podcast "why is this happening?" which has a great episode up this week if i do say so myself. it's about the internet and why it's gotten so bad. go check it out. that is "all in" this evening. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. thank you. and thank you at home for joining us this hour. if you are going to be corrupt, or if you are going to be a serious criminal, word of advice. if you have the choice, it is probably also a good idea to be a politician. and that's because politicians, people elected to public office by definition may have one very special thing that they can use as a get out of jail free card. they have a thing that other people don't have that they can trade to prosecutors to keep themselves out of jail when they get caught for serious crimes. the thing that public office holders can offer that nobody else can offer is they can offer

to resign. and that will be a significant offer to most prosecutors. i mean, if you drive a bus for a living or if you sell lawnmowers, if you get caught doing something really illegal and you get charged with a serious crime, prosecutors are just going to assume that you're going to lose your job because they're going to convict you and lock you up in jail that will just be a little externality to your case. but if you hold political office, even if you are potentially on the hook for very, very serious crimes, it's pretty much accepted practice. it's in the u.s. attorney's manual that prosecutors may very well be persuaded to make the charges against you go away, to make your potential jail sentence go away, if you just agree that you will resign your public office. it happens all the time. that's what happened to the mayor of nashville, tennessee, just a few weeks ago. plea deal. she plead guilty to a felony, but she got no jail time. she got unsupervised probation.

how did she get such a sweet deal? well, as part of the deal with prosecutor, she agreed to resign. same thing happened last year to alabama republican governor robert bentley. the governor who you might think would be voted least likely to fall victim to a lurid sex scandal, one in which there were tapes. but governor bentley did not get prosecuted on ethics charges. he instead made a deal in which he did community service and he agreed to resign from office. and in his case, he not only agreed to resign from office, he agreed to a lifetime ban on him ever again holding any other public office. prosecutors thought that was a pretty good deal. now today it is missouri republican governor eric greitens. there has been serious scandal swirling around governor eric greitens since the beginning of this year. in missouri he was facing possible impeachment. he was facing an ethics inquiry. he was facing a reported fbi

investigation, a felony charge from one prosecutor, another felony charge from a different prosecutor, a charge that had been filed against him and dropped, but it might be filed again by a special prosecutor. all of this swirling around eric governor greitens. well, today the top prosecutor in st. louis revealed her agreement with the governor, that she would drop one pending felony charge against eric greitens in exchange for him resigning from office. so he will be out as missouri governor by the end of this week. and then that one felony charge against him will be dropped. the document actually spelling out that deal is kind of amazing, and we've got that actual document to show you a little later on this hour. but one of the things that is going to be fascinating to watch here is whether this deal that eric greitens just cut is going to be enough. i mean, eric greitens traded his job as governor in exchange for this prosecutor dropping one felony charge against him. but what about all the other pending investigations and

potential charges he is still facing? i mean, that's the problem here. if you're going to be a criminal and you're going get caught, it is great to also be a politician. so you have that get out of jail free card so you can make charges against you go away if you resign in disgrace. easy peasy, we should all be so lucky. but the trick there is you can only do that once. i mean, depending on what happens overnight tonight in moe and into the next couple of days, governor eric greitens may end up regretting that he has but one public office from which he can resign, because what's he going to trade away now? another fringe benefit to being in politics if you are also in crime is that depending on what kind of charges your facing, depending on how many other people you might conceivably bring down with you as you are going down, sometimes people will set up legal defense funds for you to help you pay your legal fees. again, if you drive a bus or

sell lawnmower for a living and you get caught up in some type of criminal enterprise, not likely to happen. but with public figures, people caught up in politically tinged scandals related to politicians, it's kind of a common thing. and that's nice. it's another thing that is sort of an add benefit about being in a public corruption scandal. but legal defense funds often also end up being super shady. or at least they have a history of themselves becoming magnets for scandal. for example, in the iran/contra scandal in the reagan administration, one of the people who ended up pleading guilty in conjunction with that sprawling scandal was retired air force general named richard seecord. once he realized he was in pretty serious trouble, he solicited donations to a legal defense fund. he specifically wrote to hundreds of special forces units in the military, personally asking active duty service

members to donate to his legal defense. he signed more than 1200 of those letters by hand, asking people in the military to give him money for his legal defense. it was a little weird. richard secord appeared to profit himself from the iranian arms sales. he bought himself not only a new porsche, but a new private plane. nice! but still, plead poverty and specifically targeted members of the military to help pay for his legal fees. he set up this legal defense fund, sent out all those blind requests for cash. but then very quickly it got very seriously weird. >> former defense department official noah cook revealed today he had resigned last week as head of general richard secord's legal defense fund. cook said he quit after the fund received three anonymous deposits totalling $5,000. the money came from a swiss fund

that managed funds for secord himself. although secord said he knew nothing about the money himself, the general appearance was improper. >> numbers of that magnitude from that particular source, from a swiss bank had a peculiar odor to it. >> a peculiar odor. you know it's bad when your own lawyer running your own legal defense fund quits and walks away to try to keep the stench of your legal defense fund off of him. we still don't know exactly where that half million for richard secord's legal defense came from, but it was from a swiss bank where secord and his iranian arms dealer friend had in fact stashed millions of dollars that they had found for themselves in the middle of that scheme. as i mentioned, richard secord later plead guilty in that scandal. legal defense funds are supposed to help people who have been

caught up in a scandal, but they can themselves be a scandal. they can be opaque if you're not careful. they can very easily become slush funds where you take in money from people you shouldn't be taking money from. you pay it out to people who shouldn't be getting paid. even when you do it super carefully and try to be completely aboveboard, something rotten always happens with these things. in the whitewater scandal in the clinton years, the clinton administration set up legal defense fund, and they dotted all their i's and crossed all their t's. they did it all quite openly. they made a public announcement about the details of the fund there was nothing secret about it. they appointed independent trustees to manage it. they made clear they would refuse to take any money from any lobbyist or anyone in any foreign country. they even set a low cap, a low dollar amount cap for how much any one person could contribute. so nobody could give a gazillion dollars to the president's legal defense as a way of currying favor with the president. even still, even in that case, as we have covered before here on this show, that whitewater

legal defense fund ended up with a mini scandal. in the case of that fund, it was when a whole bunch of american followers of an obscure taiwanese religious cult banded together to stuff over $600,000 into the whitewater legal defense fund there was this individual cap for how much any one person could give. and there were all these other rules. but one guy basically bundled all the money from all the followers of this cult. it kind of felt like it was part of a major international moneylaundering operation. it definitely was part of a really weird cult. and the clinton legal defense fund ended up embroiled in its own mini scandal about that money and ended up giving all that money back. so even when you try to do it right, even when you set one of these things up cognizant of the dangers, it is very hard not to end up in a mess. in watergate, nixon stepped in it a million different ways. he tried to pay some of the legal fees of his watergate henchmen, at one point with

campaign funds, with campaign funds from the committee to reelect the president. then they figured out it might look bad to do wit campaign funds. so nixon was going to pay their legal fees himself out of his own pocket. then it turned out nixon thought he maybe knew a guy who could pay for the legal defense of these guys there is a million different ways these things can go wrong. in current scandal facing this president, so far we have had the republican national committee, the national republican party, or the trump reelection campaign at times picking up the legal bills for the billionaire president himself and for his eldest son, for hope hicks. apparently she is having republican donors pay for her legal fees. maybe even the legal defense for michael cohen has been funded by republican donors. now you might remember a few months ago the white house did set up a sort of amorphously defined legal defense fund that so far has made no disclosures as to what kind of money it's taken in, if any. legally, it also seems to have

no official mechanism for dispersing any funds either. so we don't have any idea what's going on there, despite that strange seemingly dead-end effort at setting up white house-based legal defense fund. a small group of trump adjacent figures who have been caught up in the russia scandal have also started setting up their own funds. you might remember rick gates had one before he decided to plead guilty. he got in trouble with the court at one point for making this weird hostage video skyped in statement to a fundraiser that had been called on his behavior. the fundraiser itself was weird. it seemed to have been attended mostly by journalists who were there wondering who else would turn up, and then at one point they all realized they were just writing about each other. michael flynn has plead guilty. he is awaiting sentencing while he cooperates with prosecutors. he too has set up a public-facing legal defense fund. but now today there is a new e one. well, it just seems a little off kilter. a strange new legal defense fund

for donald trump for president campaign chairman paul manafort. now, i need to tell you, we don't know exactly who set this up. part of me thinks it might be a prank. "the washington post" reports tonight that it looks like it was initially registered as a web domain right after christmas and that it was updated somehow in late february, but today it went live. today unnamed and unknown self-described long-term friends of paul manafort put out a statement announcing the existence of this website and this -- what purports to be this fund. i say it seems like it could potentially be a prank or a stunt, or it's at least a little strange in part because this website that they launched today, this paul manafort defense fund, kind of feels like it was cheaply translated from some other language. quote, let's band together and allow paul's position to be fully expressed and create an even playing field. in english, playing field is two

words. and somebody expressing their position doesn't make sense in this context. who knows. some of this probably just inevitably unavoidably awkward. there is a section of this website that tries to define paul manafort's lifetime of service to the united states. paul has spent his life advancing american ideals and principles. that may or may not be an effective plea to donors, but it doesn't quite reflect the spirit of what paul manafort is on trial for, which is, among other things, lots of tax evasion and moneylaundering relating to his time of pro russia regions in ukraine and its successor anti-american, anti-western opposition bloc is what manafort's clients in ukraine had to rename themselves after their previous leader fled to russia for putin's protection and to avoid angry mobs in his own streets. this is not somebody for whom it is easy to concoct a tale of all american patriotic service.

but even still, a lot of this makes no sense. look, quote, president ronald reagan appointed paul as a director, a member of overseas private investment corporation. paul, quote, acts as liaison between the white house, international and national security and energy-related departments. oh. ladies lingerie? hoses and implements, energy-related departments? international -- i mean, again, nobody is admitting to setting this up. nobody is putting their name out there as the long-time friends of paul manafort who have established this website and what appears to be this fundraising effort for him. but they definitely say they're taking money. quote, checks and money orders should be made payable to the legal defense fund irrevocable trust and mailed to this random p.o. box in clifton, new jersey. notice they're setting you up for maximum anonymity here.

the name they want you to make the payment to is completely generic. legal defense fund irrevocable trust. that turns up in your trust register, is everyone going to know what that is? certainly doesn't mention the name paul manafort. quote, the trust will maintain strict confidentiality of the identity and information of those who choose to contribute. crucially, they do not suggest that donations should be limited by any particular cap. they say they're happy to accept donation, quote, in any amount. and, you know, if by any chance you're reading this in a foreign country, perhaps the one in which this was drafted, the only warning that you get as a potential foreign donor is, quote, donations from foreign individuals, corporations, and other entities are subject to public reporting. at least the mike flynn legal defense fund says they're not going to take foreign donations. paul manafort says no such thing.

part of that peculiar odor emanating from richard secord's legal defense fund back in the iran/contra days was the lack of any identifying information that accompanied those gigantic donations to secord from swiss bank accounts where he and his co-conspirators in that international scheme had stashed some of their ill-gotten gains. i don't know who set up the do not say paul manafort legal defense fund irrevocable trust and started soliciting donations for it today with this my space website, but it really does appear to be a pretty slap dash effort. a lot of the idiom in this thing is super weird, and there is no reason to think we will ever have any disclosure as to who set up this little anonymous legal defense fund and who fills it up with money for paul manafort's use. they do take credit cards. they take checks. they take money orders. presumably, you can just drop off some jewelry you want to pawn.

and the new mysterious manafort legal defense fund has opened up today on a day when things are otherwise moving ahead now newly quickly in this scandal, and we've got plenty of that ahead. stay with us. maker you've ever met. there's a lot of innovation that goes into making our thinnest longest lasting blades on the market. precision machinery and high-quality materials from around the world. nobody else even comes close. it's about delivering a more comfortable shave every time. invented in boston, made and sold around the world. now starting at $7.99. gillette. the best a man can get. stimulant laxatives for my constipation, my doctor recommended i switch to miralax. forcefully stimulate the nerves in your colon... miralax is different. it works with the water in your body, unblocking your system naturally. save up to $7 on miralax. see sunday's paper.

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in less than a week now, special counsel robert mueller's office has advised a judge in washington, d.c. that prosecutors are ready to move ahead with the sentencing phase for two witnesses who plead guilty months ago in the russia scandal and who have been cooperating with prosecutors ever since. today it was richard pinetto all the organizations that were charged with conspiracy to defraud the united states by way of the russia propaganda campaign that was mounted against the 2016 presidential election. pin yad d pin nadeau was charged and now mueller's prosecutors say they're ready to go ahead with the sentencing part of his case. last week it was george papadopoulos, trump campaign foreign policy adviser. he has plead guilty.

has been cooperating with prosecutors ever since. for several months now, mueller's prosecutors have asked for and received extensions from the court to keep putting off the eventual sentencing of both of these guys, because apparently both of these guys were still cooperating with prosecutors. prosecutors were still providing -- still finding them helpful in terms of getting useful information out of them. prosecutors weren't done with them yet. and so they didn't want to move ahead. well, now, in both of those case, prosecutors have stopped asking for any more extensions for either pinedo or papadopoulos. they've asked the court to move towards starting the process of sentencing them. both of those men will expect lenience in their sentencing to reflect the degree to which they cooperated with prosecutors and helped prosecutors build other cases. so far paul manafort is the only american charged in the russia scandal who has plead not guilty and is instead fighting the charges against him. prosecutors wrapping up their involvement with these other

guys who did plead guilty and cooperated may essentially be a message to paul manafort. hey, if you'd agreed to talk, if you'd agree to cooperate, you might be halfway home now too. but as it stands, manafort is still facing many, many felony charges. he is looking at not one, but two major federal criminal trials starting this summer. and as i just mentioned a few minutes ago, his approach the paying for his legal defense now involves a brand-new dodgy as heck super sketchy website pleading for money for him. meanwhile, in federal court in the southern district of new york today, it was bad day for the president's personal lawyer, michael cohen. michael cohen hasn't been charged with any crime, be he is the subject of an ongoing federal criminal investigation being run out of the u.s. attorney's office in manhattan. and there have been a lot of court proceedings even though he hasn't been charged because prosecutors got warrants to search his home, his office, even the hotel where he was staying, even a safety deposit

box. they got the warrant to seize documents they say are related to their investigation of mr. cohen. the judge today described the wrangling over the review of the documents and what prosecutors are ultimately going to be allowed to see. she described the wrangling, as, quote, a potential precursor to a criminal trial if charges are filed against mr. cohen. in this precursor today to what is ultimately widely expected to be a criminal trial involving mr. cohen, cohen's lawyers today argued sort of begged for more time to review everything the government had seized. they want to review the stuff to declare if any of it should be kept confidential, kept away from prosecutors because it's part of mr. cohen's privileged attorney-client communications. we got the courtroom transcript what from what happened today in federal court in new york, and it's really not good for michael cohen and his lawyers. here is one of cohen's lawyers, quote, we are moving heaven and

earth, your honor. we have people working all night. we have people sleeping on couches in our offices. we have people who worked all through the memorial day weekend. i had an associate yesterday who felt a tremor his hand from lack of sleep. i had to send him home late last night. he came back at 7:30 this morning. we are working around the clock. the judge, quote, by approximately what point in time do you expect to have reviewed the remainder of the files? cohen's lawyer, quote, we estimate we will be done fully with the review approximately mid-july. the judge says, quote, let me hear from the government as to the reasonableness of this proposed deadline. the government prosecutor says, quote, we do not believe that that is a reasonable deadline. one of our concern, as the court is aware from the beginning is delay. that is an unreasonable delay. the judge, well, what in your view what be reasonable, given your familiarity with the material? the prosecutor says, your honor, mid-june. and the judge says to michael cohen's lawyer -- how many lawyers are working on this

full-time? cohen's lawyer says 15, your honor. the judge, full time? the lawyer, 15 plus two data folk, two data specialists. the judge, and they're all working full time on this? >> the lawyer, yes, judge. the judge, okay, mid-june is the date. another one of cohen's lawyers pipes up. your honor, can i be heard for one minute? the judge, yes. i want to court to understand something about the materials. for example, if there is an hour-long conversation, that is one of these 3.7 million files. one of our attorneys has to listen to that hour. i don't think i can maintain quality control of larger staff of attorneys working on this matter than we currently have. we are burning money at a rate, candidly that i don't know that i can even increase. your honor, the 1.3 million records that we are through is a demonstration of how hard we have worked. we are working flat out. we are doing, candidly, a great job on this. and i do not think we could do more.

an unrealistic deadline of mid-june, i don't know if we can patriotic that. i don't know what i'm going to do to get that done. i need nor time than that. just ask for you to consider that in your ruling. and then the judge responds. mr. cohen's review of the materials currently in their possession must be completed by june 15th. it is important for the court to balance the slow, deliberate needs of those asserting attorney-client privilege with the need for the investigation to go forward. michael cohen's attorneys today begging the judge for more time. mid-june, two weeks from now, are you kidding? mid-june? we can't visit done by mid-june. begging the judge. getting nothing from the judge. and then there is this, which was spelled out by prosecutors, right at the start of this hearing today from questioning from the judge. the judge said, quote, i begin by seeking the government's update on its production of material. the prosecutor says yes, your honor. as reflected yesterday, we complete adderalling production of material to mr. cohen in the

special master on may 22nd, with the exception of three items, namely, two blackberries that quantico is still working on getting into, and the contents of a shredding machine. we expect to produce those materials within two to three weeks. the judge says very good. could doh you have any idea of the possible volume of materials that represents? prosecutor, the blackberries we can't be certain because we're not in them so we can't tell the volume of electronic material. i do not believe the contents of the shredding machine are voluminous at all. the judge says, okay, thank you. and when you shred stuff. the contents of the shredding machine, whether voluminous or not, the reason prosecutors are saying those can be produced in two to three weeks because apparently at quantico, they're not only working on getting into what were described in court today as michael cohen's wife's blackberries, they're also apparently assembling whatever was shredded by michael cohen

and then retrieved by federal agents from michael cohen's shredding machine. today i learned that, yes, they put that stuff back together. so things proceed apace. federal agents are unsledding whatever it is michael cohen tried to sled. as much as michael cohen's lawyers begged to stretch the process out, it looks like prosecutors are going to get access to all of cohen's files in two weeks. cooperators are moving into the sentencing phase, at least two of them now. and today paul manafort or somebody purporting to act on his behalf but refusing to identify themselves opened up a sketchy facing website to pay for his defense just weeks before his trial starts. and last night "the new york times" broke a very important news story about the president and possible obstruction of justice. the story last night relates to attorney general jeff sessions and the president's pressure on the attorney general. "the new york times" has also just broken a second story tonight about a previously

unreported memo written by fbi deputy director andrew mccabe concerning the firing of james comey. things are moving fast now. time to pay attention. joining us now is one of the authors of two of those scoops, "new york times" reporter michael schmidt. thank you for being here. it's nice to have you here. >> thanks for having me. >> let me ask you first about the story that just broke tonight. andrew mccabe wrote a confidential memo last spring related to the firing of james comey. this is something that's being reported for the first time. you guys have this scoop. what was the memo? and what's potentially important about it? >> the memo was about rod rosenstein's explanation, the deputy attorney general, the person overseeing the mueller investigation. it's about his explanation of his role in helping the president fire comey and how the president had asked him to include russia in the letter and that rosenstein had not done that. and the question being, what was it about russia that the president wanted him to include? was it simply the fact that comey was leading the russia

investigation and that he wanted him gone, or was it more narrow? was it that the president wanted him to address the issue of how he was not under investigation in the russia investigation, something that comey had told him three times and something that rosenstein did not put in his memo, but the president ultimately put in his letter that was sent to comey. >> so rosenstein tells mccabe, yeah, i wrote this letter about the president's reasons for firing comey. he wanted me to mention russia and i didn't. i refused? i left it out and hoped he didn't notice? we don't know the circumstances. >> it was not a -- he said, look, i didn't need to do that. he did not need to go that far. he did not believe, to provide a rationalization for why comey should go. there were a lot of reasons people thought comey should be fired, some of them legitimate about the way he handled the clinton e-mail investigation. but the president about the president and comey's firing has always been what did it mean about the russia investigation? what were the true motivations about the president?

and that's what bob mueller wants to ask the president about. what was your intentions when you had comey fired? what was really behind that? and the president is probably the only person that could answer that question, although the president's lawyers would tell you there is white house memos and officials who could give you an idea of what he was thinking. >> you also report that the president's -- the president had drafted his own letter explaining the justifications for firing comey and that robert mueller has now obtained that. >> yeah. and that letter was so out there that the white house counsel don mcgahn said this letter cannot go, and he made sure that the president met with sessions and rosenstein, who oversaw comey, and that's when the memo from rosenstein was created and a letter endorsing that from sessions was signed. >> so-so out there could never be publicly released, but not so out there that it didn't end up somehow in mueller's investigation. >> rosenstein had a copy of the letter when he wrote his memo. he knew what was in that when he

wrote the memo. now the question about rosenstein in all of this, this is the person overseeing mueller. and there has been questions how could he not recuse himself if he is a witness in the central issue mueller is investigating. >> uh-huh. and to the point, the issues that mueller is investigating, the scoop last night about attorney general jeff sessions, we had had some inkling before that mueller might also be looking not just at the firing of comey, but whether or not his pressure on jeff sessions about his recusal from the russia investigation, whether that might also be part of the obstruction. you're reporting that it absolutely is, and in your words, this demonstrates jeff sessions' overlooked role as key witness into the investigation into whether mr. trump tried to obstruct the inquiry itself. this seems like a much more serious part of the obstruction inquiry based on this new reporting. >> the attorney general is a witness in the obstruction investigation. the top law enforcement official

in the country, one of the president's closest allies politically, at least until he recused himself. the reporting on this started when we looked a the 49 questions. there were many questions about sessions, and in those questions was one about efforts the president had to reverse the decision. we knew that there was lobbying that went on from the white house before the recusal. the president haddon mcgann lobby him, but we didn't know anything about reversing. >> unrecuse himself. >> how do you unrecuse yourself. most lawyers would never come up with that idea, but the president has quite a creative mind and thought that unrecusing was okay. you are to remember the president on recusal, he is very open about this. he said on the record in an interview we did last july, i would not have made him my attorney general if i knew he was going to recuse himself. he does not hide from this issue. today, after we wrote our story, he posted his tweet with quotes

from trey gowdy in which he talks of their denigrating sessions, and he basically says he shouldn't have appointed sessions again. he does not hide from this issue at all. but mueller wants to ask him about it. rudy says he shouldn't answer questions about it. >> now we've got based on your reporting, we've got not only the president telling reince priebus that he should get sessions to resign, not only the president telling don mcgahn to get jeff sessions to unrecuse himself, but now we've got the president himself directing jeff sessions that he should unrecuse himself, which again, previously unreported before this scoop. michael schmidt, thank you very much for coming in to talk to us about this stuff. i feel like i want to send you right back to work. thank you, sir. thanks. we'll be right back. stay with us. derate to severe plaque psoriasis, little things can be a big deal. that's why there's otezla. otezla is not an injection or a cream. it's a pill that treats psoriasis differently. with otezla, 75% clearer skin is achievable after just 4 months, ...

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earlier this month, the attorney general jeff sessions and the department of homeland security announce they'd would start taking babies and kids away from their parents if they were caught crossing the border without papers. previously, border agents would send members of the same family to a detention facility together. under the new policy, parents and kids get forcibly separated by the u.s. government. parents go to one facility. kids go to a different one alone. even babies. there is no question that our immigration system is screwed up in lots of ways. immigration detention is screwed up. the deportation is screwed up. legal representation for people caught up at any point of the process is screwed up. i mean that's why we've been

talking about immigration reform for decades. because people who have wildly different ideas about what would make for a good immigration system in this country can all still agree that the system we do have is messed up nine ways to sunday. and it has been for a very long time. but this policy decision to take little kids away from their mothers and fathers, that is a brand-new policy, and it was invented by the trump administration and is being implemented by them. the attorney general himself announced it. the trump administration's homeland security administration is now implementing it. and as people have learned more about the fact that, yeah, we're really doing this, there has understandably been some outrage. understandably. when it comes to outrage related to immigration, though, this president has loved that. this president has played that to his partisan advantage with great relish.

>> we're going to have a real wall. and whose going to pay for the wall? >> mexico! >> who? >> mexico. >> i have to listen to pelosi and these people saying we have to respect them. they're human beings. they're not human beings. they're not human beings. and this is why we call the bloodthirsty ms-13 gang members exactly the name that i used last week. what was the name? animals. >> you don't like it when i use the word animals? say it with me now, animals. should i not have called mexican immigrants rapists? let me say it again. should i not have said an american federal judge is a mexican and therefore can't hear a case? how about i do it again. this is how the president has dealt with every racial provocation he has been able to think of on immigration. which is double down, triple down, right? find out what offends people and then do it ten times more. it works for him politically.

on this issue of taking babies and little kids away from their mother, though, this one is not playing out the way the other ones have. with this one, he's calling this a horrible law that separates children from their parents, misspelled there. by the way, it's not a law. it's a new policy that his administration just announced and started to implement. but unlike everything else on immigration that he has turned into a racial nuclear rhetorical weapon, on this one, he is calling for people to, quote, put pressure on the democrats to end this horrible law that separates children from their parents. put pressure on the democrats to end his new policy that he made up. the president has no qualms riling people up, turning it up to 11 about anything related to immigration. he has no problem churning up racially inflected fury. the hoards of rapists crossing the border, right?

the backlash to those policies and to those rhetorical pronouncements from him has made him gin them up all the more. it's part of a process that he enjoys. but when it come this one, when it comes to separating kids interest their parents, the thing that his administration has just started doing, the president is doing this one differently. he is not taking credit for it. he is trying to blame the democrats for this new policy. what does this mean? was what does this mean for that policy? and what does it mean for what is going to happen to those kids and those parents? hold that thought. olay ultra moisture body wash

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looking for a hotel that fits... whoooo. ...your budget? tripadvisor now searches over... ...200 sites to find you the... ...hotel you want at the lowest price. grazi, gino! find a price that fits. tripadvisor. a farmer's market.ve what's in this kiester. a fire truck. even a marching band. and if i can get comfortable talking about this kiester, then you can get comfortable using preparation h. for any sort of discomfort in yours. preparation h. get comfortable with it. secretary of homeland security in the trump administration is kirstjen nielsen. one of their jobs right now is to implement trump policy on immigration, including this new policy where in the u.s. government, by policy forcibly takes children away from their parents at the border if they cannot provide any paperwork to justify their border crossing. secretary nielsen scheduled to testify before the judiciary committee in the house next week.

a member of that committee, congressman ted lieu from california is now circulating a letter among his colleagues asking for an explanation of this new policy of separating little kids from their parents, asking for homeland security's view of whether taking kids away from their parents might violate international human rights law. he asks about homeland security's plans to ensure that families are some day reunified, and about homeland security's efforts to ensure that separated children are not placed ultimately with human traffickers. joining us now is congressman ted lieu, democrat of california. congressman, thank you for being here tonight. i appreciate your time. >> thank you, rachel. >> so the president has enjoyed stoking outrage on the issue of immigration. i think that it's plain to see that he sees it as something that he can stoke all sorts of concern and particularly racially inflected rhetorical excess on the issue of immigration, and it all redounds to his benefit. on this issue of separating kids

from their parents, he seems to be taking a different tact. he is not out thing this. he is trying to blame it on democrats. he is saying it's a democrat law, and democrats need to be pressured to end this. what is your take on what's going on here? >> well, thank you, rachel, for your question. you know it's got to be bad when donald trump won't even accept responsibility for his own administration's policy. that's because ripping children away from their parents is completely indefensible. and the president understands that the american people put children in a different category. we want to protect children, not abuse them. i think that's why you also see the president have a different tone when he talks about daca. i think he understands that the american people view children as separate and different. we need to be protecting them, not abusing them. >> in terms of the actual policy and these questions that you've posed to secretary nielsen about this, do you know the answers to any of these already? do you know in fact whether or not there is a homeland security policy, there are procedures in place to ensure that these

families ultimately get reunited after the u.s. government separates kids and parents? >> we do not. that's what is so troubling. we've heard anecdotally that you have children that are not able to be reunited with their parents, and we also want to know what is causing this change to happen. what really was a crisis they were trying to deal with? because we haven't seen any crisis that would result in this kind of horrific policy. and the american academy for pediatrics issued a statement that said when you separate children from their parents, it could disrupt their brain's architecture. it can cause something known as toxic stress which can have life-long consequences for the kids. and our government is doing that right now to all these children. >> do you have any idea of the extent of the implementation of this policy thus far? i ask that because the immigration system broadly is so opaque, it's unaccountable, in part because it's dispersed. there is very little public-facing information that is put out by immigration authorities. and even at the best of times,

our broken system is sort of hard to suss out in terms of its human impact. it is a new policy of the trump administration. do you know how many kids are affected are affected or how big they see this getting? >> it's going to get very big. let me explain what happened under the obama administration. when these people present themselves in these interview, about 76% according to the latest data, have a credible fear about going back to their country. they can file a claim, and under the obama administration, they would let the asylum claim go forward first. where jeff sessions is prosecuting everyone even if they have an asylum claim, and it doesn't make any sense. >> congressman ted lieu from california, thank you for

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i am not perfect. but i have not broken any laws nor committed any offense worthy of this treatment. >> it was a surprise when missouri's republican governor announced yesterday he is res n resigning from office. this announcement came after he spent the last four months battling separate sexual misconduct allegations and campaign finance scandals and efforts by his party to impeach him and remove him from office.

he insisted other and over and over again that under in no circumstances would he consider resigning, no way, no how. and then he did. suddenly, finally, yesterday. today we learned why. turns out the governor's legal team over the last few days reached out to prosecutors over the weekend seeking a deal for the governor. if they would drop a felony charge of computer tampering, which relates to the governor's campaign financing scandal, in exchange the governor would agree to resign. the kansas city star published this today. they got basically a photograph of a wrinkled copy of the agreement between the governor and the prosecutor. the deal apparently included seven terms, two of them redacted with a marker, there's a handwritten notation in the margin there that says under seal. you can also see in the thing they published, they spell it

out, the prosecutor would drop the one felony charge upon receipt of the defendant's resignation of office by the secretary of the state of missouri. which means they haven't dropped than charge technically because he isn't technically resigning until friday. if the deal holds, he'll get rid of the charge but he did it by resigning as governor. but he's still being investigated in a 2015 affair. the charge was dropped but they have the option of restating it. the governor could end up facing new charges. he's also facing other ethics complaints and the lingering impeachment investigation, what happens now that he's leaving? what can he trade away for that

stuff? that will be for him to deal with as a private citizen. missouri's governor eric greiten due to step down friday. we'll be right back. i can do more to lower my a1c. and i can do it with what's already within me. because my body can still make its own insulin. and once-weekly trulicity activates my body to release it. trulicity is not insulin. it comes in a once-weekly, truly easy-to-use pen. it works 24/7. trulicity is an injection to improve blood sugar in adults with type 2 diabetes when used with diet and exercise. don't use it as the first medicine to treat diabetes or if you have type 1 diabetes or diabetic ketoacidosis.

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for eight months and ten days, study after study as pointed to a death toll that's more than what the government admits to. now they've produced an estimated death from the storm of 4,645 we don't know if harvard's math will prove to be the answer here. but nearly nine months after hurricane maria, we can be sure the death toll is nowhere near 64. not even close. 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. we're going to have a discussion of the harvard study later in this hour. it includes deaths that occurred after the hurricane because people were denied medical care during and after the hurricane for many, many months after the