hi bill. if that is your real name. it's william actually. hmph! affordable, fast fedex ground. as per usual because it's friday, this is our life now. there is news, including late-breaking news, tonight a federal appeals court ordered the trump administration to at least change the way it has been treating a 17-year-old girl who is in federal custody and wants to have an abortion. the girl is being held as a part of the refugee human services agency. the president appointed an official to run that office who didn't seem like a great fit when it was announced. this is the reasonable settlement, president trump tricked to run this office of

refugee resettlement has no experience in reasonables or resettlement of anyone. what he has done is he's a very prolific anti-abortion activist and even within that movement, he's known as a foreliner, he argued it's not enough to make abortion legal, he argues it should also be a posed to birth control. now, why someone with a pag for that particular issue should be put in charge of refugee settlement with no experience in that field. anybody's guess. but that choice by the trump administration has hurricane u turned out to be a consequential thing for a lot of individual young women whose lives are very much now subject to that one official's directive. court filings of this one 17-year-old shows as of march of this year, hhs believed they had 38 pregnant girls who were being

held by this agency. according to lawsuit, the head of this federal office the guy in charge of the office of refugee resettlement, he directed employees underneath him in his agency to tell girl's parents about their pregnancies against the girl's will. he's directed federal employees to physically take girls to christian counseling centers in texas. so anti-abortion activisactivisd try to talk them out of having abortions. and at least in this latest jane doe case, it appears they have been physically holding this girl in the child immigrant when she is being confined, even though kids in facilities have a right to get doctors and have medical care, obviously, that i have to under the close supervision of the guy running that agency this pregnant 17-year-old, they apparently have been refusing not just to take her to a doctor so she can have this procedure, they have

been refusing to allow anybody else like an attorney or anybody to take her to the doctors, so she can't go, they're stopping her from going. she filed her own deck la reagan with the court, quote, she says i feel like they are trying to coerce me to carry my pregnancy to term. so on wednesday this week, federal court ordered the government to some doing that, to get out of the way by tomorrow and let the girl have this procedure, now tonight an appeals court has given the trump administration another week and a half, given them until the end of the month to see if they can find somebody who the trump administration approves of the government will designate to take her out of the facility to have the abortion done f. that seems like a job this agency might not perform with much enthusiasm, keep in mind, the timing here matters. the longer they hold on to her and physically block this girl

from being able to get this legal voluntary constitutionally protected medical 44 that she has the mean toss pay for, i mean, the longer they wait the less likely it is she's going to be legally able get one. she's being held by the federal government in texas. texas bans abortions at 20 weeks, so tic toc to this teenage girl, depending on what hhs chooses to do here at this girl, it looks like the anti-abortion activist who trump ordered to run the resettlement. he may succeed by physically blocking her ability to see a doctor to end the pregnancy until it is too late for her to do so. there were protests today outside the hhs building in d.c. people protesting she should be allowed to have an abortion if she wants one.

>> this young woman has a right to do it. she's in the united states. right. but watch this space on this one. obviously, there's the critical matter of what's going to happen to this one teenager. but this may also be, this case may also be the best public window that we've bought the into what may be happening much more quietly, with what may well be dozens of teenage girls in the same circumstances. again, from court filing, we know, as of march, hhs believed there were nearly 40 teenage girls who were pregnant who were under the supervision of this office. at least in the case of this girl, about whom this case is being fought, her doctor visits really are being blocked by an anti-abortion activist who somehow got this job that gave him the personal individual control over women's lives and bodies that he previously could have only dreamed about as an anti-abortion activist. the official in question here, again his name is scott lloyd. he's the director of the office of refugee resettlement.

but this case to keep an eye on has been filed under the name jane doe. for that plant teenager. tonight we're also watching puerto rico at exactly one month since hurricane maria made landfall. electric power is still out in much of puerto rico and remarkably, that is a statistic that is still getting worse t. proportion of puerto rico without power yesterday was 21%. today the proportion of puerto rico with power yesterday was 21%. today it is 12%. it went from 21% with power between yesterday and today, today parts of the capital city of san juan went dark. and roughly a million american citizens on the island of puerto rico are still without running water. and as these intolerable circumstances have stretched on for weeks now, we have been continuing to report on the mortal threat that is no longer

reported by the storm which has gone on. the phenomenally inadequate federal government response there. chief among the failures, obviously, is the inability to get people safe drinking water, people can survive without food longer than they can survive without water, but the dire lack of potable water has forced these american citizens for a month now to do what they got to, do to improvise the whauts water however they can. they were reportedly tapping wells at superfund sites, people checking rain water and water from gutters. today the death toll in puerto rico rose to 49. and the latest death is attributed to leptospirosis. it's a disease you have to rely on open air water sources also contaminated with animals, when

the first two deaths were announced, officials in puerto rico says there were four additional cases of possible leptospirosis. today the epidemiologists suggested the number they are identifying for today has jumped. it was four, it's now 74. hurricanes don't give you leptospirosis. lack of access to clean drinking water because of a failed recovery effort after the hurricane, that's what givers you leptospirosis. these are deaths, that es are illnesses that will be attributed to the failed response to the hurricane, not to the hurricane, itself. now, we don't know how many of these potential lepto -- cases, they're investigating 74, we don't know how many are fatalities or people who have been successfully treated or people currently in treatment, but 74 cases being investigated is a very alarming football, if

are you worried about the prospect that puerto rico is evolving from a natural disaster into a public health catastrophe. so we're going to have more on that story coming up this hour, including some pretty remarkable new very specific details on the way the trump administration responded to hurricane harvey in texas, versus the way they are responding to hurricane maria in puerto rico. so that's it today has been a day of surreal fallout from yesterday's truly unusual statement in the white house briefing program from white house chief of staff john kelly. john kelly yesterday gave those emotional remarks about how he was notified about the death in combat of his son and that very intense emotional context, he defended trump for the, excuse me, defended president trump for the president's condolence calls he placed to military families recently, john kelly went into an extended and apparently

prepared just pitiless critique of a democratic congress woman frederica wilson from south florida. she had been physically with the family of sergeant le david johnson, she had been with his widow when sergeant johnson's widow took the condolence call, the widow took it on speaker phone so members could hear the conversation n. that conversation, president trump used language intentionally or not that the family found disrespectful and hurtful. john kelly yesterday criticized congress woman wilson for having been on that call. now, that was an unusual line of attack. >> that decision was made by sergeant johnson's widow. she seems like somebody who doesn't need to be attacked by anyone right now. john kelly then also criticized the congress woman at length for comments he said she made at an

fbi ceremony in miami in 2015. comments he said he remembered and he and many other people found quite distasteful at the time, but said nothing to the press. now i mentioned these sounded like prepared remarks from john kelly, there werecogent remarks, they were well laid out. he at times appeared to be speaking from notes, this remark in maek miami made up a significant bulk of the total remarks he mid yesterday and he was speaking from the white house podium. usually people are prepared to do that. what he said the remarks he attributed to her were not anything that she said. this event he was recounting, there was tape of her full remarks t. tape shows her asking law enforcement personnel to stand up, it shows her getting a standing ovation at the end of

her remarks, speaking at length and with passion about the depths of the fbi agents for whom that building is being renamed, thanks to a renaming effort she has led, john kelly accused her of getting up at that event, said nothing about the agents and how she got funding for the building. congress woman wilson never bragged about or even brought up the issue of funding for that building. she absolutely did talk at length about those agents she got their names right. he got their names wrong yesterday. confronted with that, confronted with the tape of her remarks today, which absolutely contradicted what the white house chief of staff said about her, the white house spokes woman said there would be no apology, that general kelly would not take back his remarks. they will let it go. the white house spokes woman sarah huckaby sanders looking for anyone to correct on this would be behaving in a manner

highly inappropriate. she said that would be going after general kelly. >> that would be getting into a debate with a four star marine general and that would be highly inappropriate. general kelly is a four star marine general what he said about congress woman frederica wilson was absolutely untrue and that's the sort of thing that would usually cause resignations from the white house, particularly if the white house refused to give an apology for the remarks, but this is a different time. what started this week of lying on this fraught issue was the president still unexplained decision to not make public acknowledgement, public pronouncement about the deadliest combat incident of his presidency thus far, the loss of those special forces in an ambush attack carried out by islamic groups, so far, no group

claimed responsible. i reported up with of the reasons the president might be reluctant to talk about the prospect, it might be carried out to a group linked to isis t. president is interested if getting credit for eliminating isis. so that doesn't fit well having to explain how an isis linked group may have claimed the loss of american lives. we reported the trump administration recently, late last month enragened and bewilderred the government of the neighboring country of chad. when it comes to the fight of islamic militancy in that part of the world, where groups have held major cities and large swaths of territory, chunks of mali, nigeria, they claimed the ilammic state at one point, in that part of africa the military from chad has often been the lead and many experts see them as the most effective force when

it comes to fighting it islamic groups in that part of the world. up with of the outward facing signs is so many of the multi-national task forces and military operations against militants in that region are head quartered in the nation of chad. chad, itself, does have some problems with islamic militants carrying out attacks on their own territory. but their problem is nothing like they have to deal with in the nearby countries of mali and nigeria and niger. still, though, in all those countries, it has been troops and special forces from chad who have been in the forefront of the front lean fighting. even though they don't have to deal with it as badly at home, they are very active in the region that fronts line fighting and efforts to retake territory from militant groups and boka haram an isis and others, despite that track record in chad, despite that demonstrated

and proven anti-terrorism and commitment from chad the trump administration reportedly ignored vehement protests from the u.s. defense department and the u.s. state department and at the end of last month inexplicably, they lied chad on the new travel ban and really nobody knows why. the associated press reported yesterday, one of the reasons they might have put chad on the list is chad ran out of passport paper recently, therefore, they weren't able to submit a fresh passport in time to avoid being put on the list because of something that 1250u7d. so the trump administration made their travel been announcement september 24th, baffling everyone, as to why chad was included on that list. it prompted the government of clad to put out a statement expressing its quote incomprehension of the trump administration decision. many experts in the field, in fact all experts in the field joined the government of clad in

expressing incomprehelping for what the trump administration did. the following week, chad started removing all of its troops from neighboring niger, where they had been deterring and fighting a off insurgent militant groups t. week after that the week after chad started pulling its troops out of niger, the week after that was the ambush in niger near the border of mali which claimed four american lives. over the course of the day, lots of people have been upset with me with reporting that last night. which is fine. i didn't know you cared. but that upset over my reporting that last night doesn't mean that anything i reported wasn't true. everything i reported was true. now this also doesn't mean that chad withdrawing their troops was necessarily the cause of those u.s. troops ambushed. it is described by a the pentagon as a shock. there is now an investigation into what went wrong there. how it was the u.s. military had

no idea it was coming. they were so unprepared for. that obviously, if you are looking at the central domestic mystery here, which is why the president didn't acknowledge those deaths. he was asked today by nbc news if he had ordered the physician i mission that resulted in those deaths. the president walked away without saying anything. he is noting a only ining or speaking to or commemorating in anyway the loss of those soldiers. he's made into public pronouncements about it whatsoever. if you are interested in the president, why he is so reluctant to talk about that or take questions on that, well, it really is true, his administration took what is widely believed to be inexplicable reaction to insult the country that is our most effective military partner in the part of the world where these attacked happened. nbc news reports a congressional

source briefed on the ambush, called it a quote massive intelligence failure on the part of the united states, reportedly no u.s. overhead under surveillance of the mission. so no manned acre watching over what those soldiers were doing, no drones, no way to get eyes on the ground when things went bad. there was also no american quick reaction force available to rescue the troops if things went badly or if they went missing. the "wall street journal" was first to report alongside the pentagon investigation of what happened, the fbi has now joined the investigation. now that is not unheard of in a military incident like this, but it doesn't happen all the time. according to journal, the fbi has the authority to take over the investigation from the pentagon that it has not done so. >> so it's friday, a lot going on, i foley a lot of news stories that broke are things that are likely to break through

this weekend on the niger ambush story, it's important knowing sergeant le david's body was not recovered until two days after the ambush t. white house is recounting what the president said if his conversation to her, sergeant le david johnson's funeral is tomorrow in florida. so that alone will likely keep this story in the spotlight over the weekend. i expect we may also start to learn more about the preliminary results of the investigation into this matter, which now involves both the pentagon and fbi, congress seems town on its hind legs pushing for information as well. expect that story in particular to develop over the week. here's one last thing, in terms of the what is going only this week in the news, we look back on this week, weeks and months down the road, despite all of the insane news that happened this week. we may find that the thing that happened that has the biggest long-term impact on our politics

is something that really flew under the radar this week except in legal circles. this was something drused right when trump was sworn in, then because of everything else, it kind of faded from view. thanks, so this court case, it came roaring back. we have the most qualified person on set to talk with us next. >> that story is next. stay with us. ♪

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so the veg had been bombed out, it was a small village right next to the airport in kandahar in southern afghanistan. this was early on in the war.

up with aide worker said what was left of the town looked like the surface of the moon. see the little boy sitting in the remains of hess house. >> that aide worker, wanted to help people in the village rebuild. to rebuild, they were going to need stone, stone foundations for the houses, that's how they were built around there, first thing, stone. turns out the guy if charge of the stone didn't want to give it to her. he wanted her to buy cement instead. naturally. because what he wanted her to buy was his cement. . >> the only thing is we promised this village we would rebuild it the way it was before. and they had stone foundations

before, it's just one village. >> find my cement. >> that man has to be saved for using cement from his factory and nobody is aloud to have stone for foundations. >> he's cornering the market completely and he's the governor and the part owner of this factory, of this mu cement factory. so he's using his governmental power to protect that monopoly. >> using his governmental power to protect that monopoly. he owns the factory and po proclaims you sham use cement to rebuild. guess where are you buying it from. the angry woman is sarah chase. angry and articulate. in the 1990s, she was the paris correspondent for npr. this clearly is not paris. in 2001, she went to pakistan and then to afghanistan to cover the start of the u.s. war there by 2002, she decided to leave

journalism and try to help rebuild and build up afghanistan. she moved to kandahar full time. she did rebuild the homes in that blown-up village by the airport. she worked for a karzai ngo at the time. she opened a factory with cosmetics to make money and build their economy on their own terms. how does a random solo american white lady last in kandahar when many aren't allowed to leave their homes there. first of all, first rule, don't dress like an afghan woman, dress like an afghan guy, also, be sarah chase. the better part of a decade, living and working in afghanistan, working as a journalist, working ngos, ultimately becoming a high level adviser to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. what sarah chase ended up becoming, through all of that, unexpectedly, what she ended up becoming is one of the world's leading experts on corruption.

her central argument which she learned in afghanistan and all over the world, whats that you can't, you know, get security now and then thereafter take care of the govern fans issues and the corruption problems, corruption turns out to be a really bad, bad virus. easy to get and it's hard to kill. but if you are a country, once you got it, once you've got a bad case of corruption, not only saps a country of its ability to 39, it accelerates some of the post-dangerous things on earth, radicalism, conflict. unbridgeable division. she literally wrote the book on it, theirs of state. but she's here tonight, because she's just written something else. three days after president trump was inaugurated the ethics watchdog crew filed a lawsuit against the president alleging he is violating the constitution, by allowing his business to accept payment from foreign governments while he still owns an benefits from those businesses. this week, sarah chase submitted

this brief to the court as part of that case, making the architect that the dangers of him taking foreign payments go way beyond just classlessness and they go xrond the violation of whether it was previously seen as an obscure clause of the constitution, quote, numerous clauses by the president and the united states erode the fundamental princes expose this nation to grave threats. first there is the spectre that foreign gifts will influence presidential policying second they undermine the citizen's faith in the integrity of their government, third, they invite practices typical to places like afghanistan to affect our democracy the network toss which the defendant is beholden engage in a style of rule that's anti-thettical to american democracy, whether they're nominal democracies such as indonesia or autocracies, these are criminalized kleptocraci ze,

dismissal of the plaintiff's complaint in this case, would help such practice gain acceptance at home and the character would be corrupted for decades to come him and it's one thing to hear some schmuck on tv say that a person like sarah chase is in a unique position to know what she speaks. sarah chase is senior fellow endowment and author as i mentioned of thieves of state, why corruption threatens global security. sarah it's nice to see you, thank you for being here. >> great to see you. >> i am unnerved by seeing your scholarship and your life experience about kleptocracies and places like afghanistan and the philippines and honduras and all this stuff, being something that you see as directly relevant to americpolitics. i find it unnerving. >> i do, too. >> okay. >> and it's been a kind of slow motion nightmare to watch sort

of the place that we have been seeing since january 20th because i almost feel leak i know which one's coming next. it's like it's so familiar, but it's familiar from honduras, azerbaijan, afghanistan. >> you made the article in the breechlt i didn't expect this until i got into it. you really go through the president's% involvement in various countries that i just like the ones i mentioned in that excerpt, phillipine, uae. you say essentially these governments are corrupt in a way that we americans should be able to understand, they're far away countries. we can understand this and see this when it happens in other places, in order to be doing business, you have to be participating in their graft. >> it's not just graft, a collection of venal things that a bun of different people do. in fact, what these governments do is kind of weave a network and in different countries, it's going to be more tightly woven or less tightly woven, it's

going to have more internal you know disruption or rivalry or whatever. these are new yorkers that straddle the kind of sectors that we love to keep separate in our minds. you have private and public sector, which we americans love to fight about, which is something to fight about. in these networks with eoverlap, sometimes they're dent cal, for example the president's family owns 11 banks so they like own the financial services. >> that's right. >> in others, they're a little bit more distinct, but what you have is this constant exchange of favor. so like i make a law that's a sweetheart deal electricity generated by a plant, like by biomass let's say. then i get shares in the biomass companies. so have you this constant exchange. then the criminal sector is almost always woven into. so in afghanistan, that guy who

was, what he was saying was, but stone is going to be too expensive for you. you want to have cement, it's cheaper. he was running most of the opium in southern afghanistan at that time. >> wow. >> and so sow have this overlap and you simply cannot do business in especially i would say three sectors always come up. energy, high end, sorry, energy, let's do the next one, high end real estate is the other banking. >> energy, basking. >> and high end real estate. you can't be in those three sectors in these countries without either being a member of the network or engaging in this. >> why is that dangerous to us as americans rather than just being a potential legal liable for the president and his businesses are just something that reflects poorly on him? don't answer yet. we have to take a break. we'll be right back with sarah james rate of this.

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this week, a big lawsuit against the president got a federal lawsuit. epic watchdogs say he should be held to account nor the fact that his businesses are doing lots of business with foreign governments and that's against the constitution. sarah chase is here, she filed a brief in this case that i find

absolutely chilling. the basis of your argument is that the president is involved with kleptocratic regimes in terms of his own business practices in countries around the world. why is that not just something personally bad about him or potentially criminal about his business? why is that dangerous for us as a country? >> so when the president of the united states is in business with a regime like that, that's like a stamp of approval, right? it doesn't matter what u.s. policy might be about corruption overseas, so then wraps is, people subjected to systemic corruption react by going to -- we have been seeing the last five, ten years ago we seen them join extremist groups like boka haram the taliban, we seen them have ref lugs, they have deinvolved in ways that have made the world a lot less secure. but for me, what's most important is suddenly these practices start to get kind of brushed off, like, well, that's

just how you do business. not only over tlrk remember this is the president of the united states doing business in these ways so it's reenforcing its, its a stamp of approval on these practice, once you say it's okay to do it in indonesia oh, by the way, it's the president of the occupation' organization doing it in indonesia, then you are kind of saying it'sing a for americans, i'm afraid these practices will come to affect the united states of america. now, we're the only country in the world founded on a set of ideals. right? i mean, that's our whole reason for existing. it was precisely to break away from the venality and corruption of you know the british government. that was up with of the main rationals. not the only one, it was tyranny. it was also we don't want to be venal and corrupt like the british crown, with i is subborning the members of

apartment who were supposed to be representing the people t. constitutional debates were full of those arguments. so the very pre text for even having a united states of america becomes undermined. >> if in your living in afghanistan for nearly a decade in your study of kleptocracy around the world, they they work work they benefit, how they're structured the radicalism and division they cause, did you learn anything about how countries on the precipice of a new era of corruption, how we can stiffen our spines how you can get better and send it off? >> what's really interesting is it has to be institutional. in other words, there is attemptation to say if you could only have a knight in shining arm our, an individual, sometimes it does take a reforming individual at the top, but often, it will take some fairly sweeping at least in the

beginning to show you are serious. i think we can look at our own history, if you go to the guilded age, it took a couple decades, then it took a serious set of reforms so what we have been watching are norms, ways that we expected government officials to behave, but that weren't law, right. and they have been slipping, this didn't start on january 20th. the kind of overlap that we now see in this country between private sector interests, particularly, you know energy, defense contracting, bank, big pharma, we have four or five shaping the decision-making in the united states well before january 20th. but there were still only bake things we expected public officials, do things like release your tax rurnsz, things

like don't hire lobbyist toss actually regulate the industries that they were lobbying on behalf of. we kind of took those for granted. it's clear to me that in in country with regoing to need a series of reforms that are going to have to be made in law and not just in practice. >> that don't count on shame and public embarrassment. >> sarah chase the author of "thieves of state" and one of the most interesting people i interviewed over the years, aim happy to have you back here. >> great to see you. >> we'll be right back. stay with us..

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. >> this summer the senate judiciary committee designed trump's nominees to be a u.s. attorney. jessie lu's official statement, there was one very interesting detail, quote, in march and april 2017, aattended formal interviews of the justice department and representatives of the white house council's office and then i met the president. you what now? that got everybody's attention, because a candidate for u.s. attorney, a candidate for federal prosecutor meeting with the president before he nominates her, that's weird, it's not illegal, that's definitely weird. now this week politico reports that the president met with two other potential candidates, one a potential candidate for the eastern district of new york based if brooklyn, one who is a potential candidate for the southern district which is

manhattan, southern injuries of new york has basically jurisdiction over the whole financial world and geographic reach that includes trump tower, hq for the president's business dealings, homebase for the trump campaign and the trump transition. so it's a weird thing for the president to meet with nominees to be u.s. attorneys, when you look at that time the ones we know that president trump has met with, they'd be the ones in charge of prosecuting crimes in washington, d.c. and in manhattan and brooke len. right? very much the president's home turf, both in politics and business. places where he might conceivably have 16 in the game, meaning if any federally prosecutorable crimes arose in connections with the president's businesses or the company or the transition, it's those u.s. attorneys in new york and d.c. who would be the one toss try those cases, those are the ones he is meeting with personally. now, again, there is not illegal

the president has his legal rights to meet with these people, but it's up heard of. wall street preet bharara was in a position to know of what he speaks. another position in the position to speak on this issue, a person who had the who indication to ta-- had the occasion to speak a whole bunch of attorneys joins us next. whoooo. i enjoy the fresher things in life. fresh towels.

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. his long tufty hearing at the judicial hearing this week. jeff sessions was asked a question about the new very unusual reports that the president's been taking personal meetings himself with several candidates for u.s. attorney jobs. now, presidents don't usually meet with potential u.s. attorneys. most presidents and the justice department tend to take care to keep law enforcement away from anything that looks like a politician's influence. so why is president trump taking these personal meetings? here's how the attorney general responded. >> i'm not sure i remember whether he had interviewed for new york, but if you say so, i assume so. and he has the right to for sure because he has to make an appointment. and i assume that everybody would understand that. >> see the attorney general's not particularly concerned about any untoward appearances in this matter. joining us now is barbara

mcquaide, a former u.s. attorney, an msnbc contributor. thanks for being here. >> my pleasure. nice to see. >> you thank you. i'm not a lawyer and i'm -- i know people who are lawyers and i know people who have worked in federal prosecutor's offices, but i still can't quite figure out if it's a big deal that the president is meeting with potential u.s. attorneys. there have been former obama administration officials who say that president obama never did anything like this. is it clear that this san unprecedented thing? >> it's not illegal, but it's definitely unheard of. i happen to be in washington this week for a conference of former u.s. attorneys. these are u.s. attorneys from democratic administrations and republican administrations. and so i've been asking around whether anyone ever met with or was interviewed by the president who appointed them. and the answer is without exception, no. so it is highly unusual. >> and what's concerning about it? as you say, it's not illegal, but it does seem to be something absolutely breaking with precedent. what's the reason that a

president typically wouldn't do this? >> it's important to keep in mind that these are appointments very different from other appointments. like the president's cabinet. prosecutors are -- it's very important that they be independent and this they not only be independent but there's the appearance of independence. in fact, there's a policy memo that prevents u.s. attorneys from having direct communication with the white house. only the highest levels of department of justice are even allowed to communicate. and that is to preserve that independence so that the public has confidence that prosecutors are acting on facts and law and not political motivations. >> there are reports that the people who the president has chosen to speak to are from two districts in new york affecting place where's he's got a lot of business interests, brooklyn and manhattan offices. also the d.c. district attorney where that's quite relevant given what his current job is. there's also some unconfirmed reports that the president may have also taken a personal interest and made personal contact with somebody who would be the u.s. attorney where

mar-a-lago is in that district in florida. is there a particular reason to be worried that the president seems to be seeking out people who might potentially be looking at criminal matters where he has his interests? >> i think it's an es special red flag, isn't it, when he's looking at people who are in the jurisdictions where he does business, where he lives, washington, d.c., new york, and florida. if he sid want to interview i appoint to every position or at least every u.s. attorney, that might still seem odd and improper. but when he's focusing on the very districts where he himself could face criminal exposure i think raises a particular red flag. >> former u.s. attorney from the eastern district of michigan, thank you. very helpful to you have with us tonight. >> thanks, rachel. jimmy's gotten used to his whole room smelling like sweaty odors.

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>> wloun watch baseball the rest of the year, everybody becomes a baseball fan in october. houston tonight the yankees are playing the houston astros for the chance to go to the world series, game six. games one and two were also played in houston. and whether or not you care about baseball generally speaking, it's a great and remarkable news story that these games have been played in houston. because houston got slammed by hurricane harvey on august 25th. in the wake of that storm there was of course historic flooding in houston. major league baseball did have to move a series of games between the astros and rangers because of houston's ballpark not being in play. but now less than two months after harvey houston has recovered to the point where

they can host these big national sporting events and have that not be the main thing they have to talk about the whole time. but that's real progress and at least some of that progress is thanks to the robustness of the response from the federal government when it came to texas. 338,000 texans were without power after the storm. in the days after harvey 5,300 power workers from outside the region all converged on coastal texas to get electricity back on for almost everyone within two weeks. and that's awesome. and when you compare that to what we have seen in puerto rico, it is not a subtle difference. in texas, thousands of repair workers rushed in to restring power lines. in puerto rico, a few hundred electrical workers from outside the island arrived to help. everything's bigger in texas, right, but when it comes to disaster response, that's a terrible truth about what's happened in puerto rico. and the need in puerto rico has turned out to be much, much greater. the power outage in texas was

one tenth the size as texas the power grid in puerto rico was decimated, in the past 24 hours it's gotten worse. yesterday 21% of the island had power, tonight 12% of the island has power. and the death toll continues to rise. the number of americans dying from treatable and preventible infections is going up. president's giving himself a ten out of ten. it's not a question of whether or not we can do more, clearly we can, we just showed what we can do. other places like houston saw it. just for whatever reason, not puerto rico, at least not yet. not one month in. that does it for us tonight. we'll see you again on monday whenthy guest will be former attorney general eric holder. now it's time for the last world. good evening, ari. >> good evening. briefly rachel i'm glad you're saying o