as i mentioned, we're going to be getting to news in just a move moment including very apt expert advice as to what it might mean. the biggest news in the country today, however, continues to be the emotional reeling all across the country after the mass murder of high school students at a self-florida high school yesterday afternoon. the 19-year-old alleged murderer was arraigned today. he has been charged with multiple murder counts. there were reports today that suspect might have been associated with a white supremacist, anti-semitic militia group in florida. the claims were from a guy in a white supremacist, anti-semitic, militia group in florida, a guy

who we wouldn't take his word for it without any supporting documents. police continue to say the murderer acted alone. if you are looking for a motive for his mass murder, if that makes a difference to your understanding against this latest gun massacre, then maybe hold out hope that someday we'll get word of what that motive might have been. for now we know he's the suspect, he had an a.r.-15 and tons of ammo. police say it was all legally acquired. because the laws our lawmakers have made on guns welcome a young man in his circumstances to arm himself the way he did, that ends up being the most important thing to know about how he came to a place in his life, in this country where he could kill that many people himself. there was no moment of silence today among our lawmakers in washington for this massacre. usually after the latest gun massacre of american children they have a moment of silence.

they did have one in the u.s. senate today, but they didn't have one in the house. and that's because they got disrupted in the house. now, we've got the tape of it. you will actually hear the disruption happen in this tape and you'll see members of the house react, but the camera never pans up and shows you who is creating all the ruckus. it's sort of oddly compelling. just watch this. the chair notes a disturbance in the gallery in contravention of the rules and laws of the house. the sergeant at arms will remove those persons and restore order to the gallery. >> at that point they cut the audio, but you can see all the members of the house looking up into the gallery and then the audio comes back on. >> the house will be in order. members will please take their

seats. the house will be in order. members please take your seats. please remember your conversation from the house floor. >> you don't see the people disrupting the house there because the people who are disrupting the house that you can see members of congress looking up at them, those people weren't even allowed to have their own phone cameras in the galley so they weren't able to documents what they were doing themselves. but a bunch of people in the house gallery did get arrested for this. this is a photo taken after they were released from custody. the protesters were blind people and deaf people and people who use wheelchairs and people with other disabilities. you see one man who uses a wheelchair getting loaded into a police van. a bunch of americans with disabilities, including people in wheelchairs, got arrested for the same cause as well. they were protesting on the house floor today because today the republican-led house of representatives passed a bill to cut back the ada, the americans

with disabilities act. congressman james langevin, senator tammy duckworth who lost both legs while in iraq, john lewis railed against this but the republican house passed it today. they passed it as a stand-alone thing. it wasn't part of a big spending bill or where it was a line item. this was its own quiet little stand-alone bill to gut the americans with disabilities act. and nobody campaigns for congress by saying, hey, send me to washington, i'm going to gut the americans with disabilities act. nobody says send me to washington, i'm going to stick it to disabled people. send me to washington and when i take my votes, you'll see blind people and people in wheelchairs

being hauled out of the gallery in the house and arrested because i'm taking away the most important parts of the most important legislation that has integrated people into mainstream life into american public accommodation. there's no i'm wheelchair user's worst enemy caucus. right? so when the republican-led congress pursues stand-alone bills on esh uissues like this, know they don't want to brag about it at home. nobody promised to make things harder for disabled people when they got to washington. they like to do these things quietly. often times these things proceed all wait through both republican-controlled houses of congress and all the way to the president's desk without anybody making any noise about it at all, except, of course, for the activists who represent these communities, whose lives are materially going to get worse because of this rollback of some of the most successful civil

rights history in history. they're the ones who make noise, brings house to a stop, make all those members of congress turn and and figure out what's going on, even when no one in the house is allowed to turn their cameras toward the gallery to see them, they make themselves heard. on issues like this that congress wants to keep as low profile as possible, it's the outcry from the activists group that is sometimes the only way we know these things are happening. they make there's no press for this stuff. there was another quiet little bill like this that passed the congress one year ago today. it was actually the first materially significant stand-alone legislation that was passed after the 2016 election, where republicans won control of the house and the senate and the white house. it was a stand-alone single purpose piece of legislation to make it easier for mentally ill people to buy guns. that's all it did. it passed through both houses of congress as of one year ago today, passed congress today.

went to president trump's desk. president trump signed it. you have seen a gazillion photo-ops of president signing legislation. sometimes it's just random pieces of paper making him look like he's accomplishing something in the legislative process when he's not. any time he can show off he's signing a thing, they take that opportunity, except for the bill he signed that makes it easier for mentally ill people to access guns. cbs news reported today that they repeatedly requested, they requested 12 different times that the white house release a photo of president trump signing that bill, that eased up on our nation's restrictions on people who have been adjudicated to be seriously mentally ill from accessing firearms. cbs news reports today they asked 12 times for it, that a

white house photographer has confirmed to them that there are existing photos of signing that bill about mentally ill people getting guns easier. it almost like they don't want to admit that it was specifically and only designed to get more guns into the hands of more seriously mentally ill people. this, of course, was president trump's response to yesterday's latest gun massacre. quote, so many signs that the florida shooter was mentally disturbed." but the president has never answered a question about that first materially significant legislation that he signed. the white house is dodging those questions, even now. even now they are refusing to release the photo of president trump signing that legislation, which in fact he signed.

so they're not answering questions about it, they cancelled yesterday's white house press briefing, can scel today's white house house briefings. nbc caught up with senator chuck grassley of iowa today to get his thoughts about what the nation should do to try to stop these gun massacres from happening. this was his response. >> we have not done a very good job of making sure that people that have mental reasons for not being able to handle a gun getting their name into the fbi files and we need to concentrate on that. >> and then he walked away. now, senator grassley speaks in a sometimes elliptical manner, he can sometimes be hard to follow. he said "we have not done a very good job of making sure that people who have mental reasons for not being able to handle a gun, getting their names into the fbi files and we need to

concentrate on that." that's what he said. to be perfectly and specifically clear here, senator chuck grassley was the lead sponsor in the u.s. senate of the bill that passed one year ago today that had one specific purpose, which was to keep people who had adjudicated as seriously mentally ill from having their names added to the fbi database that he's talking about right there. we haven't done a very good job making sure people who have mental reasons to not be getting a gun of getting their name into the fbi files. you have to go out of your way to choose a legislative goal to choose that people with serious, debilitating mental illness can more easily get guns by excluding them from the fbi background check database. that has to be a specific goal. you don't hit that mark in a stand-alone bill that only does that. again, this was not part of any

bigger piece of legislation. this was not part of some loophole of some dumb bill that did only that. today he speaks in wonder in apparent wonder that for some reason we can't get the name of people with mental illness on to the background database. he can't give one reason. gun laws do not make themselves. we have the gun laws we have today because of the lawmakers we have today. none of them received our nation's gun laws on tablets on a mountaintop. they're all in control of what gun laws we have. but if we were -- if we were thinking they might reflect on that today in a moment of silence for all these american kids who were just murdered, well, they were scared away from doing their moment of silence on that today because there were people with wheelchairs and people who were blind and deaf

trying to stop them from taking the action that they took today to go out of their way to hurt disabled people in america. your tax dollars at work today. in many ways, today was as much a day of rage as it was a day of grief. in the after math of an event that shakes the country like yesterday's shooting did, there are political professionals among us with ice water in their veins, who look at a tragedy like this and see opportunity. they see opportunity to dodge some of the consequences of unflattering news. for some folks in washington, the day after a particularly repulsive massacre of american children is a good time to empty out the hamper, air out the proverbial dirty laundry you don't want people to focus on too much while they're worried about bigger and more tragic things. so "the new york times" was the

lucky recipient today of the long, long, long, long delayed release of financial documents from the trump inaugural committee. now, that may seem like kind of a picayune concern, right, random accounting matter related to the trump administration? hmm? why focus on that? the reason it's important, the reason it may very well not be a coincidence they decided to release information on the trump inaugural committee on a day like today is because the trump inaugur inaugur inaugural committee that no other has been done. like that stand-alone bill they passed today to help mentally ill people get easier access to

guns. an inaugural committee is a stand-alone, discrete thing, raising money once for a one-time event that is over in one day. and then when it's done, they square up the accounts, close themselves down and cease to exist. that's it. even for really gigantic inaugurations like barack obama's in 2009, the inaugural committee, open, execute, shut down, that's it. as financial things in washington go, this is one of the simplest financial things in washington. they open, they execute, they shut down. not the way it happened with the trump inauguration. trump inauguration, for reasons we will not go into here, was a fairly small inauguration. there were not very many inaugural balls, no big, glitzy attended events where hundreds of thousands of people went. at the inaugural parade it was

cold, a lft tot of the stands w empty, there were a lot of protesters. for an inexplicable reason, the inaugural committee raised double the amount of money and that led to questions where did all the extra money go? this was not a $100 million event. over the course of the past year the inaugural committee for president trump has refused to release any accounting with what they did with the more than $100 million that they raised. on at least four separate occasions to reporters' questions, they said they were just about to put out the numbers. one time they even claimed that they had just passed with flying colors a formal audit. announcing that raised the prospect that we would all get to see that audit, so we'd all be assured there was no funny business going on with any gigantic trump oriented slush

fund in washington. they never released that audit. we've been trying for months to get any sort of accounting for what happened to that leftover money. slush funds tend to attract scandal. we've been trying to figure out what happened to the tens of millions of unaccounted for dollars that must have gone along with the trump inauguration. the chairman of the inaugural committee is a close friend to the president. he announced the phantom audit and never released it. the pressure of the inaugural committee never got back to us, despite our attempts to contact him. it may have had something to do with the fact rereported he was an unindicted tax co-conspirator in their criminal case. and rick gates is facing multi-felony charges in federal court brought by special counsel

robert mueller. the information quietly released today to "the new york times" indicates that the reason we haven't been able to find out what happened to any of the leftover money from the trump inauguration is because there's almost no money left over from the trump inauguration, which is astonishing. they say they've got $2 million or $3 million left in the bank from $107 million that they raised. biggest inauguration ever was about 50 million. how did they spend over $100 million on this particular inauguration that they put on? well, now we know part of how they spent that was by sending $26 million to a company that was only created one month before the inauguration happened. a company created in december 2016 which was made $26 million out of the inaugural fund. it a company that was created by donald trump's wife's good friend. she herself reportedly cleared well over $1.5 million on the

deal. but her company cleared this gigantic amount of money. even if you take out the money she just stuck in her pocket, her company cleared like $25 million for the inauguration. now, to be clear, there is a general contractor which basically does every inauguration. this one for trump, both of them for obama, both for george w. bush, both for bill clinton. there is one big contracting firm called hargrove that is kind of always in charge of the major preparations for the inaugurations. that company did the trump inaugural and they got paid $25 million to do it. that sort of makes sense. that's sort of in keeping with other inaugurations. but then in addition to the general contractor who does all the inaugurations getting paid $25 million, in addition to that, this woman who knows melania trump also got paid another $25 million plus $1.5 million for herself. and nobody is quite sure what that's all about. but maybe nobody will remember

to ask about it since they snuck the news out in the middle of an all-encompassing, show stopping national tragedy. but i mentioned at the top here that there was some important breaking news on the mueller investigation. that actually relates to rick gates, who was the deputy chairman of the trump inauguration, unusual trump inaugural committee. rick gates was arrested in october and charged with multiple femulti multiple felonies. for a couple of weeks there have been some intriguing court proceedings that made it seem like he was getting dropped or dropping his second legal team as well. it was reported a third legal team led by veteran washington scandal lawyer tom green might be taking over rick gates'

representation and negotiating a whole new relationship between rick gates and the special prosecutor robert mueller. tonight sources say rick gates is in fact about to flip and become a cooperating witness for robert mueller. mueller has already on attend a guilty plea and a cooperation agreement from trump foreign policy adviser george papadopoulos and from trump national security adviser mike flynn. if he also gets trump's deputy campaign chair, who was on the campaign longer than paul manafort was, he was still there after manafort got fired, he was an integral part of the presidential transition, he was number two in charge of the trump inauguration, he was a frequent presence in the white house for the first months of this administration, if he flips, this would be the biggest development that we could see publicly since the mueller investigation since flynn and papadopoulos announced they would become cooperating

witnesses. again, nbc news has not confirmed this reporting. it's a cnn story at this point but they're citing multiple sources and they've got one super intriguing, super specific detail about what has happened legally already between robert mueller and rick gates. it's a detail that we're definitely going to need an expert to explain. that part of the story and the expert are next. imagine if the things you bought every day... earned you miles to get to the places you really want to go. with the united mileageplus explorer card, you'll get a free checked bag. two united club passes. priority boarding. and earn fifty thousand bonus miles after you spend three thousand dollars on purchases in the first three months from account opening plus, zero-dollar intro annual fee for the first year, then ninety-five dollars. learn more at theexplorercard.com coaching means making tough choices. jim! you're in! but when you have high blood pressure and need cold medicine that works fast,

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nbc news broke this scoop this afternoon. former white house strategy and trump campaign chief steve b bannon met can special counsel robert mueller multiple times over the past week, bannon spent some 20 hours in conversation with robert mueller's team. after that the a.p. reports

tonight based on a single source that, quote, bannon answered every question that was put to him by mueller's team. now, 20 hours is a lot of testimony. that said, we have no idea what the questions were. we have no idea what mueller wanted that much testimony from steve bannon about. but after that scoop from hallie jackson today, quote, -- if this cnn report is right tonight and mueller is about to get a third cooperating witness, that is a major advance in the special counsel's position in this investigation. that said, i'm not a lawyer and there is part of this reporting for which i need some help. i just need some help

understanding this part. this is cnn's report tonight. "gates has already spoken to mueller's team about his case and has been in plea negotiations for about a month. gates has had what criminal lawyers call a queen for a day interview." what on god's green earth is a queen for a day interview? "gates has what what criminal lawyers call a queen for a day interview, in which a defendant answers any questions from the prosecutor's team, including about his own case and other potential criminal activitiy witnessed. a defendant can typically admit to crimes with little additional consequences unless he or she lies. after the queen for a day interview, there's only a very small chance a defendant could turn back toward fighting the charges." again, as a non-lawyer, i get it would be a very big deal in the

mueller investigation if mueller and his team are about to flip a new cooperating witness, one who was there for the campaign, even after manafort, one who was there for the campaign, transition, inauguration and beyond. that said, i have no idea what to make of this queen for a day interview stuff. luckily we are joined now by former u.s. attorney barbara mcquaid, who is very plain spoken on these and other matters. barb, thank you for being here. >> you bet. glad for being here. >> so queen for a day isn't a joke on non-lawyers to make us look up to look like dunces, it's a real thing? >> it is a real thing. it refers to proffer sessions. it comes from an old tv show, a game show in the 50s where women would compete to be queen for a day and win prizes by telling their sob stories. it means the witness or defendant comes in and in an exchange for an agreement that none of those statements will be

used against him, answers all questions truthfully, including questions that may implicate criminal behavior by himself. >> so you have to tell the truth and you can't later take the stand and contradicts what you say in this interview or they'll use it against you. but aside from those two prospects, you're supposed to feel free to confess to anything and everything, even stuff you were involved in, safe in the knowledge it won't be used to put you in jail. >> yes, in fact you have an incentive to be very for tthcomg because anything you say there can't be use against you. if you hold back and the prosecution finds out about something you did, you can be charged with that. the only limitation really is if you lie. if you get caught lying, the deal is off and all of those things you said about yourself can be used against you. >> do agreements like this -- do interviews like this always happen in conjunction with someone pleading guilty? it seems like a guilty plea, a plea deal has to be part of that kind of negotiation. >> almost always.

i'm not sure i've ever seen it happen where somebody actually sat down and went through this process and then backed out of it. they could theoretically. but once you've told the prosecution all of the bad things you've done and you've talked to them about bad conduct by other people, usually you've come to a point where you're ready to flip, to join the other team, to plead guilty to try to minimize your own exposure to sentencing. >> would there be an instance where somebody agreed to talk to prosecutors this way and change to a guilty plea because we know mr. gates has already pled not guilty to these charges but then they also didn't become a witness for the prosecution, a cooperating witness to help them build another case against another person or is that always part and parcel of the zmael. >> it's contemplated that the person will become a witness. it may come down the road that

he's not nebe needed. it's contemplated you will be willing and able to file. >> and prosecutors say they are filing new charges, for gates it will be tax-related charges. how should that fit into our understanding here? >> i think it's not surprising we would see additional charges. i think people speculated where are the tax charges? it seems obvious if you're hiding all this income, tax charges are likely. sometimes that comes later in a superseding indictment because the charges aren't ready or sometimes prosecutors strategically hold back some of those charges saying we'll allow you to plead guilty to the indictment as it exist today, we're going to continue to investigate so it might get worse for you and if there is no plea, they need to follow

through on those promises that additional charges are for the coming. it wouldn't surprise me that we might see it. new charges can sometimes cause a delay in the trial while the defense attorney prepares for new additional charges. >> one last question for you, barb. my sense as a non-lawyer that the mueller investigation getting a third cooperating witness would be a big deal, would be a serious change in their position in terms of this overall investigation, am i right to see it that way? >> i think it's a big deal. it may be that gates in light of his position with the campaign has information about connections between the campaign and russia. even if the sole basis of his knowledge is about paul manafort and he agrees to testify and cooperate against paul manafort, that could endues paul manafort to cooperate. i think in either scenario this inches us a little bit closer toward getting into the trump

orbit. >> former u.s. attorney barbara mcquaid, you are exactly the person i knew who could understand it and explain it in a way that could help me understand it. we are very lucky to have her on deck for us. we have a lot of great lawyers and prosecutors who help us understand stuff. but when there is something so complicated to the point where it seems funny, barbara mcquaid is the one person who will damn straight always makes sense of it. we'll be right back. don't we need that cable box to watch tv? nope. don't we need to run? nope. it just explodes in a high pitched 'yeahhh.' yeahhh! try directv now for $10 a month for 3 months. no satellite needed. i know when i hand them the it's gonna be scary.car

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i do recognize the optics of this are not good. i accept responsibility for that and but i do believe it's important the united states continue its work with its al i -- allied countries. >> it's not the optics that are not good, it's the facts that are not good. >> also the timing is terrible. veterans affairs secretary david sh shulkin would probably have picked any other day for his bill. he has apologized and even written a personal check in

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so for over a month now, ever since "the wall street journal" published this bombshell report that the president's personal lawyer arranged a $130 payment to porn star stormy daniels, we've been trying not to think about the president's sex life at all but to ask the crucial question who paid that money to stormy daniels to make this story of an alleged affair with the president go away? the initial flimsy denials in response to the wall street journal were about the sex part of the story but nobody bothered to overtly denied someone had paid ms. daniels right before the election. the watch dog group common cause called on the justice department to investigate this matter. they said the payment of $130,000 violated campaign finance laws because it wasn't

reported on campaign filings because it exceeded campaign contribution limits and said it was paid for influencing the election. that floated three possible original sources of the $130,000 that was paid for ms. daniels. their guesses for who paid, number one, the trump campaign commonwealth, number two, the trump organization or number three, john doe, the unknown source of funds paid for essential consultants llc, the name of the company set up reportedly by trump lawyer michael cohen to cut this check. so that was the complaint. two days ago this turned up in "the new york times." michael cohen, trump's longtime lawyer says he paid stormy daniels out of his on pocket. that may have been a little ahead of the story. he didn't say he paid out of his own pocket. what he said what, "quote, i used my own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000

to stephanie clifford, aka stormy daniels. he said neither the trump organization or trump campaign was a party to the transaction and neither reimbursed me for the payment. he said he was not reimbursed by the campaign but there was no denial he might have been reimbursed by donald trump himself. when he says he used his own funds to facilitate the payment, honestly that means he could have paid out of pocket for the stamp on the envelope with somebody else's check inside, right? to facilitate that payment getting to its destination. so who paid? and there's also this matter now of why michael cohen would come out and admit this payment right now. the "new york times" suggested his statement was linked to a deadline requiring him to respond to the fec complaint filed by common cause. that doesn't make sense either. michael cohen doesn't appear to be one of the official

respondents in that case. we spoke to watch dog common cause. they genuinely seemed surprised that cohen volunteered this information unprompted and we reached out to michael cohen and asked him why he volunteered this information if he didn't need to. he told us, quote, "i am the respondent. you really need to get your facts straight." he then told us to take this matter up with his attorney, who never got back to us. is michael cohen saying definitively that he is john doe, that he is the ultimate source of funds? he didn't just facilitate the payment? there's still a lot to sort out here, including this still central question of whether this now acknowledged payment violated campaign finance laws. well, i'm very happy to say joining us now is the vice chair of the fec, ellen weintraub. i should point out she cannot discuss this specific case in

detail but she has more knowledge about these issues that anyone alive. i appreciate appreciate your time tonight. thank you for being here. >> thanks, rachel. i'm not talking about any cases that may or may not be before the agency but if you want to talk about the law, i'm here for you. >> that's exactly what i want to talk about, nothing that is pending before the commission. can you give us a sense how long it takes for the commission to decide if it's going to take up a complaint such as this one. >> it really varies. whenever we get complaints, our lawyers will take a look at them and do an analysis for us and present a recommendation to the commission and then the commission, depending on how many cases are in the queue ahead of them, sometimes it takes a little while before the commission can get to the point of having a discussion about it. we could vote just based on the recommendation on what we call tally, but usually somebody wants to talk about it. so we have to wait until there's an opportunity to discuss it at

a scheduled meeting of the commission. >> now, in this case, which again you're not going to talk about directly, michael cohen says this was a private transaction, he says this is totally separate and apart from anything having to do with the campaign. in a general sense, what are the general factors that the commission looks at in deciding whether or not campaign finance law is implicated, whether or not an expenditure of some kind or some sort of financial action of some kind has a link to a campaign? >> okay, again, i'm not talking about -- >> as a general matter, how can you tell if some things are related to a campaign? >> as a general rule, it's usually actually pretty transparent if a contribution is a contribution that's related to the campaign because it's usually a check or an electronic transfer that goes directly to the campaign account. but the law says that a gift, loan, advance, money, anything

of value that is made for the purpose of influencing an election is a contribution. so that's a fact-based determination as to whether a particular payment is for the purpose of influencing an election. >> so as a legal matter, a check does not have to go into the coffers of a campaign specifically in order for you guys to be able to say that is a check that was designed to influence the outcome of a campaign. >> not necessarily. it does not necessarily have to go into the campaign. there are what are called in-kind contributions. and we've had cases where somebody paid an expense of a campaign and that was considered the contribution to the campaign because it saved the campaign the expense of having to pay it themselves. >> commissioner ellen weintraub, would you stay with us for another second in? i have a couple more questions that have come up and i feel

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as i mentioned at the top. show, today at long last we got a 116-page tax filing from the president's inaugural committee, revealing that $25 million or so went to the general contractor who has run all the other recent inaugurals as well, but in addition to that, another 25 million or so went to a brand new firm run by an adviser to the first lady, a firm that was only formed the month before the

inauguration happened. that's interesting. the inaugural committee reported all that to the irs, but the irs isn't the only agency with some degree of oversight when it comes to the inaugural committee. the other, the agency that actually hears from them first is the federal election commission. we're still joined by ellen weintraub, vice chair of fcc. what kind of funds do inaugural committees get? if there were something hinky or unexplained in inaugural filings or filings moren egenerally, wh would catch it or who would look at it? >> there's not a lot of laws on these committees. there's actually no requirement that they report where the money goes. that's something that people might want to think about as they look forward to future

inaugurations, now that national guard raugs -- inauguration coms are raising so much money. >> thank you so much for coming here tonight. you've been very enlightening in terms of how you approach your work. >> thank you, rachel. >> we'll be right back. stay with us. successful people have one thing in common. they read more. how do they find the time? ... with audible. audible has the world's largest selection of audiobooks. for just $14.95 a month... you get a credit good for any audiobook ...

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now threatens the tenure of epa administrator scott pruitt. in the case of david shulkin, it's worse on several levels. there's a damning inspector general report about his behavior this week. it not only includes he repeatedly lied about his travel and using government funds to pay for his wife, his report refers his chief of staff to the justice department for potential criminal prosecution. it stems from a trip that shulkin took his wife on last summer in july, over ten days in

europe, secretary shulkin had three and a half scheduled days of work but all the rest of the time was for -- we have a list from the inspector's report. touring the palace for the changing of the guard, visiting rosenberg castle, visiting frederickberg's castle, shopping in copenhagen, a visit to the church of war rooms and visit westminster abbey, a visit to st. paul's cathedral, a visit to tower bridge and shakespeare's globe theater, a trip on the london eye, that ferry wheel thing, another trip to the windsor castle, all on the taxpayers' dime. he took his wife to the

wimbledon championship. he said it was okay to take the ticket because they were a gift from a personal friend. that person admitted in an interview that she didn't even know shulkin's wife's name. his staff apparently charged taxpayers $4,000 for what they inexplicably described airport parking. where'd you park? no one's explained that one yet. in the course of preparing the report, the inspector general referred the chief of staff to the justice department for altering internal e-mails for making it seemed like he was going to get an award in denmark, which would have justified for his plane ticket. he wasn't going to get an award but he changed the e-mails to say he did. the justice department decided not to pursue prosecution at this time.

maybe the justice department would let that go but not secretary shulkin. he suggested that maybe that e-mail was doctored by a hacker. huh? well, this morning the secretary arrived on capitol hill for what was supposed to be a budget oversight hearing. watch his response when a lawmaker suggests that actually they should take this hacking allegation quite seriously. >> i would just say before moving on to the budget, the allegations of a potential hacking of a v.a. computer system with ill intent is a serious matter. i would ask you, mr. secretary, we're prepared to ask the department of justice to look into that if you think that's appropriate and we will follow up to see if that's the appropriate action to go on. >> you -- you would like to look at which now? i said my chief of staff couldn't possibly have messed up her e-mail, it must have been hacked. you're going to send that to the

justice department for investigation now? gulp. sure. of course. that would be very serious. tonight leo shane of "military times" reports congressman till walls has in fact referred meanwhile, these can't be fun days for va secretary david shulkin, the taxpayer funded trip to europe with his wife might have been fun but these days are no fun at all. now it's time for the "last word with lawrence o'donnell." >> good evening rachel. remember for candidate trump there was nothing more important than fixing the va. and now $4,000 in airport parking to me is the biggest mystery on that list. >> the overcharges on airport parking. the only thing i can think is they parked the car on a baggage carousel and that's the ticket you get. in 10 days how do you pay $4,000 for parking?