the president has been given a sort of cause here to get rid of him. thank you both. >> thank you. >> that is "all in" for this evening. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. good evening. >> good evening, chris. thanks my friend. thanks to you for joining us this evening. happy monday. the time between thanksgiving and christmas can go one of two ways when it comes to the news guys. either the time between thanksgiving and christmas is written off by the news gods as the holidays, right? news slows down and important or controversial work gets put off until maybe after the new year when people get around to not being in holiday mode anymore. in years like that, everybody is allowed to have their own personal and family stress around the holidays but as for news, not much happens. then there is years like this year which is basically the other way it can go.

the opposite way where the news gods decide oh my god, it's the holidays already. we have so much to cram into the universe before the end of the year. double time news now. that's the kind of thanksgiving to christmas we are having this year and so, there is any number of stories that broke today that might conceivably count as the biggest story in the country at any one time. and a lot of the stories that broke today aren't just big stories today. they will have far-reaching ramifications from here on out. the supreme court ruled that president trump's muslim ban will be allowed to go forward at least on a temporary basis while the constitutionality of the ban is litigated. that is somewhat of a surprise. it may be a temporary victory for the president on this matter but it is a ruling in his direction and it is from the supreme court. in years past, any time there was a vague thoueory threat of shut down, the news media and political class in washington would spend months obsessing

about the i'm pempending shut ds we get closer and closer, it would ring so loudly in the news cycle, you couldn't cover anything else. not this year. this year we really are looking at the government being out of money and shutting down this week, on friday. but nobody has quite gotten around to worrying about it yet. supposedly they will have a meeting about it on thursday. that will leave them plenty of time to sort it all out. we got closer tonight to the biggest changes to the u.s. tax code in 30 years. the senate passed the republican tax bill in the dead of night on friday. now congress has to reconcile the two different versions of that bill that passed in the house and in the senate. the house had a contentious but ultimately successful vote to advance that process which means that gigantic tax bill, which will have generational effects in this country, it's expected to have a major effect on redistributing american wealth further from the middle class to the rich, that bill tonight took

one big step closer to the president's desk. so we're going to have more on that ahead tonight. the president today also took a triumph trip to utah where he announced he would be shrinking some national monuments and selling off land to the highest bidder. woo hoo. it was a strange -- it was -- i mean, i know this is their policy. it was a strange event. given the popularity of public lands, particularly in the west, you think it would be a hard thing to brag about and hold a triumph photo op about. we're giving away public land. but that is what the trump white house did today in utah. we're also awaiting the news, big decision that will be announced tomorrow as to whether or not russia will get banned from the olympics. the olympic committee will announce a decision on whether the russia doping scandal is so bad it should keep the russian flag and the russian national

anthem without of the next olympic games, which of course, start in just a couple months in south korea in a part of south korea not that far from north korea. just saying. also, the u.s. senate race that will take place one week from tomorrow in alabama today the president abandoned all pretense and explicitly endorsed the republican candidate in the race who has been accused by multiple women for value sexually harassed or sexually assaulted them when teenagers and when now candidate roy moore was a fwrgr man in his 30s. all those stories happen today. all of these might have been expected to start the world spinning backwards on its axis. in this administration, all this stuff is happening at once and it's all happening in the context of the most serious criminal encounter intelligence investigation that any u.s. president has ever faced. and that investigation appears

to be barrelling toward this president now sort of like that big round boulder with indiana jones. tonight, if you go to the website where they post all the court filings from the special counsel's office, robert mueller investigation at the justice department website, you'll find that website crashed. it's been down all day. if you want to bookmark it anyway, it's justice.gov/sco for special counsel's office. i'm assuming some day they will come back up. we have a sense the special counsel's office website may have been busier than usual over the last few days since mike flynn went to court on friday and plead guilty to lying to the fbi about his contacts with the russian government while serving as national security advisor in the trump white house but i didn't notice that the site itself had crashed today until after i was looking for another

court filing there because the special counsel's office tonight filed this sort of, i don't know if it counts as dplramatic, it' intriguing and slightly strange a new filing they just posted concerning paul manafort. he and rick gates were indicted on multiple felony counts mostly related to alleged illegal lobbying and money laundering back in october. on the same day manafort and gates were charged, it had been a secret plea agreement and arrived with a trump campaign foreign policy advisor. today political.com obtained the booking photo from the night that he was first arrested this summer after flying back to the u.s. pop he was taken into custody by the fbi. his lawyers in chicago were

notified their client had been picked up and they were booking him into defense center and by the next morning, muller's prosecutors were telling a federal court that george papadopoulos said he would cooperate. so that arrest, that booking photo, which we're getting a first look at, that all happened in july. we didn't find out about any of that until october. and since the day that plea agreement was unsealed about papadopoulos in october, we heard nothing, there has been nothing leaked, nothing about what papadopoulos was able to hand over and give to investigators. he was cooperating with them for months while nobody knew it and there remains the possibility that he went undercover for the muller investigation during those several months although

georhe plead guilty, he has not yet been sentenced for that crime presume plably the court will consider what he was able to provide for cooperation when they make their sentencing decision. that said, manafort and gates are not in the same boat as him. they have not plead guilty. they are both fighting the charges and most of the court filings we've seen related to them since their indictments have been about negotiating the terms of their release. they are not being held in jail but the government and their defense lawyers have been negotiating about how these guys will be held until their trial. both of them have been mostly confined to their homes. both of them have been wearing gps tracking ankle bracelets. both are required to check in regularly with the court to verify whereabouts. but what happened today is that part of a previous agreement that had been agreed to as of last week between manafort's lawyers and prosecutors in

muller's office that, that agreement appears to be falling apart for an intriguing reason. now we thought as of the end of last week that paul manafort would have terms of confinement relaxed. we thought based on the discussions between the two sides that manafort for example would be allowed to lose the ankle bracelet. he would be allowed to travel in a limited way within the united states. he wouldn't have to just stay home all the time anymore. part of that agreement is he pledged over $10 million in real estate in florida and new york and virginia. in a way that essentially meant all those properties would be handed over to the government if manafort decided to make a run for it and not turn up to court. so that was the deal we thought that muller's office and manafort had arranged as of thursday last week. that's the deal it looked like they had arranged as of thursday last week but then, thursday night the government, muller's

office somehow learned new information about how paul manafort was whiling away the hours on effectively house arrest. this is what muller's office filed with the court tonight. quote, newly discovered facts cast doubt on manafort's willingness to compile with this court's orders. quote, the government learned late last week that as of november 30th, 2017, which is thursday of last week, manafort and a colleague were ghost writing an editorial in english for his work in ukraine. manafort worked on the draft with a long-time russian colleague currently based in russia and have ties to the russian intelligence service. and then because the best things in court filings are always in the footnotes, jump down to footnote three on the evening of no november 30th, they eluded to the defendant's efforts and were assured steps would be taken to make sure the op ed would no longer be published.

what? there are a few things that are sort of amazing about this. i mean, number one, perhaps most importantly, the one thing the white house has been super excited about when it comes to the president's campaign chairman being charged with multiple felonies, the one thing the white house has been excited about when it comes to the paul manafort indictment, the charges against him technically aren't specifically about russia. right? the charges against manafort are about him allegedly illegally lobbying and money laundering and a bunch of other stuff but not about like russian intelligence. that's been the one saving grace for the white house about trump's campaign chairman being indicted. the fact he's spending post indictment time on bail with an ankle bracelet on working with the russian based in russia who has ties to russia intelligence, that is not awesome for the white house. so that's incredible. also, there is is the argument

from muller's office as to what is technically wrong with manafort doing this. in the case of manafort and gates, the court issued a gag order. the court is explicit with the prosecution and defense telling them they are not allowed to make public representations about this case. all of their argue menation on the matter of this case against manafort and gates, all must happen in the courtroom and courtroom only. that gag order happened after manafort's lawyer walked out of court the morning of the indictment and made a big rambling statement to reporters about how innocent his client was. after that, gag order. there is a gag order in your case. you can't talk to reporters about your case. you cannot publish op ed columns about your case. but this is from the filing tonight. quote, even if the ghost written op ed were entirely accurate, fair and balanced, it would be a violation of the november 8th gag order.

it was under taken to influence the public's opinion of defendant manafort or else there would be no reason to seek its publication. and even though muller's office notes that they very charitably did not publish the draft of manafort's op ed that he was working on under an assumed name that they somehow obtained, they throw a lightning bolt in there suggesting it would be bad enough if this op ed were fair and balanced but in this case, quote, it compounds the problem that the proposed piece is not a dispassionate recitation of the facts. so it's amazing the trump campaign chairman is working with a russian intelligence source right now while he's on bail. really? he don't know, i don't know a frenchman. it's -- that's amazing. it's fascinating that manafort was allegedly trying to violate

the gag order in his case by ghost writing this thing like nobody would ever know it was him. but thirdly, lastly, how did the government find this out? they were negotiating with him to relax the conditions of his release, the conditions of his confinement as of thursday. by thursday night, they were like wait a minute, what is this op ed? they say in the filing as soon as they found out on thursday manafort was doing this, they contacted his lawyers and said do not allow that to be published. here is my question, how did they find out manafort was working on this if he was doing it under an assumed name. manafort doesn't appear to be cooperating with the muller investigation. he's plead not guilty and there is nothing that suggests he's cooperating with investigators and out on bond fighting this case. we contacted a few former pr ee prosecutors to ask if the government could still be surveilling paul manafort while he's out on bond with the ankle

bracelet on and everything. we don't know at all if that's how they learned of ghost writing activities and former prosecutors say it would be an unusual circumstance if the government still had paul manafort on surveillance while he's out on bond but there is no reason to think it would be illegal. i also say there is also a possibility that the government was surveilling paul manafort's russian friend with the ties to russian intelligence and so maybe this information ended up in the government's lap because of surveillance on this russian source in russia tied to russian intelligence and they figured out that paul manafort was the one working with him. don't know. but that's happening while the dude is out on bail. so the bail arrangements for the president's campaign chairman appear to be in jeopardy tonight. there does not appear to be indication this will result in them, you know, yanking him out of his house and putting him in jail until he's on trial but i do think the prosecutors seem

furious about this development and boy, do i want to know how they learned about it. since national security advisor mike flynn's guilty plea was announced, the behavior of the president's lawyers has swung from i think -- swung from hard to believe to hard to handle. starting with hard to believe, the president issued a statement on twitter this weekend that stated bluntly that he had known that mike flynn had lied to the fbi before he fired him and led to discussion whether or not the president had just accidently confessed to obstructing justice when it came to the crime of mike flynn lying to the fbi. that bumpbwent into a laugh out covering your track moment when he said no, no, no, no, that wasn't the president saying that, that was me. dressed up like him using his thumbs on his phone. that was me, that wasn't him. we'll get some expert advice a little later on tonight as to whether or not that really might

have been a confession to obstruction of justice to the president and whether we believe it was him and not the president saying that. but on obstruction of justice, today may end up going down as a landmark day in this scandal because today is the day that the president's lawyers effectively stopped arguing against the allegation that the president obstructed justice and instead, they pivoted today and started making a public case that it's okay if the president obstructed justice because he's the president and he can do that. as president, he's immune from accountable from that particular crime. the president's lawyer telling axios.com, the president cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer. that was published by axios this morning and this morning jeffrey toobin at the new yorker published this about his discussions. quote, in several conversations with me, sekulow emphasized the

collusion between trump campaign and russia, even if it did take place wouldn't be illegal. there is no crime of collusion. there is a lot right now going on in the news, just in the muller investigation and russia scandal to the point where the muller investigation website has crashed. but with everything else going on, today will always be the day that the lawyers for the president of the united states abandoned their argument that the president didn't obstruct justice and instead started to argue that it's okay that the president obstructed justice. that they will also always be the day that the lawyers for the president of the united states abandoned the argument that the president and his campaign didn't collude with russia and instead started making the overt argument out loud on the record

that it doesn't matter if the president's campaign colluded with russia because it's okay the they did. collusion is awesome. who says it's a crime. can't we all just get along with our foreign masters? it's clearly something that's changed in terms of the way the white house is thinking about the president's liability in this scandal. they have now done a 180 in their defense of the president on collusion and obstruction of justice. and it's possible that that weird u-turn just means the president needs fresh lawyers but they are pursuing a fresh take on this scandal. and they remain two big live problems for administration they haven't come up with answers yet. the first of the two big live problems they got, which they got no explanation for, the first one is the problem of the vice president. the white house continues to maintain that vice president mike pence made false statements

repeated false statements assuring the american public that flynn hadn't talked about sanctions with russia. they continued to assure us the only reason mike pence made those false statements is because he didn't know. mike flynn had lieed to hd to ht that. based on the court filings surrounding the guilty plea, we know the government has evidence that that story about mike pence is untenable. it wasn't just mike flynn who knew he was discussing sanctions with russia. it was multiple members of the trump transition team. the trump transition team was run by mike pence. so the story can no longer be that flynn, bad apple, rogue actor lied to the vice president and that's why the vice president told those inwhitting lies to the american president. that's over. that can't be the rational contention. the story now has to be that not just mike flynn but the entire transition team that mike pence was overseeing all conspired

together to lie to mike pence and then agreed to keep the lie going for weeks and weeks as the vice president kept unwillingly, inwittingly repeated the lie to the american public. it's that or the vice president was lying on purpose telling the american people something he also knew was not true. the old story is now dead. the vice president needs a new explanation for his behavior. that is one thing that the white house hasn't got around to fixing yet. the other problem the white house has now that they have no explanation for is why mike flynn lied to the fbi at all about what he said to russia and that is going to be a mystery they either solve right away or that follows them right to the very, very, very end. more ahead. stay with us. we've started a campaign to let the american people

raise their voice to say that this president is unfit for office and needs to go. i love it! yes! yes! [ chuckles ] there it is -- over there!

mcminnville, tennessee... poughkeepsie, new york... milton, indiana... chattahoochee, florida... wow... we're looking at the whole country. not just the coasts. even in utah, we're starting to realize trump has been doing things that are against our laws. i definitely worry about war. north korea. i don't want that guy's hand near the bomb. sick to my stomach. he's not the kind of person that should be running our country. the things that he does has consequences. is this going to be here for my grandchildren? he's not being held accountable. if we have the vote, like we have for election day, they will impeach him. times square is the crossroads of the world. we need everyone to go and put their name down at needtoimpeach.com. we need to speak up together and demand an end to this presidency.

"the new york times" is reporting the director of the fbi christopher wray sent a message to the fbi's 35,000 agents and support staff. it's a memo defending them to boost the moral after the president described the fbi's reputation in tatters, worst in history. christopher wray has reportedly written to his staff to tell them he was quote inspired by example after example of professionalism and dead cadica to justice demonstrated around the burro. it's an honor to represent you. with the president's new torrent of public statements attacking the justice department or attacking the fbi, it is

possible that the president is not just trying to court public opinion on this matter. it's possible and reasonable for the country to prepare for the possibility that the president is really flexing his muscles in the direction of the special counsel investigation led by former fbi director robert mueller. it's possible he is laying the public relations ground work for going beyond just criticizing the russia investigation to instead threatening it. threatening the succession of firings at the justice department and fbi that would make it possible for the fbi to end the investigation. here is my question. is there a game plan for how to put up a fight against that if that's what he's gearing to do? and this possibility seems to be coming up again. it seems to be at least coming up in discussion again at the same time that the president's lawyers are now making brand-new legal arguments that it would be okay for the president and his

campaign has colluded with russia and it would be okay for the president himself to have obstructed justice. one lawyer telling jeffrey toobin tonight, if there had been collusion between the trump campaign and russia, that's not illegal so it's okay. another lawyer for the president john who represents the president on russia matters making a much more sweeping case to axios telling him the president is the chief law enforcement officer in the country and therefore by definition, he cannot obstruct justice. there are a lot of people who have a contrary opinion on that, obviously. the question is whether or not this is some sort of signal this is where the president is going with his defense. joining us now is former white house counsel to president barack obama. real pleasure to have you here tonight. thank you for your time. >> thank you. >> let me ask you about the last matter first. these claims from the president's attorneys today that a, collusion wasn't a crime and

b, the president cannot obstruct justice because he's the president. are either of those reasonable claims in your -- to your mind? >> well, the first, collusion is not a crime is not a reasonable claim. the second that the president is immune from prosecution is wrong but some have argued it's not settled but certainly the first is a fantasy. there certainly is a statute that prohibits an american political campaign from essentially establishing a political alliance with a foreign government to win a presidential election and suggestion that's not a crime is simply flatly wrong. in the second case, i understand where they are going. i think in the end they will be entirely unsuccessful in persuading the public or courts that a president is above the law. >> when presidents have faced scandal and investigation in the past, have any presidents been able to successfully claim that obstruction of justice per se is a category of crime that doesn't

apply to the commander in chief? >> no, none that i can recall and in fact, it's instructive that in a particular moment in the watergate investigation when president nixon was trying to assure the public that he was going to see to the bottom of it, that he was going to have the matter fully investigated and crimes uncovered appropriately prosecuted, he made a point of saying that he understood that it was a nation of laws, not of men and women and the law would have to prevail. he took a position richard nixon did. >> terms of the of the president's own statements over the last few days and i don't mean this in a snarky way but i do just as a way of my approach to the news, discount the president's literal comments more than previous presidents because what he says is designed to have an effect on the news media rather than reflect any sort of -- rather than to predict his own behavior.caveat

concerns reading the president's escalating criticism that he may be laying some sort of public relations groundwork to try to end the muller investigation. what do you think about his options for doing that and whether people who don't want that to happen should be preparing for that eventuality? >> i'm confident those who don't want it to happen are preparing for that eventuality. there are concerns that this would be a red line he could not cross. i also agree with you that that is a strategy option it was reasonable to assume for sometime the president and his lawyers are contemplating. he's made claims about the muller investigation. he said the entire subject matter of the muller investigation the russia investigation was a hoax. he's now talking about what he says is the worst fbi in history so i think yes, the president

and his allies, bear in mind they may hope they don't have to go in that direction and we heard from him and may be completed by the end of the year and wrap up without damage to the president and start to fall in that conviction. this is definitely an option they would consider. >> on that point, and i don't want to get too far into hypotheticals but it has been suggest that if the president did find a way to fire robert mueller himself, that the investigation might be able to continue even without him in place that the there is enough work done in the special counsel's office already that essentially the fbi has an organization for the special counsel. do you think that's fair? >> with every single official in the united states.

let's assume he does and then the question is who is over the investigation and proceed professional in that department. honestly when you oversee the investigation that would provoke a circumstance in american legal and political history. we would have to assume congress would intervene. professionals to bring an end to this and keep the congress from intervening. >> bob bower, former white house counsel to president obama. thank you for being here. >> pleasure. thank you. >> much more to come. busy news night. stay with us. 3w4r5 p except for one of us. i write them a poem instead! and one for each of you too! that's actually yours. that, that one. yeah. regardless, we're stuck with the bill. to many, words are the most valuable currency.

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to rime unsure and poor than other states but you got to get local in your pronunciation and carolling. the festive anti tax bill tunes, also repeal and replace rodney signs, promising to turf him out of congress if he votes ultimately on the republican tax bill that passed late friday night and gathered outside congressman lance's office in new jersey. his constituents making an unflattering comparison between him and king george and wasn't just new jersey. we got footage from clooe laeve ohio. they have less than subtle leaf lets leaflets and mccain's constituents camped out for 33 hours straight to protest the tax bill after the senate passed the bill in the dead of night with mccain's vote. they chanted shame on mccain and

shame on his arizona colleague jeff flake, as well. we're also protests on the ground in denton, texas. and in white plains, new york and in a lot of people out in white plains. high point, north carolina had protests. this is chicago tonight. hundreds protesting. you can see it's windy. in pennsylvania this weekend which went to trump in 2016 by ten points, burkes county, pennsylvania 1600 people gave up their sunday night to rally against the tax bill. this thing does still have a ways to go before it hits the president's desk. the house and senate have to reconcile their two competing versions of the bill and that's not just a procedural thing. to a certain extent, the policy and political fights what exactly is in this bill, those fights aren't yet over. right now in the meantime the people against the substance of this bill, this bill that's due

to add a drill and a half dollars to the deficit, people that don't want to see a gigantic tax bill that makes people pay more in taxes so the wealthy and corporation s can py less and those applying pressure everywhere and anywhere they can to convince representatives to stop this thing. it's not over. prepare for the volume to continue to go up on this. finay ron! they're finally taking down that schwab billboard. oh, not so fast, carl.

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no one was sure what would happen next after the trump national security advisor mike flynn plead guilty to lying to the fbi about his contacts with the russian government during the transition. no idea what will happen next. no idea how the white house would react but even given the fact that i think nobody could have tried to predict anything, i can guarantee you that nobody expected for sure that the way the white house would react would be to present two competing versions of the simple central story of whether or not the president knew that flynn did what he just pled guilty to. did the president know flynn lied at the fbi? the president has two competing contradictory stories. the president's personal lawyer tells "the washington post" that yeah, trump knew. president knew back in latejune

before he fired him he lied. he says the president probably knew that because his white house counsel don mcgahn told him that. there is a competing condition. sited as being quote familiar with don mcgahn's account says white house counsel don mcgahn didn't tell the president about flynn lying to the fbi and don mcgahn himself didn't know that was the case. i expect conflicting stories, competing stories. i don't expect for them to both come from the white house. but we don't know which is true, if either of them is. for now we can put the unsortable mess into a gray box off to the side. what is clear is this, the president saying in typed and correctly spelled words that he fired famike flynn because he ld

to mike pence and the fbi. president has always said he fired mike flynn because he lied to the vice president. he wronged the vice president. this weekend the president also said that in addition to that he fired flynn because flynn lied to the fbi. so the words themselves in this tweet from the president would seem to say quite literally if the president knew flynn lied to the fbi before and when he fired him. the president's lawyers appear to be squabbling about this point that can't be sorted out at the moment but we do have this black and white statement from the president and we have this one root question, we know flynn lied at the fbi because he admitted that in court last week. does it matter when the president knew that was true? and how he found out? is the president himself on the hook? if he knew at one time versus another? joining us now is carol leaning a reporter from "the washington post" that's been cover thing story intensely. nice to have you here tonight. thank you for being here. >> glad to be here, rachel.

>> i am reading this as i just said as conflicting accounts from various people associated with this investigation as to what the president knew, who told him and when he knew it. is that how you see it, that there are a few different conflicting stories as to how much the president was in the loop here? >> yes and actually, i think there are sort of three gradations of accounts not all of them coming from the white house. one from the justice department, the acting at that point the acting attorney general sally yates. the white house counsel, don mcgahn and the president's personal lawyer john doud. it's confusing but ultimately all goes to whether or not the president was aware that his national security advisor was in criminal trouble. was he a person who had given false, misleading information to the fbi and sally yates has

testified that she didn't describe this problem that mr. flynn might have as a result of his interview with the fbi agents. mr. mcgahn according to a person familiar with his account has said he surely thought that the account that flynn had given the fbi was not complete and inaccurate based on what the acting attorney general told him, and mr. doud has said that the president knew from his lawyer, mr. mcgahn that it was likely that mr. flynn had given an inaccurate account, sorry, inaccurate account. >> an inaccurate account, got it. well, so it depends on the credibility of each of these poem who are telling each of these stories, i suppose and their credibility or assessment cob informed with how much they might be on the hook or in trouble if they are not telling the truth about matters.

from your understanding about how this factors into the overall investigation, is it your sense that we'll ever know for realc statements under oath? is this potentially a criminal matter we may see turn up in court filings? >> it's surely true based on interviews with people that have gone through the muller probe, meaning literally the interview process in his office and been questioned by his prosecutors and fbi agents recently. it's surely true people have been asked questions that go to the heart of this issue when the president fired fbi director jim comey who was leading the investigation in charge of it essentially was he doing that motivated by a desire to kill this investigation that had wrapped up flynn and possibly was looking deeper into trump's actual campaign and connections with russia.

was that his motive to obstruct a probe? >> so it's true muller is looking at that, however, this tweet storm, this event with so at that, however, this tweet storm, this event with the president tweeting something drafted by john doud is not the single piece of information upon which an obstruction charge could hinge. it's just too unimportant ultimately. there would have to be other pieces of evidence if someone was going to bring an obstruction charge and just to remind everybody, don mcgahn, the person at the center in a way of this story, the person receiving information from the attorney general warning, warning, michael flynn has provided an account that is not correct to the vice president. that person was just interviewed by bob muller's team on thursday of last week and again this week is supposed to be interviewed again for another day. so he has been surely asked a

lot of these same questions. that's more important than what the president tweeted on saturday. >> and carol, to that last point in terms of mcgahn being sort of in the middlecgahn being in the middle of the interview when they starting on thursday broke on friday when the flynn investigation -- sorry, when the flynn plea agreement was announced and maybe picked up that interview already this week or will later on this week, is it a crime for somebody to tell a lie to mueller's investigators in an interview setting? >> it absolutely is something that could be prosecuted and charged. if you are lying, if you give inconsistent statements, i mean, a prosecutor has to make a decision about how important this lie is. and what you're trying to cover up. and whether or not you're intending to conceal. but it is certainly something that's prosecutable. >> and has that threat has a way of focusing the mind i'm sure as a general matter, carol. >> there are two people that

have been charged with it already and we're not very many months down the red. >> exactly. carol, reporter for "washington post," thank you for your clarity and for your time, carol. nice to see you. >> you, too. thank you. >> we'll be right back. laxative, daily probiotics, endless fiber-- it could be wearing on you. tell your doctor what you've tried, and how long you've been at it. linzess works differently from laxatives. linzess treats adults with ibs with constipation or chronic constipation. it can help relieve your belly pain and lets you have more frequent and complete bowel movements that are easier to pass. do not give linzess to children less than six and it should not be given to children six to less than eighteen. it may harm them. don't take linzess if you have a bowel blockage. get immediate help if you develop unusual or severe stomach pain, especially with bloody or black stools. the most common side effect is diarrhea, sometimes severe.

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it's only ten seconds. just watch. trust me. just watch. ten seconds. >> smoking sucks. the air right out of your lungs. and you're going to need them for the rest of your life. don't smoke. it kills. >> takes you back, doesn't it? always classy. here at the rachel maddow show the homage is you know more now. stories that don't make sense at first but then down the road, hey -- come back. do it again. do it again. do it the other way. do it backwards. back that other way. there you go. thank you! sorry. hey! look, now you how the story ended. sorry i made you do it twice. abc news in august released a little intriguing morsel of news we didn't know what to make of at the time. peter strzok, a top investigator

on robert mueller's team at the special counsel's office left the team under mysterious circumstances. now, peter strzok was a big deal, chief of the fbi's counter espionage section. and when mueller appointed special counsel he recruited strzok to help lead the special counsel's probe into russian meddling. and just weeks after mueller recruited him to the special counsel's office, strzok mysteriously gone and he wasn't just gone back to counter espionage. he was gone to human resources. and no disrespect to our brilliant friends in hr who i am not disrespecting by saying this, but i don't think that was his first choice. so what happened? why did peter strzok leave the mueller investigation and get busted down to hr instead? well, this weekend we got our answer. "the new york times" reporting this mueller had removed strzok from his team, quote, after the justice department's inspector general started to examine

whether he sent text messages that expressed anti-trump political views in the campaign. text messages in which strzok and a colleague reacted to news events like presidential debates to appear critical of mr. trump. and then "the washington post" filled in the blanks on the aforementioned colleague, another fbi lawyer who was working for a deputy director andrew mccabe. a lawyer who had also been part of mueller's invest and involved a romantic relationship. strzok removed from mueller's team immediately upon discovery of the texts. his female colleague had already left mueller's team two weeks earlier. and so we have got lots of intrigue around this subject but now we also have an answer to what happened back in august. ♪ thank you, ma kayla. that does it for us tonight. see you again tomorrow. now it's i'm for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." good evening, lawrence. >> good evening, rachel. it is about standards. it's about the thing that the trump administration is