that's accessory to murder, conspiracy. >> i yet there's an understanding that the political optics, putting women in prison for this are so terrible they won't go there even though it's sort of what the moral logic demands. great to have you both. that's all enfor this evening. the rachel maddow show starts right now. >> good evening, chris. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. back in december, the week before christmas this past year you might remember there was sort of a freaking debacle in a washington, d.c. federal courtroom. trump national security advisor mike flynn showed up in court to be sentenced by a federal judge. and when he got there flynn appeared to be in good spirits. and that was understandable. prosecutors had filed a public facing document that praised him for his cooperation since he pled guilty. prosecutors said, yes, yes mike flynn committed and pled guilty to have serious crimes. but once he got caught, he pled

guilty right away, he corresponded substantially to investigators on multiple investigations and prosecutors told the judge they wanted the judge in the flynn case to take into account when sentencing him what a good cooperator mike flynn had been. so when flynn showed up in court that day in december you could understand why he was a little buoyant. everything was going to go great, this was going to finally be behind him. it did not go great. the judge at one point during that sentencing in mid-december told mike flynn, quote, i'm not going to hide my disgust, my disdain. that was right before the judge asked one of the prosecutors standing there in the courtroom whether he had assessed whether flynn's actions actually might rise to the level of treason. the prosecutor said in response effectively -- the judge later walked that back. but he didn't walk it back that much. this judge said to flynn in the courtroom that day, he pointed to the american flag in the dorner of his courtroom and he said to flynn, arguably this

undermines everything this flag over here stands for. he told flynn, coat, arguably you sold your country out. and that went on for a while. and ultimately flynn finally did get the message, the very unsettled message from the judge maybe that would not be the best day to go through with the sentencing. maybe it might be better to come back a different day, if there was any other investigations flynn might possibly contribute to help his country, the one with that flag there in the corner of the courtroom. try to help the cause of justice in some way, maybe try again in a few months. that was in december. now, mike flynn's case is not scheduled to be back in court until the middle of next month. that's when the next status report is due in his case. that made it all the more surprising today when we got a whole new bunch of stuff from flynn's case unsealed by that

judge without warning. and it's interesting. this doesn't seem to be related to any forthcoming proceeding relating to flynn. doesn't seem to be driven by something else going on in flynn's case. this stuff just popped onto the public docket today by order of that judge. and one of the items that we got for the first time today is the sealed, the previously sealed documents that prosecutors had filed with the judge in flynn's case in advance of that doomed sentencing proceeding back in december. prosecutors had filed a public facing document, which is the one that said flynn is a great cooperator, you should give him credit for that, suggest. that public facing document didn't spell out much what flynn had guantanamoed about. they saved that for this sealed document, this document that was sealed until today which does spell out in detail exactly what flynn helped with, exactly what investigations flynn cooperated in. and so now that it's been unsealed today, surprise, we're seeing that for the first time.

you can see it there at the top it's described as under seal and exparte but there's a strike-out. it's been released, it's been posted publicly so now we can see it. quote, this addendum to the government's memorandum aid in sentencing describing the usefulness of michael t. flynn's assistance to it government and the timeliness of that assistance. as described here in it merits consideration at sentencing. quote, the defendant has assisted with several ongoing investigations. number one, a criminal investigation in the eastern district of virginia that is likely to result in criminal charges. more on that in a second. number two, the special counsel office's investigation concerning any links or coordination between the russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of president donald j. trump. and then the next line down is presumably the third thing that

mike flynn helped with, maybe. the next part after the comma there, he helped with the eastern district of criminal case, comma, special counsel case investigation, comma, and then redacted, redacted, redacted. but this new document does go onto describe at least for the parts of it that aren't still redacted, it describes the assistance flynn provided in pretty good detail. it spells out, for example, about that criminal investigation in the eastern district of virginia is the case that ultimately did result in criminal charges against flynn's former business partner, a trump transition official named bjon keyonn, doing little unimportant tiddlywinks tasks like oh, say helping pick out the cia director. he's pled not guilty.

that case is ongoing in the eastern district of virginia. but prosecutors in flynn's case gave flynn big props for how much he helped in the case. quote, in the eastern district of virginia and the national security division at the justice department cystitance have been critical to the investigation in the case and then there's another big redacted chunk. the national division prosecutors have interviewed the defendant, redacted, redacted, redacted. so that's something dealing the bjon keyonn case. this is sort of fascinating. this is new -- at least in this form this is new. quote, the defendant has also assisted with the special counsel's investigation with individuals associated with the trump campaign. defendant flynn has assisted the special counsel's investigation on a range of issues including interactions between individuals in the presidential transition team and russia, discussions

within the trump campaign about wikileaks releasing e-mails and potential efforts to interfere with the special counsel's investigation. and they break it down. quote, defendant flynn provided first-hand information about the content and context of interactions between the transition team and russian government officials. for example, after the election defendant flynn communicated with the russian ambassador as a representative of the transition team on two sensitive matters. a u.n. security council vote on a resolution calling for israel to cease activ in the u.s.-palestinian territory and obama sanctions for interfering in the 2016 election. quote, several senior member of the trump transition team publicly released false information conveyed to them by defendant flynn about communications between him and the russian ambassador regarding the sanctions. flynn provided details on which transition team officials he conferred with before

communicating with the russian ambassador. also who on the transition team was aware those communications were occurring. also who on the transition team was informed about what he discussed with the russian ambassador. so it's really interesting to get all that detail. i mean, we know from the context here and we know we can see in the mueller report that that contact between the russian government and the trump transition team about sanctions, that was one of dozens of contacts between the russian government and trump world during the campaign and during the transition. that in fact was one of the contacts with the russian government that all the trump people lied about. now we know one of the ways mike flynn cooperated with prosecutors was by telling them who knew the truth about his secret contacts with the russian government while he and everybody else in the trump transition was lying about those contacts. this new filing from prosecutors also says that flynn helped them investigate wikileaks and how the russians released the

material that they stole from the democratic party and the clinton campaign in their effort to help trump win the election. quote, defendant flynn also provided useful information concerning discussions within the campaign about wikileaks' release of e-mail. wikileaks is an important subject of the special counsel's investigation because a russian intelligence service used wikileaks to release e-mails thedential service stole during the 2016 presidential campaign. defendant flynn relayed to the government statements made in 2016 by senior trump campaign officials about wikileaks to which only a select few people were privy. meaning they got stuff from flynn about how the trump campaign was talking about wikileaks, and it was information they probably couldn't have gotten otherwise had flynn not told them about it. quote, for example defendant recalled conversations with senior trump campaign officials after the release of john podesta's e-mails during which the prospect of reaching out to

wikileaks was discussed. so what we're getting here, again, for the first time hooch this has never been unsealed before. we get flynn helping with the bjon prosecution which is ongoing. we get flynn lying about talking to the transition team for the russian government and the enthusiasm about russian efforts to help them during the campaign and the trump campaign's responto reach out in response to what russia was doing for them. but the second half of the report was about obstruction of justice. and now we know flynn was helpful there, too. quote, defendant flynn also assisted into potential efforts to interfere with or otherwise obstruct its investigation. defendant flynn informed the government of multiple instances both before and after his guilty plea where either he or his attorney received communications from persons connected to the administration or congress.

or congress? that could have affected both his willingness to cooperate and the completeness of that cooperation. the defendant even provided a voice mail recording of one such communication. in some of these instances the special counsel was unaware of the outreach until be alerted to it by the defendant. so before and after mike flynn pled guilty people connected to the trump administration and also people connected to congress, who's that? they were reaching out to mike flynn to talk to him about what exactly he planned to tell prosecutors and whether he planned to cooperate with them and how much and on what topics. we know that one of those instances of outreach from persons connected to the trump administration was referenced as the voice mail here, which we think is probably the same reference from mueller's report about a lawyer for the president, quote, the president's personal counsel leaving mike flynn a voice mail.

this is amazing. so right after flynn withdrew from his joint defense agreement with the white house, which is signal he was about to plead guilty, it was also a very strong signal he was about to start cooperating with prosecutors. right after he pulled out of that joint defense agreement mike flynn got a call. and in the mueller report this is sort of a particularly mafia-esque episode in mueller's report. i mean this is literally the part where flynn is about to cooperate, right? he pulls out of the joint defense agreement, it's pretty clear he's about to plead guilty. he's about to start cooperating. and he in the dead of night gets the warning from the president's goon squad letting mike flynn know if he's thinking about cooperating you know what, mike, here's what you might want to keep in mind. i mean, this is from the mueller report. quote, in late november 2017 flynn began to cooperate with this office meaning mueller's prosecutors. quote, on november 22nd flynn

withdrew from the joint defense agreement he had with the president. flynn's counsel told the president's personal counsel and counsel for the white house that flynn could no longer have confidential communications with the white house or the president. later that night the president's personal counsel left a voicemail for flynn's lawyer that said this. i understand your situation but let me see if i can't state it in starker terms. wouldn't surprise me if you've gone onto make a deal with the government. if there's information that implicates the president, then we've got a national security issue. so you know we need some kind of heads up just for the sake of protecting all our interests. remember what we've always said about the president and his feelings towards flynn, and that still remains. the following day, november 23rd, flynn's attorney returned the call from the president's personal counsel to acknowledge receipt of the voicemail. flynn's attorneys reiterated they were no longer in a position to share information under any sort of privilege. meaning, hey, we are out of this joint defense agreement.

we can't talk to you anymore, and anything you say to us from here on out, we can't keep it secret. quote, according to flynn's attorneys the president's personal counsel was indignant in his disyeemt, he tormented it to him as a reflection of flynn's hostility to the government and he planned to inform the president, his client, of that turpg. flynn's attorneys understood that statement to be an attempt to make them reconsider their position. yeah, you think? would you look down to see if your kneecaps were still in the front? nevertheless, on december 1st, so a week later flynn in fact pled guilty. and when he turned up in court to plead guilty then everybody officially knew he was cooperating with prosecutors, with the special counsel. whereupon almost immediately the president changed his tune to start publicly dangling a potential presidential pardon

for mike flynn. we knew some of that from the mueller report. we now as of tonight know the other side of it from a description of flynn's cooperation that was just unseal bide this federal court today. and i mean just a little personal aside here, how is the president not being impeached for obstruction of justice right now? i mean that episode alone -- i realize there's a lot of equities involved in terms of whether or not the president is going to be impeached for stuff like this. but this is the president's personal counsel calling up flynn and being like, you know, it might be a national security issue if you said anything about the president. you know how much the president likes you, wouldn't want me to tell him you turned hostile on him, would you? i'm going to go ahead and tell him. i'm going to tell ahim you've become hostile to him if you cooperate, you sure you want to cooperate? this is the stuff that gets cut out of a b.

movie because it's a little too ham handed in terms of explaining. your going to go ahead and cooperate, i'm going to tell my client about your hostility to him. this was made public today. soon thereafter we got another brief order from the judge in flynn's case after he ordered the unsealing of this stuff. he soon thereafter ordered the prosecutors to also file on the public docket the full transcript of that voicemail recording that flynn handed over to prosecutors, the voicemail that is described in part in the mueller report. prosecutors are ordered to hand over transcripts of that voicemail, also crypts of flynn's conversations with the russian government. those are going to be on the public docket, and the judge himself has told prosecutors that he doesn't want just the transcripts himself, he wants both the transcripts and the actual audio recordings of both flynn talking to the russian

government and the president's goon squad calling up flynn and threatening him to not cooperate. the judge wants the audio versions of both of those recordings delivered to him on a dvd in chambers by the end of this month. wh what? now, i don't know if that means we the public will ever get to hear the actual audio recordings but we definitely are going to get the full transcripts. and then oh, wait there's more because that was followed immediately by another short order from this judge, and this one i had to read backwards and forwards a few times before i would believe my lying eyes. i sort of can't believe the judge just did this, but he did. and i think this is huge deal, and i'll have that over for you next. deal, and i'll have th oatver for you next considering? the 2019 subaru outback is an iihs top safety pick plus. the honda cr-v is not. sorry, honda. which suv would make the best investment?

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the most reliable service possible. my name is tanya, i work in the network operations center for comcast. we are working to make things simple, easy and awesome. so a federal judge in washington, d.c. today issued an order that's not very long. only this long. and even though it's this short and this straightforward, i could not believe it when i first read it. i read it backwards and forwards and convinced myself this isn't what it said. but this is from judge emt

sullivan, the judge in the michael flynn case. and in this little order judge sullivan is now ordering the government or the prosecutors in this case, he's ordering them to remove all of the redactions from the mueller report that have anything to do with the mike flynn case. this judge today says take out those redactions and then publish that run redacted version of mueller's report. quote, the government is ordered to file on the public docket in this case by no later than may 31st an unredacted version of those portions of of the special counsel's report that relate to mr. flynn, signed judge emmitt g. sullivan. so plot twist, right? i mean, mueller's report gets released or gets submitted, right? and then it gets released to the public with redactions and under strange circumstances, right? we now know the attorney general wouldn't release the summaries from the report which mueller's team had written specifically so

those summaries could be released to public. he refused to release those summaries and instead wrote up his own totally misleading characterizations of the report. we have since learned mueller and his team were furious about the way barr mishandled their report, their document, their findings. barr initially suggested even the redactions in the report were all things robert mueller wanted. he later admitted under reluctant questioning okay there may have been conflicts over the redactions and maybe the redactions don't reflect the way mueller wanted this to come out. mueller still has not been allowed to testify about his own finings or the handlings of his findings by the administration, nor any member of mueller's team. nor will they allow any documents of what mueller found or investigated to be handed over. they've gone so far as to retroactively throw a fire blanket over the entire mueller

report. they're now claiming the whole thing retroactively is covered by executive privilege, which is weird assertion, but they're doing that specifically because they hope that gives them an extra tool so they can try to prevent anybody from testifying about it or talking about it. and in the midst of all that today, surprise here's judge sullivan saying, actually, i order you to release it. i here by direct you in this court order to remove all the redactions which relate to my case, which is the mike flynn case. take all of that out, make this public, you've got two weeks. so i know the white house is doing everything they can to try to keep everything secret to try to stuff the toothpaste back in the tube, but look at how this is going now. the judge overseeing the roger stone case started off this week by herself getting an unredacted version of the mueller at least as it pertains to everything having to do with wikileaks and roger stone and anything else

that might touch that case she's overseeing. that judge, judge amy berman jackson, has already had the mueller report's redactions removed. now we've got another judge in the same district that's overseeing another mueller derived case, the flynn case, ordering not just he should get to see the redacted portions of that pertain to the flynn case but he's ordering we all get to see it, too. that that stuff has to be released to the public even before the flynn case is over, even before flynn is sentenced. again, this deadline for judge sullivan for the unredacted version of the mueller report as it pertains to the flynn stuff, the deadline for that to be released to the public is a couple of weeks before there's even the next status report on mike flynn, let alone before he gets another sentencing date. so even before the flynn case is wrapped, he's saying release everything in that mueller report, unredact everything in that mueller report that relates to flynn. do it, court order.

i mean today today literally as i speak right now members of the house democrats in congress are conducting a marathon live reading of mueller's report. at least the portion of it they've been allowed to see, right? the house democrats started with this at noon. they've been going all day long reading mueller's report out loud. they're expected to go through the night and maybe finish some time tomorrow morning. that's actually a live shot right now. i will say i watched this on and off throughout the day shout out to mary scanlon, they today have been really good readers. they make it sound like a better movie you could expect, even though in the report itself we've got the president's lawyers threatening in the dead of night and all that melodrama

stuff. it also highlights the fact not all of the report has been released. yesterday was the subpoena deadline for the justice department to hand over the fully run edacted report to the intelligence committee. plus the intelligence information that was turned up in the course of the investigation. the justice department did not respond to that subpoena, they did not hand over any of that material. adam schiff today said his committee will meet next week to discuss an enforcement action of some kind in response to the justice department defying that subpoena. the question of what happened to the counter intelligence investigation into among other things whether the president were acting as an agent of a foreign power wittingly or unwittingly, that counter intelligence investigation is not really described at all in mueller's report. the question of what happened in that investigation is becoming increasingly urgent as people wake up to the fact that mueller appears not to have done it. we're going to have more on that coming up a little later on in

the show. but one of the other things schiff told reporters today when his committee meet next week to discuss this enforcement action in response to the justice department ignoring their subpoena, one of the other things he says they're going to do at that meeting is they're going to release the most recent testimony that committee got from michael cohen, the president's long time personal lawyer who's serving a prison sentence among other things for paying a quarter million dollars in hush money to two women right before the 2016 election to prevent those women from describing alleged affairs with then candidate trump. it was a nice reminder that the president has in effect confessed to his own role in those campaign finance felonies for which michael cohen is now serving his prison sentence. at least the president confessed his role in those felonies to the extent this time last year when he put out his financial disclosures he had to put in an

amendment mentioning the payment he made to michael cohen to cover that illegal hush money stuff. those payments which he had previously been both lying about to the public and keeping secret until cohen's court case forced the public to retroactively add his accounting for his making those payments onto his own financial ledger. and today's financial disclosure from the president is interesting as far as it goes in terms of figuring out how his businesses are going and reading between the lines in terms of his accepting money from foreign governments and stuff. while he is required to release that financial disclosure, though, he has also hired a whole new team of lawyers to cep his real financial history and his taxes secret. we've been trying to figure out who's paying those lawyers. no one will cop to paying them. we don't know if that's the white house or the rnc or the trump campaign or the trump organization or the trump family, yeah right. is your elderly uncle who's pin

buying make america great again merchandise from the trump campaign website inadvertently fighting the lawyers to keep the trump taxes secret? whoever paying those lawyers fees those lawyers are now fighting subpoenas in two different court cases involving deutsche bank and an accounting firm. the idea of both of those court cases is quite clear tee to try to stretch those fights out as long as possible, to delay the prospect any investigators especially ones in congress might ever get a look at the president's actual finances and taxes. but you know what, i mean subpoenas are a real thing. and the judicial process, that among other things that enforces subpoenas, is a real thing. tomorrow another subpoena deadline will arrive. tomorrow's the date by which the irs and treasury are supposed to hand over the president's tax returns to the ways and means committee in response to that

committee's lawfully issued subpoena. we'll see what happens tomorrow when that deadline hits and we presume the treasury department and irs will stand in defiance of it. but, you know, we are at the point where the bluster and the defiance is starting to kind of hit the wall here. i mean, a federal judge just ordered the public release of whatever has been redacted from the whole flynn section of mueller's report. right? they're all saying no, no, the mueller report, the redactions you'll never get behind them, executive privilege -- you know what, court just ordered to release them. i know they love the optic and the chest pounding joy of saying they'll defy the democrats and congress and any kind of oversight, right? now what are they going to do? are they going to defy a federal judge? are they going to defy a court order? really? stay with us. o defy a court order? really stay with us they're america's biopharmaceutical researchers. pursuing life-changing cures in a country that fosters innovation here, they find breakthroughs...

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this week the calendars for special counsel top deputy were released. they released a bunch of human interest stories how the mueller team had potlucks and made time for birthday cake, it was kind of weird. but on the right those calendars being released was used for occasion of an attack on the individual members of the special counsel's team. they've been attacking prosecutor andrew wiseman specifically interest having interviewed people and hired people to work on the mueller investigation as if that is some

sort of vigantic scandal. but that's how they've moved onto pursuing this on the right. they're now going after individually named prosecutors and investigators. we've seen a bit of this from the top, too. during attorney general william bar's testimony earlier this month he had an answer for a letter that was sent to him by the special counsel that unceremoniously ripped william barr for mishandling the mueller report. barr responded to questions about that letter by going after mueller's staff. he told the committee, quote, you know, the letter is a bit snitty. i think it was probably written by one of his staff people. you're seeing this pattern whereby the attorney general and other on the right are trying to put the spotlight on, trying to specifically indict staff members from the special counsel's office, the prosecutors who did the work under mueller. and they get to do whatever they want to do. but honestly it also raises the question of whether or not then those members of the special counsel's office and the prosecutors should be brought in to testify themselves as well.

you can't make these people into villains and blame them for all the worst things you think happened in the mueller investigation and then not allow them to explain themselves or speak for themselves. that said, where's mueller anyway? i mean it has been so long since the release of his report and yet we still have zero clarity on when he will be able to testify before congress about his investigation and his findings. "the wall street journal" has this report this evening that maybe the hold up has something to do with the white house asserting executive privilege over mueller's report and so maybe that screws everything up. maybe. that said a source familiar with the negotiations from the congressional side tells "the wall street journal" that's bull pucky. whatever is behind the delay with each passing day it becomes attenable that mueller and his team have not been able to speak for their own findings and investigation at all. one silver lining about the delay, though, is that the

democrats' job does get easier with each new day of delay because the legal experts at just security keep drawing up more and more comprehensive questions about what mueller and his team should be asked when they finally do get to testify. so by the time their butts are finally in chairs the democrats will have a lot of their homework already done for them by people who are watching this process wondering where mueller and his team are. joining me is goodman, coedter in chief at justice security. thanks for being here. >> thank you. >> one of the questions that you guys wrote today in terms of thinking about what mueller should be asked is really what i want to ask you about. you think mueller should be asked did your office ever provide an assessment to the extent president trump is acting witting or unwittingly to the russian government. if so to which member snz if

your office didn't make that assessment are you aware of the fbi or others in the government having produced such an assessment at any point? do you know if that's been provided to the office? you were asked if this ever got investigated? >> that's right. what on earth happened to it? "the new york times" reported they opened an investigation and andy mccabe confirmed that, in fact, he was responsible for opening an investigation on the president himself. they briefed it to the gang of eight and recently last week the former fbi general counsel was also on your show, had also confirmed that's exactly what they did. so what happened to it? adam shif who's the chair of the house intelligence committee just gave an interview with "the washington post" in the last few days and he actually says as the chair of the committee i don't know what happened to the investigation. i don't know what happened to the investigation into the trump circle, and i don't know what happened to the investigation with respect to president trump himself. >> and when you read the mueller report i mean obviously you and your colleagues putting together

this list of questions people should be asked -- when you guys publish this today at justice security, obviously this is based on a close reading of the report. i'm gleaning from this as you read the report as i do, i don't see evidence that mueller's team actually investigated those key counter intelligence questions. it doesn't seem like they investigated and then left those findings out and put them in some classified annex we haven't heard about yet. it seems they didn't look at those letters, is that how you read it? >> recently he said mueller was just seeing himself as a prosecutor and was embedded in this larger counter intelligence investigation that was looking at these other questions, where the public might think if there's other questions there's not criminal conspiracy but collusion, or were people acting as witty or unwitting assets of the kremlin? that's what's missing and it's missing from the public, congress. they don't have access to it

either. it's kind of astonishing we don't have that information and we're talking about persons in the white house. >> the reason i raised these questions to you and wanted to talk about in the context of mueller's potential testimony. if mueller and his team, if they were allowed to come in and talk to congress, is there any reason why they wouldn't be able to talk about the scope of their investigation, whether or not it included these counter intelligence questions, what they know about how that was followed up elsewhere in the fbi if at all? >> it's difficult to say, but at least in one respect they should be able to say something about just the scope, what was their jurisdiction, what was their authority? part of the reason they should be able to say that is when james comey was fbi director he made this significant public statement before congress and he said i'm authorized to tell you we have a counter intelligence investigation into the trump campaign, and the campaign and potential coordination with the kremlin and there's also

potential spin-off investigations that might come out of that. he publicly announced it and then rod rosenstein's also seemed to suggest you take over-the-counter intelligence investigation that james comey announced. that's why many people had thought mueller has it. that's where it'll be and it'll be in the report. but he doesn't appear to have it because the report itself seems to say, no, there were just some fbi agents embedded in the mueller team. >> and those fbi agents were not involved in our investigation. in the report he says those fbi agents who were gleaning intelligence information from what they were doing in order to feed it to other places they were not ininvolvvolved in the investigation. do you think there's an open question between how mueller and his team testifies? >> it's not clear how it's going to go. >> much more ahead tonight. stay with us. go. >> much more ahead tonight stay with us

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on abortion rights. here are some of the headlines about her confirmation yesterday. wendy vitter confirmed for lifetime judicial seat, judge that endorsed theory abortion causes cancer. wednesday really did endorse the idea abortion causes cancer. abortion does not cause cancer, but she endorsed that idea at a conference she hosted called abortion hurts womens health. abortion does not hurt womens health, nor does birth control. she endorsed abortion causes cancer and hiv and suicide and violent death. birth control does not actually do any of those things. but according to louisiana's newest lifetime appointed federal judge it's not just birth control causing violent death it's also planned parenthood. according to now judge wendy

vitter those abortion judges at planned parenthood kill over 150,000 women per year. planned. parent hp ho parenthood does not kill women. birth control does not cause you to die a violent death, but wendy vitter says they do. that is also conveniently all of the stuff wendy vitter left off her nominating paperwork when she was picked to be a federal judge. she did not include any of those comments about abortion in her disclosure form when they were considering her nomination despite the fact you really are supposed to include all your public statements when you are being consider frd a federal judgeship. no matter senate republicans don't care, all but one republican voting not to give her a lifetime appointment on the federal bench. alabama republicans have made it so a woman is forced to carry her pregnancy to term by the state even if she's pregnant as a result of a rape or incest.

that new law in alabama is of course part of a package of legislation being pursued by republican controlled states across the country all aimed at making it illegal to have an abortion. the goal is to of course provoke a court challenge that will lead the supreme court to overturn roe vs. wade. we're still waiting fors one of those court challenges to drop in the aclu case. ultimately big picture where this fight is headed but it's anyone's guess where the twists and turns it could take along the way. and there's interesting questions being raised about whether the aggression the republicans are taking in their anti-abortion zeal right now might actually hurt them in their effort to get done what they want to get done. that story's next. stay with us. that story's next. stay with us

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joining us is nancy northup, president and ceo of the center for reproducer rights, an organization that among other things helps health care providers sue states that try to ban abortion. this is exactly how want to be talking to at this moment in american politics. nancy, thank you for being here tonight. >> thank you for covering this. >> so republican-controlled states across the country are in this sort of frenzy right now where they're all passing the most aggressive abortion bans they have ever tried before. this has a lot of different consequences. it has immediate consequences in the states in terms of the availability of health care. it has political consequences

including for 2020. now it's very clear you know, that's what the democrats are going to say, vote for republicans if you want abortion to be banned in multiple states. that's what they are doing, vote democrat otherwise. what do you make though about the theory that is driving all this activity in these republican-controlled states that they think this gets them closer to a nationwide overturning of roe. >> you're right. everybody who cares about women's health, women's equality under the constitution should be alarmed by what's happening because these are extreme laws and they're coming really quickly. and obviously, it is the strategy to try to set up. they say it on the floor of the legislatures and want to have a test case for roe versus wade. it's important every one of these laws will be challenged and every law will be blocked. we're talking about complete ban on abortion, we're talking about six-week bans on abortions. all of these are in blatant

violation of roe versus wade and almost 50 years of constitutional protection. >> i've talked to you a million times all the laws they passed in recent years chipping away at people's ability to access abortion. but roe stands as long as roe stands, you can't do anything nearly as blunt as what they're passing in these states, clearly. >> absolutely right. the lower courts have to follow. >> they're constrained by that precedent. >> absolutely. we're challenging a 15-week ban in mississippi. the trial judge was outraged that the mississippi legislature had even done this and that they have to follow the law. only the supreme court can reconsider roe versus wade. >> so they think they can get the supreme court to reconsider roe versus wade with these extreme laws. what do you make of their logic? >> i mean they've been encouraged by the president who said he was going to put justices on the court who would overturn roe versus wade. but you know, roe versus wade is not a stand alone case. it stands after 50 years and 50

years beyond it of the protections of personal liberty under the constitution. these personal decisions about our family. i think that the court has again and again since roe versus wade reaffirmed that core right for women like other people in the united states to make the decisions about their health care, their future, these incredibly personal family decisions. and you know, we are counting on the supreme court. we've got a case in front of it right now out of louisiana in which we need the court to block louisiana from trying to do exactly what the court blocked texas from doing three years ago in whole women's health versus hel erstad. we got a stay from chief justice roberts in that case and we are now asking the court to summarily reverse it and tell states they cannot ignore settled law. >> you are making an argument that in part you're hoping the justices hear in terms of how roe fits in not only as a super press department but it's also

supported by bigger doctrinal issues they would have to be -- to have to take a radical swing at if they wanted to get rid of. i think a lot of people looking at these republican-controlled states right now think this is the court ready to take that swing and they'll do whatever they need to do and they'll do it quickly. i think there's a lot of fear because of that. and i am starting to see you know, anecdotal evidence and some reported evidence that advocacy groups and women's groups and people who have worried about this for a long time are starting to put their post roe plans in action. >> we have to be looking ahead. as we're looking to the court and asking it to follow settled law as they all said in their confirmation hearings we're looking what would happen if roe fell. the center for reproductive rights for 15 years has been documenting what would happen. we were concerned about it in the bush administration and we've been doing it forever since. it is true that were roe to be reversed over probably over 22

states as many as half the states would either ban abortion or so severely restrict it would be hugely difficult for women in those states. we have to look beyond that we have to remember we have state constitutions. and we've been getting amazing rulings including one out of kansas which now protects the right to abortion more strongly under the kansas constitution than the u.s. supreme court. we'll also be looking to federal legislation. the women's health protection act will be reintroduced in a couple weeks. we will look for everything because women in the united states are not going back. >> yeah. and these -- there are 22 states right now fully republican controlled in terms of legislatures and governors. i know the 22 you're talking about. that issue about state constitutions is going to become really important really fast. nancy, thank you for being here. i appreciate it. >> thank you. >> we'll be right back. stay with us. hank you >> we'll be right back stay with us makes it brilliant. the visionary lexus nx. lease the 2019 nx 300 for $359 a month for 36 months.

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deadline of 5:00 p.m. eastern time tomorrow. to respond to a subpoena that commands them to hand over six years of president trump's tax returns. house ways and means chairman richie neil called for the returns as the law allows him to do. the irs and treasury said no, they won't hand over the taxes. the subpoena deadline 5:00 p.m. eastern tomorrow. we'll see what happens. i'm honestly looking forward to seeing what happenses in responseing to this court order from judge emmitt sullivan today ordering is portions of the unredacted mueller report be made public. i'm really looking forward to see the white house freak over that. that does it for us tonight. we'll see you again tomorrow. now it's time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." >> it was unredacted day a little bit. i mean, and really powerfully interesting new information to put it mildly that was unredacted in that court filing. > yeah, the flynn stuff about what flynn cooperated on and then just like the follow-up