>> thank you. >> that's "all in" this evening. the rachel mad out show starts right now. thank you. thanks at home for joining thus hour. happy to have you with us. so the judge literally said, where do you want to go? they asked, we're thinking about leaving, your honor. and the judge was like, where? where would you go? that happened in court. we just got in the transcript of the court hearing today in the second federal felony trial of the president's campaign chairman paul manafort. and he is not on trial yet in that second trial. this is pretrial arguing. this is the defense and the prosecution arguing before the judge about the logistics of how the next trial will go, how it will unfold. there are two pieces that will end up being very, very relevant in that trial, depending on how the judge works it out. and they were both hashed out today in court in front of the

judge. the first is that paul manafort's defense team doesn't want his second felony trial to be in washington, d.c. paul manafort's defense lawyer today speaking to the judge. mr. wesling. quote, just to give the court notice we will file this week a motion for change of venue. we wanted to just give you notice, your honor, and not be in a situation where that came tomorrow or at the end of the week so you would be surprised by it. so -- and the judge interrupts and says, where do you want to go? mr. westling says, i don't know that i have the answer to that yet, judge. it may be that there is no place. but we feel it is important to make the record on the issue and to brief it for the court. the judge says, all right. i understand that. i believe that the overwhelming majority of the publicity about this case is national. so you can file what you need to

file and i won't prejudge it. but i think the goal of the jury questionnaire is to everybody able to us find a fair and impartial jury. and this jurisdiction, meaning federal court in d.c., has had very high profile cases before where we have been able through a jury questionnaire, followed by individual investigator dire. if it is not possible in the proceeding, we can still take action at that time. but the judge says, you are entitled to file whatever you want to file. manafort's defense lawyer mr. westling. understood, your honor. thank you. so as the judge says here, she's not pre judging manafort's request to move his next trial out of washington, d.c. but i wouldn't expect paul manafort's defense team has their hopes up. based on that initial response from the judge. i will also say that things did

not go particularly well for paul manafort's defense team today when it came to the arguments before this judge, judge jackson, when they asked her for more time to prepare their case. now, we've talked a few times on the show about prosecutors in this case. prosecutors working for special counsel robert mueller. they filed this list of evidence that they plan to introduce in the next paul manafort trial. and the list is like super long. it has something like 1,500 different items of evidence on it. now, the reason prosecutors have to file that list of evidence is in part so the defense team can object to any of those items potentially being cited in the trial as evidence. well, paul manafort's defense team apparently cannot get it together to file their objections on the evidence for manafort's trial so they've apparently asked for a number of extensions on this. we now know that the judge does

not seem pleased by it. the judge, quote, i was a little surprised when i read the joint pretrial statement that the defendant had voiced no objections whatsoever to any of the government's exhibits. i have now read the pretrial statement many more detail and note that you are planning to do so at a later date. you all have been dealing with these exhibits for months. they just showed up in my chambers this week. i need your objections to the exhibits tomorrow. manafort's defense lawyer says, it's -- >> and the judge interrupts and says, i understand. >> and then he tries again -- it's -- is not going to happen, your honor. i apologize but we got dumped 1,500 exhibits just the other today. 1,500. there's no way. a thousand exhibits, 1,100. the judge then turns to the prosecutor from the special counsel's office at this appointment and says, the judge says to the prosecutor, quote, well, are they designated which

ones are for impeachment and which ones you're actually manning to introduce at the trial? the prosecutor says yes, yes. the judge says, so how many are you planning to introduce in your case in chief? and mr. wice mann, the prosecutor says, every single exhibit that is on that list is something that we intend to offer in our case. 1,500 exhibits. that's what we're planning on introducing, your honor. so the prosecutor and the judge have a back and forth about how all these exhibits, how they are important and the prosecutors know what they're going to do with all of it. the judge then turns back to manafort's defense lawyers and she once again gives paul manafort's defense lawyers a little bit of a hard fwim one of the decisions which has actually been a real mystery in this case so far. which is why paul manafort and his defense team elected to go on trial twice.

once in virginia and once in washington, d.c. prosecutors had offered to consolidate two cases so manafort would go on trial only once. his legal team said no. this judge in the d.c. case has previously proclaimed herself in court to be basically bewildered by decision and here today she once again goes back to it. the judge, quote, now i understand, wasn't my decision to move another trial in front of this. wasn't my decision on push that trial up to accommodate that judge's schedule. and you know, it was your decision to push it further. so you're under extraordinary time pressures that don't happen on a daily basis. but we have a pretrial scheduled on september 5th and i need to know what objections you have to the prosecutors' exhibits. so what are we going to do? manafort's defense lawyer kevin downing says, i don't know, your honor. we don't have the resources of the u.s. government. we don't have two trial teams on get ready for two trials.

this is us. three here and a paralegal. i don't see how it will get done with all the parts. the judge responds, well, the day you asked for was yesterday. so what are you asking for now? you can't just say i don't know. you haven't moved to continue the trial. which means delay trial. i don't want to continue the trial. we have 120 jurors coming in who have been pre qualified to be available for this period of time. a lot of documents you've been provided in discovery. you know that. we've been living with them. you've been figuring out what your defense is based on them. i realize, well, i need an answer as to what you think. the defense lawyer. your honor, i have no idea how you think we'll be able to be prepared to go on trial for september 17th with all of this. are you asking for a continuance? let's talk about that before -- your honor, the judge -- >> i will ask you at the end of this hearing. you have to make a proposal to

me. you made one in writing and it said yesterday. now you're telling me tomorrow is impossible. what am i supposed to do? i told you when i wanted it. now i'm asking you, when do you want it and you won't even tell me. you need to tell me. manafort's defense lawyer. >> well, i would like the confer with counsel this. and the judge says all right. and then manafort's defense lawyer says, he interrupts and says we'll talk about this at the end of the hearing. the judge says, we need a schedule. defense lawyer, yet. the judge says, and i'm very reluctant to move the trial. i think we need to move these jurors in here. we need to pick them. so this is judge who is about to their second federal felony trial against campaign chairman paul manafort in washington, d.c. she is plainly exasperated and maybe even a little surprise that had manafort and his defense team made this decision that they wanted to put how many

trial twice. it appears from the way the judge has addressed this this court that maybe it is an inconvenience. that she is the second judge to hear this and the timing of hadder tlil to be adjusted for the other federal judge who went first. it is cheer from this transcript, she does not appear to be happen that they want to move this second case out of washington, d.c. and have it somewhere else. apparently that will be litigated by the end of next being. on this issue of paul manafort's defense team, not being able to handle the requirements of preparing for his second trial, not being able to get it together. well, the judge today in d.c. gave him a very hard time on that. in the end, she did actually give them a little bit of an extension. so there's another round of fairly voe sifrous fighting at the end of the fighting over the

issue of whether or not the trial will be delayed. manafort's defense lawyers again complain about the pace. as the court is well aware, we finished a trial a week ago today. we've been doing our best in the time we've had since thrown obviously pick up the ball. and the prosecutors came back arguing against with basically, no, you shouldn't get a delay. the date has been set for a long time. the prosecutor says i can say there are witnesses who have been told exactly when the trial is. we have witnesses who have medical issues, that have worked around this. we have witnesses from overseas. i mean, the idea that it is now going to move again. it does create a substantial problem for the government. meengs for the prosecution. the judge weighed both sides of that argument. impassioned arguments from the defense and the prosecution on

whether or not this could be delayed. in the end she decided to give a little. the judge. with respect to the judge, while i absolutely understand the position of the office of the special counsel, i also understand the position the defense is in. so i won't give anybody everything that they're seeking. but i'll try to give you a little more breathing room. so this second manafort trial had been scheduled to start september 17th. you about the judge in federal court in d.c. today announced they would start picking the jury only date. on september 17th. but, quote, openings and the presentation of the evidence will start one week later on september 24th. the judge explained to the prosecution and defense, once we have the jury, we're not going on swear them. we'll tell them on come book the 24th. and then you'll have the rest of the week the prepare. i think that's really the best i can do under all the circumstances. so that's the transcript from today's hearing.

what this means is that the second felony trial of the president's campaign chairman paul manafort will be effectively delayed for about a week even though jury selection will start on the date that we thought the trial would start anyway. i think it is helpful to have that transcript so you go see how it was fought over. it gives as you little more insight than we might have as to the cause of the delay. that is potentially important. last night there was a report in the "wall street journal" that paul manafort and his defense team have been trying to make some sort of a plea deal with prosecutors in the special counsel's office. you get that news about manafort reportedly looking for a deal, followed by the news that manafort's trial is being delayed and you might expect, you might at least wonder if the delay in manafort's case is because of some effort to put together a deal between him and prosecutors. now, it is totally possible that something like that is secretly going on behind the scenes and we can't see evidence of it in

court. from the transcript of what did happen, it does seem like the delay is happening because paul manafort's defense team can't get it together. two federal trials back to back against experienced aggressive prosecutors including the possibility the first trial might not even be over yet. the special counsel's office is due to tell the court in virginia tomorrow whether or not they'll put manafort on trial again. whether they'll retry him on the ten felony counts where the jury was not able to reach a verdict in his case last week. i don't doubt that paul manafort and his team may have talked to the special counsel and his prosecutors about the prospect of some kind of deal to make the charges and the second trial go away. but it doesn't appear that any such negotiations are the reason that manafort's team is trying so hard to slow it down. the news about this minor delay

in paul manafort's next trial is set. there is a new trial date in terms of when it will start. this comes amidst new reporting from the "washington post" the president himself continues to be basically losing his mind over the russia scandal and the legal inquiries, the legal investigations, the prosecutions. we'll have a little more on this later in the show. but bottom line, the "washington post" is basically reporting that administration officials have been doing a sort of delicate dance where they've been cajoling the president and consoling the president and basically trying delaying tactics with the president to try to keep the president from firing attorney general jeff sessions in an effort to end the russia investigation and its related prosecutions. we'll have more on that in a moment. we have a former very senior justice department official here tonight. he left the justice department quite recently. he'll be joining us for his first tv interview since leaving

government service tonight so we'll talk about that with him and more. the other important thing going on here is that the president, of course, isn't alone in his crusade to try dismantle or roadblock the russia investigation and all of its component parts by going after key person and he will officials who have doekss different parts of the investigation. this is from an almost lyrical portrait. more than 20 years ago. it was written in 1996. it was published in the "new york times" about the head of a drug gang in the bronx. in the criminal organization that he ran in the bronx. quote, when the history is written of the drug gangs of new york in the 1980s and the mid 1990s, the kind that wrecked a city's nerves, helped create record high murder rates and made gunfire a common sound in many neighborhoods, the author of that might want to spend a

chapter on jose reyes, or as he was known, el feo. he rose to become both dealer and supplier, building an empire. operating in a neighborhood doused in drug money, he was a general in the earl. he also devoured books on the behalf. i can't he read match developy. and he killed. managing a hit team that left a trail of rivals dead in manhattan and the bronx. it took several years for authorities to even hear of his existence. two months ago, mr. reyes was convicted of running a drug organization and of killing seven men. this guy's name was jose reyes. they called it el feo, the you goly one, and it was one of the legendary gangs of that era. he himself indicted in 1994. they tried him in federal court

in new york city. the judge deliberated for eight days. when they came back they ruled that he was guilty of seven murders which men, of course, life in prison. the prosecution was led if part by an assistant attorney in the southern district of new york who was thought of as a bit of a braini brainiac. he had graduated a degree in physics. after he helped bring the successful landmark el feo prosecution in new york, he got a big promotion. he was named chief of the violent gangs unit for the whole southern district of new york. it would not be long before the main justice department in d.c. hired him away from the u.s. attorney's office in new york and at main justice, he rose to lead the racketeering department. his specialty was international organized crime. to run that section he became known as an intricate manager.

he worked not just the fbi but other law enforcement and intelligence agencies all around the world. he built and maintained the contacts for the benefit of the justice department. and that makes sense. he was prosecuting international organized crime so you need intel and international law enforcement connections. in 2003 he oversaw the team that indicted the boss of all bosses in the russia mafia. that made big news at the time. i have to admit, the big news made at the time when the justice department indicted the godfather of the russian mafia, it was somewhat limited by the fact nobody could pronounce the name of the guy they just indicted. >> today we have some of the fbi's most wanted for you. this is simon. he is wanted for racketeering, wire and mail fraud and money laundering. we are told he has pock marks on

his face and smokes heavily and uses a russian passport. he is considered armed and dangerous. >> i am no better at pronouncing names than the next guy. he is considered to be the godfather of the russian mob. he is one of the most wanted men in the world. he has been for years. he is a fugitive from justice. under indictment in the united states. he is on the most wanted list for the fbi but they haven't been able to get him. very few pictures of him even exist. his name has turned up in a couple ways, including the russia investigation for president trump. a russian born ex-con who worked for a while at the trump organization, who worked with michael cohen is that the plan to build a trump tower in moscow during presidential campaign. that donald trump lied about. he has been accused of having links to semien mog.

it would have been a gigantic real estate dmeel new york city with some russian linked business partners. that deal never came to pass but it was the subject of litigation in the u.s. and great controversy in ukraine because it was suspected of being way for paul manafort to help launder smfrt the money. so this top figure in the russian mafia, the starring role on the ten most wanted fugitives list, who periodically leads to headlines like the one, whenever the fbi starts talking about him again. fbi, mobster more powerful than gotti. the justice department official who actually led the effort to

indict him led the effort to bring him to justice in the u.s. courts. that's the same harvard brainiack who had come up from duty in new york after prosecuting the drug gangs and el feo. he indicted the head of the rugs mafia and played another key role in the fate of another key name who has ended up having another star role involving this president and his campaign. i mentioned the 1,500 pieces of evidence that the special counsel's office says they'll use every single one of in their trial for paul manafort in washington, d.c. well, at least a couple of those pieces of evidence appear to explicitly reference a russian oligarch linked to vladimir putin whose name is oleg deripaska. he is apparently going to play a role in the manafort trial in d.c. you will also remember that oleg deripaska's name turned up in

e-mails that indicated that while manafort was running trump's presidential campaign, he was simultaneously offering private briefings on the election and the campaign to this russian oligarch, to oleg deripaska. he had entered into a $10 million a year contract with deripaska to promote the interests of putin's government around the world. well, in 2006, that same justice department official, the one that started as the gang prosecutor, taking apart those drug gangs in the bronx, the guy who had worked his way to become an expert on transnational crime, the guy who led the team that got the prosecution the head of the russian mafia, that same official, quote, was part of a group of government officials who revoked the visa of oleg deripaska, a russian billionaire and aluminum

magnate. the russia scandal around this president and marchly the part of it that has led to these two federal criminal trials against the president's campaign chairman, it has an organized crime element to it. it has a russian organized crime element to it. and now the president mulls pardoning paul manafort. as the president openly mulls firing the attorney general of the united states in the midst of the manafort prosecution as a way to make the russia investigation all go away, today, republicans in congress spent the entire day going after that justice department official i've been talking about. that specific official who started with the el feo case and the drug gangs in the bronx. who rose to become the head of organized crime and racketeering at the justice department. who became the justice

department's expert on russian organized crime. the guy who indicted the head of the russian mafia. the guy who became the justice department's lead counsel for transnational organized crime and international affairs. the guy who had been part of the team banned paul manafort's patron and business partner, oleg deripaska from doing business with the united states on his alleged ties to organized crime in russia. that justice department official. that guy. is named bruce ohr. and he is the object of conspiracy theories and condemnation on right wing media on a 24-hour loop. and today, pro trump republican members of congress summoned bruce ohr to testify behind closed doors before two republican led committees and then they immediately went out to the cameras to talk to report betters how bruce ohr was a liar and to accuse him of being the rot at the heart of the mueller

investigation and the russia scandal more broadly. the "new york times" this weekend profiled his long history in leading american law enforcement efforts against russian organized crime. there is a russian organized crime element to the trump/russia scandal. today house republicans literally came back early to spend the day try to destroy bruce ohr. from politico.com, house republicans have fixated on a handful of career and justice department officials as they sought to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the investigators who launched the russia probe. first, the spotlight was on jim comey and mccabe and now they intend to prove that political bias is behind the sprawling investigation of president trump's ties to russia. they are now elevating a new target, justice department official bruce ohr.

they went after the fbi with the experience of breaking up russia operations on u.s. soil. and today they are trying the take out one of america's top experts on organized crime. and i don't know exactly what these targeted attacks by the white house and congressional republicans will ultimately do to the capabilities of the justice department and the fbi when it comes to fighting things like russian intelligence operations in the united states and russian organized crime and russian money laundering through american real estate. but you can imagine how satisfying a day like today must have been for semion mogilevich. you can imagine how delightful that was for the russian mafia. you can imagine how nice a day it must have been when viewed from the perspective of the kremlin. we'll be right back. l be right .

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this is primary night in three states. polls have close in the florida and oklahoma. they remain open in arizona

despite problems at dozens of polling locations including problems that prevented the polls from opening on time. the big news tonight right now is coming out of florida. florida has not elected a democratic governor in 24 years. but tonight we have just witnessed an upset in a very competitive primary on the democratic side of the florida governor's race. for more we turn to msnbc political correspondent kornacki. >> this is a shocker. he led in no polls coming into tom. i don't think he was in second place in a single place coming into tonight and yet andrew gill zlum now the democratic nominee for florida. he has upset the front-runner, gwen graham. her father was a governor, a u.s. senator. what happened? andrew gillum, he was he said dorised by the way. what does he represent

ideologically? he was endorsed by bernie sanders. the mayor of tallahassee. what happened? a couple things to explain this. number one, he did well in his base here. but go down to south florida. check this out. we are following this all night. what really powered gillum, broward county. he ran up the score. this is not his home region in the state. and gwen graham did terribly down here. she was supposed to hold her own, do better by her base. instead, gillum just ran up the score here. this is phil levine, the third candidate. this is his home base. winning this outright again. graham finishing very, very distant third. so graham got crushed in south florida here. gillum did very well here. he did very well in orlando. look at this. this is tamp dlaflt he is going to win that over gwen graham. that was not supposed to happen. and then how about this? gwen graham, this is her home base.

this is where the district was that she represented. she was supposed to run up the score here. you can see this is gillum's color, this dark blue. you see some of the counties he won outright. others he was competitive in. this is just a shocking performance. and what it does, it sets up a very interesting general election here. has the candidate of the democratic base, certainly gillum and insurgents, i think you can call it, who will he run against? against donald trump's endorsed preferred candidate in the republican, ron de santos. he defeats the republican thought put nam is by far more electable than desantis. so democrats will look at him and say this is a very vulnerable republican in a mid-term year in a mid material environment that looks good in a state. it has been a long time since democrats won here but they say he is very beatable. there are some issues in tallahassee. there's an investigation that

involves city hall there. unclear if gillum is involved in that. he will get a lot of attention and scrutiny that he hasn't gotten in the last two hours. democrats will look at that and they're saying, donald trump's candidate, someone that close to trump, might have some trouble. democrats will be very helpful and republicans, you bet their opposition research will be going full time andrew gillum. >> thank you very much. a fascinating result. the theory of this case in part was that the graham campaign was thinking they would be trying to appeal to moderates and crossover republicans. the gillum campaign was thinking they needed to motivate the democratic base to turn out. two different approaches. clearly gillum the better theory. when we finally get the absolute number, the turnout numbers, that will give us a sense as to whether or not gillum's strategy sets him up well for the general or whether or not it helps you

in the primary. and then trouble coming down the line in november. this is one of those, it won't just be the results. it will be the turnout numbers. stay with us. he turnout numbers stay with us there are roadside attractions. and then there's our world-famous on-road attraction. the 2019 glc, starting at $40,700. mercedes-benz. the best or nothing. but climbing 58,070 steps a year can be hard on her feet, knees, and lower back. that's why she wears dr. scholl's orthotics. they're clinically proven to relieve pain and give you the comfort to move more. dr. scholl's, born to move.

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joining us for the interview is someone i would very much like to you meet. someone a great deal of high level experience in a place that is basically news central for us these days. his name is david loftman. he served under republican and

democratic administrations. before he stepped down from the justice department in february of this year, he served in the national security division at doj. he was the chief of the counter intelligence and export control section in the national security division. now, in that capacity he oversaw investigations you might have heard of like the hillary clinton e-mail investigation and before special counsel was appointed, he helped oversee the investigation into russian meddling in the 2016 election. this is his first television interview since leaving the justice department. thank you very much for making the trip here and thank you for being willing to come on the show. >> good to be with you. >> first, i ask but the circumstances under which you left the justice department. you left in february of this year. >> yes. i left on my own steam. i had three eventful years, about 25 years all together of public service. a lot of it at the department. i felt like i had contributed in any way could i and it was time

move on to a new chapter of my career. >> in terms of being able to talk publicbly your experiences, one of the reasons i wanted to talk to you is because i rarely have the opportunity to speak with high ranging officials who may be able to give us insight into how these things we see in the news really affect day to day work of people doing the kind of work that you did on behalf of the country. the "washington post" is breaking yet another story. the president has privately revived the idea of firing attorney general jeff sessions this month. at least twice in the past month, he's vented to white house advisers and his lawyers about the endless investigation of his campaign. he said he needs to fire the attorney general for saddling his president swi the controversy. we all watched that and we know it is unusual as citizens. within the justice department, how does this unusual pressure from the president feel? how does it affect work? >> you have tens of thousands of

professionals, men and women working every day on behalf of the country doing their best to provide fair and ill partial law enforcement investigations, in my case in the national security realm. they're putting their nose to the grind shown in doing what they can with admissible evidence under the rule of law. in this carnival like atmosphere that affects rest us is not immarketing them that much. they're very mission focused. as far as the attorney general goes, that's a horse of a different color. the president is entitled to a cabinet of his choice. men and women he can work with to carry out his agenda. but i can't think of any policy area of the president's agenda that attorney general sessions is not ardently carrying out. so there's only one reason when you think about it for why the president would want to get rid of jeff sessions.

that's to install somebody in his place who would circumstance up describe or undermine the work of the office and that is reprehensible for the health of our criminal justice system and domestic policy. >> would it work if the president decided to take that approach? let's say that the republican-led senate could be persuaded to confirm somebody else without getting any promises from them about how they would treat or respect the office, if that was the president's plan to ice the ag so the new ag would not be there. would it be an effective tactic? >> we won't know until we know. it will come down to the character of the individual installed in that position. that moment of truth where he or she is forced into making a decision at the behest of the president. with an ongoing investigation. then we'll know.

and we'll hope that person has the steel and the spine to make the right decision. >> the, you said that the career law enforcement professionals at the justice department, particularly working in national security, people are keeping their nose to the grind stone. they'll keep doing it. we have seen the careers of a number of senior people taken apart by political criticism and pressure. and it is all the circumstances have been slightly different and all the scandals have been bigger or smaller depending on the individuals. we've seen the counter intelligence chief agent. we've seen lis page who was counsel of the deputy director, the fbi director himself. today, the justice department official official, bruce ohr, is being pilloried. it seems like those keeping their nose to the grind stone

also have to worry that they'll get cross hairs trained on them shortly. >> an understandable concern. each of these has its own specific facts and circumstances in each of the cases. i don't have visibility into those cases. you're raising a larger important concern which is whether the department of justice has a big bull's-eye on his back and more importantly, whether the deny the greating, whether it is part of an effort to undermine the integrity and independence of one of the most important institutions in our government. and that's incredibly worrisome. >> is there a fix for that? >> the sfix to raise the cost to carrying out those kinds of actions. by raising the cost to the people who could lend their voices now to expressing objections to the types of courses of action that we hear about in the offing. where republican members of congress who control both

houses, unless they're retiring and suddenly feel a spurt of loquaciousness and willingness to speak their mind works certainly start holding accountable those officials including the president who if they're exercising their legal authority, may be stepping close to the edge of overstepping their legal authority or abusing it. whether it is putting pressure on the department to curtail ongoing investigations or threatening the pardon of officials pardoned for those reasons. we count on our elected officials to be a bulwark against that kind of abuse of power and they are failing in that task today. >> our guest is dave laufman who is a senior official at the department of justice. the national security division. the chief of counter intelligence in the export control section. we'll be back after this. stay with us. ion. we'll be back after this stay with us -i've seen lots of homes helping new customers

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back with us for the interview is i have had did a laufman. he served at the justice department. he was chief at the counter intelligence and export control section. as such he oversaw a number of very high profile investigations including the hillary clinton e-mail investigation and before the special counsel was appointed, the investigation into russian meddling in the 2016 election. thank you for staying with us. and i know that a lot of these matters that are ongoing investigations industrial things that you can't comment on in terms of your role in them when they were open. i think you were basically in charge of at justice department until february, which is the foreign registration act enforcement. this is something that we're about to see the president's campaign chairman paul manafort go on trial for in his second federal trial in d.c. it has come up in a number of the other prosecutions in guilty pleas around people surrounding the president. the question i have is, wlahand

the law is, it seems like this was never prosecuted before. or very rarely prosecuted before and when it comes to the trump russia scandal. what do you make of that? >> well, it's true there have only been a handful of criminal prosecutions over the last several years. there's reasons why it's hard to charge a criminal violation. some of these are technical turgid in the weeds stuff but you've got to be able to produce admissible evidence there was direction and control of the agent of a foreign principal by the foreign principal. there's challenges in proving willfulness, which is an element of a criminal offense. so there are some structural challenges to proving these cases. i can't speak to why in decades before i arrived on the scene there was only a handful of investigations but i can tell you when i arrived in late 2014 we did an assessment of whether we were firing on all cylinders

with respect to propelling forward investigations of all the areas of our responsibility, whether they be espionage, export control, or sanctions, theft of trade secrets, or investigations and prosecutions of the foreign agent registration act, which was another part of the mosaic of the national security mission of the department of justice. and so we endeavored to make sure that we were in as muscular but appropriate a fashion as possible investigating and holding accountable parties that had an obligation to register and willfully faild failed to do so. so i think the manafort case that is going to go to trial in september ought to be seen in that larger context. the enforcement is really part of the broader picture of how the department approaches foreign influence operations in the united states today writ large, whether it's malign cyber operations or more espionage-like activities like the maria butina case in d.c. or straight up fara prosecutions. >> david laufman, i appreciate

this is the first tv interview you've done since leaving the justice department earlier this year. i hope you'll come back. i feel like your expertise is something that's really unique and it's helpful to hear from you. >> good to be with you. nice to see you. thank you. >> we'll be back. stay with us. thank you. >> we'll be back stay with us dy likes dealing with insurance. which is why esurance hired me, dennis quaid, as their spokesperson because apparently, i'm highly likable. see, they know it's confusing. i literally have no idea what i'm getting, dennis quaid. that's why they're making it simple, man in cafe. and more affordable. thank you, dennis quaid. you're welcome. that's a prop apple. i'd tell you more, but i only have 30 seconds. so here's a dramatic shot of their tagline so you'll remember it. esurance. it's surprisingly painless. so you'll remember it. that's confident. but it's not kayak confident. kayak searches hundreds of travel and airline sites to find the best flight for me. so i'm more than confident. how's your family? kayak. search one and done. we really pride ourselves on making it easy for you >> tech: at safelite autoglass, to get your windshield fixed.

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a few weeks after hurricane maria in puerto rico last year this was the view of the commander in chief. >> if you look at a real catastrophe like katrina and you look at the tremendous, hundreds

and hundreds and hundreds of people that died -- what is your death count as of this moment? 17? >> 16. >> 16 people certified. 16 people versus in the thousands. you can be very proud of all of your people, all of our people working together. 16 versus literally thousands of people. >> it is true that the official death toll from hurricane maria in puerto rico stayed inexplicably in just the double digits for a long time, despite overwhelming anecdotal evidence and multiple academic studies that said the real death toll should be much, much higher. today researchers at george washington university put out a comprehensive study of the deaths caused by hurricane maria. the number they came up with is 2,975. almost 3,000 americans killed in that storm. not 16 people, not 64 people, which was one early official death toll. but the same number almost

exactly as the number of americans who were killed in the 9/11 attacks in 2001. and ultimately, hundreds more people than were killed in hurricane katrina. the death toll of hurricane katrina is approximately 1,800 people. again, this number today from george washington university is 2,975. the governor in puerto rico tonight has ordered the official death toll in puerto rico from the storm to be raised to match the numbers in this new study. no word yet from the white house. we'll be right back. liberty mutual accident forgiveness means they won't hike your rates over one mistake.

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pre-labor day mattress sale and save. for a limited time get 150 dollars off and free shipping too. sale prices are available right now. go to buyleesa.com today. you need this bed. ♪ that's confident. but it's not kayak confident. kayak searches hundreds of travel and airline sites to find the best flight for me. so i'm more than confident. how's your family? kayak. search one and done. as you know, this is primary night in three states. arizona, oklahoma, florida. we're going to have more on arizona and an important republican senate primary in that state coming up later on msnbc. once polls close and we start getting in results. but the big election headline at this hour is an upset. it's in florida. the mayor of tallahassee, a bernie sanders-backed charismatic progressive candidate named andrew gillum has won the democratic

nomination for florida governor in an upset victory. gillum is 39 years old. he never led in any public polls heading into tonight. but he has tonight defeated establishment favor gwen graham, daughter of bob graham. mr. gillum will become the first african-american nominee for governor in that state's history from either party. mr. gillum will now face off in november against trump-backed republican congressman ron desanity-its, who tonight won his republican gubernatorial primary easily, by 20 points. the republican establishment believed that mr. desantis would not be their strongest candidate for the general election. democrats fully expected gwen graham was going to be their candidate on the democratic side. you can add this one to the list of very, very competitive and interesting races coming up in november. november 6th, just 70 days from right now. that does it for us tonight. see you again tomorrow. now it's time for "the last word" with lawrence o'donnell. good evening, lawrence. >> good evening, rachel. and it seems to me