tv The Rachel Maddow Show MSNBC September 21, 2017 6:00pm-7:00pm PDT
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what cassidy says they will package all that money and hand it to the states. over time that money gets less and less but the mechanism by which you got the money, the federal exchange and a credit on your federal income tax, disappears and so the state-based flexibility they talk about is achieved by robbing money that currently goes to individuals and handing it at a lesser amount to state-based politicians. that's not a good deal for people in the red states. >> senator chris murphy, thank you for your time tonight. >> thanks. >> that is is "all in" for this evening. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. >> good evening, chris. thank you for joining us this hour. his name was josh. he was 28 years old at the time. he was a young-looking 28. he was working in the treasury department and while he had been working in the treasury department, turns out, he was keeping a diary. >> several members of this
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committee have commented on my personal diary and if i might, i'd like to make one brief point about it. i started keeping this diary nearly six years ago. i would write in it fairly infrequently. sometimes two weeks, other times six weeks would go by. i made no effort to check the accuracy because this was nevada intended to be a precise narrative or a verbatim account of what took place. it was more than anything, a way to reflect on events and draw lessons from my personal and professional experiences. >> so there he is. 28 years old. testifying to congress. not because he had done anything particularly suspect or worrying, just turns out congress heard that he had a diary and they decided they wanted to read it. >> mr. sign teiner i want to st with you and the diary you kept. >> senator, as i said in my
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opening statement, i used my diary as reflecting back but to try to draw lessons from my professional experiences. >> now -- yes, would you pull the microphone -- >> i apologize. >> now, do you have a copy there of the diary entries that we're going to focus on today. >> yes, i do. >> all right. do you want to get those in front of you. let me read you the entries. >> then he reads from josh's diary. joshua steiner worked for the treasury secretary at a tender young age and when investigators were looking into the white water scandal of the clinton era when they found young josh at the treasury department had a diary, they not only made him hand it over to congress but summed him to congress to talk to him about it and read him his diary entries during televised hearings and made visual aids
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summarizing and excerpts from joshua steiner's diary and made big plaques explaining what he dear diaried in the winter of 1994 about the long hours he was working in big, bad washington d.c. white water investigation went on forever. joshua steiner was not a bad guy in the investigation and didn't get in any trouble but he did end up under oath as a key witness handing over defending, describing, answering congressional questions about his diary from his time in washington and they raked him over the coals about it. at one point he sat there while a senator screamed at him about quote his feeble lame brained excuses about his diary. so that was during the white water scandal back in 1994. today, axios reported sean spicer from the trump administration also kept kind of
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a diary. at least he kept copious notes in multiple notebooks during his time in the white house. quote, former colleagues of sean spicer tell axios that he filled notebook after notebook during meetings later at the trump campaign and then at the white house. spicer was so well-known for his copious notes that under lings joked about him writing a tell-all. sean documented everything. axios continued quote that surprised some officials of previous white houses who said because of past investigations, they intentionally took as few notes as possible whenever they worked in the west wing. last night "the washington post" and "the new york times" reported that robert mueller special counsel investigation looking into the trump russia issue made 13 different requests for information to the white house. two of the 13 are very specific demands about sean spicer. sean spicer related demands for
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documents reportedly the muller investigation has asked for documents from the white house concerning sean spicer's comments that he made on may 3rd at the white house. which is when the president was apparently gearing up to fire james comey. the muller investigation asked for white house documentation about comments made by sean spicer about the comey firing on may 9th, which was the day that comey was in fact fired by the president. now that we know a lot more about what the special counsel inquiry asked the white house to hand over as part of the investigation, a couple of things are newly clear to us. one is that the muller investigation is definitely not only looking at events that just happened during the campaign but also looking at a lot of things that happened while president trump has been in office as president. and stick a pin in that because that may end up being quite legally important and quite financially important, not just for the president but for a lot of people around him. this new information about the
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muller inquiry made clear there are a lot of people in the white house who should definitely have their own lawyers by now representing them specifically on the russia matter, not least of whom is sean spicer. as far as we know, sean spacer has no lawyer representing him on russia matters, which is remarkable enough before we found out he has copious diaries from his time in the white house. i know sean spicer is now 28-year-old wide-eyed anonymous innocent treasury employee getting chewed up by the senate and winning the sympathy of everybody who watches, but there is an emerging clarity here about who in this white house, who in trump world has a shell. who has a defense? and who's like a turtle pulled out of the shell left to fend for it selself. in that sense and emerging clarity who is being defended and who is not, that sort of reflects the character.
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that window into the character of this part of trump administration, how they handle this gigantic scandal and defense against it is starting to parallel and look like how this administration conducts itself in other matters. right? so i mean, how they are handling this administration scandal is starting to kind of echo how they are behaving as an administration like the basic stuff about staffing up the federal fwovt agovernment and ie business. take a snapshot what we know from current headlines and news in terms of how they are behaving as an administration and handling themselves as a federal government. today poll litico.com they hire high tech positions and the appointees are a long-haul trucker, country club cabina and the owner of a scented candle company. american over sight filed a
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freedom of information about request to figure who was getting the jobs for which you're supposed to have at least a college degree and for some you have to have a masters but instead installed in the jobs a kid who was an intern at the rnc. literally that person's last job. not like back in the day i started off as a teenager as an rnc intern but went on to be a well-qualified agriculture expert getting a high-level job at the usda. no, direct from rnc intern to high-level usda senior job. i mean, this is what political scientists call the spoil system. they appear to just be randomly handing out high level specific federal jobs supposed to go to experts but instead just giving them out to anybody that volunteered on the campaign or their sister. like the person in charge of energy efficiency and renewable energy at the energy department is a guy who most recently
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worked in tire sales. retail tire sales. the assistant to the secretary of the treasury most recently worked as a production assistant at something called that's entertainment. i don't know what that's entertainment does but doubt it has anything to do with treasury department does. the buying and selling stocks while taking action in congress to affect the price of those stocks. he nevertheless was confirmed in the republican senate and health and human services secretary tom price is making news for the hundreds of thousands of dollars he has spent in his brief time in office. inexplicably flying around in private charter jets. at the epa, trump's appointee has diverted enforcement agents from all over the country to stop doing their work and instead provide him a 24 hour a day, seven day a week security
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detail and scott pruett apairs to be using his travel budget to fly back and forth every five minutes because he appears to be laying the groundwork for a run for governor. you and i would be subsidizing that run for governor every time he takes government transportation to go back home. then there is the treasury secretary. with that's entertainment. the treasury secretary famously requested a military plane to take him and his bride on their european honeymoon vacation. they didn't end up using a military plane for that purpose but did -- he did take his new wife with him on a big government jet to fort knox. where they quote inspected the gold. [ laughter ] >> they then enjoyed watching the eclipse since that trip happens to have provided then a prime viewing opportunity to see the eclipse in totality from fort knox. this is where the president started describing his private beach club as the southern white house. and then he doubled the rates
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for people to join that golf club. that beach club. donald trump and donald trump junior are both having cap pain donors pay their legal fees both having the republican national committee cover their legal fees. why not? you know who is not having campaign donors pay legal fees? paul manafort for example. nor mike flynn. mike flynn's family turned to square space to get mike flynn financial assistance to pay his seven lawyers on the russia matter. sean spicer doesn't have a lawyer for the raush sussia matt clear he needs one. they have hired russia lawyers. who is going to pay for them? why is the trump family able to use campaign funds to pay for
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their lawyers? but none of these other people that worked at the trump white house are on the campaign. it's crazy enough the white house counsel had to hire his own lawyer to defend himself in the russia matter but don mceldermcgann needs it. he is particularly going to need good legal advice if the over heard conversation at a steak house last week between two of the president's lawyers, if that bears out and white house counsel don mcgann is hiding documents in a safe to keep rob burt muller from getting them. he is going to have a bear of a legal fight on his hands if he tries to resist handing over documents or giving testimony to the muller inquiry on the basis of the fact he's white house counsel and shouldn't have to talk. that the an argument you could definitely litigate but he's not likely to win it. and nobody you would know would like to fund a legal fight like that because it will go to the
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mattresses. and how about old mike pence? mike pence the vice president has retained a very good, very expensive d.c. lawyer. it clear that mike pence needs one. he has made multiple false public statements about many of the key hat matters that appear be under investigation including the firing of james comey and resignation of mike flynn. when vice president mike pence took the unusual step of setting up his political action committee very early, it was initially floated he could use the pact to raise money for his own legal defense, for his own legal fees. team pence apparently changed their minds about that once they started getting press inquiries and say pence's pact will not pay for his legal fees but who will? mike pence isn't a rich guy. he doesn't have deep pockets. he doesn't have like trump family deep pockets for sure.
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put yourself in mike pence's shoes for a second. how does it make sense if you're mike pence that the rnc and the campaign to reelect the president, right? those two entities are paying the legal fees for the trump family. but they are not paying the legal fees for you. mike pence next week is going to be doing a fundraiser in milwaukee in which he will be raising a lot of money for the campaign to reelect the president. he will be raising money used to pay for donald trump junior's legal fees. but not his own. his own, that t's his problem. this scandal and any potential prosecutions that derive from it may eventually boil down to very personal decisions about how much they are going to try to sacrifice. how much they are going to sacrifice to keep the heat off this president. i mean, if the white house strategy is to try to get through this by the president
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having campaign donors and regular people pay his and his family's legal fees while they pay nothing but everybody else is expected to get personally bankrupted by those legal fees? and you're counting on all those people not rolling on you? that seems like -- that -- that seems like a reason to go through and start dotting the is and crossing the ts in dear old diary because you will be talking about it soon. i'll just raise one last point here given the general cashing in nature of the administration and how they behave not just about the scandal but in general. we started off this week with some great reporting from the associated press on the mysteriously large amount of money raised but not apparently spent on donald trump's presidential inauguration. as we talked about before, the picture on the left side of your screen is in fact the biggest inauguration celebration we've ever had in this country when barack obama was inaugurated for the first time in 2009.
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the picture on the right side is the comparatively much smaller inauguration for donald trump. when the obama inauguration happened in 2009, they blew everybody's mind with the fact they raised $50 million to pay for that inauguration. but it turns out they needed to. it turned out being the biggest ever and that's how much it cost. this year donald trump's inauguration was a fraction of that size with a fraction of the events organized by the inaugural l committee but raised more than double the amount raised for the obama inauguration in 2009. they raised $107 million for the trump inauguration. including unlimited corporate donations. 107 million dollars. what happened to that money? we've been asking this sort of since very soon after the inauguration. administration said any leftover money would be given to charity. but as the associate the press documented this week, we're a long ways since the inauguration and so far no money is handed
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over to charity. the inaugural l cocommittee sai there is a third party audit of the funds and turns out everything is fine, everything is present and accounted for but nobody seems to actually be able to produce this audit and nobody seems to know anything about this audit including who supposedly did it. nor has anybody turned up any evidence that audit actually took place. part of the public accounting, they said this concert took up almost a quarter of the money they raised for the entire inauguration. that concert they held ahead of the inauguration was a $25 million concert for reference at the obama inauguration in 2009, they held a concert that featured pretty much everybody you heard of in music. it seated 10,000 people and turned out hundreds of thousands
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of people more to witness it. it was produced as such high quality, hbo bought the broadcast rights from the concert and that one cost $5 million. so how did trump's baton twirling cost five times as much or maybe it did not. maybe they just need something to say about where all that money went. just given the way this administration is behaving around money and their entitlement to public resources, if there is a giant tens of millions of dollars strong slush fund sloshing around inside this administration left over from the inauguration, couldn't that be used to pay the legal fees of the various people in trump world? honestly many of them multi
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million dollar. people in the administration. first step of the administration. it could be we asked the money left oever and russia investigation and for anyone family. really be used for that. the committee on that, the answer is, we have no comment. lots going on tonight including a newly aggressive effort by congress to apparently try to slow down the russia inquiry. we got the latest from puerto
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>> it was ten years ago almost exactly when a u.s. senator from idaho anti guy gay got arresteda bathroom for lewd conduct with a dude. an undercover cop testified that the senator had basically solicited him for sex underneath the bathroom stall divider in an airport bathroom in minneapolis st. paul. senator larry craig of idaho, senator in question defended himself by saying he was not gay, never have been, not even for one minute.
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he explained that he simply had a wide stance when he went to the bathroom. senator craig ended up pleading guilty and paying a fine and ultimately resigning from the senate. but the scandal ended with one final indignity for him and took a long time to spin out. it didn't get resolved until 2014 three years ago ordered to pay the u.s. treasury almost a quarter of a million dollars because two defend himself in this embarrassing saga, he used his campaign funds. whatever larry craig was doing in the bathroom stall in the airport, it was a lot of things but not running for reelection. the woes campaign related in the slightest. you can't use legal expenses. you can't use campaign tunfundi for legal expenses that arise from the bathroom.
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larry craig fought that to the bitter end in court and lost because that's a clear line about what you can spend campaign funds on. here is my question. donald trump junior was not a member of the campaign. he's a member of the donald trump family, also he's named donald trump but never had an official role on the campaign. how is the reelection campaign paying donald trump junior's legal fees related to the russia scandal? i mean, you could make the case the russia scandal is campaign related. i understand that it may very well be that colluding with russia was part of how they campaigned for president and how they got elected. i can concede this might be a campaign related matter but donald trump junior was not on the campaign. doesn't that matter in terms of whether or not his legal fees can legally be paid from the campaign to reelect the president? joining us now is somebody who understands what matters, craig
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ho holeman is a lobbyist. thank you for joining us. appreciate you being here tonight. >> glad to be here, rachel. >> rob burt muert mueller is no looking at actions during the campaign but actions since he's been in office, since he's been president. is that a relevant distinction in terms of who can legally pay for the president's legal fees? >> yes, it is. when it comes to using campaign funds to pay for legal fees, they can be used not just for campaign purposes but also for official duties as a government officer. >> okay. >> so the course of the russian investigation involves both the campaign and perhaps some sort of scandal or corruption involving governmental dutys. so it is right smack dab in the middle there where donald trump can use campaign funds to help pay for his legal defense on that. >> what about donald trump
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junior? we have reporting that donald trump junior has had his legal fees paid for by both the republican national committee and by the president's election campaign. i asked about him in particular not just to single him out but as far as we can tell, he had no official role on the campaign. does that mean that there is legal issue or may be a legal issue with the campaign paying for his lawyers? >> there may indeed be a legal issue. you're very right to keep asking this question. you know, if donald junior was not involved in the campaign, which he isn't, it's possible that he -- that, you know, as a government advisor to donald trump they were somehow discussing the russian scandal and the russian probe. if that's the case, then the campaign funds could be used, but, you know, if that is the case, it's almost an admission that this whole russian probe is
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hitting deep into the hearts of the trump administration. you know, when it comes to using campaign funds, which larry craig learned for legal defense funds, it's really important that the candidate or the office holder first request clearance from the federal election commission for the use of those campaign funds. the fa krrc and if they determi donald junior wasn't really involved in the whole affair when it comes to the campaign, then this would have been an illegal use of campaign funds and the trump campaign as well as the rnc may well face legal ramifications for that. >> craig, let me ask you about one last piece of this and i, you know, i'm only interested in this because i'm suspicious of and have questions about an
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unaccounted for giant pile of money inside this administration that appears to be left over from the inauguration. we got no commented by the inaugural committee when asked is it possible raised from private donors could be used for any campaign or administration official. legally do you think that's possible they could do that? >> yes, they can do that. you're talking about a whole different entity. the inaugural committee is not consider adam pa ed ed a none nd no rules how an inaugural l commcom spending that money. they don't have to disclose what they are doing, which is what you've been talking about here. the only rule when it comes to funds is that the source of funds has to be disclosed after the inauguration. how that money gets spent is anyone's guess, no rules, no regulations.
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it can quite frankly go into the pocket of donald trump if he chose to do so. >> wow. >> yes. [ laughter ] >> it's a wild west area. >> that is -- that's -- i did not understand that before talking to you about that tonight. thank you for helping us understand that. now i have lots more questions about that money, its size and where it's headed. craig holman, mind blowing. thank you very much. appreciate you being here. >> take care. i have to go think about that for a second. leave me alone. i'll be right back. it's like nothing you've seen.
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right now in mexico city, an imp vi imp viced army are under taking a heroic task trying to find anybody that might be alive in the rubble. it's been more than 55 hours since the 7 .1 quake collapsed dozens of buildings in that ma -- ma. this school is made of concrete, that's a blessing and curse. big chunks of concrete could survive and may have created air pockets and on the other hand, no small task to cut through giant slabs of concrete when you're trying to avoid a secondary collapse at the site of the collapse, rescue teams were lowering microphones and
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lowering motion senators into the rubble to try to find if any kids were still trapped inside. but then late today officials announced all the children from that school have been accounted for now. either because they got out or because they are now known to have died. just an incredible scene at and around that school for the last two and a half days now. experts say after collapses like this, one of the most immediate dangers is dehydration. human beings can only push it so long not to last, what, maybe four days without water where now nearly three days in in terms of this crisis. the u.s. joined in the effort by sending one of its disaster assistance response teams. another one of those highly trained teams is deployed to the caribbean to help with the recovery effort there. 3.5 million americans are in pitch darkness tonight for a second night across puerto rico. flashlights and generators are precious commodities.rico's pow.
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could take half a year to six months to get the power grid up and running. across san juan today, residents stood in line for hours to try to get gas to power generators. hurricane maria moved on and flash floods today. cell phone service very, very and airport in san genre opened and flights which at least need supplies to get in. the dominican republic has 10.6 million people and very dangerous storm surge. right now bahamas.
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18 people across the caribbean including one in puerto rico with a small number given the amount of physical damage done. tonight we are thinking of the millions of people in puerto rico and the rescue teams working throughout the night in mexico city and people still looking at that storm bearing down on them. we'll be right back. americans,
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tonight the republican chairman of the judiciary wrote to the fbi telling them they need to report to congress about quote whether the fbi ever provided the campaign with a defensive briefing or warning regarding attempts to infiltrate the campaign people connected with or compromised by russian intelligence. the letter says quote such br f briefers are a toll the fbi uses to thwort to compromise citizens. such a briefing allows innocent organizations and individuals to take defensive action to protect themselves. what senator grassly is insen waiting, if they didn't warn about russian influence, russians trying to infiltrate what they are doing, maybe it's the fbi's fault. maybe the fbi didn't do its job.
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so this letter has just gone out tonight but i think it fair to see this as just the latest in a series of senator grassly's attempts to go after the fbi as if they are the real bad actor or suspect. senator demanded the fbi hand overall its fisa warrants, the surveillance warrants and all the requests for fisa warrants, all they issued in the investigation, just hand over the warrants and your on going investigation so the committee could check out much of the investigation was based on the trump russia dossier created by the former agent. this summer the senator spent considerable energy trying to discredit and criticize the acting head of the fbi at the time andrew mccabe who is a potentially corroborating witness for james comey and any obstruction of justice inquiry into the president firing james comey. he's one of the fbi officials
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who comey says he told about the president's demands about the russia investigation at the time that behavior happened before comey was fired. but here is one thing chuck glassily is doing appears to be to try to target and i have real questions how this will play out. senator grassly has very aggressively gone after the obstruction of justice issue. not just andrew mccabe as acting fbi director but two other senior fbi officials, two other potentially corroborating witnesses for why the president fired james comey. these are two more of the senior fbi officials who james comey says he told about the president's behavior while it happened before the president fired him. grassly and his committee have been asking the two senior fbi officials to come in for an interview about comey's firing but earlier this month, the
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justice department turned down the requests and when they did that, they explained why and said sending those fbi officials to testify with the senate would interfere with a matter that was being investigated by robert mueller in the special counsel's office. that was news worthy for us at the time because that confirmed basically for sure that the special counsel robert mueller investigation is looking into obstruction of justice by the president and the firing of james comey since that's what those two fbi officials were reportedly a witness to. i mean, that's who these two witnesses from the fbi are. these guys are people who comey confided in at the time about the president's inappropriate behavior. so that is a big deal. if muller is looking into that and it would interfere with that for them to testify anywhere else. okay. so that's what grassly is doing. yesterday we got word that even though the justice department has said, which really means robert mueller said the come
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hitty canhit -- committee can't interview, despite that, chuck grassly responded that he's going to subpoena those guys anyway. which means we can find our severals shelves in a situation where the special counsel is saying no, you can't talk to these guys. who wins in a fight like that? and what is grassly up to with doing this? joining us now is ron white, assistant former attorney general under president obama and before that chief counsel to the judiciary committee and dean of the university of baltimore school of law. dean, thank you for your time tonight. i really appreciate being here. >> thanks very much for inviting me. >> i don't understand who wins in a fight like this. if the senate judiciary committee sends subpoenas that to the special counsel says that it would interfere with the investigation and --
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>> it should be the prosecuting people, the american people should win and see this investigation carried out in the manner free of political interference and so while congress does have legitimate role in overseeing the operations of the department and making sure that taxpayer money is well spent when there is a direct conflict with the criminal investigation, it is well established that the investigation trump's congressional oversight, no pun intended. >> who is the arbiter? how does it get decided? >> they can simply refuse to allow the department of justice employees. you understand they are fbi officials, department of justice employees. the department will refuse. the subpoena ultimately could be checked by an assertion of constitutional authority by the executive branch. it's not going to come to that. it never comes to that in this situation in the past. the congressional committee has
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stood down. >> if there is this kind of conflict or i guess we're seeing this kind of conflict come to ahead now, at the justice department, the official who was acting as the attorney general overseeing the special counsel investigation is rod rosenstein, deputy attorney general in the fact he's the attorney general for this investigation. there are concerns -- >> that's correct. >> -- around him because of his account how this unfolded, he himself may be an important witness in terms of understanding how this unfolded within the executive branch. we learned at least from public -- from open source reporting this week that rod rosenstein may have been in fact interviewed by the special counsel about his role or what he witnessed in this part of the probe in this obstruction of justice probe. >> rachel, i happen to know rod rosenstein. he was a colleague of mine and i worked with him in the years i've been dean at the university of baltimore.
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i know him to be a very honorable man that well understands his obligations and if he needs to recuse himself, he can do that. so far he hasn't seen that as necessary. and we don't know enough to say that he is wrong in that. i certainly doubt that he is because he is a man of great integrity. i think that in this situation, we need to let the facts play out before we criticize and it looks to me like the department is doing a good job of protecting special counsel muller's investigation. >> terms of the recusal situation mr. rosenstein is making and i take your point about your relationship with him and respect for him and have no reason not to have respect, if he is making the wrong decision on recusarecusal, would that be matter for the inspector general at the department or anybody else that can insen wainuate themselves to police it to make sure it's proper? >> sure. you're right the inspector general could have something to
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say about that, that is in part -- that official's role. there are career ethics officials at the department who counsel individuals like mr. rosenstein about this. and ultimately, again, it doesn't come to this but mr. rosenstein is accountable to congress confirmed by the senate and accountable there. but i think again we're playing this out too far right now i see an investigation that is functioning well that seems to be protected and under rosenstein. >> do you think that the actions of grassly bring an effort to slow down effort and fbi's potential bad guy. >> senator grassly, chairman grassley has been a very proficient in department
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officials administrations. i describe that motive to them to the contrir arcontrary, he'so the bottom of things he cares about but in this instance he must stand down and defer to the criminal the criminal investigation being conducted by special counsel mueller. >> ron weich, i really, really appreciate your time tonight. i know you're very busy. thank you for being with us. >> thank you very much for having me. >> more to come. stay with us. and then you totaled him. you two had been through everything together. two boyfriends, three jobs... you're like nothing can replace brad. then liberty mutual calls... and you break into your happy dance. if you sign up for better car replacement™, we'll pay for a car that's a model year newer with 15,000 fewer miles than your old one. liberty stands with you™. liberty mutual insurance.
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so we're told it could happen on wednesday. sources on the hill telling us a vote on the plan to kill obamacare could come next week on wednesday. in the meantime, senator mitch mcconnell's taking days to find and squeeze hard every single arm there is that has a republican senator attached to the end of it. according to the senate parliamentarian, republicans have to have it passed by midnight next saturday if they want to pass it and so whether they have the votes right now or not republicans are telegraphing that they plan to get them before that deadline and they plan to vote on wednesday. now, the timing of this is interesting and important for a couple of reasons. for one, it means republicans think they have got a shot of finally passing this thing and killing obamacare and throwing tens of millions of americans off of all health insurance coverage. but the timing is also really important. it's really important logistical information for democrats who,
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of course, very much would like to save obamacare. politico is reporting that senate democrats working up list of procedural tricks and stalling tactics to deploy in a specific window. the idea is that the second the republicans put this bill on the floor the democrats would basically hold the proceedings hostage to try to run out the clock until that expiration date which is midnight on saturday. so, now we have a good idea of what day this vote would happen. now that we have that, democrat cans do the math. they can now figure out how much time they'd need to fill between the start of that vote and that deadline. how many senators they would need to be able to pull off holding all that time. how long they would all need to stay awake to run out the clock that way. that's people at home facing the prospect of getting kicked off the health insurance not waiting around to see if the exhaustion plan of the democrats in the senate work. protesters back out in the
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streets this week asking lawmakers to not take health care away. we're starting to get in that footage and those pictures again. this was alaska. hundreds of people standing outside senator lisa murkowski's office chanting for the senator, kill the bill, kill the bill. in maine, senator susan collins constituents made it inside the house to vote no. north carolina citizens, protesting. constituents dressed up like zombies in san diego calling this zombie trumpcare and back from the dead. and charlotte, north carolina, they used inflatable props like this giant trump-haired chicken. we have seen these grass roots efforts to try to save the affordable care act before and now they have one very new, specific element to it. because of this specific timing, that wednesday night start to
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saturday night expire, because of that window, local chapters are asking people to call their lawmakers and tell them to, quote, run out the clock on the obamacare repeal bill. which, of course, really might be the democrats best hopes to stop people from having their health insurance taken away by the tens of millions and the clock runs out not this saturday night but next saturday night. no matter where your snar stands on this, you should probably advise them to stockpile some sleep in the meantime. tick tock. ♪ so, i was at mom and dad's
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pop quiz -- what is the single source of health insurance in the country? more americans have insurance from this provider than any other. what is it? medicaid. and breaking news, the hill is reporting that all medicaid directors from every state in the country, all 50 states, have now just come out against the republican bill to repeal obamacare. this is the national association of medicare directors, the directors from every state. they say that this bill would constitute the largest intergovernmental transfer of risk from the federal government to the states in the country's history. all 50 states. that does it for us tonight. we'll see you again tomorrow. now it's time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." good evening. >> good evening. the block granting is the republican
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