouldn't say the plug was pulled but the trump campaign had sent enough messages to say look, this is no longer a, you need to stop it. the problem is there were a lot of former trump people who now have very bitter feelings. a lot are friends with kellyanne conway and there's a lot of backstabbing and there's a lot of backtalk that's going on behind the scenes. >> you know it's bad when the word skulduggery comes up. >> sorry, i could've come up with a better word. >> it's relevant, mark. thank you for your time and your fascinating reporting. i appreciate it. trump's 2020 election subversion case is back in the hands of u.s. judge chutkan.
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i don't need anybody's money, it's nice, i don't need anybody's money. i'm using my own money, not using the lobbyist, not using donors, i don't care. >> i'm self funding my campaign. >> i'm totally self funding my campaign . >> one of the first big lies donald trump told after announcing his campaign for the white house in 2016 was that his campaign would be totally self funded. that of course, was not true. trump only self-funded about 20% of the campaign and turn to donors and super pac's to pick up the tab whenever possible. but the very end of october, less than two weeks before the 2016 election, the famously cheap donald trump opened up his wallet. >> i wrote another check for $10 million, i'm spending money like crazy.
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>> today the washington post is out with breathtakingly reporting that paves the last minute $10 million cash infusion in a whole new light. the u.s. government have classified intelligence indicating that egyptian president tried to give trump $10 million to boost his campaign at almost the exact same time. in september of 2016, candidate trump who was already calling for his infamous muslim band met on the sidelines of the un general assembly for a closed- door meeting with the egyptian president. >> he's a fantastic guy, took control of egypt and he really took control of it and i thought it was a great meeting. we met, for a long time actually, we had a long meeting, and it was good chemistry, you know when you have good chemistry with people, you are the king of that. a good feeling between us. >> about a month after the great meeting, trump gave his
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campaign that $10 million check , and then, a few months after that, just five days before trump was sworn into office, the washington post reports that a bank that branch in cairo received an unusual letter from an organization linked to the egyptian intelligence service asking the bank to kindly withdraw nearly $10 million from the organization's account, all in cash. inside the state run national bank of egypt, employees were soon busy placing bundles of $100 bills into two large bags according to records from the bank. four men arrived and carried away the bags which you s officials later described as weighing a combined 200 pounds and containing what was then a sizable share of egypt's reserve of u.s. currency. now there are a few incredibly important pieces of context here. one, is this kind of cash transaction and being a
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potential bribe from the egyptian government is very much within the realm of possibility. new jersey senator bob -- democrat bob menendez was convicted on charges of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes in the form of envelopes full of cash as well as literal gold bars. cash and gold bars that came from egyptian intelligence agents from the same agency involved in this nearly $10 billion cash withdraw, the other key piece of context is that the ejection president is not as trump put it, a fantastic guy, he's an authoritarian desperate which overthrew the government with military force in 2013 and has stayed in powder power through set -- sham elections but despite that, the president is one of the first guest that president trump invited to the white house and one of the first foreign leaders that trump met with on his very first international trip. throughout all of his presidency, trump cozied up to
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him despite his brutal crackdowns on political oppositions and his blatant consolidation of power and his disregard for human rights. at one point, trump was even overheard calling him his favorite dictator. clearly there's more than one. so all of this, the classified u.s. intelligence, that he tried to give trump $10 million, the $10 million cash withdrawal, all of this is red hot, so where we just learning about it now? the other half of this incredible piece from the washington post is about how federal prosecutors investigated all of this for years, and then, knowing everything i just laid out, trump's attorney general, bill barr, seems to have made that investigation just go away one of the reporters who broke the story joins me, coming up next
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[window slamming] woman: [gasps] [dog barking] ♪ woman: [screams] ♪ [explosion] [explosion] ♪ [lock clicks shut] back in 2018 in the middle of the mahler investigation into russian interference in the election, the bc federal courthouse was filled daily with reporters looking for clues, looking for leads, but on december 14th of that year, something happened that made it decidedly much more difficult for the reporters to do their jobs. that day court officials mysteriously shut down an entire floor of the federal
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courthouse, restricting access to both the press and the public. reporters assumed that the cloak and dagger maneuverings were related to russia but two years later we learned it was about a separate investigation looking into whether the egyptian government could have backed the millions of dollars that donald trump donated to his own campaign in 2016. and today in an exclusive and deeply reported investigation by the washington post, we are learning about how a $10 million cash cash withdrawal at a bank in cairo, five days before trump was inaugurated, how that intensify that inquiry. and also about the effort inside trump's doj to bring the investigation to a close. joining me now is one of the journalist who wrote the story, carol leonnig, she is of course a pulitzer prize winner and an investigative reporter at the washington post. this story is not to be believed, thank you for being here tonight, first, just you know, there are a lot of ins and outs but as you understand it from your reporting, where
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do investigators, or where do they suspect the money may have come from, and where were they concerned it might have gone? >> first off, thanks for focusing on the story, which was incredibly difficult to report out and it involved a lot of sensitivity including where i will start the story which is classified intelligence. the cia basically alerted the department of justice in the early part of 2017 that they had information from an informant and other cooperated sources of intelligence that investigators at the time described as jaw-dropping. the intelligence suggested the president of egypt was planning and arranging to send $10 million, illegally, to help donald trump's reelection effort. you may remember at that time, there was this concern in donald trump's campaign world that after the access hollywood revelations, donors were
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backing away from him and he didn't have any money left and it was running on fumes and his aides were asking him to write a big check of his own money to the account and he would not do it. well, in september, he meets him and at the end of october, he writes this check. what the intelligence suggested and what led to and spurred the department of justice investigation was that he wanted to help trump he was promising a great relationship if he was elected president and the investigators needed to get trump's bank records to try and figure out who this mysterious money that they later learned, had actually been withdrawn, just as the intelligence suggested, from one of the accounts linked to the egyptian intelligence agency, this money withdrawn, put into full bank -- duffel bags, very large
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percentage of u.s. bills, and in the egyptian currency, did that money that got thdrawn, five days before donald trump became president, did it land in donald trump's accounts? the investigators, from their standpoint, they would never be able to answer that question because as soon as they began proposing subpoenas to do this, the u.s. attorney said that she, jesse lou, needed to review this and briefed the attorney general. a fairly new attorney general named bill barr, and within days of reviewing the intelligence herself, meeting with bill barr, conferring with him, she returned to investigators and said she no longer believe that this was a good idea. the fbi was so angry that they began preparing their version of an ultimatum. their view was if we can't ever look at trump's bank records,
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which are a pretty easy thing for federal investigators to subpoena, if we can't get those, then, there is no chance in the world of us ever getting to the truth or the bottom of the investigation. >> yeah, i mean there so much here, carol, and one of the things i'm interested in, you know, there is an aspect of money laundering, i will read an excerpt from the piece. investigators saw hallmarks of an international money laundering operation in the way the funds moved into and through accounts ahead of the cash withdrawal, indications of a potential crime that may or may not have been related to an effort to help trump. there's effort to help trump and there's actually the source of the money and then there's investigation being quashed, what stands out to you as the most i think, disturbing element of what is already a fairly disturbing story?
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>> i'm not the person to decide what is disturbing, i'm an investigative reporter. i learn a lot about how criminal investigations and sensitive intelligence is handled particularly sensitive criminal investigations involving high profile people. and what my colleague and i heard over and over again as we reported this out, looking up people's contemporaneous notes, looking at records from the investigation, reviewing documents that are still secret, what we heard over and over again was, there was chilling, job raking intelligence that pointed to a potential money laundering operation in an effort at least by the egyptian president to bribe or compromise donald trump and that when evidence was gathered by molars team at the very end of the mahler probe, when this evidence was gathered of this mysterious cash withdrawal
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piece, the statute of limitations has expired. the deadline for bringing charges under the federal statute of limitations for illegal campaign contributions expired january 15th of 2022. but it is hard to imagine with reporting like this that this story ends there. it is a revelatory, bombshell reporting, deserving much more deeper discussion. inks for making the time tonight, i really appreciate it. we have one more story for you tonight. the supreme court has released its stranglehold on special counsel jack smith remaining criminal case against donald trump. just-in-time for the election. more on that when we come back.
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donald trump's 2020 election interference case is now back in judge tanya tokens court, just in time to become a live issue in the provincial campaign. the cases been on hold for months at the supreme court considered trump's claim of presidential immunity. after giving trump unprecedented immunity for what they called core presidential functions, the supreme court kicked back some hot button issues to the lower courts. and now, judge chutkan will have to decide whether actions in the quote outer perimeter of trump's presidential response abilities are fair game for the criminal trial or not. joining me now is harry littman, former deputy attorney general in the clinton demonstration. harry, thank you for being here. i think that there is some concern, expectation, trepidation, i'm not sure what to call it, about what happens next in this case as it pertains to the coming months.
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judge chutkan as to make the decisions. and i wonder, given your expertise in the field, whether you think there are actually going to be hearings as she makes these decisions. >> okay, my short answer here is no, at least as far as evidentiary hearings go. as far as jack smith putting mike pence on the stand, what did donald trump say to you? but that is going to be heavily fought. she is been given a very hard job, alex. and everything is going to be subject to challenge by trump and the supreme court is not given a lot of guidance. but what she has to do now is decide what actions are potentially immune. forget about the legal charges in the indictment, think instead about the stories, the conduct in the indictment. there are five stories. trying to get votes from state officials, they only need 11,000. trying to get the false certificates. trying to get doj to lie to georgia and say there is fraud. trying to get mike pence to violate his constitutional duty
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. and then trump's own exhortations. and the court has made clear that one and maybe two of those are immune, and they have given trump arguments every other place. as to your point, will there be an evidentiary hearing? trump won't wanted. jack smith might propose, let's put some people on the stand. but you can read the opinion either way to say you just have to decide on the allegations court. you don't take evidence here. that will be trump's position, and remember, he gets to appeal it if he gets adverse rulings, because this involves immunity. >> so, what i'm hearing you say is we are not going to see mike pence trotted in the federal district court for an evidentiary hearing. >> that's my best guess. >> okay, but it sounds like the deliberative process is going to be a matter of public record. and as it concerns the political reality here, the
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story of the 2020 election and attempted election subversion is likely going to be in the news this fall. is that a safe bet, to understand the impact this could have on, of course, november? >> 100%. but in two ways. first, the story, as laid out in the original indictment. and second, smith may well decide to tailor his indictment and give a shorter story. but the basic allegations will be front and center, yes. >> to you, as part of her deliberations, and i'm sorry to be so sort of a lay woman about this, but i didn't go to law school. does the deliberative process, i mean, how much of chutkan 's weighing of the facts is something that we as a public are going to be treated too? is there new evidence or supporting evidence that we may get in the course of this deliberation? >> well, all of her deliberations, whether they will be on the allegations as already made, or new evidence by witnesses on the stand, that
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is for now the $54,000 question. my best guess is we will only see it based on allegations, but there will be an effort to proper witnesses. but everything she says and does, i think, will be open here in opinions that will then be reviewed. >> it just sounds like an extraordinarily complicated lift for a judge at a time of high political heat. we are talking about the closing weeks of the election, where a judge is going to have to effectively relitigate, not officially, but relitigate in the court of public opinion what happened. >> and in the shadow of the supreme court, which can slam her back down again. >> exactly. harry littman, and valuable perspective on this. thank you for your time, my friend. >> thank you, alex. >> that is our show for tonight. now it is time for the last word with ali velshi in for lawrence. >> you put a lot in that discussion. tanya chutkan

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