12 hours from landfall. it's a picture of the staff of the national weather service in tallahassee. note what you don't see in the picture, their own families. they all put their lives on hold to go to work and warn the rest of us. every so often, there's an effort in washington to privatize the national weather service. doing so would mean losing all of them and their knowledge, their reach, their expertise. and they're among the finest public servants in this country today. something they proved again today. that's our broadcast for wednesday night. thank you for being here with us. our coverage continues after this. top of mind tonight, all

over the country is hurricane michael, churning across the florida panhandle and alabama and georgia. we're going to get a live update on the state of the storm coming up in just a couple of minutes here. unusually, though, for a day in which a huge category 4, almost category 5 hurricane hit the continental united states, unusually, this has also been an otherwise busy news day. usually, a storm this big hitting the united states broadside would eclipse all other news. but today, a lot of other stuff has been happening besides. so we're going to be covering the storm. we're also going to get to a bunch of these other stories alongside our hurricane coverage. you should know, for example, that tonight "the washington post" is reporting that the president has talked "recently" to the man who is now serving as chief of staff to the attorney general, jeff sessions. his name is matt whitacre. matt whitacre made news when everybody thought rod rosenstein was going to be fired as the deputy attorney general and the

overseer of the mueller investigation. matt whitaker, that day that everybody thought rosenstein was out, he was named by the justice departments a the person who was going to get appointed to replace rod rosenstein had he been fired. that was really controversial for a few different reasons. number one, rosenstein wasn't getting fired after all that day. so it's weird that the justice department wrote a press release about who was replacing him and then that leaked to the press. that was weird. also weird, matt whitaker is not in the line of succession at the justice department to take over the deputy attorney general job. so inserting him into the rosenstein job, had rosenstein been fired, that would have been strange. that would have been the white house inserting itself into the justice department to hand pick the person to take over that important job. the fact that matt whitaker, until recently, was a cable news

pundit, whose main gig on tv was attacking the robert mueller investigation, that made it seem clear to a lot of people why the white house might have wanted to pick him exactly to insert into the rod rosenstein job, presumably so whittaker could hamstring the mueller investigation he's been so critical of and protect the president from that high post at the justice department. well, tonight, what "the washington post" is reporting is that whitaker is in talks with the president to replace a high ranking justice department official, only this time "the post" reports that the president is talking to him about him about him replacing jeff sessions, the attorney general. not rod rosenstein, the deputy attorney general. trying to make matt whitaker attorney general of the united states, or even acting attorney general of the united states, that would be a spectacularly radical move by the white house.

given his minimal experience and his emphatically declared hostility to the ongoing special counsel investigation into the president, with whom he is reportedly personally negotiating about getting the gig. what "the post" is reporting that those talks are under way, and those talks have happened recently. briefly today was also the day that special counsel's investigation produced its longest jail term yet. we'll have more on that coming up in a moment. we have just got in the transcript from that sentencing hearing today. the prison sentence that was imposed at this hearing today for this defendant in the special counsel's investigation was described by his defense lawyer as a shock. so we've got that transcript coming up. we also had a surprise announcement from the justice department today that a chinese military intelligence officer was arrested and extradited to the united states to face federal charges that he was part

of a plot to steal technology in the united states from a u.s. company. it was specifically airline technology, and whether or not the technological secrets of ge aviation are things that are of interest to you. what is particularly interesting to all of us about this case with this chinese military intelligence guy today is that this is a foreign military intelligence military officer who has been picked up, arrested, extradited, and sent here to face trial in a u.s. courtroom. the u.s. has indicted chinese military officers before, including for hacking crimes. the u.s. has indicted a whole bunch of russian military intelligence officers, quite recently, including by the special counsel's office, for their role in the attack on the 2016 election. every time there's one of these indictments of foreign military intelligence operators, the u.s. prosecutors who file those indictments, they face the same criticism, right? this is just naming and shaming.

this is a purely symbolic act. why even bother indicting? you'll never get these guys in a court of law. well, in this case, today they did. this is a case overseen by the counterintelligence unit of the fbi. this chinese military officer was arrested in belgium, charged in a sealed indictment. the indictment was unsealed today, and he was extradited to the u.s. today he was arraigned in federal court in ohio. i mean, charge a foreign military officer and charge a foreign spy, true, most of the time you're not going to get them in a u.s. court, but apparently sometimes you do. documents filed by prosecutors seemed to suggest maybe the way they got him is by keeping the charges against this guy sealed, luring him to belgium, luring him to a country where we could have extradition under promises he might be able to obtain some more of that stolen information he was interested in from the aviation company if he traveled

to belgium. it was all set up, and now he's here on trial. also, along somewhat the same lines, we have been watching fast-moving developments today related to the disappearance of "washington post" journalist jamal khashoggi. khashoggi is the saudi journalist who had become a mainstream, fairly moderate critic of the saudi regime. he entered a saudi consulate in turkey to do routine paperwork, and then disappeared. and amid absolutely damning reporting now that suggests that a team of more than a dozen saudi agents were dispatched to that consulate to lay in wait for him there, charges that that saudi team not only killed jamal, but may have videotaped that killing to prove it to the

saudi leader, amid reports that they may have used the house of a nearby saudi official to dispose of the remains. amid reports u.s. intelligence may have captured intercepts that overheard saudi officials discussing the journalist's murder. now tonight, a big bipartisan group of u.s. senators has written to the president in a specific way that legally triggers a u.s. investigation of this murder, that legally triggers an investigation into whether or not saudi officials were involved in the apparent murder of this journalist. i said this letter is designed to trigger that investigation. this is the mechanism that was created by the magnitsky act in response to the russian givernments torturing and killing critics and dissidents at home. but it's not specific to russia, and now that the chairman has

written to the president with the senators, the u.s. government, under u.s. law, now has 120 days to investigate, and then if they find culpability, they will need to lay down individual sanctions against anyone responsible. again, given how the trump administration feels about the saudis and the saudi leader, who is alleged to be behind this killing, that might be a tall order. but, again, tonight the letter has gone. that investigation into khashoggi's apparent murder should be triggered under u.s. law. we'll see how the trump white house handles that. as i said, today has been a very busy news day. on top of all the hurricane news. the stock market fell off a cliff today, the dow dropping more than 800 points today, led by huge losses in the tech sector. also, supreme court justice brett kavanaugh learned that a raft of judicial complaints against him, related to his testimony during his

confirmation and the temperament problems he may have displayed, those complaints have been referred for investigation to the 10th u.s. circuit court of appeals. so this is his fellow judges saying, not his fellow justices on the supreme court, it started with his fellow judges on the court he used to sit on, saying these complaints about him warrant investigation. if the 10th u.s. circuit court of appeals substantiates these claims against kavanaugh, it's not clear how it will affect kavanaugh's time on the bench at the supreme court. supreme court justices tend to sort of be pretty much above the law in terms of their own conduct. but now he is the first supreme court justice to ever take a seat on that court while his fellow judges recommended that misconduct claims against him are serious enough to warrant judicial review, and now that judicial review will begin in the 10th circuit. so all that is going on tonight.

plus one other story that i think is potentially really important that just broke in "the wall street journal" that relates to the old peter smith case. the republican operative who was trying to pay the russians to get hillary clinton's e-mail. big, interesting break in that case today. we'll have more on that coming up, as well. there's a lot to keep track of tonight. but, of course, the biggest thing of all is this hurricane. at the storm's height, wind gusts up to 175 miles per hour. that's the force of an ef-4 tornado. that makes it the fourth strongest hurricane on record to make landfall in the u.s. ever. the storm made landfall this afternoon in the town of mexico beach in florida. these shards of wood and debris that you see is all that's left of one house in mexico beach, florida, after hurricane michael came ashore. in panama city, the storm's winds acted like a sandblaster, tearing the roofs off of buildings, tearing buildings down. after the storm passed, this is what it looked like.

you can see a lot of trees just snapped in half midheight there. usually once a storm makes landfall it fizzles pretty quickly. land is kryptonite to hurricanes. but this one, this one instead of falling apart when it hit land, michael picked up a little speed at landfall, it seems. for hours, it seemed to hold together. and tonight, the danger is still there. joining us now is nbc news meteorologist bill karins. who is tracking the hurricane's progression over the course of today. bill, we know that it's obviously decreased in strength by now, but this has been a remarkable trajectory today and a big swath of destruction. >> we're almost eight hours after landfall and still dealing with a hurricane in central georgia, we still have trees that are falling on houses, cars, power lines, and people in georgia are heading to safe rooms. that's just a fact that we're going to go through. it is weakening, down to a

category 1, but there are still wind gusts up to 70 miles per hour, heavily forested areas, just a ton of trees. that's the pictures you're going to see, is all the trees down throughout the region. here's the latest. yes, we are down finally to 85-mile-per-hour winds. in a couple of hours, around midnight, we'll drop it down to a tropical storm. we like the fact that it's moving at 17 miles per hour. let's quickly try to get this out of here as we go throughout the overnight hours. then again, the faster it moves, the more widespread the wind damage is. you just can't win with these things. overnight, we send it through south carolina. then north carolina. by that time, it's much weaker and will turn into a hybrid type storm. as it heads for the norfolk/virginia beach area. all of this region is going to get drenched by a lot of heavy rain. so not only the problems of additional wind and trees, but minor flooding to deal with. but as far as the damage from this storm, we are about 80%,

maybe 85%. we've seen most of it. so here's the winds throughout tomorrow. this is the potential for tropical storm force winds. we're targeted in the carolinas. as far as the rainfall forecast goes, the heaviest rains will be found throughout the night tonight, and then eventually sliding up the east coast. and i mentioned flood watches up through southern new england. this pink is about four to five inches of rainfall. it's been a very wet fall and the ground is very saturated. it's just been a crazy, historic, this thing just intensified so quickly and kept going all the way to landfall. if it had been had two or three more hours over water, it could have been a category 5. the strongest hurricane to make landfall in our country since 1992, when hurricane andrew came ashore. so that was 1992, so 26 years ago we haven't seen a storm this strong. the lower pressure, this goes down as the third strongest. by far, we have never seen anything like this in october. before this landfall, the

strongest was 130-mile-per-hour winds. we were 155, that's off the charts stronger and more intense. >> so we keep breaking terrible records, we keep seeing what everybody talks about as 100-year storms or 500-year storms and floods and all these things happening. does it feel like things are more extreme, both with individual storms and in terms of the frequency of extreme events, just because we're seeing them in close proximity or are things getting worse? >> that's what everyone wants to know, did we hit the tipping point? i think the message has changed. it always used to be, you know, this storm happened because of climate change. you don't hear that now. what you hear now is, we always had storms in the past. but this storm was stronger than it should be because of climate change. so they'll take this storm, they'll take a study of it and put it in the computers and see, you know, did a warmer planet, did warmer gulf water

temperatures make it that much stronger than it normally would have been? that's where the science has taken us. so we're trying to advance the narrative. did this storm happen because of a warmer planet, but was this storm worse because of a warmer planet? >> it does seem like the warm waters of the gulf were a factor in terms of the rapid intensification. >> guaranteed. this is usually the peak of the warmth there anyways. in october, we've had monster storms in the gulf before. a lot of times they fizzle before they get to land. this one decided not to. so the water temperature was a little warmer than normal, nothing crazy for this time of year. it was just a perfect ingredient that the winds weren't tearing apart the thunderstorms, the storm was able to hold itself together and put on an amazing show. where it hit, you know, we've

seen the pictures. panama city, the air force base, mexico beach. that area was devastated. storm chasers that have traveled the world say it looks like a bomb went off. we didn't even see the worst pictures yet of that region. we'll see that tomorrow when the helicopters get up. it will be worse than what we're showing now. we were limited by about two hours of daylight to show you the best we could. but there's a couple of communities that are going to have to make tough decisions on whether to rebuild or not. mexico beach will be one of them. >> especially now that we have a new understanding of the strength of storm that can hit in that part of the world. >> that's the other question, right? do we rebuild it? if we rebuild it, at what standards? >> exactly. meteorologist bill karins doing yeoman's work today. much more to get to tonight. stay with us.

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february this year, on the same day that the special counsel's office unsealed an indictment of 13 russian citizens and three russian companies under the control of an oligarch close to vladimir putin, same day as that

indictment in the russia investigation, the special counsel's office unsealed a plea agreement from an american who had apparently unwittingly helped out those russians in their effort to influence the u.s. election. the american's name is richard pinedo. what we learned when they unsealed this plea agreement is he agreed to cooperation with prosecutors, and agreed to be made guilty to identity theft for his role in the scheme. basically, what we learned was that he had been running an illicit business online where he bought and sold bank account information and helped people set up paypal accounts using that stolen information. the russians involved in the online propaganda effort to tilt the 2016 election to donald trump, they used accounts they had set up with his help to buy online ads and pay for other stuff related to their part of

the election interference scheme. well, today richard pinedo got sentenced for that. he got six months in prison, six months' house arrest and two years' probation after all of that is over. but we also found out at the sentencing hearing today, because we just got the transcript from the hearing, we also found out what happened when the special counsel's office caught richard pinedo in the first place. here's what happened today. at this point, the judge is asking the prosecutors from the special counsel's office to explain how much richard pinedo helped them as a cooperator, because the judge needs to factor that in when deciding on the sentence. so here's the judge. can you elaborate on how he saved you time and resources?

in this case, the government asked an agent to fly out to california. in the first meeting, he was for forthright. it was pretty close to the unvarnished truth, more than you get in most first interviews. and he was able to identify his upstream seller. and also voluntarily produced records that the government didn't possess related to his contact with upstream sellers. it was chat communications from his own computer. he voluntarily produced those chats as well as made his own computer available. so i would say that in a normal investigative office, we would assess that mr. pinedo provided substantial assistance vis-a-vi

his upstream sellers. if this is just a normal prosecution, he would have identified people above him more culpable and would have led to the charges of other individuals. the judge, did he implicate other folks? he did, your honor. and the government could pursue them? the prosecutor, it could pursue them. however, given the mandate of the special counsel's office, they did not pursue those because it did not relate to our core commission. the judge, why can't they give this to another u.s. attorney's office to pursue? the prosecutor, the special counsel has been referring this to other offices to prosecute and investigate. the judge, is there any question that the information he's given you is truthful? the prosecutor, we have every reason to believe that the information he provided is truthful and fully fulsome. the judge, and his information could well lead to future prosecutions?

the prosecutor, could well lead, yes, exactly right. the judge says, and yet, and yet the government will not at any point commit to filing a rule 35 motion, which is one of the ways that you tell the judge it's okay to let this guy off, he gave us good cooperation. the prosecutor says, judge, i think rule 35 would be considered down the line. i just don't think the government can commit at this point, given -- the judge says, no, i understand. the prosecutor says, that's not to undersell mr. pinedo's cooperation and acceptance of responsibility. the judge, so he is prejudiced by being part of this investigation as opposed to a regular u.s. attorney's investigation. prosecutor, prejudiced is maybe a little extreme, judge, because there are other instances which the u.s. attorney's office wouldn't be interested in the information he provided. but we think a prosecuting office that had a wider ambit, that might possibly be right.

but the judge says, without revealing too much, you would provide this information to another office? the prosecutor says, correct, your honor. so, what are they hinting about here? what is all this i can't say, but what i mean is -- this guy, richard pinedo, has been selling bogus bank account information online to who knows who. he's here to be sentenced. he's pled guilty and cooperated. the judge needs to figure out how helpful he has been to prosecutors as a cooperating witness. that's because the judge needs to decide how much of a break he's going to get on his sentence. the government, for example, is supposed to tell the judge if this guy provided information on bigger criminals than himself. more culpable criminals on himself, things that lead to other prosecutions. that's what gets you a lighter sentence. but in this case, this is the special counsel's office. these are prosecutors who work for robert mueller. so the prosecutors from the

special counsel's office kind of don't have normal options like that and they have to pussyfoot around this issue in open court because of cases that haven't been charged yet. and open cases. can we put that up again? they basically say, because richard pinedo gave them information that could be used to prosecute people, people that have crimes on their -- crimes on their conscience, that have nothing to do with what robert mueller and the special counsel are investigating, the special counsel can't prosecute those things. they can't prosecute just anything. and so, yeah, they might have handed off those potential prosecutions to other u.s. attorneys, even though they can't totally spell that out. but these are prosecutions they can't undertake themselves because they're just supposed to be investigating russian interference in the election. "the special counsel's office did not pursue those, because they did not relate to our core

mission." this is interesting, in terms of the fate of richard pinedo today and also the question whether more prosecutions are going to come that derive from his help. they can't say overtly, but that was the big hint in court today and the big worry for richard pinedo and his lawyers, realizing if he had been prosecuted in the normal course of events, we might be in a better circumstance. and then the judge says this. you have the right to make a statement. is there anything you want to say to the court. he says, yes. i want to say i take full responsibility for what i've done, and what i've caused as a result of my actions. throughout the life of the business, meaning his online business, i was convinced the services i was offering put no one at risk. but i now understand that after

all this, that was not the case. by helping people open fake accounts, i was helping them commit fraud and other crimes. never did it cross my mind that the services i would be offering would be used in crimes to the highest degree. as i witnessed and came to find out through this investigation. in other words, i didn't think i was doing anything that wrong. i realize it could have been used by fraudsters and criminals. i didn't know it was going to be used to sway the presidential election. he then explains to the court how difficult his life has been since his guilty plea was unsealed. the loss of privacy, the accusations and threats. then he says this about his dad, who unfortunately is also named richard pinedo. what's even worse is what happened to me, is what my family had to go through. especially my father, who shares the same name and who is also in

the court with us today. as a result of him sharing the same name as me, he's often been mistaken as a person involved in this case. he's been harassed at work, and clients of his boss demanded that he be fired. all he's trying to do is support me, emotionally and financially through this process. i want to apologize for the grief and pain i've caused. i've tried to be honest and comply with everything i can. i hope that what i've done has helped, but i also know nothing i can do can ever fix the mistakes i've made. your honor, thank you for taking the time to listen to me.

the judge says, i will now indicate to sentence to be imposed. the judge then goes on at length explaining the reasoning behind her sentencing. she says pinedo deserves credit for his cooperation, that he was remorseful for his actions, but in the end, she says he's going to jail, six months in federal prison, then six months' house arrest and two years' probation. that is the lowest end of what she could give him within the sentencing guidelines. that's the longest sentence yet in the mueller investigation. and as such, it probably means something to these guys, who are all awaiting their own sentences in the russia scandal. trump campaign chairman paul manafort, rick gates, mike flynn, michael cohen. all awaiting federal sentencing right now. among them, it has to land with a thud that the other cooperator with a guilty plea in this case, the one nobody who has ever

heard of, the bit player, today he got six months in federal prison. with the special counsel's office still not tipping their hand as to which shoes are next to drop, even in cases related to him, and which charges are still to be unveiled. watch this space.

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michael flynn and vladimir putin sitting elbow to elbow at a fancy dinner in moscow. come on, make it more subtle. it was taken december of 2015. general flynn was about to take a job with the trump campaign. vladamir putin was working behind the scenes to attack our election to help swing the election in trump's favor. all a little obvious. we're going on three years now since that picture was taken. given all that's happened since then, the picture almost looks weirder -- it looks weirder now than the day general flynn was sitting there. why would he do that? what was he doing there in moscow that day? tonight, thanks to some new reporting from "the wall street journal," we do know a little bit more about the circumstances there. we now know, for example, what mike flynn was doing right before he flew to moscow to have that dinner. turns out he was talking to this guy. peter w. smith.

peter smith was a longtime republican operative, last may he was found death in a hotel room, ruled as a suicide. just a few days before he died, he did an interview in which he told them about a project he had been working on during the 2016 campaign, trying to track down what he believed were thousands of e-mails that had been hacked from hillary clinton's private e-mail server. he contacted people who he believed were russian hackers online to encourage them to get clinton e-mails, so they could be used against clinton in the election for trump's benefit. in other words, peter smith, u.s. citizen, volunteered to "the wall street journal" last year that he, as an american citizen, really had tried to collude with russia to influence the presidential election in trump's favor. since then, one important question about that story has been, well, was he just doing this as peter smith, private citizen, or was he doing this as an agent of the trump campaign?

well, tonight, "the wall street journal" has figured out a piece of that. tonight, "the wall street journal" adds the news in which the story of general flynn and that dinner moscow and the strange story of peter smith and his attempted collusion around hillary clinton's e-mails, those stories kind of come together. a veteran republican activist whose quest to get hillary clinton e-mails from hackers dominated the final months of his life, he struck up a relationship with michael flynn as early as 2015. and told associates he was using the general's connections to help him on the project. smith met with flynn in 2015, according to people familiar with the matter. in an e-mail, one of mr. smith's former associates wrote to a friend last week, as you are aware, peter started a business

relationship with general flynn in 2015. we spoke with him on the day he left for his trip to moscow. so that's what mike flynn was doing before he hopped that plane to moscow. apparently he was talking to peter smith, who was trying to reach russian hackers online to get hillary clinton's e-mails. we spoke with him on the day he left for his trip to moscow. "the wall street journal" has done incredible reporting on this story, pulling at this for more than a year. as has robert mueller, the special counsel. he has questioned witnesses connected to the late mr. smith, including at least one before the grand jury. he apparently has a trove of documents and hard drives that belong to peter smith. but, sort of bottom line here, this one american, now deceased, who cheerfully admitted to colluding with russia to get hillary clinton's e-mails, is dead now, but he does appear to have had a real working relationship at the time with someone at the top of the trump

campaign. what exactly does that mean and what happens next here? joining us is shelby holiday, a reporter at "the wall street journal." thank you for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> so, first, let me ask you, did i get any of that wrong? >> no. factually, it was correct. >> so, in terms of this e-mail, which says that there was a relationship between flynn and mr. smith in 2015, a crucial time for this timeline, what can you tell us about that e-mail, circumstances of it, and whether you see it as, i guess, hard and fast evidence that that relationship did exist? >> the person that wrote the e-mail declined to talk to us. we've seen the e-mail and the e-mail led us to believe that yes, in fact, there was a relationship between these two men before flynn, as you said, took off to moscow and then later joined the trump campaign. we've been able to confirm that with sources.

we know that they were in touch in 2015. we don't know if any business deals came of that. we don't have any reason to think they did, and we don't know what they spoke about before michael flynn left and hopped on that plane to russia. >> at the time, mike flynn had left the defense intelligence agency under difficult circumstances. he had formed a private intelligence group, and you suggest in the story that it's possible that peter smith was looking at a potential investment opportunity, maybe wanted to become involved in flynn's business. >> peter smith was an investor, he had a lot of different connections. he was a republican, his friends describe him as an ardent conservative. so it would make sense if they were trying to connect on a business level, that they would have a meeting. again, we don't know if anything came up related to hillary clinton's e-mails. but we do know that peter smith, for a long time, was convinced that hillary clinton's e-mails were out there, that he could get them, and they would be very damaging to her and spill secrets she didn't want revealed

related to her work in the obama administration. >> now, the other part of this that has rung for so long, since the "journal" first broke this story is that smith kept saying when talking to other people about this project, about his efforts to get hillary clinton's e-mails, he talked about how he was happy to try to get them from russian hackers, but he also bragged about his relationship with the trump campaign. didn't he brag about having a relationship with flynn? >> he used flynn as a person helping the effort. he dropped his name a lot. and he had documents that said steve bannon was involved, kellyanne conway. they denied knowing him. michael flynn is not talking, but he hasn't pushed back as fiercely as some of the others in the trump campaign.

>> to me, that's the super clarifying thing about this story. i followed every incremental development. the reporting team on this has just been amazing. >> thank you. >> for me, this is like we've now taken a turn. without knowing anything about peter smith other than his activism, him dropping lots of names, don't worry, this is legit, the trump campaign has me working on this, he might be a crazy dude. but if there's corroborating information, that might have been about something real, because him and flynn did meet and have a relationship. that implicates at least flynn, if not the trump campaign more broadly in what smith was doing. >> yes. that's a really good point. he could be a crazy person and some of his friends think he was a deluded old man. who was on a crazy mission to get clinton's e-mails. but he wasn't crazy in the way he went about it. he formed a company, he had a dummy e-mail account where he had people leave drafts but didn't want them to send

e-mails. because then they couldn't be traced. >> the old al qaeda trick. >> and he was raising money from at least four donors, raising at least $100,000. and did he pay hackers? he said he was in touch with five groups of hackers. two of them he believed were russian and had ties to the kremlin. you know, it raises questions about whether or not he was crazy and if he was very aware of what he was doing and whether or not what he was doing was wrong. >> to be clear in terms of following the money here, you've been able to track americans from whom smith raised money for this project. we don't know if smith sent money to the russians or anybody else to pay for what he thought he was getting. >> correct. >> shelby holliday, keep going. good luck. great to have you here. we'll be right back. stay with us. just one free hearing test at

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ho about canceling people's voter registrations in that state. his office canceled over 600,000 voter registrations last year alone. think about that. 600,000 people who thought they were registered, he canceled them. they have been closing voting precincts, often in poor and minority districts. he's been doing this kind of thing since we started covering him years ago. this year, however, that hardline elections official, that republican secretary of state, brian kemp, is not just the state of georgia's hardline top elections official, this year he's also running for the state's highest office. republican secretary of state brian kemp is running against democrat stacey abrams to become georgia governor this year. that means he's now in charge of an election in which he's running at the top of the ticket. what could possibly go wrong? tonight, the associated press reports that more than 53,000 voter registration applications

are sitting in a desk drawer at the georgia secretary of state's office, on hold. so these are applications from people trying to register to vote this year. many of these tens of thousands of voter applications are being held and not processed by kemp's office, because of a system he's implemented called exact match, which means if you, like, you know, drop a hyphen in your last name or somebody's election office types in your information with one letter wrong so it doesn't match information already on file with the state, well, your application is put on hold indefinitely. and the state doesn't tell you how to fix it, if it even tells you the application is on hold at all. you may or may not be surprised to hear that the system of exact matching affects certain groups of georgians more than others. quote, analysis of records

obtained by the a.p. reveals racial disparity. but the list of voter registrations on hold with kemp's office is nearly 70% black. so it's affecting black georgians at more than double the rate of their prevalence in the population. this would be a flashing red light story less than a month out from any election, but especially approaching the georgia governor's race. polls in that race show a toss-up. 53,000 votes is a lot of votes in a race that close. again, these are people who have filled out the application, who are trying to be registered to vote. many of these people may not even know that their effort was not successful. the democratic candidate, stacey abrams, the first black woman major party nominee for governor in american history, particularly her campaign strategy explicitly depends on turning out black voters and registering new voters and her opponent brian kemp is the secretary of state holding up 53,000 voter applications in his office.

past georgia secretaries of state who have run for governor have stepped down in order to run. because it's a bad look to be in charge of your own election. but he's not stepping down, saying everything is fine, you can absolutely trust him. if you are a georgia voter and your registration is in limbo on election day, you can still cast a provisional ballot. which i suppose kemp did eventually once your application is processed, if it is processed. but this is the situation in georgia right now 26 days before the election. and honestly this is outrageous enough, it seems almost impossible that the courts will allow this to stay. go guys, yo? go guys, yo? hi! cinturones por favor. gracias. opportunity is everywhere. ♪ it's gonna be fine. it's a door... ♪ it's doing a lot of kicking down there. waiting to be opened. ♪

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try to let everybody know i'm all right. i mean, it's stressful. i'm all right, though. this is what it is. by the grace of god i'm still here. >> as hurricane michael barrelled through the florida panhandle today, 155-mile-an-hour winds. one of things that happened just in the news gathering process today, it was really challenging for us here msnbc nbc news to even transit videos our crews were taking on the scene to get

those back here to headquarters so those tapes could be broadcast. but on the ground, residents of the panhandle did their best to do their own documenting. even as they dealt with the destruction of their own homes and their own neighborhoods, kanisha clark of panama city, you just saw there, she said she's ridden out many hurricanes in her lifetime, and she said this one was different and she will not stay for this one. streets torn up from the winds. a lot of houses have not fared much better. hurricane michael is on its way into georgia right now as a category 1 storm. but the aftermath of the panhandle is bad. officials at the state's capital are telling everybody to stay inside. bay county includes panama city, which was hit very hard. a curfew is in effect there until tomorrow morning. at daybreak tomorrow we presumably will have a fuller picture how much damage exactly this fast moving hurricane wrought today. but on the panhandle we can

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and back pain made it hard to sleep and get up on time. then i found aleve pm. the only one to combine a safe sleep aid, plus the 12 hour pain relieving strength of aleve. i'm back. aleve pm for a better am. this is day where the hurricane in the southeast is of course dominating the news. but it's also a day which i i didn't really expect. but there's also a day in which there's been a lot of other breaking news on top of that. you will want to stay with us throughout the night tonight. now it's time for the "last word" with lawrence o'donnell.