joy reid will be hosting the 11th-hour. that is all in for this evening. rachel maddow show starts right now. good evening, rachel. >> if that's the guy at the end of the bar talking, that's a bad bar. >> it's a a bad bar that has nuclear code. it's bad in a lot of different ways, i think. >> i'm just saying. there are good bars and there are bad bars. if that's the dude at your bar, go to a different bar. >> good drinking advice from rachel maddow tonight. >> thanks for joining us this hour. i'm going to show you a piece of tape that i find funny. it's not funny, but i will admit that i find it funny. on march 31st, they did that thing in the oval office that they've gotten pretty good at now. they have the executive orders in big leather folders like men use. the president had his ceremonia pens. they had them laid out, they had

the podium set up where he could make remarks ahead of time. you don't have to do them in this ornate staged way, but they do. they want reporters and photoraphers to be there to witness these signingsment and the problem with that system is that sometimes those reporters ask questions even when you don't want them to. and there is now -- we now have good evidence. there's one category of question that basically works like freeze tag on this president. you ask him about this one thing, tag, and he freezes. he forgets what he's doing. and the photo op falls apart. he just left the room. >> thank you very much. >> were you trying to tell the justice department to grant immunity to michael flynn? was that your intention, mr. president, sir? was that your intention, sir?

>> thank you, guys. >> thank you, guys. >> so he didn't sign it. >> he did not sign it. >> the little menu still sitting there on the desk. mike pence is like -- he has to go get them, follow the president out. that happened march 31st. the president was doing a photo op to sign two executive orders front of reporters with stakeholders standing nearby, but he got asked about michael flynn, and that apparently was in. forget it, no signing, this thing is over. so mike pence has to go back and get the executive orders off the desk and brings them to the

other room where presumably the president signed them later. they do say he signed those eventually, just not what he was supposed to. that was march 31st. today that same game of freeze tag got played again in the oval office, again at a signing ceremony with an executive orders and little menu and is everything. the less this time he had already signed the things in the menus before somebody said the magic words that froze him like a stone. >> do you have any regrets about michael flynn. >> thank you very much. >> if you want to turn this president to stone, ask him about mike flynn. and this particular game of freeze tag does not just afflict the president. it is also, i think it's the same aflexionor this

congressman, congressman devin nunes. as chair of the intelligence committee investigating the russian attack on the election last year, the intelligence committee under devin nunes held one blockbuster public hearing. and after that first hearing they'd a second one scheduled for the following week, their second public hearing was to include public testimony from sally yates, before trump fired her for refusing to defend his muslim ban in the courts. sally yates was not due to testify before the intelligence committee. she was due to testify about michael flynn. everybody turned to stone. there was very intense interest about what sally united states would say about mike flynn because she appears to have had a key role in the process that cull led to him being fired as national security adviser.

but the sequence of events that led up to that firing, particularly with regard to sally yates' involvement in it, that sequence of events really is insane. and still totally unexplained, and she is one of the only people who might be able to shed some light on it other than the top people in the white house. in the transition after the election but before the inauguration, we now know that mike flynn had fairly extensive squugsz russian officials including repeated discussions with them about u.s. sanctions on russia. russia obviously wants sanctions against them lifted, some of the sarngsz are on them because of the attack on our elections. this is a sensitive thing for mike flynn to be talking to them about. that said, he denied that he was having those conversations at that time. and the white house was distinct on his behalf as well. >> what i can confirm having

spoken to him about it is that those conversations that happened to occur around the time that the united states took action to expel diplomats had nothing whatsoever to do with those sanctions. >> but that still leafs open the possibility there might have been over conversations about the sanctions -- >> i don't believe there were more conversations. i can confirm those elements were not part of that discussion. >> so there's been one call. i talked to general flynn about this again last night. one call talked about about four subjects. one was the loss of life that occurred in the plane crash that took their military choir. two was christmas and holiday greetings. three was to talk about a conference in syria on isis and four was to set up -- to talk about after the inauguration setting up a call between putin

and the president. >> white house spokesman. that was january 23rd, his first briefing. two days after the wearing? in, he's saying we talked to flynn about this. he was not talking to them act about sanctions. definitely nothing about sanctions. that was the 23rd. the next day, the 24th, we now know general flynn was interviewed by the fbi on this matter. he reportedly told the fbi what had by now become the administration's public line on this subject, nope, definitely no discussions with the russians about sanctions, didn't talk to them about that at all. that krs happened on japan 24th. incidentally it is a crime to lie to the fbi. if general flynn denied he had conversations with russian officials about sanctions what

he had in fact had those conversations, that would be a big deal. and he did tell them that he didn't talk to the russians about sanctions. if he tried to sell that to the fub, the fbi would have known at that time that that was not true. because we know general flynn's actual conversations with with the russians were stoudge fbi surveillance. so they know what he was talking to them about. two days after he had his interview with the fbi where he reportedly lied to them about his contacts with the russians and what he was saying it's russians, two days after that, this remarkable decision was made, the apex of the drama scene in the movie where sally yates faced with this information about the national security adviser and what he's saying, and what she knows has actually happened thanks-to-to that fbi surveillance, she makes

this remarkable decision to go directly to the white house to warn them about their national security adviser. the acting attorney general warned the trump white house that the national security adviser was potentially vulnerable to russian blackmail because he had been lying about his contacts with the russian government, and the justice department and the fbi knew about it. they had proof. so she brings that bombshell to the white house. this is flashing red light. national security adviser to the president might be getting black mailed by the russians because he's having contacts with the russians that he's lying about. has anything like that ever happened before in the history of the american presidency? not that we know of. huge deal. how does the white house respond? they do not respond. at least as far as we can tell, no visible response. that flashinged warning comes from theepartment of justice

six days after the naurks january 26th. there is no visible response at all on the 26th or the 27th. on the 28th we see flynn in the oval office. that's him sitting in on the disastrous call where president trump hung up on the prooirmgs of australia. there he was staring at the back of donald trump's head while he held one of his signing photo ops. this was before the mere mention of michael flynn's name. three days after that he's there next to jared. into february, flynn is still there in the white house briefing room putting iran on notice. remember that? what did that mean anyway? no response. there's mike flynn at the national prayer breakfast. meanwhile, they fire sally yates. they fire the woman who had come up from the justice department to the white house to warn them

directly about their national security adviser and him lying about his ties to a foreign government and the prospect that the russians might be black mailing him. they fire her. they keep flynn. they keep him on and on and on and on. meanwhile, luckily, journalism continues on this subject. on february 8th, "washington post" asks flynn directly if he had discussed sanctions with the russian government. quote, asked in an interview if he had ever done so, he twice said "no." that's the 8th of february. then the the next day, he issues a new statement saying, when flynn said "no" yesterday, what he actually meant was more like he can't remember. might have done, might not have done. by february 10th that story

blowing up in the "washington post" is getting not only serious about flynn but it's starting to get seriously weird that the white house hasn't commented on it. >> what do you make of reports that general flynn had conversations with the russians before you were sworn in. >> i don't know about it. what report is that? >> i'll look at that. >> i haven't seen thoochlt president says, i haven't seen that. i haven't heard anything about this. flynn? contacts with the russians about sanctions? really? says he's never heard of this before. that was february 10th. the president has been informed about this on january 26th. and the act attorney general came to the white house and told them about this.

there's trump more than two weeks later professing total ignorance? what's this? finally the trip from sally yates to the justice department back up to the white house with that blistering warning. they're final able to report that meeting happened. the whole thing gets so business zarks ultimately michael flynn resigns. whatever you think about michael flynn, the behave of the house is very strange. the vice president lied on tv. the white house spokesman lied in the briefing room. all according to them because of untrue information that was conveyed to them personally by mike flynn. the nature of those lies was such the acting attorney generally thought national security adviser mighte susceptible to blackmail. informed of that though, the white house just, eh, sat on it

for a few weeks. so you can imagine the questions, right? sally yates, ms.iates, thank you for being here. do we have this story right? is that really what happened? what can you tell us about what happened? the house intelligence committee gets into that. they have this hearing, a blockbuster hearing where james comey admits, yes, there was an ongoing counterintelligence investigation as to whether or not it koorptd in the russian attack on the united states last year. after that bombshell, we are next going to hear fromiates, the next hearing in a few days is going to be the one that has sally yates on it. she's not going to be talking about the muslim ban, she's going to be talking about michael flynn. and so now, freeze tag, now is devin nunes's time to be a pillar of salt. the day after the comey hearing,

devin nunes apparently decides to pull the rip cord, eject, eject, igd to get out of this thing. famously he pulls this stunt where he goes to the white house, meets with one of his former staffers who's working there now as well as a michael flynn protege who the white house insisted on keeping. he meets with those guys and they provide him with maximizdo maybe. what was clear to everybody at the time was that devin nunes was behaving strangely, that he was explaining things in a way that didn't make sense, that he was clearing trying to create a smoke screen, it was cartoonishly obvious that he was trying to do. first of all, inexmilk blirks despite fact it had no connection to that at all, the

first thing is that the sally yates hearing got canceled. oh, good. that was weeks ago now. sally yates hearing, canceled. they would still like to talk to her but they have not rescheduled. the other material consequence of that devin nunes stunt is he got kicked off the investigation. when they finally do that sally yates hearing, if they ever do it, devin nunes will not be in the room when she explains what she knows about mike flynn and thousand white house responded when she told them the current sitting national security adviser is susceptible to blackmail by the russians and lying about his contacts with them. who would want to be the trump transition committee member republican chairman of an oversight committee with the details of the mike flynn and the white house story come out?

would you like to be overseeing the committee at that time? so the name mike flynn has this remarkable effect on people. you want to say president freeze want to point he forgets what he's doing? ask him a question about mike flynn. you want to say devin nunes freak out and take himself taken off the board? well, get him closer to the real story about mike flynn. but that intelligence committee investigation is not only board on which that game is being played, and that story is next. t 10 hours under fire. you know, everybody was very focused, looking out the window, scanning for car bombs. being outside of a vehicle was suicide. to say that i wasn't operating at a constant level of fear, i'd be lyi to yo if i didn't believe in the importance of journalism, i wouldn't be able to continue to do this work. ( ♪ ) i'm bryan denton, photojournalist for the new york times.

at angie's list, we believe i'm bryan denton, there are certain things you can count on, like what goes down doesn't always come back up. ♪ [ toilet flushes ] ♪ so when you need a plumber, you can count on us to help you find the right person for the job. discover all the ways we can help at angie's list. because your home is where our heart is. ito treat your toughy nasal allergies... ...listen up. unlike pills that don't treat congestion, clarispray covers 100 percent of your nasal allergy symptoms. clarispray. from the makers of claritin.

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let's[ whimpers ] dog. find ping-pong. okay, let's go. find your awesome with the xfinity x1 voice remote. that's amazing! approximate. taking money from russia is

not the same thing as colluding with the russian government in an attack on the united states. taking money before it russia or from any foreign government is something you legally cannot do without specific permission to do it if you are a retired senior military officer of the united states armed forces. on that very specific, almost technical matter, the house oversight committee decided it would get itself involved in that, in just that little part of the trump/russia investigation. they decided that's it. they'll take this little piece of the mike flynn part of it, don't want to get too much into this. if you are republican oversight committee chairman jason chaffetz you want to seem like you're doing something. you like to find a little piece

of it that you can bite off and chew and swallow easily so it looked like you had done your part. turns out this little piece of it ended up up being not that easy to chew and it has not gone down well. they started an exchange of information and requests for documentation with various pentagon agencies about this very specific issue, former national security adviser mike flynn having taken money from foreign governments. from that exchange of letters and asrequests, we know it's gog to get bigger. he never asked for permission to take money from russia or money from turkey which he now admits he did after registering are there active-- retro actively.

he did not ask for that permission to take the foreign money. it's just definitely and clearly something he needed to do and that he knew he needed to do. and we have learned that the defense department inspector general opened a new investigation into mike flynn on these matters. poor jason chaffetz. but looking into this turned up tough stuff about mike flynn but turned up way bigger political problems for chafrts. now this guy, this ambitious committee chairman who used to love being on television. created himself as a hard, tough super tenacious oversight guy, now having built up that reputation, now he's having moments like this in his interviews. >> do you think michael flynn broke the law.

>> it doesn't appear as of he complied with the law. >> breaking the law is such harsh language. the law is still there for others to comply with, so it's not broken. in addition to what they have turned up about mike flynn, apparently his income from foreign governments, the chaffetz committee stumbled onto much, much bigger problem, a particularly big problem if you're a republican congressman doing this oversight. it's about the white house. i will interject for a second to say i believe the white house made a tactical error here in handling this scandal. i don't think they are tactically did you mean and i'm not sure why they made this error. maybe i'll be proven wrong wrong. but if you study the history of american political scandal, when you have to stone wall, you have to build the stone wall piece by

piece. that's way too left arming to people who are watching you supposedly try to be reasonable. you're supposed to start looking accommodating, mature, reasonable ability these matures, and then you work up to your stone wall so you don't set up the alarm bells at the beginning. when it comes to mike flynn, turin to stone, they would rest of to hand over any documents whatsoever about him. they was national security adviser. he was fired because of lying about his foreign government contacts. he retroactively registered as a foreign agent after they fired him. the white house was explicitly warned about him. this is not someone who they can brush off questions about and say it's inappropriate that anybody would be asking about

him or they would have to answer to anything related to this particular hire. but the white house has decided to provide zero documents on flynn. which now makes the white house as much the subject of this part of this scandal as flynn himself. >> this week the white house refused, absolutely refused to produce even a single document, not a single document in response to the bipartisan document requests i sent with our republican chairman. i wched sean spicer make all kinds of excuses about how hard it would be to comply with our request. come on, man. look, general flynn served in his position for 24 days. so that excuse from the white house will not fly.

i did not understand why the white house is covering up for michael flynn. i don't get it. after the president fired him for lying. so the president fired him for lying about a communications with the russian ambassador. backwards to help us. it doesn't make sense, and i tell you, makes the american people think the white house has something to hide. there's obviously a paper trail, ladies and gentlemen, that is white house doesn't want our committee to follow. but let it be known that we will follow it. we will follow it with everything we've got. >> elijah cummings.

people sent the lotteries their own chairman, jason chaffetz. they are demanding that he not let this slide from the white house. he has always seen himself such a tenacious oversight chairman. the democrats on the committee are now demanding of their own chairman that he at least not taking that lying down, that he at least request a meeting with the white house to press for those documents which they are refuse to hand over. and jason chaffetz faced with this kind of pressure, the mike flynn and the white house stone wall part of the story no jason chaffetz has decided to poof himself out of this story. bye. he announced held not run for re-election. since this flynn stuff blew up and specifically since the white house announced that it wouldn't produce a single document remitted to mike flynn, chaffetz has since discovered, ow a

preexisting condition. i got to go right now. he hurt his food a long time ago. and now he has announced on instagram as of late last night he's leaving congress immediately. he's definitely leaving the oversight committee because he has to go take care of his foot urgently. and we wish him a speedy recovery. the mike flynn story is one piece, only one piece of what we don't understand about this white house, and its connections to russian officials and any potential connections between the trump campaign and that russian attack mike flynn story is only one part of it. one thing we know to be true is anytime any high-ranking republican with access to classified information gets close to the mike flynn part of this story gets asked pointed questions is potentially going to sit there in a committee room while more is discussed about the mike flynn part of the story, they freeze like a deer

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. i'm interrupting what i was planning on doing at this point in the show because i want to bring you this as breaking news tonight. i think this is important. this should not have been a news-making event. the president didn't oval office interview ahead of his hundred's day in office with reuters

tonight. they just went to air with what he said. this is the sort of thing that may have international consequences. some of it is an dine. it would be weird for anybody else to an dine when when it comes to trump. it's about north korea. asked about whether he considered kim jong-un to be rational, he was operating from the assumption that he is rational. this is the quote from the president. quote,, he's 27 years old, his father dies, took over a regime. say what you want but that's not easy especially at that age. i'm just saying that's a hard thing to do as to whether or not he's rational, i have no opinion. i hope he's rational. first remarks on whether or not the leer of north korea is sane. but then there's this. apparently reuters asked him about the prospect of being military conflict between the united states and north korea. president said, we'd love to solve thinks diplomatically.

it's very difficult and then he said this. this is the sort of thing that american presidents don't say. this is why i'm interrupting our broadcast to bring you this because this has the potential toen resident nate in a bad way. we could end up having a major, major conflict the north korea, absolutely. north korea's whole public stance is they're trying to defend themselves from military best of my knowledge ransom from intending attack from the united states. this is the threat of an imminent military attack by the united states. i have no idea if that's how the president meant it but this is not the remark a u.s. president says about a sensitive situation like this. again, quote, we could end up having a major, major conflict with north korea, absolutely. just spoken tonight, reuters just posted it. we'll be right back.

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tais really quite simple.est it comes in the mail, you pull out the tube and you spit in it, which is something southern girls are taught you're not supposed to do. you seal it and send it back and then you wait for your results. it's that simple. after a few days of blistering reports about the senate intelligence investigation into the trump/russia story thus far filing no document requests and issuing no subpoenas and interviewing no key witnesses, after days of the senate intelligence committee getting hammered by those reports, now new news on that front. the senate intelligence committee has fired hooird for its investigation a former top

intelligence lawyer with 13 years' experience at the national security agency. excellent. her name is april f.dos. she was reportedly hired by mark warner. i should tell you the republicans on the committee including the republican chairman so far they say they see no need for any more bodies working on this thing. >> to date we feel like we've good sufficient amount of bodies to do the job. but if we find out that additional ones are needed, we'll add them. >> we're fine, we're fine, relax. but the democratic side of the committee hired this new senior council. judging by her public record she seems like somebody who kind of takes no guff basing that on her

public comments. in january she told reports that a proposal to search your browser history and search your phone contact list, if you wanted to enter the united states, she said that proposal, doing that to everybody who comes into the u.s. would do more harm than good. there's no fashion in which all the information for every person who wants to enter on a visa has nothing to do with. it would be debt mental to intelligence committees because she would get so much garbage that has nothing to do with anything. well, all right then. she's going to be special council to the trump/russia investigation. the only other thing i can tell you about her according to a highly confidential source known as linkedin, her middle initial "f" stands for falcon.

april falcon doss joins on may 1st. it definitely makes me want to name somebody falcon from here on out. now you know what i knowb. i will let you know if we learn anymore. meanwhile the investigation in congress continues to uncover more and strange and off plum details. we learned today from documents turned up by the house oversight committee that mike flynn got the goth warned by the pentagon about taking payments from foreign governments. he went ahead without getting the permission. and now as we learn more about what happened with flynn, and we wonder more about how he ended up as national security adviser in the first place, they will provide zero documents about him to the oversight committee that's asking for them. not a single piece of paper. now we're on to more serious

line of questioning about this. w40us may just be embarrassed they didn't do a very good job vetting someone for such a high-level and sensitive national security position given all these red flags we now know about him. that's the best-case scenario. they're embarrassed and they don't want to show what they knew. the worse case is they did know about the contacts with the russians and him lying about the contacts with the russians and the foreign payments. they knew all that and that's part of what they knew they were getting and that's part of what they wanted. that's, of course, the worse case scenario. it's hard for me to continued implications if that's true. mr. watson, i appreciate your time today.

>> thanks for having me. >> let me ask you about the mike flynn story big picture. you did a lot to educate people about how russia approached their attack on e u.s. leeks, what they're trying to get, how they think strategically o these matters. how does the flynn part of this story make sense in terms of the overall russia situation? >> well, the one issue that they could come to terms with and really match would you please flynn on was finding what flynn would call radical islam. but also throughout the sbrier fight globally. where hez downfall comes from is his vengeance, history reindividual against the obama administration which let him go against his l. he took on with such zeal that he accepted money from a state propaganda outlet

from russia. it's bizarre he wouldn't take advice from the lawyers at the dod. even filing the form saying you've taken money from a foreign government is admitting you were trying to deceive before. it's puzzling why the guy in charge of counterintelligence for the entire military at one time, a briefing that you get every day or year, excuse me, that you're in the military would do something like partner up or cozy with them. >> in terms of the counterintelligence aspect of this, from a counterintelligence perspective, the reporting that we've got, and it won't be all borne out until tend, what appears to be the case about mike flynn is him not telling the truth about the number of contacts he had with the russian government, him not telling the truth about what he was talking russian officials about, him not

requesting permission to take money from foreign sources, him not disclosing foreign source income that he took from at least four different sources, three of which were russians. he appears to have been deceitful about those things. how does that factor into the counterintelligence angle? >> you're looking for two things. lies of comission which is committing the lie, you're deliberate i deceiving and lies of omission, things that are left out mysteriously. i know when i was in the military general flynn was a respected person. but it seems whenever he had his downfoul at the dirksa, he started to have these judgment errors.

was he doing russia's bidding for them or was he so vengeful the obama administration let him go? >> the department of defense inspector general says that that office opened up a new investigation into general flynn. the oversight committee chairman appears to being driving it trying to recoup money from him, the money he accepted without having permission to take it from foreign sources. there is this other element that won't be about repercussions for him. it's about the questions the white house ha to answer. what is your take, clint, on the e house saying that they have no documentation about mike flynn's time as the national security adviser? nothing about his vetting or about his hiring and nothing about his firing that they are willing to turn over to congress. >> i don't think it's so much about lying things.

i think it's about incompetence. they partnered with people to win a campaign and they didn't know who they were getting into bed with. you use useful idiots and agents of influence. trump is a businessman and he takes on partners and lets them go bailiff on success and failure. when he needs them, here's their birgs champion, and then when he doesn't need them, he says he doesn't know them anymore. when you see that, that makes them vulnerable. carter paige, general flynn, to shape the president's view. this is what's most dangerous about it is the white house probably isn't aware, probably didn't do any vetting. and the reason there's no documents to turn over is they

never had documents o begin with. >> and that lack of vetting yourself is essentially creating a keyhole that the russiansan insert a key into and do whatever they want. that opens a line of attack for them. >> i can't imagine any other republican candidate going into the election last year that would see flynn appear at an rt event and speak would bring them inside their administration. it's hard to fathom. >> thank you for helping us understand this. you have a value perspective on this. thank you. >> thanks, rachel. >> we have a story with cheerleaders and baton twirlers and tens of millions of unaccounted for dollars. that's next. invious. . . . . . . . st. a. y. . wi. th. . . . . . . .

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okay. we have a follow-up tonight on a story that we have been covering that you guys, our viewers, have had a huge response to. it's funny. but doing the show for a few years now, you never know what is like -- it's like tap on somebody's knee, that little triangle-shaped hammer at the doctor's office and your legos like this. every once in a while we do a story and we don't see it coming, but we get a ton of feedback from you guys. this is one of those stories. we have had a ton of feedback, questions about it. we have had requests for supplemental information about this story. now tonight i do have some follow-up news to share with you on this. it's about the inexplicably

oversubscribed fundraising for this inauguration this year. when newly elected barack obama brought in $53 million to pay for his inaugural in 2009, that was unprecedented fundraising. it blew everybody away. but then you know what? that 2009 obama inaugural, it did turn out to be the biggest inauguration ever, by a lot. the biggest inauguration. actually, the biggest washington, d.c. live event of any kind ever. january 2009. then eight years later, though, a numerically strange thing happened. because the next president's inauguration, the one that happened this year in january, it was comparatively small. and i do not say that to be mean. but just as a matter of fact, as a numerical matter, as inaugurations go, the inauguration this year was not all that well attended. and that's important.

because to pay for that smaller relatively modest not particularly star-studded inauguration that happened this year, the trump folks nevertheless raised more than double the amount of money that obama had raised eight years ago for his gigantic inauguration in 2009. obama raised $53 million for the biggest inauguration ever. $53 million. the trump folks raised $107 million for their small inauguration. why did they do that? still not sure. but we are starting to get some interesting pieces of the answer. last week, the trump inaugural committee filed its donor data for the inaugural with the fec. it was over 500 pages long with over 1500 individual donors listed. and we reported here after that filing came out that one of the donors, a man who donated over $600,000 to the inaugural committee, his son ended up getting a private meeting with members of the national security council so he could pitch them

on his ten-point plan, his ten-point foreign policy plan for changing our relations with venezuela and dropping u.s. sanctions on that untry. and that of course raised the qution of how he got that meeting, right? whether the administration was effectively selling access to the national security council. and actually, he got a second meeting with steve bannon too, selling foreign policy audiences with the president's top staffers. the white house selling those things to their donors? in exchange for donations to the inaugural committee, which is mysteriously enormous? that's as far as we were able to report the story thus far. but since then other people have been doing their own reporting on it, including through something that started at "the huffington post" called the citizen sleuth project. reporter christina wilkie has taken the lead of what is effectively a crowd sourcing effort. and everyone pitch in and google these guys effort to trace all the donors.

to trace the names, to trace the llc names, to trace all of the inexplicable initials associated with those 1500 inauguration donors, to trace them and their donations. and what they have found through their citizens sleuth effort basically is already a farce and a mess. i mean, this is a legal document. this is an fec filing. this is supposed to be for real. but the folks at ""huffington post" cosmically bigger roars. trump folks attributed a $25,000 donation to the inauguration to katherine johnson. does that name ring a bell? katherine johnson. did you see the movie "hidden figures"? katherine johnson played by tragedy p. henson in "hidden figures". a $25,000 donor to the trump inauguration. and if katherine johnson is sort

of a generic name, maybe they meant a different katherine johns. th listed the address as nasa headarters, just tke it really clear. katherine johnson of nasa did not make a $25,000 donation to trump's donation. but nevertheless, it's in the filing. the trump inaugural committee has now apologized for that. but they're also now saying that they're going to go back and clean up the filing altogether. they have now told "huffington post," quote, we plan to amend our report to le rest fleck any changes that we have become aware of, including many of those donor records or technical glitches that we have recently become aware of. so that's something. but the larger question still stands. where is all the money? what's this giant fund for? they did not spend all the money on this inaugural. if it cost $50 million to put on the largest and most attended and most elaborate inauguration in history in 2009, it did not cost double that to put on this

inauguration with the middle school cheerleaders and the baton twirlers and the marching bands and nobody in the parade stands and three doors down as the biggest headliner. it just didn't. so what did they do with the money? where is the money now? and i'm not teeing up this question because i have some big cable news reveal of an answer to share with you. really, nobody seems to know what happened to those tens of millions of dollars that they collected that went into the trump inaugural committee for the inauguration that could not have been spent on the inauguration. where is that money? all we do know is enough to worry about the likely existence of a large multimillion-dollar unaccounted for slush fund that is attached loosely to the new white house. all we know is enough to keep sticking a pin in that on cable tv news until the white house either comes out and explains this, or congress starts an

investigation. i mean this would typically be the kind of thing that congress would investigate. i am all for citizen sleuth at "the huffington post" looking for this. i'm into the mike.com on the initial reporting on the venezuela ten-point plan. i'm all for us here on msnbc tying these things together ourselves. but even before we knew about the illegal and messy filings here, this is the kind of flashing red light follow the money thing for which once upon a time there would have been an official aggressive investigation. if we lose the expectation that stuff like this gets looked into, we will lose something important about what is decent and expected in our country and what counts as corruption. watch this space. that does it for us tonight. we will see you again tomorrow. now it's time for "the last word" with the great lawrence o'donnell. good evening, lawrence. >> there is no great moment in the history of the modern presidency where something like this would not have already been deeply inve