i didn't call it fascinating. the guests are fascinating. you can catch them any time, anywhere with the podcast. that's "all in" for this evening. rachel maddow shows start now. thank you. it is hard to know where to start on a night like this after a day like this. in a world like this. let's just start right here tonight. let's start with this. james comey was right. >> he fired comey because comey would not, among other things, say he was a target of the investigation. >> once upon a time, the white house tried to pretend that president trump fired james comey, the director of the fbi for something having to do with the handling of the hillary clinton e-mail investigation.

within two days the president slipped off that rationale like he was falling off a slippery rock when he told lester holt that when he made the decision to fire comey he had the russia issue on his mind and he said the same thing to high ranking russian officials. he said i just fired the head of fbi. i faced great pressure because of russia. that's taken off. james comey said it seemed he was getting fired because of the russia investigation. >> do you believe the russia investigation played a role? >> in why i was fired? >> yes. >> yes i've seen the president say so. i take the president at his word that i was fired because of the russia investigation. something about the way i was conducting it the president felt created pressure on him that he wanted to leavrelieve. >> james comey saw the president admit to lester holt, brag to russian officials that he fired

the fbi director because of the russia investigation. why wouldn't anyone think that was true? we then got lots of detail bolstering james comey sense of that matter. memorial ieizing the things the president told him to do or asked him to do that comey wouldn't do. in the real world, it's never been a mystery as to why the special counsel's office might have been looking at potential obstruction of justice in the form of president trump firing the fbi director because of the fbi director's role in this investigation into the president and his campaign. firing somebody who is running or overseeing an investigation into you, yeah, that's going to get you investigated for obstruction of justice. in the real world it's never been a bigami mystery as to why mueller might be pursuing that. now the white house or the

president's new lawyer has just dropped the official fig leaf. they are flat out admitting it. >> he fired comey because comey would not, among other thing, say he wasn't a target of the investigation. >> that seems like as good a place as any to start on a night like this. when james comey documented all that stuff the president told him to do about the russia investigation, when he memorialized it in writing, when he briefed it to all those other senior justice department and justice officials so there would be documented corroborated evidence of the president's intent and his actions leading up to the firing of james comey, well the president's new lead lawyer on these matters concede, comey was right. that was why hifs fired. so we're done here, right? after you get the -- we got a confession, do we wrap this up?

actually, apparently the movie never ends. even when you get to the end of the plot and the bad guy gets caught and we all know what happened, finally. apparently we're all still sitting here in the dark indefinitely and the floor is sticky. we're going to do things a little differently on the show tonight. there's so much news that's broken in the past 24 hours. in addition to the president's new yeah, i did it admission on the comey firing. we're going to do something we have only done once before during this presidency. only once before in the whole history of the show. we're going to bring in a group of legal experts to be here live with me onset tonight to basically take me to school. to take us all to fake law school so we try to get a realistic assessment of the importance of what has just happened tonight and today and last night. from a non-legal, just news perspecti

perspective, from a citizen's perspective it's fascinating that the president is making this admission about firing the fbi director. it's fascinating that he's now admitting that's what he did and why. from a legal sense how does that relate to obstruction of justice as a realistic legal liability for the president. we will figure that out this hour with expert help and along the same lines it's something even weirder than fascinating that that will be a front page in u.s. presidential history. this is the front page of the new york times website. president acknowledges porn actress payoff. contradicts earlier claims. what a life we're all living. happy national day of prayer. it is worth noting that today is the day the president has admitted that james comey was right about why the president fired him. today is the day the president has finally admitted that adult film actress stephanie clifford was also right about the

president secretly paying her off. >> i'm confident that when we get to the bottom of this and we are going to get to the bottom of it. this case will not be settled or dismisdsed until we get to the bottom. the president knew about the agreement and the $130,000. >> that was stormy daniel's lawyer a week ago. this is today. trump acknowledging payment to porn star stormy daniels. ding, ding, ding. correct. stormy daniels and her lawyer, james comey was right. stormy daniels and her lawyer were right about the president's liability on this matter. again, as admittedly fascinating as that is for us as citizens and people observing the news, as a legal matter, how does this new admission that stormy daniels was right, how does that relate to the president's legal liability on campaign finance

violations or any other potential criminal matter related to what he is now admitting. we'll figure that out this hour too with expert help. then there's also michael cohen case and it's revelations today. we know from previous reporting and publicly filed court documents in the cohen case that federal prosecutors in new york and federal agents working with them got warrant to surveil multiple e-mail accounts used by michael cohen. we know that in executing search warrants pertaining to mr. cohen, federal agents seized multiple electronic devices he used including phones, blackberry, tablets and computers. more than a dozen. it's been reported that federal agents also obtained audio recordings of mr. cohen's phone calls an communications. recordings he made on those devices that the government has. we know that federal agents and prosecutors seized boxes and boxes of physical documents from

ni michael cohen's home, office and a safety deposit box he maintained. we thought agents and prosecutors received authorization to surveil his actual live phone calls to listen in on wiretap lines. nbc corrected that story and said the kind of phone warrant prosecutors got wasn't that high level. it was the kind of warrant that tells you in realtime what calls are going into and out from the surveilled phone but it's not the wiretap order that would let them listen in in realtime. that all happened today in terms of what the federal government, what prosecutors have in terms of access to information and documentation and communications from michael cohen. now, on top of all that we have this new explanation from the president's lawyer, rudy giuliani, as to how exactly things work between president trump and this lawyer, michael

cohen. >> having something to do with paying some stormy daniels woman 130,000, which is going to turn out to be perfectly legal. that money was not campaign money. sorry. i'm giving you a fact now that you don't know. it's not campaign money. no campaign finance violation. >> they funneled it through the law firm? >> funneled it through the law firm and the president repaid it. >> oh, he did? >> yeah. when i heard cohen's retainer of 35,000, when he was doing no work for the president. i said that's how he's repaying it with a little profit and margin for paying taxes for michael. >> huh? is that a normal arrangement? according to the president's lawyer, michael cohen was doing no legal work for the president,

but that's how the president secretly paid people. he would funnel it through the law firm. this wasn't a deposition. this was like rudy giuliani getting pinned to the wall. he's just putting that out there. his explanation of how this worked in the president's life is that payments of all kinds, at one point he calls them harassment payments. other people call them hush payments. payments in the president's life in mr. rudy giuliani's words are funneled through michael cohen in a way that's designed to make those payments look like legal expenses. even though they are not legal expenses because michael cohen doesn't do any legal work for him. if that's really their system we can probably safely assume that federal prosecutors now have documentation of that system given all the stuff they have seized in their investigation of michael cohen. is that going to be a problem for the president?

i mine, honestly, happy national prayer day. today we learned the president, as president, not add a candidate, not as a private citizen but since he's been president, by his lawyer's own account, today we learned the president, for months, has been paying secret hush money payments to an adult film actress that he's falsely disguised as legal fees that he's paying to lawyer who he freely admit is not doing legal work for him. no problem, right? we will get some expert help here in just a moment as to how exactly this may constitute a problem for the president. there's one more thing i want to give you a heads up about before we bring in these folks who will help us sort out some of these questions. it's a document we have obtained exclusively tonight. it's not a secret document but we don't think it's been publicly seen before. i'll show it on the air in a

second because behind all this craziness, the mueller investigation and rudy giuliani admitting all this stuff and the cohen investigation and the president taking all these shots at the justice department, we think this document sort of gives a good window into, i don't know if it's the president's mind set. it's sort of the trump world mind set. what might be happening behind the scenes and what we might expect the president to do next. what this has to do with is the paul manafort trial. he has multiple charges pending against him in federal court in washington, d.c. virginia. he said they were prosecutor him improperly. his civil lawsuit claim the special counsel's office is basically a bogus legal entity and that at least it isn't

empowered to charge paul manafort with the stuff they have charged him with. paul manafort has already lost this civil case. it's been dismissed as of last week. you might remember that the mueller team, bob mueller's prosecutors gave us one really juicy document in their court filings where they were trying to fends off this civil suit from paul manafort. it's saying special counsel's office is way beyond its remyth. they are operating illegally. they have no authority to go after paul manafort. in response the special counsel's office asserted that they did have very clear authority to do what they did when it came to charging paul manafort. in order to make that case, in court, they filed this document. they filed in an unsealed way so we could all see it. it's a memo that was written just a few months after the special counsel, robert mueller, was appointed, was given his assignment. it's a memo from rod rosenstein who both appointed robert

mueller and oversees the mueller investigation. in the memo dated august 2nd, 2017, the deputy attorney general spells out in detail what exactly mueller and his team are cleared to investigate within the realm established. the may 17th, 2017 order that established the special counsel, that order was worded categorically in order to perfect its public release without confirming specific investigations involving specific individuals. this provides a more specific sdripgs of your authority. the following allegations were within the scope of the investigation at time of your appointment and are within the scope of the order. then the whole next section is redacted. on the next page we get an un

unredacted section. that manafort colluded with russia in russia's effort to interfere in the election and manafort committed crimes with respect to payments he received when he worked for that prorussia ukraine dictatodictat. then the whole rest of the page is blacked out. maybe that stuff that's blacked out is more stuff that mueller is cleared to investigate about manafort. maybe it's more stuff that mueller is cleared to investigate against other people. we can't tell. that three-page memo was put in a public court filing by robert mueller's office last month to rebut this civil case. to rebut paul manafort's charge that mueller was on some wild goose chase. this document shows in black and white that robert mueller and the special counsel's office

were duly and specifically authorized to go after paul manafort for the stuff that manafort got charged with. we got that last month. shortly after that turned up in the docket. shortly after mueller filed that document in court, pro-trump republican members of congress who are very bothered by the mueller investigation insisted they needed to see the whole memo with no redactions. they need to see who is investigating. we need to see that. this is part of the strategy that they've been pursuing in congress to demand more and more information about the mueller investigation. about this live open investigation while it's still live and open. well all know can't comment on an open investigation. by rule and precedent, the justice department can't share

materials like anyone including congress in the middle of an ongoing investigation. among pro-trump republican members of congress, their idea is to demand documents from the deputy attorney general rod rosenstein, demand stuff from him way beyond the stuff he could give them. he has to say no. by forcesing him to say no they are hoping to create a pre-tense to fire him for the terrible crime of not handing over information about the live ongoing investigation that could jeopardize the investigation or tip off targets and witnesses if it ever got out. of course the justice department said no when these republican members of congress said they wanted to see the whole source memo of everyone mueller issi looking at. we have the demand letter they sent to try to get that document. it was sent on april 9th. it was sent to the deputy

attorney general, to rod rosenstein. two members of congress, it's critical we have access to the entirety of your memo authorizing the investigation. we are requesting to view the full unredacted version this week. they say this memo they want to see is a classified document and they say they got a problem with that. the memo status is a classified document raises serious concern that the specific appointment began outside the scope. clearly these members of congress are freelancing here. this memo from mark meadows and jim jordan to the justice department, it's not at all clear they know what they are talking about. this memo they are requesting isn't classified. it's not marked as a classified document. it is law enforcement sensitive, sure. that's a different thing than

classified. letting that memo out would screw this up as a law enforcement matter. it's not a classified document. in at least one important sense these members of congress making this demand of rod rosenstein clearly don't know what they are talking about. this is what's going on in trump land. these kinds of demands what are they are ceding in congress every day now and what the president is complaining about online every day to lay down a pretense for why senior justice department officials need to be fire fired for saying no to these crazy requests that they could not say yes to without jeopardizing the mueller investigation. the reason it feels like we're getting to the edge of a cliff is because the justice department knows exactly what these members of congress are up to. quoting from the new york times today. ", "a former federal law

enforcement official said that mr. rosenstein and top fbi officials have come to suspect that some lawmakers are using their oversight authority to gain intelligence about that investigation so that it could be shared with the white house." the justice department and the fbi have come to suspect that some members of congress themselves are basically themselves working to try to obstruct justice by using their status of members of congress to obtain information so they can then with that information tip off the president about the inner workings of this ongoing investigation into the president. if this is a private citizen who was stealing information about the inner workings of the mueller information and shoveling it to the white house to tip the president off, we would expect that private citizen to end up in trouble for

that as a matter of obstruction of justice for querying this ongoing law enforcement matter. could a member of congress be charged with that? could they go to jail? every day in this crisis ridden presidency has lots of news now. not every day make you feel like you need to go to fake law school to figure out today's news. tonight is one of those nights. let's try that. next. stay with us. when you can do it out there. with this clever little app called audible. you can listen to the stories you love while doing the things you love, outside. everyone's doing it she's binging... they're binging... and... so is he. so put on your headphones, turn on audible and binge better. hello. give me an hour in tanning room 3. cheers!

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on a news day like today which let's face it, it's kind of every day now. when the news feels like nine separate goldburg contraptions you're trying to work your wait out of and it's you're a little dri drunk and it's slippery. we wish we had a lawyer or a firm to speak to. so many of the scandals offlicting this presidency will end up in courtroom and playing out in legal offices. we're going to cross our fingers

and reprieve something we have done only once in the history of this show. it's time for another addition of the rachel maddow show's fake law school. we'll hash out with some great legal minds some of the questions i have about what's going on in these legal battles around the president with the latest revelations about stormy daniels and what the president and his associates could be in. joining us is our three newest professors. thank you. let me start with the some of the stormy daniels stuff we learned today. danny, what's a retainer?

>> a retainer is an interesting concept. sometimes it's a flat fee but sometimes it's an amount that's paid due that you have to put in your client trust account and pay yourself as you bill hourly but there's a lot of rules that relate to retainers. you can't just in many cases take someone's check or take someone's money and stuff it into your pocket. as it is with any business in america but with lawyers there's several additional ethical rules. we have to tell our client what we're charging them. it should be in a written fee agreement. there's a paper trail and i'm not so sure there was one in this case. >> the reason it's newly rev lent is rudy giuliani is saying the way the president paid people, including stormy daniels, he's suggesting it might be an arrangement for multiple people. he had a retainer he was paying to michael cohen. he was doing no legal work in

conjunction with that retainer. that money was a pass through. that he funneled money through michael cohen to pay people and it looked like legal fees. it looked like legal, that it's money he was paying michael cohen for legal work even though it wasn't. clearly there would be an ethical problem on michael cohen. >> the ethical problem is the least of the concerns. it relates to your professional responsibility and your license. when ever you're funneling through a company and concealing the source, concealing the destination you run into federal law and criminal law and that can be a problem. at least in terms of retainers, no. retainers were not designed to be loans or paid out. >> secret slush funding. >> you can't use your client trust account for that. >> do you agree there's federal, criminal laws that may be implicated here?

>> seems to me like what they're trying to do is set up a situation where they are muddying the waters of how the president could have repaid michael cohen there by exculpating michael cohen for violating the campaign finance law. if he gave $130,000 and it was given back to him, he hasn't made an illegal contribution. >> the campaign finance is you can't donate $130,000 until you're giving it to yourself. mr. trump are could make $130,000. he could have to declare it as such so there's the issue of whether or not these things are turned up. you're saying that if michael cohen, which is what he said, has given that money himself. he would be on the hook for an illegal donation. the campaign would be on the hook for accepting it and the payment to stormy daniels, the out going flow of funds to her should have been declared as campaign expenditure? >> potentially.

there's the argument being tossed around this is a personal matter, not a contribution being made to ensure or to help your candidate get elected. there's problems with that. >> rudy giuliani said can you imagine if this had come out in october before the last debate. he's acknowledging the timing of this was key to the election. that seems that issue might be dead. this new reality they want us to believe about this funding. if rudy giuliani is right and the president did pay ms. daniels this way, by calling it legal fees, by saying it was money to pay michael cohen for his legal representation even though he knew he wasn't legally doing any work. is that potentially illegal for him to have paid that way? >> yes. >> how? >> it depends where the money originally came from. if you're trying to hide the source of the funds, which they

sounds like they were because they are passing it through the law firm. tryi ining to disguise it as a l retainer fee then where did the funds originally come from. if they came from a legitimate source then okay. >> say they came from his personal bank account. >> then you probably don't have a separate crime. then it would still be in campaign finance land. if it came from a loan that someone doesn't disclose what the real purpose of the money was from and proceeds of a separate crime and looking at some kind of money laundering. if funds come from an illegal source like the most common example if you get money from selling drugs and then you pass it through a legitimate source to try to mike ake it look legitimate, that could be the road to money laundering. >> when do we take them at their

word? let's take the latest iteration of their current statement of facts. the campaign finance violation worry here still even in this newest rudy giuliani iteration is that michael cohen advanced this money for the purposes of affecting the campaign. campaign did not disclose it as a loan they had received from mr. cohen. they did not disclose the payment as a campaign expenditure and the president didn't disclose if he repaid mr. cohen for that. he didn't disclose he had a personal liability in terms of this loan out. nobody has disclosed any in campaign finance or be president's personal finance. >> where did michael cohen get the money from? >> he said his home equity loan. >> it's fair to say we don't know -- that's what i'm saying. we don't know where the money

came from. >> we have two prosecutors and they haven't asked what's the tax consequences of these payments flying to and flying fro. that's the first thing that former u.s. attorneys are going to look another is how are these being reported. where are the 1099 miscellaneous forms. what's the affect of these payments and how are they being classified and treated. when the story keeps changing like this and the source and the destination of the money keeps changing then the legal landscape changes with every new tale. >> as a former prosecutor, now i'm in private practice. talk about strategy. what do we think is actually going on? you have a couple of statements that are helpful to the people who want to advance i'm not guilty of anything. you have if the money is coming from michael cohen is paid back then michael cohen, that helps

michael cohen in his case that he wasn't making illegal contributions because he was giving a personal loan and he got paid so it's not really a contributi contribution. this other thing about the retainer agreement that allows a bunch of money to sit in a pot that mr. rudy giuliani in his practice uses to pay off random people who come up and make claims -- >> harassment payments. >> whatever those are. it's not part of my practice but according to him it's part of his. what that does is it moves the president away from the sort of mens rea or intent to violate the campaign finance laws. if he's giving north of $450,000 a year to michael cohen to play with and run off whoever is coming with false allegation or true allegation or whatever the case may be, he doesn't really know what's going on with that money. it's very hard to make the case as what has the case like the john edwards case where you have to argue the recipient of the

money, the candidate and the donors conspired together to violate the campaign finance rules. here if this money is thrown into a pot and they are all using it to run off every person who has an allegation to make then really does the president know what that is being used for. what they are doing is trying t cohen and distancing him. >> the campaign finance violations that you get charged with and go to jail for is when they are willing and knowing and willful violations. trying to separate the president's knowledge and intent makes the difference as to whether or not this is serious. it's working. stick around. i have more study group questions. stay with us. 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.

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to lead healthier lives and that's invaluable. ♪ class is back in session at the rachel maddow show fake law school. thank you for being here. we were talking before the break about michael cohen, the president's lawyer, his role in whatever happened with the stormy daniels payment. the president has to account to the public in terms of his changing accounts of how this all worked.

then there's the issue of what michael cohen is in trouble for. he's being pursued by prosecutors in your old office, the southern district of new york. we're told what they are looking for had to do with the president, had to do with these payments and we're told they were doing pretty intrusive surveillance. we know his home office, hotel room and safety deposit box were searched pursuant to a search warrant. would that be one or four? >> you could do it either way. if they're all in the same location like new york city, you could go to one court with one warrant but list each place separately and you still have to list probable cause as to each place. >> they had to say specifically what they thought was in the safety deposit box? >> yes. >> we're told even before it happened, before those search warrants or that search warrant was executed they were surveilling multiple e-mail accounts related to mr. cohen.

>> it could take a bit of issue with the word surveilling. my understanding is they got the e-mails through a search warrant of his e-mail account. >> a separate search warrant. >> to his e-mail provider? >> yeah. >> when talking about surveillance, monitoring ongoing phone calls you'll need a title three wiretap. >> let's get to the phone warrants in a second. >> since that's already happened, you can get that with search warrant. as far as i know and again not a lawyer onds not that -- and not that smart. the e-mail surveillance was not unbeknown unbeknownst. it's my understanding they were able to look at his e-mails if not in realtime, at least while he didn't know they were doing so. while they were looking at them he's send and receiving new e-mails. is that a different -- is that what we're talking about here in terms of, it almost seems more

like a wiretap if you're e-mailing with people back and forth all day. >> it could be a trap and trace a pen register, a search warrant. the courts will view a search warrant for ongoing listening the same way they would for an e-mail. they view the internet as you sending and receiving these packets of information. it's the same search process. >> we had this interesting thing today where nbc news reported initially there was a wiretap warrant which would mean listening in on people's phone calls in realtime. they got different reporting. multiple u.s. officials contesting that and saying it wasn't that kind of warrant where you get to listen in on the call in realtime. it was the kind of warrant you can see in realtime what calls are being made and received even if you can't hear them. >> that's not warrant though. a search warrant whether it's on

e-mail or a title three on a phone. those allow you to listen and view to con tent. a pen register is not warrant. it has a much lower standard. you don't need probable cause to get it. it is kind of a court order in a since a magistrate judge signs off. all you're getting is the number going in and out of phone, the time and duration of the calls. that's it. no content. >> jim, do you agree with that? >> absolutely. >> this is a low threshold and happens commonly. the person who is the subject doesn't know it's there? >> no. that would defeat the purpose. >> do you need to have a different order like this for every phone or per person? >> you're having like a -- they call a trap and trace order. you're catching numbers coming in and going out on a particular phone number. >> here's my question. a relatively low level order related to his phones.

not that kind of order at all on the e-mail. they are reading his e-mails as they are coming and going? >> not necessarily. >> they may not be. >> i don't think -- as far as we know, we don't have anything telling us the e-mail reading was in realtime. we mean realtime. listening to calls, getting texts thas they are occurring. you draft up your search warrant. >> it's all the e-mail exists from that time previous. >> you can get it arenewed. >> it's a different kind of warrant if you want to say we're going to get your e-mails as they come in. >> then it will be a title three. >> it might be a pen register trap and trace. you may not get the content but ip addresses, information about where it's going and who it's coming from. >> finally this makes sense. i'm so glad you're here.

two former prosecutors and a defense attorney. i have more for you. we'll be right back. whoooo.

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james mcgovern headed the criminal division in the eastern district of new york. mimi was a prosecutor in the southern district. i want you to put your minds together and tell me why i'm wrong when i saw rudy giuliani on television, to my mind, confessing that the president committed obstruction of justice and fired the fbi director because of the fbi director's role in the russia investigation into the president. when rudy giuliani said he fired comey because he wouldn't say he wasn't a target of the investigation. me as a civilian i was like, oh, game over. we can go home early. this is done. this is toast. this is confessing to what we've all been assuming that mueller is trying to nail the president for. that's how i see it as a

layperson. how did you see it as lawyers? >> this is rudy giuliani statement. what's the value of what your lawyer says on tv. >> he says he's speaking on the president's behalf. >> it would definitely be something you would have to like if you're trying to get these admitted in court you would have to show he's agenting as his agent. >> you can't confess on somebody else's behalf ? >> no. >> he goes through lawyers. the next lawyer might have an entirely different story. >> totally different crime. >> it's not inconsistent with trump has said himself. you'd have some good arguments but that's a threshold thing as whether rudy giuliani statement themselves could be evidence of trump state of mind. >> there's a view of the world that the president can't necessarily obstruct justice because he can fire the director at his pleasure for any reason if he doesn't think he'll do a good job or he doesn't like him.

he can lawfully fire the director. corruption and obstruction statutes depend on an official doing an otherwise lawful act but with a corrupt motive. he motive. he could fire james comey but if a president did that for a bag of sweaty $1 bills, that additional fact shows some corrupt intent. so almost all of the white collar crimes you see involve an official doing an otherwise act, but they accepted something that made it corrupt. >> i'm going to ask you why the dollar bills are sweaty in a second. we all think that robert mueller and his prosecutors are investigating the president for whether or not the firing of james comey was done for a corrupt purpose, was done to obstruct the investigation. aren't they supposed to be arguing that the president did it for some reason unrelated to russia? why would they concede this

point? why would the president's lawyer concede this point given this is an active investigation? >> it doesn't make much sense. frankly it doesn't make much sense. i know, as you say, what the general public's perception is, if you fire the guy leading the investigation against you and you have somebody admit on your behalf that was why you did it, that doesn't look good for appearances at the very least and maybe for criminal liability. i don't think we can overlook the fact that the director serves at the president's pleasure and he has the authority to remove him, as danny points out, sometimes you can do something you have the authority to do but you shouldn't have done it because you're violating a statute at the same time. what we've seen unfold over the last year, year and a half and why guys like james comey and donald trump don't get along, it seems like they have inconsistent personalities. >> which would be a great

explanation from his lawyer, does not like that guy. different worlds. instead he gets on tv and says russia investigation, had to get rid of that guy. >> there's other evidence out there too. trump having said i want my ag to be loyal to me, all sorts of things that enhance this was for a corrupt purpose. >> thank you all so much. the sweaty dollar bills thing we'll take up on the show that we do on weekends on a secret network where we swear. thank you for being in law school with us. we'll be right back. stay with us.

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father patrick con roy has served as chap lain in the house of representatives for the last seven years until last months when the most unexpected headline on tax day was speaker ryan fired the priest. he demanded the father's resignation, he said okay but there was no explanation why he was forced out. speculation began on a prayer for the tax bill. may their efforts these days guarantee. and blessed are the poor. father conroy was cast out. today he came back. he unquit. he wrote a letter to house speaker ryan saying at this time and on advice of counsel i

retact my rehabilitation. on friday april 13, 2018 your chief of staff came to me and informed that you were asking for my letter of rez igs neigh. i inquired as to whether it was for cause. the chaplain has levied that charge that maybe he was canned with the snide remark that maybe it was time for someone not catholic. but the chaplain unquit today and speaker ryan decided to unfire him as well. so now he serves in the house. as it was in the beginning, shall it be forever more. at least until someone else prays for equality. your sorry not sorry thing. your out with the old in with the new,

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whoamike and jen doyle?than i thought. yeah. time for medicare, huh. i have no idea how we're going to get through this. follow me. choosing a plan can be super-complicated. but it doesn't have to be. unitedhealthcare can guide you through the confusion, with helpful people, tools and plans. including the only plans with the aarp name. well that wasn't so bad at all. that's how we like it. aarp medicare plans, from unitedhealthcare. that goes beyond assumingl pet ingredients are safe... to knowing they are. going beyond expectations... because our pets deserve it. beyond. natural pet food. so today we learned that the president, as president not as a candidate, but as president, for

months has been paying secretary hush money payments to an adult film actress, payments he disguised as fees that he was paying to a lawyer for legal work even though that lawyer is not doing any legal work for that money. that is not the product of an investigation, that's admitted to and offered to the public by the president's new lawyer who also says the president really did fire the fbi director because of the russia investigation. like i said, the movie ends here, but apparently we all have to stay in this dark theatre for quite some time because even though this is the end of the plot they're all still playing it out. that does it for us tonight we'll see you tomorrow. now it's time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell" good evening, lawrence. >> good evening, rachel. i'm getting the feeling i did not oversell rudy giuliani's interview last night that was happening during the