chicago. good night. happy friday. thanks for joining us tonight. this is a live news show right now. it's friday night and this era in america news and politics, that means keep your trey tables stowed and your seat in a upright position and we need to start tonight with something new to report concerning the epa administration and not just by thread and that is invisible that has been cut and retied and several times and it's frayed or on fire right now depending how you squint at it. one of the elements of controversy around scott pruit has to do with the upper level

staffing that he's done at his agency at epa. when fox news reporter ed henry interviewed scott pruit, that was the part, that is it. >> why did you go around the president to give pay raisers -- >> i did not. my staff did. i changed it. >> somebody was fired for it? >> that should not have done. >> who did it? >> there will be accountability. >> you don't know who did it? >> i found out about this yesterday and i corrected the action and we are in the process of finding out how it took place and correcting it. >> both of these staffers that got large pay raises are friends of yours, i believe, from oklahoma, right? >> they are staffers here in the agency. >> they are friends of yours. >> they serve an important person. >> you didn't know they got the pay raises. >> i didn't know they got the pay raise until yesterday. >> one got a raise of $28,000 and the other was $56,000. do you know what the median income in this country is?

$57,000 a year. >> okay. >> one of your friends from oklahoma got a pay raise that's the medium. >> they did not get a pay raise. >> they did not. i stopped that yesterday. >> you stopped it. are you embarrassed that -- >> it should not have happened and the officials involved in that process should not have done what they did. >> i love the part where he says there are staffers here -- hang on, these staffers are friends of yours from oklahoma. they are in the agency, they are friends of yours and scott pruit says they serve a very important person. they're his staff. the substance of that public explanation from epa administrator scott pruit is he had no idea about these big pay raises, $30,000, $50,000 pay raises that went to his staffers. we later found out that the money for those pay raises came from the safe drinking water act. where it is in the law that an administrator can do that because the epa is ssupposed toe

engineers to respond to drinking water agencies. he's saying publicly he had no idea how this happened and only found out about it in the press this week. it was news to him. he definitely didn't do it himself. he says he's not even sure who might have done it but when he figures it out, they will be in trouble. scott pruit it's reported not only knew about it, he signed off on them himself. the post siting three trump administration officials confirming that scott pruit endorsed the idea last month of giving these substantial pay raises to two of his new strappers. so according to this much typically sourced accounts, he is lying pub welcomely about one of the things he's been cut out for in this scandal avalanche that turned him into a rolling epa administrator snowball but here is something new on top of that, last week we talked a

little bit about the trip to morocco scott pruit took in december. it was amazing for lots of reasons. he took seven staffers with him on the trip including one of the oklahoma staffers he gave the giant raise to and he's denying he had anything to do with giving her a raise but including her, he brought seven staffers and his security detail. the associated press reports a little while ago tonight within the past couple hours pruit's security detail was, we now know a multi million dollar affair according to documents reviewed tonight by the associated press, epa chief scott pruit's concern for his safety came at a steep cost for taxpayers as his security detail blew through over time budgets and took officers to protect him. the agency spent millions of dollars for a 20-member security detail that is three times the size of his predecessors

security contingent and hers was only part time. so we don't know exactly how many members of scott pruit's 20-person full-time security team got to go on the trip to morocco but it was scott pruit, seven staffers plus the security team flying international first class, paid for by us, the taxpayers happy that trip came with a saturday night layover in paris, france. we learned yesterday after the saturday night layover in paris, pruit and company didn't actually show up for their sunday morning connecting flight from paris to morocco. oops. that meant another day and night in paris on the taxpayer's dime. finally on monday they did manage to catch another flight where pruit got down to the business of the trip and the business of the trip inexplicably was pruit went to morocco to lobby government officials there, that they should change the strategy and start importing liquified natural gas from the u.s.

that's not his job. it is not the job of the environmental protection agency to talk other countries into importing american natural gas. that is not anywhere near what the epa is supposed to do. at the time of that inexplicable lavish taxpayer funneled trded there is one company operating for liquified natural gas. the controlling shareholder of shanir was carl icahn. he left as trump's regulatory advisor amid serious reports he used that position to benefit companies he was invested in and make himself money on the markets. carl icahn also reportedly scott pruit his job. after scott pruit interviewed,

trump asked pruit to seal the deal by walking two blocks north to carl icahn's office because trump told him carl had some questions for him before scott pruit could be green lit for the job. carl icahn apparently asked his questions, pruit gave the right answers and soon thereafter, pruit went to morocco and hooked up carl's company with a big policy that had nothing whatsoever to do with the epa. so that morocco trip is an amazing story because the top lobbyist for the energy company is the one that's been living in the condo for $50 a night. the morocco thing is astonishing but check this out. put this in your liquified natural gas pipe and smoke it. one of the people on that amaze-balls trip was a newly hired senior counsel at the epa named samantha dravis.

in the middle of this scandal swirling around scott pruit, this epa staffer quit. found out this week she was quitting and nobody was quite sure why when he first got word that she was quitting but then we learned that this letter had been sent to the epa's inspector general ahead of samantha dravis' resignation. the top democrat on the envier meant come pity sent this letter this week asking the inspector general at pruit's agency to investigate reports that this senior staffer for scott pruit, the person whose actually said to be his closest aide at the agency, according to the letter, there are reports she was being paid full-time for that senior counsel job at the epa even though she was not actually showing up for work for three months. according to the letter, she did not show up for work despite being paid full-time in november 2017, december 2017 and january

2018. if that's true, that's an amazing gig, right? look at that timeline. if what senator carper is asking about is true, that would mean that scott pruit's senior counsel was getting paid for a full-time gig and that included her getting to go on the trip where she got to fly international first class to paris for the weekend and then on to morocco and she got to avoid that awkward thing where you come back from the awesome trip and get dirty looks from your co-workers that heard how awesome it was but didn't get to go. she didn't have to talk about that because she didn't actually have to go to work for months. so that senior counsel again described as the closest staffer to scott pruit, she has now resigned in the middle of this scandal. carper sent that letter last week. we learned about her resignation this week. she's gone. but we've got new information about this issue with pruit's

senior counsel that may show this to be a bigger problem than it's understood to be. this new information tonight comes from the committee where carter is the ranking democrat and a staffer on the committee tonight gave us back ground of what led to this request from senator carper. this is exactly how carper put it. this is what carper said to the epa. i write to request that the inspector general conduct an immediate review of the efforts to prevent fraud related to employee time and attendance including an investigation into potential fraud committed by scott pruit's political staff specifically the senator says i have been informed that ms. samantha dravis did not attend work or perform her do you haveties -- dutys for much of january 2017 to 2018 and i'm informed she was compensated as a full-time employee throughout

that time. now we can report what led to this remarkable claim is that this committee, the environment committee in the senate was contacted but multiple sources on this matter over a period of four to six weeks, multiple sources contacted the committee via calls, e-mails and in person meetings all raising the same issue about samantha dra vvis about her being senior counsel but not being at work. the sources include former appointees, current epa political appointees and current epa staff. we're told all sources that contacted the cokocommittee expressed similar concerns. so tonight, 64 democratic members of congress signed a statement calling on scott pruit to resign. that was before the new reporting from the a.p. about

the multimillion security cost before this reporting about his senior counsel and multiple staffers including current political appointees raising the issues with the committee that oversees the epa whether or not she had to come to work to earn her salary working for scott pruit. but like i said, she has resigned. as of this second, scott pruit is still in his job in donald trump's cabinet but the night is young and stuff happens on fridays. the one very high profile person who is definitely leaving washington tonight is h.r. mcmaster. i hope you saw this footage today. did you see this today? remarkable footage of west wing staff and security counsel staff coming outside onto the grounds of the white house to cheer for him and applaud for him as he left the white house for the last time. general h.r. mcmaster was fired by president trump about two

weeks ago. today was his last day. and he went out with this remarkable show of support from his colleagues and from white house staff today. but he is now gone. and the new national security advisor, the president's third after mike flynn who is awaiting sentencing and h.r. mcmaster, the new national security advisor john bolton is due to start on monday. you probably want to stick a pin in that for now because there are questions about john bolton starting on monday. real questions out of today's news and we'll get to that in a minute with rolling stone reporter tim dickinson tonight. before we get to the substantive issue of john bolton taking this job and the question of if that's going to work, also just consider the immediate timeline here and when we got that footage today of mcmaster leaving and staff applauding him and everything, that was not a show. he left. he's actually gone. john bolton we're told is due to start first thing monday

morning. is anybody working? there is no national security advisor? hold tight. hold tight because there is a lot of international eye poking going on right now including the president trying to start this trade war with china. you saw the markets go off a cliff again today because of that. the president of mexico is even keel about president trump and making stern nationally televised denounceuations over the president's recent remarks insulting mexico and mexicans and of course, there is what's going on with russia. and a whole bunch of really important stuff happens today when it comes to russia and that's next. stay with us. just listen. (vo) there's so much we want to show her.

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happening through the u.s. government, happens through the special counsel's office. they went after russia directly for their interference in the 2016 presidential election when

in february they indicted 13 russia russians. this is a guy close to putin. robert mueller straight up indict that guy in february. those indictments by mueller in february ended up becoming the basis for the first significant u.s. government sanction against russia for the interference issue. it happened a few weeks ago. mueller was the one that picked the targets, named them and literally brought federal criminal charges against them then the trump administration just held on to that and said yeah, we'll sanction them, too. since then, robert mueller hasn't just charged, he also secured his first prison sentence in the russia scandal for a dutch lawyer who speaks flun fluent russian and in our

country neither alex van der zwann, the lawyer or her father in law hermann khan are high-profile figures. the jailing of his son has to have some residence in russia. since then we've learned thanks to a fascinating cnn report from a couple days ago that mueller and his proos csecutors have be stopping russian oligarchs and searching electronic devices of an oligarch. up until today, it's kind of been the special counsel's office who has -- that's been responsible in the united states for pumpinc punching back at ru behalf of the american people. they have done so in someways that have been quite provocative. well, now today, on hr

mcmaster's last day in office, today the treasury department announ announce what experts to be a subt substantive list as punishment for russia quote attempting to subvert western democraciedemoc. they got close to it. i think they are including messing with our democracy in that but couldn't explicitly say it. don't upset the president. whether or not that matters in terms of the exact verbiage, the list they put out together for sanctions is aggressive. it includes putin's son-in-law he set up with billions of dollars worth of shares in form early state-run entities when he married putin's daughter and sanctions the head of the glass problem, which is the gigantic company, which is a key source to energy and a couple people on the list who sanction experts and russian experts describe not just as obvious choices but

clever choices. for example, there are sanctions announced against igor. he's not famous but his dad and uncle are among the richest guys in russia and closest to putin, they have been given gigantic construction jobs. the contracts they tend to get are very large and very, very well padded. because putin's government has used his dad and uncle to accomplish government aims because they have been so enriched by putin's government, his dad and uncle were both put on the very strict sanctions list, the u.s. and european sanctions list in 2014 that happened after russia invaded k in crimea. they transferred assets and companies to the kid. they just gave everything to igor. right?

they are still believing to materially control assets but igor is not sanctioned. today he got sanctioned so both him and his dad and uncle are all in a position where their assets are not stripped but quite internationally constrained. there is go last things to know here about this. first, is that the person who appears to be hardest hit by the sanctions today is somebody who is a very familiar figure from the russia scandal and in particular the scandal surrounding indicted trump campaign chairman paul manafort. like all these other guys, he's a very, very rich russian oligarch who runs the biggest aluminum manufacturing concern outside of china. c there are 12 oligarch controlled companies that got sanctioned today. of the 12, eight are controlled

by him. he's really singled out. aside from his business influence, he is well-known because of long standing business dealings with paul manafort who is awaiting trial on multiple felonies. the a.p. reported back in march of last year that in 2006, manafort signed a $10 million a year contract with oleg to promote the interest in the united states and around the world. the a.p. has stood by that reporting. beyond that $10 million a year reported contract, deripaska tried multiple business ventures together. tried because part of the way we know that is because he sued manafort in multiple jurisdictions trying to get back millions of dollars he says manafort stole from him while he thought they were doing business together. then in the past year, the

atlantic magazine turned up e-mails from when manafort was running trump's campaign and manafort appeared to link the job on the trump campaign to his outstanding unsettled business matters with oleg. he e-mailed a business associate asking if oleg seen the press clippings about manafort becoming the campaign chair and asked if there is a way he can use that to get whole with oleg. he offered private briefings on the campaign to him. his business associate and say they assess as having current ties to russia intelligence. the business associate e-mailed manafort to say he spent five hours meeting with oleg and had several messages he needed to deliver. he said those concerned the future of his country meaning

oleg's country meaning russia. manafort and his business associate then met up in new york in early august 2016 to discuss whatever those messages were from oleg. at the time, manafort was trump's campaign manager. well, oleg is now sanctioned by the u.s. government and his business empire has just had a drop today and he's close to putin and nobody knows how the russian government is going to respond. they say they will respond in kind but there is no russian equivalent to looking multibillionaires out of the u.s. economy. not when your country is economically weak. russia is the biggest question on earth. they got an economy as big as italy. they have to create oligarchs to do their work everywhere. nobody knows what russia means

saying they have to retaliate in kind. they won't do anything to get a national security advisor in place monday morning. russia doesn't workweek ends, do they? that's before we get to the problem, the other big problem with the sanctions list, which is a problem for the new guy who is supposed to start as national security advisor on monday and that that will curl your hair. that's coming up next. stay with us.

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the nra has 5 million members. we work with everyone in the united states. there are no more people. they are more alike than americans in russia. we're hunters, we're shooters, we value the same things and we need to work together. >> no peoples are more alike than the americans and russians. nra president david keen, that happened during a visit when david keen and other officials traveled to moscow to attend a conference put on by a group called the right to bear arms. that's purportedly a gun rights group founded by a senior member of united russia. what's funny about that concept is that vladimir putin and his party united russia, they don't actually support gun rights in russia. so why did they create this group that purports to promote that? a deputy governor of the russian central bank, a former senior member of the russian parliament

and a close ally of vladimir putin and ranking member of his party started this gun rights group in russia. now, they didn't actually do much to promote gun rights in russia. at all. they also named themself the right to bear arms, which has a lot more residence in the english language than it does in russian but they did do is start making lots and lots of connections to the american nra. alexander started cull vties an started attending the nra's yearly conferences and met with officials and cultivated friendships and met republican party big wigs and politician introductions wherever they could and they twice got senior nra officials and nra affiliated sell leash celebrities to visit expenses paid as guests of this

putin affiliated fake gun rights group that honestly wasn't promoting gun rights in russia. now among the u.s. officials who personally promoted this russian group is john bolton who is supposed to start on monday as national security advisor. here he is as you've never seen him before with russian subtitles. >> thank you for this opportunity to address the russian people on the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the russian constitution. today you're engaged in a historic debate about the possible expansion of your freedoms. should the russian people have the right to bear baarms. >> they do not believe the russian people should have the right to bear arms. these people from his political party wanted to appear to be promoting that in russia and appear to have been doing so for

effect. they were trying to cultivate ties between the american political right and putin's government. it is reported the fbi is investigating whether this group and alexander used this relationship they built with the nra to funnel foreign cash into the u.s. to support the election of donald trump and that of course is awkward for john bolton starting asy edadvisor o that's a counter intelligence investigation. all of these contacts form part of an article in rolling stone called the decade's long campaign, excuse me, the decade's long russian campaign to eventually help elect donald trump. quote, returnen quote, russian experts believe it masked a dark alter your motive. steven hall that served as cia chief told the magazine quote the idea of private gun ownership is to putin.

why is a progun campaign being hatched by a leader in his party? as i mentioned before a few weeks ago, it was reported the fbi is envest gainvestigating wy nra money went to it. the nra spent $50 million on the 2016 election. that's triple than the previous election. central to that investigation is the head of the fashion russian gun rights group, it's funny, since this is generated a little scandal for the nra, the nra has admitted to taking foreign money and don't do so for election purposes. the one foreign donation the nra admitted to in the middle of the controversy is a $1,000 payment from alexander for his own personal life membership for the

nr nra. it's just -- that's -- he is unable to enter the united states or attend any more nra conferences or do any business with any of his american friends because he's just been named on the treasury department list of officials sanctioned by the u.s. government because of russia's interference in the election in 2016. will our new national security advisor john bolton have to ask for the video back? joining us is tim dickinson and he wrote this article, decades long help from the nra. thanks for being with us tonight. >> great to be with you. >> one of the things i'm curious about is why alexander ended up on this sanctions list today, this sanctions list today in terms of what it said it was about, i'm not sure how that connects to him and what he's known for doing in russian politics. >> i think one of the things missing in this talk about him

is how big a figure he was in the russian senate. he was number two and briefly rose to be the acting chairman. he was briefly mitch mcconnell essentially. and alexander was there in 2014 when russia was officially annexing crimea. he helped steer that legislation and appeared at the kremlin signing ceremony with vladimir putin. this is a big deal in russian politics far apart from any of the scandal we're talking about. there was a plausible reason to sanction him back in 2014. that didn't happen. it was another high level russian official sanctioned then so the question i guess this raises for me is why now? why is he getting targeted now and steve mnuchin the targeting secretary talked in specific terms, broad terms about russia's malign influence including the influence and interference in western

elections. it seemed to me that i think the right question is does someone in the administration have other information that's come to light that makes this person of significant interest now to be seeking to punish. >> and on the why question here, i think if we can agree that it would be unnatural to the point of impossible to exist in nature that there could be a putin supported russian gun rights group that was actually going to aggressively promote gun rights in russia and private gun ownership the way the nra does here, if we can set aside that's what this group is for, is it clear to you from your reporting and what you understand from the investigations here what exactly they were after in cultivating the nra this hard and run whai what is an opt to get lots of visits on both sides and cultivate friendships and turn it into relationships with american politicians. what was it about?

>> we're looking through a glass darkly here. we don't have all the information. having gone back through years and years of social media posts, you know, just extensive research, what you're describing is absolutely right. we see a sophisticated influence campaign where he and his protoe are doing bidding in american politics. the conventions and reciprocated in moscow but in america they become a condway to meet peoplee david keen. he ran the organization that runs cpac, all roads lead through this guy. he's one of the most connected guys in washington and is likely the reason that john bolton appeared in this video, the on public discussion we had of this that david keen asked bolton to record this video for his friends in russia and bolton unwittingly agreed is the story we've heard but the idea that

bolton is mixed-up in this speaks to the depth and success of this russian effort to influence the nra and open these doors and these pathways. what this allowed is for him in 2016 to back channel through an nra operative, deputy of keens named paul ericsson and extend an invitation to the trump campaign to broker a meeting between putin and trump. right? so this is the pathway that was open. this is a level of communication that was open. he claimed he met trump personally in 2015 and ve eventually met in 2016 in louisville where trump received the endorsement of the group. he met with the president's son just weeks before the infamous trump tower meeting where trump junior is meeting with other russians and a couple weeks after that he receives very

interesting medal from the fsb, which is the successor organization to the kgb. maybe this is a lifetime achievement, but it gives the impression that this is a reward for something much more current. >> well done. they -- what we saw kislyak come back after his term was done and remarkable turn in the trump campaign, they crowd surfed him from st. petersburg to moscow. >> go back to 2012 because torshin is meeting and an observer in the 2012 election between obama and romney. he's thinking about american politics deeply at that point. after that trip he goes and visits nra headquarters and sergei kislyak. i suspect the nra got the wool pulled over its eyes. we're left to understand that there may have been a way for

the russians to steer money through the nra without the nra necessarily being aware. >> they should probably be aware with the sanctions of torshin. >> congratulations on this reporting. thanks for joining us. >> appreciate it. >> we got much more ahead tonight. stay with us. well, like most of you, i just bought a house. -oh! -very nice. now i'm turning into my dad. i text in full sentences. i refer to every child as chief. this hat was free. what am i supposed to do, not wear it? next thing you know, i'm telling strangers defense wins championships.

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it was one of the weirdest c consp con jobs in government. john biel was a career staff every, worksed fed for the epa 2

years and also pretending to be moonlighting as a cia agent. for more than ten years, john biel told his epa supervisors s, i'm going to need some time off, because i have some highly secret work to do for the cia. they believed he was involved in some covert operation. and so best not to call too much attention to it. it started as a few days here and there. then it turned into a six month stretch where john beal didn't show up to work at all. then an 18 month long stretch. the epa was fine with it. they kept paying him. he ended up becoming the highest paid official at the epa.

at the end he was getting paid more than the head of the epa. what did he say he did with all the time once he got caught? he was working around the house, riding his bicycle and reading books. >> basically he's my hero. >> he was eventually caught, he pled guilty in 2013 of de23r5uding the u.s. government of a lot of money. it boggles the mind that a real person, not a character in a movie could pull something of that magnitude as long as he did. those adventures are back in the news. among epa administrator scott pruett's pile of scandals, is that epa staffers have

apparently come forward over a period of 4 to 6 weeks by phone, by e-mail and in person meetings. they've come forward to alert the senate committee that there is another scandal of this type at the epa, another senior no show staffer, in this case, it's a senior council to scott pru t pruett, someone he hired. an official to be the closest aid to scott pruett at the agency, she has resigned in the past week, according to these staffers that have come forward she was allegedly being paid full time, even though she wasn't turning up at work for months at a time. for three months between november and january. joining us now is chris lieu. he's now a senior fellow at the university of virginia miller center. thank you for being here. it's a weird story. >> it is, but it's part and parcel of a culture of anything goes.

we've seen with pruitt, a culture of misconduct. when you have that culture, it's not surprising at all. >> when you were managing the cabinet in the obama administration, if you got word of an alleged scandal, not necessarily the administrator but a senior staff, something weird about some hiring, money that was paid to augment someone's salary, it looks like that's not where the money should have come from. there's a no show job in this case. is that the sort of thing you would expect the administrator to fix the cabinet official to fix? or is that something where the white house might get involved? >> that's the important point, we in the obama administration all salary increases had to be cleared by the white house. whether it was scrutinizing trips, all of these things came to the w40us.

we had the tone of ethics, because president obama set that tone. you have donald trump who's been belate an thely hostile to ethics. they haven't set up the processes to check these kinds of abuses. >> on the staffing issue, the large raises we are discussing. the way that's been reported out. scott pruett denies any of it. it looks like the white house may have not cleared some of the people who he wanted to hire. and, therefore, the administrator seems to have decided with his senior staff he would use the safe drinking water act as a way to circumvent that white house turning them down to get those people hired anyway. is that the sort of circumstance defying -- going behind the white house's back. that would seem to be a fatal

offense in any cabinet because of insubordination. >> that's right. this seems like inside baseball, but there are processes in place. those members that are trying to follow the rules and are submitting their salary increases, some get approved, some get turned down. don't take well to this process. he uses the authority under the safe drinking water act. one of these people is a former chemical lobbyist, it's not even clear this person qualifies. that deliberate throughtin of the white house process means he gets taken to the wood shed. >> have been three house republicans who have called for pruitt's resignation. does congress have any recourse here? >> yes, they do. what we have found is, the president has been fairly defy an the of congress, and as i

said, he's turned a blind eye to ethics, as long as scott pruett is doing serious damage to clean air, clean water, turning a blind eye to climate change, he's doing what donald trump wants him to do. we can never normalize this disregard of ethics and we have to keep talking about it, i do think at some point there is something that's going to be the final straw, what it is, i'm not sure. >> chris lieu, someone who has been there, but never quite had to confront something like this. thank you. nice to see you, we'll be right back, stay with us 37.

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kayak. search one and done. the cooked political report is the gold standards of tracking elections and they don't just pop up at election time. they're around all the time right now you might look at cook as a handy way to gauge which way the political winds are blowing this second. today the report changed their ratings on 13 different congressional elections for november. there are races all over the country. they changed their prediction for how these races would go. for all 13 they shifted those races to lean more in the direction of the democrats. meaning for all 13 of these seats. if they were kind of leaning democratic, they're leaning more so. the list of races moved includes

one congressional seat in purple wisconsin. that is resonating right now. because democrats and progressives have been winning elections there. they won a seat in a district that had gone for trump by 17 points. last week, a democrat won a senate seat in 13 years that win for liberals led to lots of blue waves for democrats this week. if that prognostication is correct. more upsets are on the way. we'll see you monday, now it's time for the last work with ali velshi. >> good evening, ne