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tv   The Rachel Maddow Show  MSNBC  June 8, 2019 6:00pm-7:00pm PDT

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good to have you with us. last night we led this show with a special report on the state where not only has a republican-controlled state legislature passed legislation to ban abortion, as several republican-led states have done this year. in missouri the state is closing in on the last clinic left in the state allowed to provide abortion services at all. last night we spoke with staff at that facility who say that within the past week as the state government has closed in on them and tried to pull their license and shut them down, the state has also instituted a new
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requirement that any woman seeking an abortion at a facility from here on out must submit herself to an extra invasive medically unnecessary pelvic exam, literally an internal vaginal examination on orders of the state government as the price of requesting an abortion at that last clinic. that is a new requirement in the state of missouri. that was our special report last night. tonight we'll have part two of that special report which is about who's doing that. who made that happen? who in the state government decided to order these doctors to do these medically unnecessary mandatory vaginal expectations? the answer we found is very specific and it may surprise you. we have the second part of that special report coming up tonight. i hope you will stick with us for that. that said, because it's friday, the news gods are pitching stuff to us tonight like they've got eight arms throwing all at once all with terrible aim. it's been hard to field it all
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today. first of all, a federal judge in d.c. tonight has ordered the justice department to remove a bunch of the redactions from the james comey memos. you may remember the james comey memos were part of the way the whole existential trump presidency started to break open in the first place. when we first learned early on in trump's few weeks in office, fbi director james comey had kept contemporaneous memos of his interactions with president trump, including that the president had told him to end the criminal investigation into trump national security adviser michael flynn, and then the president fired james comey after comey agreed to do no such thing. when we learned he had contemporaneous memos documenting his interactions with the president leading up to his being fired, that was one of the things that opened up the whole scandal, led to the hiring of the special counsel, led to the whole obstruction of justice investigation. that's part of what started the whole kit and caboodle.
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in a court ruling tonight, a federal district court judge in d.c. ordered that the fbi must show the public more of what was in comey's memos than we have been able to to see thus far. now, this ruling tonight is a win for cnn, which was the plaintiff in this case. they were suing the government to try to make them release more of this stuff. it's a loss for the fbi, which was fighting to keep this stuff secret. that said, we don't know exactly what's going to be redacted from the memos and when, but the judge did single out in his ruling stuff like this section of comey's memos. and the judge basically said that the fbi is not justified in keeping these block boxes in this section of comey's memo blanked out. you know, we'll see it when we see it, but if the judge is telling us this is the kind of stuff that's about to get unredacted, just this one section, i would love to see this without redactions, frankly, we all would.
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this is all from comey's memos with redactions. imagine if we got to fill in all the blanks. trump explained that he has serious reservations about michael flynn's judgment and illustrated from a story in that day in which the president discovered during his toast to theresa may that blank had called four days ago. apparently as the president was toasting prime minister may, he was explaining she had been the first to call him after his inauguration and flynn interrupted to say that, actually, blank had called first. it was then that the president learned of blank's call, and he confronted flynn about it. he said the return call was scheduled for saturday, which prompted a heated reply from president trump that six days was not an appropriate period of time to return a call from the blank of a country like blank. this isn't blank we're talking about, he said. he said if he called blank and didn't get a return call for six days, he would be very upset. i mean, presumably what comey
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was writing up there, i mean, i'm just guessing, but presumably that is president trump freaking out that he didn't take putin's call right away. oh, god. what will he think of me that i didn't take the call and then i didn't call right back. you idiot, flynn, do you know how important this is? somebody get me a phone. i need to call him right away. let's send chocolates and flowers. let's send crimea. with this ruling from judge james rossburg tonight, we will get to see for ourselves who, in fact, is behind all of the intriguing blanks in that redacted portion of comey's memos. also in another nearby federal court in the eastern district of virginia today, an informal adviser to the trump white house and apparently quite a key adviser to the trump campaign,
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george nader tried to make his case to a judge today that he should be released on bail ahead of his trial on charges of transporting child pornography. george nader is cited multiple times in mueller's report as a witness who was involved in multiple high-level meetings during the transition and white house meetings as well during the campaign we know that he met with people including mike flynn and jared kushner and steve bannon and donald trump jr. mr. nader reportedly attending a meeting in which the trump campaign was offered a foreign-run social media manipulation campaign to try to tilt the election in trump's favor. imagine that. the trump campaign says they did not buy what was being offered to them at that meeting, but soon after the election, george nader nevertheless paid money to the firm that had been pitching the campaign that particular service, which has always been a source of intrigue. nobody knows what that payment was for.
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according to mueller's report, george nader was a key intermediary between the trump transition and the kremlin, including arranging a meeting between a kremlin-connected russian banker and erik prince. that meeting set up by nader was reportedly intended to establish a back channel for communications between the new administration and vladimir putin's office. but now george nader is in custody and awaiting trial on child pornography charges. the judge in his case in virginia today ordered that nader must stay in jail until his trial despite george nader's generous offer in court today that he would not only pay $1 million cash bond, he was also happy to pay for round-the-clock security guards for himself who surely would not let him go astray or flee the country. again, prosecutors told the judge today that in addition to the child pornography, mr. nader had on his phones, he also had
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direct phone numbers for the ruling princes of both the united arab emirates and saudi arabia. even apart from the seriousness of the charge he's facing, the charge requires a 15-year minimum federal prison sentence if he is convicted. a minimum sentence. separate and apart from the seriousness of the charge he's facing, when this arrest warrant was pending for a year and he still phone numbers of the two richest people in the world on his personal phone, that makes it hard that you're going to stick around for your trial. so george nader will stay in jail until the trial starts as decided today by the federal judge in the eastern district of virginia. but there's always rest of the news tonight that also pertains to more cases including mike flynn. for some of that news today, we need to go back to a weekend in
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may 2017 and a conference on u.s./turkey relations. the 36th annual conference, to be exact, held in washington, d.c., by a turkish business lobbying group. nothing particularly notable about that on its face, international business lobbyists host conferences in d.c. all the time. but here what was notable about this one. first of all, the event was being run by a turkish businessman who had paid trump national security adviser mike flynn over $500,000. so the guy who had trump's first national security adviser on a foreign government's payroll, he was running this conference in d.c. about u.s. relations with that foreign government. he was holding that conference at donald trump's washington, d.c., hotel, of course, because,
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of course, he was. he had put over $500,000 into the pocket of trump's first national security adviser, but that guy got fired. so why not start putting money directly into donald trump's pocket through his hotel? that was may 2017. if may 2017 rings a bell for you as an important time, that's probably because just four days before that turkish lobbying conference got under way at trump's hotel, robert mueller was appointed special counsel to look into the russian attack on the 2016 election and any potential involvement by the trump campaign. not to mention all related matters. well, here's what we now know as of today. apparently that turkish businessman, the guy who paid mike flynn to lobby for the turkish government, after robert mueller was appointed, that guy's lawyers contacted mueller. contacted the special counsel's office. they called up mueller and said, hey, our client, who paid the
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trump national security adviser to work secretly for the turkish government, our client's going to be in town this weekend for a conference at the trump hotel, would you like to speak with him? robert mueller was just appointed less than a week earlier. he probably hadn't even gotten his nameplate on the office door and didn't have a trash can yet. but this turkish guy's lawyers call him up, hey, our client would love to talk with you just in case you have any questions for him. so the special counsel's office apparently did take that meeting. they did that interview with this turkish businessman literally one week after mueller was appointed and that businessman walked in and, according to federal prosecutors, he told them a bunch of porky pies. he lied to mueller's investigators after having volunteered that he wanted to and in talk to them. yeah, that's as terrible as an idea as you think it is because that guy, the turkish businessman guy, is now under indictment for, among other
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things, lying to the fbi in that interview. if you were going to lie to them, why did you volunteer yourself for that purpose? he's now on the lam. there's a warrant out for his arrest. nobody knows if he's ever going to face trial in a u.s. courtroom. this is another one of these dangling threads at this point, but when it comes to sort of proximity to michael flynn, that turkish guy is in the wind, but he does have lawyers who for the first time have turned up in federal court in virginia to object to the government's case. even though they also basically say their client has no intention of showing up to actually answer the charges against him, their filings late yesterday are how we learned about their client calling up robert mueller the most he was appointed and him making time in
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liz his busy trump hotel conference schedule to go to the special counsel's office and commit felonies allegedly by lying to the fbi. we have not heard from that guy since he was indicted six months ago, but here he is. he has lawyers representing him even though he doesn't plan on being here to face trial. and that odd turn comes at the same time as several other sort of unsettling developments over the last couple of days. in the case of this guy's business associate, in the case of michael flynn. in flynn's own criminal case, we've just gotten released a less redacted version of the fbi's notes for their own interview with him in january 2017. that's the fbi interview where flynn lied to the fbi about his conversations with the russian government during the transition. those interview notes give us a bunch of additional details about mike flynn and russia we didn't have before. part of his plea deal with the
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government when he pled guilty to lying to the fbi was admitting he was an unregistered agent of turkey. that's what his two associates including the guy who paid flynn $500,000 and is still at large, that's what his associates are indicted for as well, that unregistered lobbying for turkey. but flynn's relationship with russia and his contacts with russia, that has always raised some pretty significant, forgive me, red flags about him. even before we knew about the turkey thing. what we get from these newly unredacted fbi interview notes pertaining to flynn was his contacts were more extensive than we thought. and we already thought they were pretty extensive. in this newly unsealed interview, newly unredacted parts of this interview, we learned that flynn talks about his visit to the moscow headquarters of russian military intelligence.
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he visited russian military intelligence headquarters, headquarters of the gru in 2013. now, he was the first he had of the u.s. defense intelligence agency to ever make such a visit. he described the fbi agents viewing him that the gru he believed was someone the u.s. could work with. so we learned he was enthused to work with the gru as early as 2013. we learned that in 2015 right before his fairly infamous trip to moscow where he sat next to vladimir putin at a celebration for a russian propaganda network, we learned newly from these newly unredacted documents that flynn took a meeting with the russian ambassador to the united states ahead of that trip to moscow. flynn went to the russian ambassador's residence for a meeting before he jetted off to go sit next to putin and jill stein while they all celebrated russia's propaganda network. a year later, flynn and the same ambassador discussed setting up a video conference between trump and putin on trump's first full day in office after he was sworn in. don't want to waste any time getting that relationship up and
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going. flynn did not ultimately make that happen, but according to james comey's contemporaneous memos, we think that putin probably was the first to call trump after his inauguration and trump was super mad at flynn for not telling him, he's going to be so mad. oh, god, what's going to come out now? guess flynn should have made that day one video conference happening. falling down on the job, mike. there's always been this sort of biographical element in the room when it comes to flynn and his appointment at national security adviser, which is that weird stuff has happened between him and russia. yes, he was working as angle emissary when he went over to meet with the gru in 2013 but he did a lot of stuff with the gru that has never happened before. he did sort of oddly collegial things with our most aggressively competitive long-standing international intelligence foe. and then soon thereafter, after
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he was fired by the obama administration, he really did go over to moscow to attend this event celebrating one of russia's state-controlled propaganda tv networks. happy to be here. this is all super inspiring celebrating your state-controlled propaganda network, sitting right here with putin. i mean, that trip gave rise to a memorable exchange with investigative reporter michael isakoff who tried during the campaign to pin flynn down on whether or not he was actually paid by russia to do that. flynn, of course, insisted that he had not. >> last december you flew over to moscow -- >> yep. >> -- to participate in the 10th anniversary celebration of rt, russian television, a propaganda arm of the russian government, and you sat next to vladimir putin at a celebratory dinner. were you paid for that event? >> you would have to ask the folks. >> i'm asking you. you know if you were paid. >> yeah, i went over there as a speaking event. it was a speaking event.
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what difference does that make? oh, he's paid by the russians. >> donald trump made a lot of the fact that hillary clinton has taken money from wall street. >> i didn't take my money from russia, if that's what you're asking me. >> then who paid you? >> my speakers bureau, ask them. >> okay. >> i didn't take any money from russia. this is the part of the documentary where the deep voice narrator comes in and says, in fact, michael flynn did take money from russia as michael isakoff would soon report, it was, in fact, russia that paid him tens of thousands of dollars for that report, plus a three-day long all expenses paid trip to moscow and accommodations at a five-star hotel for him and his son, mike junior. must have been awesome. then getting closer to the scandal that led to flynn's current lot in life as he awaits federal sentencing, i mean,
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there's the sequence of events that followed after him going to moscow for that event. he was career military, but he is a registered democrat. registered democrat no, affiliation than working for obama. then he makes a weird three-day jaunt to moscow to celebrate their propaganda network while denying that they're paying him. then just a few weeks later after he gets home from moscow, he signs up with the trump campaign. i mean, it's always been weird. and now as flynn's legal case seems to be coming to its end, as more stuff starts getting released by the judge in this case who apparently wants this stuff put out there in the public record, it's unsettling about flynn, but there seems to be something sort of hot about what flynn knew about the president and what he might tell prosecutors about the president. i mean, the president was trying
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to end the investigation of flynn when he fired the fbi director. that's what led to the firing of james comey. will you go easy on flynn? so comey had to be fired. firing comey because he wouldn't ease up on flynn, that's what gave rise to the appointment of the special counsel. why was it so important to shut down that investigation of flynn? now as flynn's case approaches its end, sentencing, michael flynn suddenly fired his lawyers who represented him all of this time. a week before his status update, we're expecting a sentencing date. boom, fired his lawyers. this is just sort of track now. whatever the track was here before, this feels off track now when it comes to flynn. and we still have no confirmation about who flynn's new lawyers are or why he might have picked them. there's explanation that he dumped his lawyers for a whole new strategy.
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which is why people are on presidential pardon watch when a comes to flynn. senator richard blumenthal warning explicitly about that possibility. senator blumenthal joins us here live next. live next. -and...that's your basic three-point turn.
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get your rest this weekend. we got a big week coming up next week. on tuesday the full house will vote whether or not to hold attorney general william barr and don mcgahn in contempt over their refusal to cooperate with congressional subpoenas related to the mueller investigation. also next week we're expecting an important court deadline for trump's national security adviser mike flynn. both the prosecution and defense will outline how flynn's cooperation is going. we'll find out if they'll tell the judge they're finally ready
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to move ahead to sentencing for flynn. whatever's going on with the flynn case right now, flynn did just fire his longtime lawyers in a surprise move. we don't know who his new lawyers are. there's also been a steady drip of new details released to the public by orders of the judge in the flynn case, including a voicemail from president trump's lawyer john dowd, dowd telling flynn's lawyer that he wanted a heads-up if flynn was going to provide information to prosecutors that would implicate the president saying that that might have national security consequences. we don't know what flynn might have been able to say about the president that would implicate him and have national security consequences, but that voicemail got a lot of people's attention this week, including senator richard blumenthal of connecticut who said this. quote, hearing the striking audio in the tapes released yesterday actualizes the pardon the president dangled in front of flynn. americans deserve to hear and see more. all the evidence making clear
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the case for obstruction. joining us is senator blumenthal of connecticut, member of the judiciary committee in the senate. thanks for being here. >> thank you for having me. >> what do you mean when you say this voicemail from john dowd actualizes the pardon that was dangled to flynn? >> you quoted a part of what he said, which was not only that national security interests might be implicated in what flynn would be offering to robert mueller by cooperating, but also there's a quote that he needed a heads-up to protect, quote, all of our interests, not just national security, and the president, and he said, remember what our feelings are about michael flynn. those feelings are still the same after the president on repeated occasions said what a nice guy flynn was, what a good man he was. and that sort of dangling the pardon in the voice that was
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projected in that tape was deadly serious, even a bit desperate, and will be very, very powerful to americans if they ever see and hear john dowd himself as a witness in a house or senate hearing. >> why is it damning and potentially obstructive for a president's lawyer conveying to a witness who's about to turn state's evidence, about to start working with prosecutors? can you spell out why that is potentially obstructive, potentially inappropriate or criminal to have that expression, the president likes you, the president wants you to remember how much he likes you, that's still in effect. what's the implication of is that? >> really important to break it down. the best explanation is in the mueller report because he presents it as one of those potentially obstructive acts that the president of the united states committed. and he says he can't really
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attribute it to trump because he doesn't know whether trump knew everything that dowd was saying, and he declined to interview dowd because of the attorney/client privilege. but basically, here it is. the witness, michael flynn, knows all this stuff about trump, and dowd is saying give us a heads-up, meaning tell us what he's going to tell mueller to protect all of our interests, and remember what a good man we think you are, and the pardon is dangled so that, in effect, flynn will be playing both sides of the street. there's no longer the joint defense going on, but the two of them can still work together if dowd is informed and protect donald trump's interests. >> as flynn's case appears to be heading towards sentencing, something is going on in the case that's hard to discern from the outside. he's fired his lawyers, the initial sentencing plan in december went haywire when clearly there was a big
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disconnect between the lawyers in the case and the judge who basically told flynn, you don't want me to sentence you right now. why don't you see if you can cooperate more because essentially signaling he was going to throw the book at him. something's going on right now. a lot of people have speculated that flynn may be in line for a pardon right now, and that's why he's replacing his legal team and the president might be heading toward that now. would that be potentially problematic in terms of the president being liable for obstruction? >> i think it would be very problematic. a pardon under these circumstances would raise all kinds of questions of obstruction. the mueller report alludes to the possibility that the president can be prosecuted after he leaves office in. volume i, pages 1 and 2, talks about preserving evidence, not only documents, but also memories and testimony. and so what the president may
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well be doing is trying to stop that prosecution after he leaves office. that's not only problematic, it is deeply concerning from the standpoint of americans seeing justice, holding the president accountable, and eventually making sure that he is brought to justice as he would be if he were not president of the united states. i've written a letter with a thousand other prosecutors saying if he weren't president, he would be in handcuffs and indicted right now. >> senator richard blumenthal of connecticut. thanks for being here on a friday night. we'll be right back. stay with us. stay with us on, limu? [ paper rustling ] exactly, nothing. they're completely different people, that's why they need customized car insurance from liberty mutual. they'll only pay for what they need! [ gargling ] [ coins hitting the desk ] yes, and they could save a ton. you've done it again, limu. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪
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the first rule of presidential polling at this time of year is, it's way too early. i mean, at this stage presidential primary polls really do not matter at all. if they did, we would have had presidents rudy giuliani, gary hart, lieberman, and jeb bush. the second rule of presidential polling at this time of year is that it super, super matters
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it's really important. in part because it's how the candidates get into different debates. tomorrow night at 7:00 p.m. "the des moines register" the going to release its pole of the democratic field, the gold standard of polling in iowa. in addition to providing a snapshot of voter preferences, this will be used by the dnc to see which democratic candidates nails down a slot. one of the 20 available slots in the first debate. and all of that put together is why this weekend, i kid you not, 19 different democratic candidates are all going to be in iowa at the same time. there will be no room for iowans in iowa this weekend. it's going to be democrats running for president. 19 of them all at once. pray for good weather, right? one of the 19 has decided to start living in iowa. mary ann williamson signed a lease on a des moines condo, i
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kid you not. the one absence from this weekend's democratic presidential candidate action in iowa is joe biden. he will not be there this weekend. he's the front-runner right now, but even so he will be there tuesday. even after most of them or all of them have left. if you're in iowa this weekend, there's a good chance you'll bump into a democratic hopeful or three. right next to the story about this weekend's all-important iowa poll, we learned that the world's biggest bounce house has just arrived in iowa just in time for 19 different candidates to start bouncing around the state all at the same time, each one hoping this weekend will be the proverbial polling bounce they need to get into the first debate. here comes an honest-to-goodness bounce house, the largest one in the world, at the time the 19 candidates are converging with
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last night we brought you a special report about the state of missouri which on the precipice right now of becoming the first state to unlegalize all abortion access since roe v. wade in 1973. as we are still waiting for a judge to rule on whether the state government can shut down that last remaining clinic in the state, we found that the republican-run state government in missouri this week started directing the doctors at this last clinic to subject their patients to new medically unnecessary manual vaginal exams as the price of asking for an abortion. this is a new thing the state of missouri is doing that they were not doing before. but as they got the clinic on the ropes trying to shut them down, this a new thing they're making those doctors do before women are allowed to get an abortion. now, there's one aspect of that story we're going to follow up on tonight which is how this is
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happening in missouri right now. this was not part of the state's new abortion ban that was debated by legislators or signed by the governor. this new policy they've instituted in the past week was instituted on the orders of a specific guy in state government. and it turns out he's a really interesting case here. that story, part two of our special report, is next. this is the ocean. just listen. (vo) there's so much we want to show her. we needed a car that would last long enough to see it all. (avo) subaru outback. ninety eight percent are still on the road after 10 years. come on mom, let's go!
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mmm, mmm, mmm. so this is a coal-fired power plant in belmont, north carolina. it's called the allen steam station and it is run by the duke energy corporation. one of the problems with running a coal-fire power plant like allen, i mean, don't get me started. there are a lot of problems. one of the problems is that after you burn the coal to fuel this plant, it produces
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leftovers. and the leftovers after you burn coal is something called coal ash. from a plant like this, the leftover coal ash is voluminous, there is a ton of it, and it is dangerous. it's toxins and heavy metals like arsenic, known carcinogens. duke energy stores that mafblilous stuff in coal ash pits like these ones. they're basically man made little ponds designed to hold all of this toxic sludge from the coal-burning power plants. oftentimes those pits aren't even lined, which means there's an increased chance that the toxic materials from the coal ash will leak into not just the ground, but into the local ground water. and that's what many people believe happened in areas surrounding duke energy's many coal-fire power plants, including those in north carolina, power plants like the allen steam station. in april 2015, north carolina
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officials issued letters to people who owned wells, 330 wells that were near the state's coal-burning plants, and those letters notified those people that their well water was contaminated. wells showed carcinogen levels higher than the state's warning level. you were at risk of getting cancer if you drank from that contaminated water. that was the notice they got from the state in april 2015. but within a couple of months, by july of that same year, something interesting happened in north carolina. the governor of north carolina at the time was a longtime duke energy executive and a republican, a guy by the name of pat mccrory, and he hired this man, a new state health director, randall williams. although williams did not conduct any new testing of ground water or these wells near coal ash pits and all this stuff, despite the fact that he conducted no new scientific inquiry on the subject, the new
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state health director decided not long after he started at his new job, he decided that the state had been not thinking clearly when it sent out those do not drink orders, when it declared that well water unsafe declared the well water unsafe. and as the new health director of the state of north carolina he decided to rescind those orders. remember that do not drink order you got about the contamination, nevermind, nevermind that, i say it is fine. it did not go away as quietly as he would have hoped. he had been the state's toxicologist for nearly 30 years and he blew the whistle on this.
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he called out the health director saying his job was to protect public health but in this instance the opposite occurred. the state toxicologist called the reversal of the do not drink advisory highly unethical and possibly illegal. in the following months, the states leading epi toxicologist files the report. this is wrong, this sun safe, saying this is possibly illegal, but the new state health director had a job to do and he maintained that the epidemio
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lrgs organizati lo logist. he ended up testified in the resulting controversy that he rescinded the do not drink warning notices because he thought they were stirring up unwarranted fears. getting people all fraekted out about safety issues when there is nothing to worry about as far as he is concerned. he lasted about 18 months in that job. the one thing that he is remembered for in his short stint, hired by the duke energy executive who was governor at the type. the thing he is remembered is the rescinding of the letters. them lied to the public saying your water is safe when it was
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not. that is the scandal he created in a very short period of time running the state health director in north carolina. that is what he did for a year and a half. then he got a new job. may have been sort of a scratch and dent sale kind of a thing, but right after that the new republican governor of missouri decided to hire him to come to missouri and become that state's new health director. he was appointed by the state's republican governor before that governor had to resign in a big spooky scandal, but he was confirmed by the state's republican legislature, and it is the same guy. dr. randall, who is shutting down the last remaining abortion provider in the state, and he has insisted that as that last clinic fights to stay open, it
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is he who decided that the doctors in that clinic must now make their patients get unnecessary pelvic examples when they ask for an abortion. his orders. all of them want to get their abortion ban before the court because with justice cavanagh there they all think they will overturn row versus wade. and that is going on in missouri, too. they have their new republican governor, the new one is called mike parson. he signed their abortion ban into law a couple weeks ago and now republicans are taking further action. what is happening in missouri parallels what is going on in
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all of these other states across the country. but there is one aspect of the fight going on in missouri that is different, which is the active and very close to successful effort right now by that state government to shut down the last clinic in the state that is still allowed to provide abortions. the last clinic in the entire state of missouri. and it is a crucial thing to understand here. that the state is not using a new law to try to shut down missouri's last abortion provider. this is not part of the abortion ban they just passed that will be tested by the federal courts now. they're not using the legislature to revoke the last license to perform legal abortions. what they're doing, to stop the last place in missouri where a woman can get a legal abortion, what they're doing and employing to try to do that is this guy. drink the cancer water.
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he is enforcing state regulations newly this week to try to get abortion shut down in missouri. he was lit on this idea to force missouri women that want to go to that last clinic have a medically unnecessary pointless pelvic example to pay the price for asking for that abortion. he is requiring doctors in that clinic do that to their patients. fresh off of his last job, making national news for rescinding the "do not drink the water notices" around the cancer pits in north carolina, he says the reason that he is fighting so hard to shut down the last clinic is because of his kbragr overriding concern of patient safety. >> what missourians expect me to
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do is enforce the law and regulations if sour goal that it be done in a safe way. our purpose in this is to protect health, keep people safe, we can never sacrifice safety for that access. we can never sacrifice safety for that. >> we can never do that at the expense of safety. >> we can never sacrifice safe if i for access. we have to have both. >> we cannot sacrifice safety. one of the producers of this show was there, he is asked williams in shutting down the last abortion provider in the state might lead to an unsafe nichgs in the state, whether or not it could lead to a rise in women seeking abortions if he succeeds in getting rid of the last abortion provider.
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is he concerned about that? >> are you worried if the lack of access will jeopardize safety because they be forced to seek an illegal abortion? >> i do not believe that to be true. >> why would that happen? i'm not worried about that at all. >> if dr. randall williams succeeds and gets the last abortion provider shut down, waiting on a judge's ruling to see if he succeeds in that, if he does missouri will be the first state in the country. but he really does not mind that. we share a distinction to the idea that we're in desert for any type of health care is one that really doesn't ring true.
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they are coming to our wonderful health care centers, they come all of the time, and people people krost the line -- cross the state line. >> i believe that the facilities in illinois that are 12 miles from here. >> from here but not parts of rural missouri. >> exactly, it gets back to the point that i made earlier. >> we are waiting for a judge to make a decision any day now, any time now as to whether or not they will be allowed to keep their doors open in that state. even those that have to traverse
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the large state to get there. any woman that gets there will have to take off of her clothes and submit to an unnecessary vaginal exam. despite her wishes, the doctor's wishes, it is his wishes. he is the one that came up with that. tonight on "all in." >> if he were any other person in the united states he would be carried out in handcuffs. >> as the democrats prepare hearings on the mueller report. >> if we had. >> remember what was always said about the president. >> we are in worse