so this was supposed to be the week when arkansas held two back-to-back doubleheader executions. arkansas has not killed any of its prisoners in more than 12 years, but they decided that they would try to kill eight of them in a row, all in a rush. eight men, eight prisoners, they were going to kill eight of them, two per night in four different double-header executions spread across a week and a half. and the urgency for that was because one of the drugs they wanted to use for these exkuxs is getting close to its sell-by date. and it will not be legal to use that drug to kill people after the drug expires at the end of this month. and, you know, from a

bureaucratic perspective on the part of the state that must make some sort of sense on paper, right? oh, hey, got to hurry. we can't use this stuff to kill anyone after april, so let's kill everyone in april then. let's kill them all now. from the perspective of one of the people who is going to be killed, though, you could see how that might seem like a fairly random factor deciding whether you are going to live or die, right? if the state didn't have this expiration date thing going on that one drug they didn't notice before, there would be no chance that all of these guys would be on deck to be killed all at once, but that's the reason they're trying to kill them all right now. steven briar is moderate liberal justice on the supreme court, but he has decided to make a real hollering legacy out of his time on the court by dissenting and dissenting and dissenting again when it comes to the

vagaries and the strangeness and the bias in our nation's system of killing men and women who are prisoners. so, that's where we were as of last night. arkansas wanted to kill eight men over the course of ten days. they wanted to have already killed four of them by this time tonight. but over the course of this week, three of their four planned killings got blocked by the courts. and then last night, as the u.s. supreme court weighed in on the fate of the fourth man, at the very last minute last night, a few landmarks were reached. number one, the new justice neil gorsuch voted to kill his first man. he voted to kill and it was a deciding vote and that was his first significant vote on the united states breyer dissented again, short, sharp, and to the point. less than two pages. it's pretty remarkable stuff, very straightforward.

not particularly legalistic argument. he just puts it out there. justice breyer dissenting from stay of execution. quote, arkansas set out to execute eight people, why these eight, why now? the apparent reason has nothg to do with the heinousness of their crimes or the presence of absence of mitigating behavior or mental state or need for speedy punishment. four of the men have been on death row for over 20 years. all have been housed in solitary confinement for ten years. apparently the reason the state decided to proceed is that the use by date on the drug is about to expire. the justice continues, quote, in my view, that factor when considered as a determining factor separating those who live from those who die, that factor is close to random. he says, i have previously noted the arbitrariness with which executions are carried out in

this country. the arbitrary nature of the death penalty system as presently administered runs contrary to the very purpose of a rule of law. so stephen breyer dissents. but the way we're doing it, the actual decisions about whether these guys are going to live and die tonight, it's basically random now. it's arbitrary. and under the constitution, that is illegal. but justice breyer's opinion was a dissent. his side lost. the neil gorsuch side won, and arkaas went ahead with one of the four killings they wanted to accomplish this week. the death warrant to kill ledell lee expired at midnight central time, less than an hour before that warrant expired. the united states supreme court voted 5-4 to let them kill him.

by 11:26 central time, it was announced to the people at the prison. 18 minutes later they started injecting lee. at 11:44. and by 11:56, they said he was dead. that's important, that timing there, just made it. the warrant that made it legal to kill him expired four minutes after they said he died. arkansas still wants to kill all the other prisoners that it can next week before the expiration date on one of their drugs makes the rest of the executions illegal, too. so they're hurrying. one of the things we'll be watching in the news is the continuing legal wrangling to see how many more of these guys they are going to be able to kill. the pace of executions, the speediness of that process of killing people, how much time people get to try to fight off the state to save their lives, how many times they can go back to court and bring in new evidence or make new arguments or show new angles on what

happened to them. the time that a person gets to try to stay alive, the pace of that stuff is one of the things that gets fought about all the me in death penalty states. in september, we reported on one of those fights that had taken an unexpected turn into presidential politics and ultimately into scandal. it started in 2013. republican politics in florida. republican politicians, including the governor and state attorney general, were trying at the time to hurry up the pace of executions in that state. florida already kills a ton of their prisoners, but the state's governor, rick scott, attorney general pam bondi, both of them republicans, they were really crusading in 2013 on wanting to start killing more of that state's prisoners faster. rick scott had in fact signed a bill to make executions go faster in that state. pam bondi as attorney general, was busy in court defining that new law.

kill florida prisoners faster. we need to speed this up. we need to speed them through system. we need the pace of executions to be faster. that's what was going on in florida politics in 2013 around the death penalty. that is why it was weird in september of 2013 when pam bondi suddenly reversed course. there was a man who was scheduled to be killed on september 10th, 2013. his name was marshall gore. his execution was on the calendar. basically thought they were going good to go with this one. but in that case, that september 10th execution, pam bondi actually intvened with t state to slow it down. she asked the state to please delay that execution, push i back. slow this thing down. she had her reasons. >> marshall gore was convicted for the murders of two florida women in 1988. he was scheduled to be executed tonight in about half an hour,

but bondi's campaign fundraiser took priority. marshall lee gore was supposed to be executed at 6:00 p.m. tonight after being convicted of killing two women in 1998. but pam bondi asked governor rick scott to delay the execution for three weeks because she had a conflicting event on her schedule. it turns out that event is a political fundraiser. >> and again, maybe from the perspective of the attorney general, from the politician's perspective, maybe that makes perfect sense. you really don't want to move your fund-raiser. so move the execution instead. maybe that makes total sense to you as the politician. but justice stephen breyer, from the perspective from the guy who will either be alive or dead tomorrow based on the actions of the state, the date of pam bondi's fundraiser is an arbitrary factor in deciding whether he's going to live or

die. but fundraising is very, very important to pam bondi. she's very good at it. paid it a lot of attention. maybe too much attention? too hard to say. but here's where it veered int presidential politics. because of what happened over the course of the following week after all that happened. that execution that was delayed so pam bondi could hold her fundraiser in peace, that happened on september 10th. there was a lot of attention in the florida press and national attention about how important fundraising was to her. to what lengths she'd go to to fund-raise. she at the time was running unopposed but fund-raising was that important to her. coverage of that was around that execution date, september 10th. then three days later, an item that was considerably lower profile, except to the people who who really cared about this subject, ran in the "orlando sentinel." this was september 13th. "orlando sentinel." new york's trump university suit

draws attention from officials. quote, complaints filed in florida were among those cited by new york attorney general eric schneiderman last month when he sued trump and trump university and the trump entrepreneurship initiative alleging civil fraud. the new york suit accuses trump and his seminar companies of making false and exaggerated claims to lure people into spending thousands of dollars on questionable courses and mentoring services. trump has denied the allegations and described the suit as frivolous. but now florida attoey genal pam bondi's office is reviewing the new york lawsuits to determine whether florida should join tultiate se. so this is the trump university fraud case. this is the one that trump settled a couple of months ago by paying out $25 million to people who said he defrauded them in that scheme. this did not end well for him. but in 2013 that lawsuit against him was just getting started.

those cases were just being filed in new york, maybe in florida, too. a lot of the complaints from that case were out of florida. and pam bondi was reported to be weighing whether or not florida as a state should join that lawsuit against trump over trump university. pam bondi was also reported that same week to be so inhumanly devoted to raising campaign funds that she rescheduled a man's death to accommodate her fundraising. four days after that article about the trump university lawsuit and pam bondi considering whether or not florida should join it, four days after that article ran in the "orlando sentinel," this check was sent to pam bondi's god blessed re-election campaign. it was sent from the donald j. trump foundation. they didn't exactly spell this out in the memo line, but in

invisible ink it said, oh, you're considering getting the state ofrida invved in lawsuit. would you also like to consider this $25,000 check to your re-election campaign from the donald j. trump foundation signed personally by donald j. trump? one of the single biggest donations she got in that whole campaign cycle. voila, pam bondi's office said they would not have florida join the fraud suit against trump university. very tidy little timeline. compared to a lot of other important things that get decided by politicians, even life or death things, this seems very tidy, right? this seems not at all random. this seems not at all arbitrary. this seems direct. but wait, it keeps going because, first, that story made news because they were delaying an execution, which didn't make

sense on the surface for republican politicians who were crusading to kill more prisoners faster ufaster, faster, that they would want to slow one down. then that story made news because it turned out the reason for the delay is pam bondi had a fundraiser. then that story made news after that because pam bondi took in one of the biggest donations to her campaign that year. then it made news again because that person who she decided not to sue, after taking his check, he went on to run for president. then that story made news during the pridential cpaign because it turns out that check from the donald j. trump foundation, it turns out it's illegal for trump's foundation to cut a check like that to a political campaign. and the irs caught him for it, and he had to pay it back and pay a fine. this story has made news a million different times for a million different reasons, but

it keeps giving because now three and a half years after pam bondi took that donation from trump and announced she would not sue donald trump, now donald trump just hired her chief of staff from that time who was involved in that whole scandal, who was included in all those discussions and decisions around the trump university case. trump as president just hired him, just hired that guy to be the top lawyer in the united states department of education because -- i don't know -- maybe he remembers him from the trump university thing. that was a school, right? here's the announcement from the white house about him. here's the slack-jawed a.p. lead in their story about it. quote, as a top aide to florida's attorney general, carlos muniz helped defend the office's decision to set out legal action against trump university.

now the president is naming him to be the top lawyer in the u.s. education department. a.p. reported last year that pam bondi personally solicited a $25,000 political contribution from donald trump as her office was weighing how to respond to questions from "the orlando sentinel" about whether she will join new york's attorney gene l general. it included an october 2013 fact sheet distributed to reporters. so just to tidy this up, just to nest all the dolls properly here, politician, publicly reported to be considering suing over the trump university scam. trump sends fat check, illegally, but whatever, sends fat check. politician then says, oh, upon further review, i think i'm not suing over the trump unirsity scam. politician defends that stunning decision, stunning en at the

time. that stunning decision with a pr effort run out of her office including talking points for reporters prepared by her chief of staff. and then chief of staff gets awesome new job from trump. as the top lawyer in the department of education because -- honestly, keyword, university. is that where they filed him? also maybe some payback. that's a senate confirmable position, by the way. we'll see if that becomes an issue in the senate when they try to confirm him. there's a lot going on right now in national politics. and in politics around the nation. arkansas is still trying to race through as killing as many of those prisoner as it can. by the time we're back on the air doing our monday night show here, arkansas wants to have killed two more of them by then. legal fights over those killings continue right now as we speak. they will likely continue

through the weekend if you watch that story. we're also still waiting for any sort of plausible explanation about this new incredible reporting from "the miami herald," whose reporters discovered the fact that the president apparently took a secret meeting at mar-a-lago with two former presidents of the nation of colombia. two former presidents of the nation of colombia, who are lobbying against the peace deal that's pending in that country to try to end the world's longest war. this is obviously a super sensitive and complicated subject. the united states of america taking a position on that will be super important to how that works out. if our president is taking meetings with former presidents of colombia who are trying to undermine the current government in that country in order to scrap that peace deal, that's a really big deal in diplomacy. that's a really big deal for foreign policy. therefore, it's unusual that meetings like that would be happening totally out the purview of the u.s. state

department, which is supposed to handle these things and be strategic about these things and be careful about these things on behalf of the people of the united states. it's weird it would be happening outside the purview of the state department, let alone it's at a golf club. the white house explanation for this meeting is that, yeah, it happened, but it was really nothing. the white house statement basically said the former presidents of colombia, they were just there at mar-a-lago with a member of the club. so it was just a quick hello. but the former colombian presidents, they're now making public statements. they're publicly thanking president trump for the cordial and very frank discussion he had with them about colombia and the region. a conversation they did get to have with the president of the united states admittedly because someone paid the president of the united states $200,000 to get into his club. $200,000 minimum.

as "the herald" puts it, the unclosed meeting also raises a number of questions about the ease with which people trying to influence trump can access him through membership in his club without fear of public disclosure. a mar-a-lago membership costs $200,000 for the initiation alone. so there's a lot going on, right? there's normal and sometimes terrible politics in the states and in the capital. we got word today that quick before the end of the first 100 days next week they're going to try to repeal obamacare again. they're also going to, quick, try to overhaul the tax code. quick, an artificial measuring stick is upon us. do something. there's new news from the trump russia investigations tonight and from the justice department where the person overseeing those investigations at doj is leaving her post now. there's a lot going on. there's a lot to notice. but we are still going to need this country when these guys are done with it, right?

and for the sake of who we ever want to be again, it can't ever not be news. it always has to be news when something really looks like bribery at the top levels of american government, when something really looks like a bag of cash under the table, corruption, when it really looks like you pay money, you get access to the president. when it really looks like public officials are taking money in exchange for their official actions and then getting thanked and rewarded for it down the road. when that stops smelling bad to us, when corruption doesn't seem like news anymore, then we do consign ourselves and the generations after us to the kind of corruption we've never tolerated before, not at this level of our national politics. to that end we have lined up next the biggest potential target of opportunity in terms of bribery that anybody has yet reported about our new

administration. it is the product of mind-bendingly thorough and difficult reporting by some very good reporters. and one of the reporters who just worry through some proverbial shoes to break the story, joins us tonight. that's next. whether you're after supreme performance... ...advanced intelligence... ...or breathtaking style... ...there's a c-class just for you. decisions, decisions, decisions. lease the c300 sedan for $389 a month at your local mercedes-benz dealer. mercedes-benz. the best or nothing. find fast relief behind the counter allergies with nasal congestion? with claritin-d. [ upbeat music ] strut past that aisle for the allergy relief that starts working in as little as 30 minutes and contains the best oral decongestant. live claritin clear, with claritin-d.

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four bedrooms, six bathrooms, 22 arched windows. this penthouse apartment on park avenue in new york city has been for sale for just over a month now. according to the breathless listing for it, this condo is

"awaiting the most discerning buyer." from the solid oak floors to the handcrafted italian brass doorknobs and custom moldings. all this can be yours if you're discerning enough and you have $35 million to spend. but this is not just a new york apartment. it is also simultaneously your chance to slip $35 million into the president's pocket. and depending on your business, conceivably that might get you something even more valuable than a handcrafted italian brass doorknob. the hand carved doorknob place with the rounded at the top windows, it is a trump property. it's for sale by trump international realty. you will recall the president chose not to divest from his businesses when he took over as president.

instead, he put his money into a trust, and the beneficiary of the trust is him. so when the company makes money, he makes the money. reporters from "usa today" have just done some very painstaking but incredible and important work. they tracked down exactly what that potentially means in terms of the presidency and his business interests going forward. nobody figured this out before. before "usa today" did the incredible legwork necessary to tell this tale, we didn't know this information. here's their lead. "usa today" spent four months cataloging every property trump's companies own across the country. trump never disclosed a complete unit-by-unit inventory of his companies' real estate holdings or sales. nor is he required to do so by federal law. they're being modest about this but "usa today," their reporters had to build this list unit by unit, city by city, across the country from scratch on their own with nothing to build on in

terms of public disclosures. what did they find? quote, reporters found that trump's trust and his companies own at least 422 luxury condos. 12 mansion lots on bluffs overlooking his golf course on the pacific ocean and dozens more smaller pieces of real estate. the properties range in value from $200,000 to $35 million each. that includes the doorknobs. unlike developments where trump licenses his name to a separate developer for a flat fee, profits from selling individual properties directly owned by his companies, those ultimately enrich him personally. and that's important because now he's president and those properties are for sale. you could buy one and thereby pay the president anything you think he might want to be paid. quote, the volume of real estate creates an extraordinary and unprecedented potential for people, corporations, or foreign interests to try to influence a president.

anyone who wanted to court favor with the president could snap up multiple properties or purposefully overpay. they could also buy in the name of a shell company making it impossible for the public to know w was behind the sales. even if the administration has decided it's okay for the president to keep all his business interests going while he's still president, everybody agrees that because of the clear language in the constitution about this, he really can't take any money from foreign governments or foreign officials. the problem is, thanks to these real estate holdings, these apartments and condos and lots and whatever that he's got for sale, that may very well already be happening. this "usa today" investigation finds that roughly half the sales he has made since becoming president, they weren't to named people you can check out to make sure they're not foreign officials or foreign governments. they were to llcs, which are a common real estate thing to hide the identity of the person who

is actually making the purchase. quote, "usa today's" review of sales of trump-owned real estate found dozens of transactions during and since the campaign involving buyers who have business in or connections with foreign countries or they were shielded by purchasing under the name of an llc. so far "usa today" says so far none of the sales they've reviewed appear to be above mark value, but imagine someone wanted to pad the price a little bit to pay the president a little bit because it is nice for the president to owe you a favor or think kindly about your interests because you once slipped him a few dollars or a few million dollars. remember the russian potash, the oligarch, fertilizer king? he's the guy that bought that mansion from donald trump in palm beach in 2006 for just over $40 million. he barely touched it. he never moved in. a couple years later, he sold it

to the fertilizer king, this russian oligarch guy, not for $40 million, but $100 million. donald trump made a $60 million profit off that house for basically doing nothing, which is nice work if you can get it. and if you took $60 million off someone in a sweet transaction like that, you might reasonably be thankful to that person for all that free money. when the fertilizer king/palm beach mansion thing happened, donald trump wasn't president. now he is. right now his many properties are yours to buy if you would like to give him money for any reason. hold that thought. stay with us. whoa! you're not taking these. hey, hey, hey! you're not taking those. whoa, whoa! you're not taking that. come with me. you're not taking that. you're not taking that. you're not taking that. mom, i'm taking the subaru.

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republican congressman jason chaffetz of utah bewildered a lot of people, surprised everybody, made national news this week when he announced he will not only seek re-election to his seat in congress, he might just resign now, right away. why e ru, . chairman? what changed? what's going on? but while everybody has tried to figure that out, including why he might be leaving and why in such a rush and what it means for his seat in utah, including for the democrat who is raising all that money hand over fist to run against him, katherine allen. while all that has been unfolding this week, congressman chaffetz also made news today for the day job he continues to

hold for the minute. he is chairman of the house oversight committee in the house. nice, maddow. well done. the house oversight committee, period. today in his role as chairman of that committee, jason chaffetz signed onto this letter. it's a letter to president trump's lawyer, and it seeks documents relating to a supposed plan from the trump folks that they said they would pay the u.s. treasury back for any money that his hotels made from foreign government officials staying at his hotels while he's president. it might seem like an obscure financial piece of the puzzle, but in the constitution bluntly, the president is prohibited from accepting money from foreign officials. if foreign officials are staying at his hotels, well, that's part of the constitutional problem with the president holding onto his businesses and continuing to financially benefit from them while he is still president. this letter from the oversight committee, it cites a "usa today" report from march.

in which a trump organization spokesperson explains that the trump folks were going to put off making that donation, the donation of their foreign profits, until the end of the calendar year. house oversight committee now doesn't want to wait until the end of the year. they want information on that next month. steve riley is the investigative reporter for "usa today" who wrote that piece and cited in the house oversight letter. was pof the team of reporters examining trump's real estate sales across the country exhaustively which led to this groundbreaking piece in this morning's paper. thank you for being here. appreciate your time tonight. >> good to be here. >> let me ask you first about the piece you've got today. you, as far as i can tell, and you guys are very modest in terms of what it took to put this together. but reading between the lines,

it seems to me there was no unified public disclosure anywhere of all the real estate for sale that's currently held by entities that are associated with the president, whether it's his trust or his various companies. did you guys build that list from scratch and track all that down yourselves? >> exactly, we did. it was an exhaustive process. the background here is that president trump, while campaigning, had to disclose the business entities in which he held positions, in which he held an ownership stake, so we had the names of the companies associated with president trump's business empire. what he wasn't required to disclose and what we had to gather ourselves was this listing of real estate parcels which are owned by those business entities. so it took months for my colleagues and i to essentially reference real estate data from new york to california and find all of the parcels of real estate which are owned by those companies.

and as you pointed out, it's hundre of properties worth more than $250 million, and it's just totally unprecedented and exceptional situation for the president to be tied to that much active real estate. >> to that last point there, the newsworthiness here is really about the fact that these properties, by and large, are for rent, for sale right now and simultaneously, the president is in a position to personally benefit from the sale or from rental income from these properties. so if somebody did want to funnel money to the president as a bribe or to funnel money to the president to get his attention for some reason, this is a pretty direct way to do that. >> exactly. many of these properties are on the market. they're kind of sold on a staggering basis. they're not all for sale right now, but some are. and it presents the opportunity

anyone or any organization can set up a shell company which would conceal their identities and make purchases. and even if these purchases are made at market rate, it is still a transaction that still benefits the president. if you remember, president trump set up a trust. however, that's not a blind trust. it's a revocable trust. he is the sole beneficiary of that trust, and he can withdraw any funds at any time. it is kind of going through a maze of funds before it reaches the president, but it still has the same destination. >> the thread tying together is that there don't seem to be any real protections on preventing the people who are giving the president money by this means, by preventing it from being foreign officials or foreign governments. obviously, there's no direct evidence that we've got the government of china or

kazakhstan funneling him money in this way, but it seems pretty clear there aren't protections to stop him from being influenced by foreign entities through these processes, right? >> that's correct. last month we asked the trump organization about the mechanics of how they find out whether someone staying at a trump hotel is paying for that stay with foreign money. we were told there was a policy. we were not allowed to see the policy. that's what the house oversight committee is currently looking at. hopefully that will be aired before the public once they get the documents. but the root of both situations is that foreign governments can conceal their identities or any foreign person can set up a shell company and do business with the president's companies essentially in secret from the american public. >> which is utterly, totally, completely unprecedented in american history. steve riley, investigative reporter for "usa today." congratulations to you and your

colleagues for having done this work. it is really, really important work. thank you for being here. >> thank you so much. >> support your local investigative reporter. more to come tonight. stay with us. that can't be recycled. fill up a mug, not a landfill. the more you know.

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♪ and try new act dry mouth spray ♪ i'm dr. kelsey mcneely and some day you might be calling me an energy farmer. ♪ energy lives here. some interesting new reporting at cnn.com tonight. it's at the bottom of an almost unrelated other story, but at the very end of some other reporting about the trump/russia investigation, cnn drops this.

quote, intelligence analysts and fbi investigators who analyzed various strands of intelligence from human sources to electronic and financial records have found signs of possible collusion between the trump campaign and russian officials during the russian attack on the united states election last year. but there is not enough evidence to show that crimes were committed, u.s. officials say. okay. tell me more. as i say, cnn sort of dropped that in at the end of an unrelated report. they are not elaborating. it is obviously a big deal if true, both parts of it. the question of finding evidence of collusion is a big deal. the question of whether or not it rises to the level of a prosecutable crime is also a big deal. we know the fbi has a counterintelligence investigation under way into the attack on our election and the potential trump campaign collusion with it. counterintelgence

investigations don't always result in criminal prosecutions. but a counterintelligence investigation that was successful at finding those kinds of links in this kind of a case would obviously have to have big political consequences, even if nobody went to the pokey. in terms of whether there is a criminal matter here, the fbi said that is basically an open question depending on what they find. the fbi itself makes a recommendation as to whether or not there should be prosecution in criminal cases, but the people who ultimately decide if crimes were committed, once the fbi has done the investigation, the people who decide whether there's going to be a prosecution, that's officials at the u.s. department of justice. and as we reported last night, the justice department official who has been leading, who has been overseeing the russia investigations, she's about to leave. mary mccord has informed people who she works with at the justice department that she's out. by professional reputation, she

is an extremely competent career public servant. she's been acting in this role since october, but again she has now announced that she is leaving. she says the time is right for her to move on to other opportunities. as of now, the white house has not nominated anybody to replace her, but that is not only a super important job. that's a super sensitive job given what she's been overseeing and given the fact attorney general jeff sessions is recused from overseeing those investigations. who they pick to replace mary mccord is going to be very, very important to say the least. might i also ask the question, mary mccord, why on earth are you leaving that job right now? is it really the right time to be moving on to other stuff? the other investigations into the trump/russia outside out of of doj's purview are the two investigations happening in

congress in the senate intelligence committee and the house intelligence committee. the house intelligence committee is again calling people into testify as part of their investigation. on may 2nd they're going to hear testimony behind closed doors from fbi director james comey and nsa director mike rogers. they both testified in the open hearing that the intelligence committee already held. they will bring them back now. that same committee will hear from them behind closed doors so they can talk about classified matters. sometime after that may 2nd hearing, they will schedule, they say, another open hearing. so we finally get to hear from sally yates. testimony from john brennan, form are dni james clapper and former acting attorney general sally yates, the one who reportedly went to the white house with disturbing news about the national security adviser having communication with russian government officials that he was lying about. these three had been scheduled to testify in an open hearing last month before the hearing was abruptly cancelled by the committee chairman devin nunes. devin nunes has since recused himself from the investigation.

the administration tried to dissuade sally yates from testifying publicly at that open hearing. but as of today, she's been reinvited to testify. her lawyer last month said she wanted to testify. now we're waiting to see the house intelligence committee set an actual date for that hearing. all they've said is that they'll set a date sometime after may 2nd, but they haven't set it yet. watch this face. of intelligence... it's a supercomputer. with this grade of protection... it's a fortress. and with this standard of luxury... it's an oasis. the 2017 e-class. it's everything you need it to be...and more. lease the e300 for $549 a month at your local mercedes-benz dealer. mercedes-benz. the best or nothing.

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imagine running for president as a hologram. that's not him. it's a hologram. the nation of france is holding round one of their presidential elections. eleven candidates. if nobody clears 50% of the vote, the top two will go forward. by american standards, this is a relatively fabulous field of candidates, including the hologram guy. the most candidate most likely to be in the headlines is the far right candidate head of party by her anti semitic, holocaust denying father. it is called the front national. for years it has been the fascist party of france. and although she made a big deal of kicking her own dad out of the party a few years ago, she

still carries on some of his legacy, his-muslim, anti-immigrant stances. president trump made his endorsement in the french presidential race. guess who he endorsed? that story is next. [ceo] welcome. [heroine] happy to be here. [ceo] so when you take the job, all these benefits are yours. the world's 2nd most decorated sushi chef... i'm trying to get the first. over here we have quiet spaces for deep thoughts. the latest smart technology.

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radical anti-immigrant, anti-muslim screen phone whose party was led until recently by a holocaust denier who is her dad. today donald trump was asked about that candidate, marine le pen. he called her the strongest on borders. she's strongest on what's been going on in france. not technically an endorsement, but it's an endorsement. phillip crowder, thank you very much for being here. i appreciate your time tonight. i know everybody is asking you who is going to win, who is going to win. let me ask you, what's the smartest way for americans to watch this? what should we watching for on sunday? >> you'll be watching for two weeks. you will be seeing 11 candidates going up across each other from the far left to the far right. and the two who get the largest amount of votes will go through

to a run-off in two weeks's time. meaning there will be a lot of speculation for two weeks you will have to see. you will have to look out for how well marine le pen, the leader of the national front, does in this election and how well manuel does he is the one who might stop this ift to the far right in so many elections we have seen the last few months. not just in europe but here in the united states. >> one of the interesting things about him is he does not represent a known political party. he's not just a centtri st, he is an outside party to the political system. how does that affect his chances in. >> a better chance, in fact. established political parties are not doing so well. the two main parties, the socialist party, the right wing party who are not doing all too well in the polls right now. meaning in the run-up in two

weeks's time, we might not see a candidate for the two main parties. the fact that manuel and marie le pen are outside the establishment gives them a better chance to make it through to the run-off. a similarity to the u.s. presidential election. anti-establishment candidates look like they might make it through to the run-off. it could be the far left leader who you saw as a hologram just a few minutes ago. he could also make it through to that run-off. no one really knows exactly what will happen. so there will be a lot of speculation and that distinct possibility that france might elect a far right leader as its next president. >> yeah. in which case france pulling out of the eu would be the first things we would start talking about. it certainly would be the start of a very radical conversation. phillip crowder, thank you for being with us tonight. i appreciate your time. >> thank you. >> all right.

that does it for us tonight in terms of watching the french elections on sunday. there's the science martha will be happening in washington and around the country here in the united states. the french election will be happening on sunday. and the continued legal wrangling around the arkansas execution scheduled, a back-to-back execution scheduled for monday night. this is the start of the weekend, but there's going to be a lot of things happening this weekend. good evening, ari. >> nice to see you, rachel. glad to see you. jeff sessions pledged to leave the politics at the door when he got to the justice department. but he spent the day slamming a federal judge in hawaii for ruling against the trump administration. tonight he says he has no regrets. >> attorney general jeff sessions dismissed hawaii as a, quote, island in the pacific. >> what? >> i wasn't diminishing the judge or the island of hawaii. give me a break. >> he's amazed that a judge, quote, sitting on an island in