against trump. after helping to corroborate the first whistle blower's allegations which are now backed by those damning text messages released on thursday. they reseal how trump's minions sought to leverage military aid in order to put pressure on ukraine. those involved in the messages include volcker who until recently was the u.s. special envoy to ukraine. bill taylor, the u.s. envoy to ukraine. sondeland and on the ukraine side, andrier mack, an aid to ukranian president. the morning of the phone call between trump and zelensky, volcker texted saying heard from white house assuming president z he will investigate/get to the bottom of what happened in 2016,

we will nail down date for visit to washington. good luck. see you tomorrow. by now thanks to the first whistle blower complaint and a rough transcript of trump's ukraine call we now know that on that call trump pressed zelensky to launch -- everyone involved in this text messages only one career ambassador bill taylor pushed back texting on september 1st quote, are we now saying that security assistance and white house meeting are conditioned on investigations? to which gordon text back, call me. taylor then pushes back again on september 9th texting quote, as i said on the phone, i think it's crazy to with hold security assistance for help with a political campaign. almost five hours later sondland seemed to suddenly become aware

of how damaging the written messages all saved to the cloud could be and texted back, bill, i believe you are incorrect about president trump's intentions. the president has been crystal clear, no quid proquos of any kind. the president is trying to evaluate whether ukraine is going to adopt the reforms president zelensky showed in their campaign. i suggest we stop communication by text. >> joining me to the russian federation, and msnbc legal analyst and a former federal prosecutor. you've been on the air a lot talking about these back and forth conversations and you made i think a really salient point is that with all of these different people who are talking back and forth about what ukraine could do for the united states in these investigations, only one person said this is a bad idea and explicitly said we

can't trade aid for dirt. why do you suppose only one person could see that clearly? >> joy, that's a great question. i -- i know two of these three individuals. i want to say that from the outset. i've known them for a couple of decades. mr. volcker and mr. taylor. mr. kol volcker had a very tough job. his job is not to be the envoy to all of ukraine. his job is to work with russians to end the war in eastern ukraine. i want to be clear about that and what i think he was trying to do was to keep the policy moving forward and particular on military assistance and when he run in to the buzz saw of how the trump team rolls on this stuff, he decided to take that trade and to do something that i think was wrong and it is just clear as day. i want your viewers to understand just go read these texts. this is not just one phone call. this is a series of events. a prep before the call and then

after the call as you just pointed out. he says see you tomorrow because they were on their way to make this play happen. ambassador sondland seems he's just a trump guy. he ends up in the european union ambassador ship. why are on earth our ambassador to the eu is involved in ukraine is a giant mystery to me other than he's just the political advisor, you know, spy for the trump team and taylor, somebody who was appointed just to be clear about it, appointed after they fired the previous ambassador, he goes out, he's still there in an interim basis and he clearly is not part of the trump team. he looks at this and he says this is not right and i really think we should applaud what ambassador taylor said. >> yeah, he's the one person who said i'm out. he literally says i quit. i'm not doing this. a couple of more of these text messages to stay with you for a

moment. this is volcker talking about biden. and he says a suggestion that he would be influenced in his duties as vice president by money for his son simply has no credibility to me and that's according to the -- that's the opening statement that he made when he spoke with congress and he says it just -- it didn't seem credible to him at all. now to go back again, here is a text now from aid to the ukranian president to volker. he says once we have a date we will call for a date including among other things election meddling in investigations. so you know, ambassador, that sounds directly like the -- the ukranians understood that in order for them to get a meeting with donald trump which was very important to the president of ukraine, remember, they're at war. they've been invaded by russia. they're occupying crimea.

they're desperate for a meeting, they're desperate for this military aid to survive and they seem to understand very clearly that the only way to get the meeting, the only way the president of ukraine can meet with president of the united states is they open investigations into this company that hunter biden used to work for, but also go back and relitigate the attack on our election and take russia off the table and say they didn't do it. in your mind, is that a direct campaign essentially to roll a foreign government and say you can't have the money? is that implied in what you heard? >> i don't think it's implied. i think it's clear as day and i'm glad you underscored both of those, that trump asked was to investigate hunter biden, in other words dirt on his main political opponent in 2020 and number two, to investigate the allege ukranian involvement in

interfering in our elections in 2016. that is the uncovering of corruption of paul manafort his former campaign advisor. and both of those stories have little evidence to support them. that's however whatnot just the president but his team including mr. volker and ambassador sondland are asking for and in return they get the lifting of the freeze they put on military assistance to ukraine and the oval office visit. it's just clear as day. that was the trade and they then go farther as you rightly pointed out, it was wasn't enough just to open the investigation, the trump team wanted them to put it in a statement to lock them in and you can see, you know, he's getting a little nervous about this. hey, wait a minute, we're going to put a statement out before we set the dates of the oval office? and so they're even working out the timing of the quid pro quo. >> and this brings me to you, glen. because that sounds to me -- you know, i'm not a lawyer.

you're a former prosecutor, i'm not. that sounds like a direct quid pro quo. you want the money, you do us this favor, exonerate russia and you investigate biden. is that a crime? >> there is a direct quid pro quo. we've seen it. but more importantly, is it a crime? the answer is it doesn't matter and here's why. i think in the wake of the mueller report there was an opportunity lost because in volume 2 mueller set out the evidence supporting so obstruction of justice crimes. what did we then spend the next months debating? well, can we fulfill every element of an obstruction of justice crime based on what mueller put in the report, because mueller famously wouldn't say it was a crime. here's why it doesn't matter. so i brought a prop. i'm not trying to be carrot top, the prop legal analyst but this is the united states criminal code. it has every crime that is on the books today. guess what?

this didn't exist when the founding fathers settled on the language other high crimes and misdemeanors. it doesn't have to violate a crime that's in this book. so we don't need to talk about whether there in fact was a quid pro quo so we can fit it precisely into one of these crimes. we don't have to talk about whether it was a thing of value such that it fits precisely into the campaign finance crime articulated in this book. none of that matters because alexander hamilton in the federalist papers talked about what is required to impeach and remove a president. this didn't exist so it couldn't have been a violation of one of these crimes. what it had to be was an abuse of the public trust. was a violation of the power of your office. trump has done that, he's been doing it, he continues to do it, and it doesn't have to precisely

constitute a crime under today's federal law. >> it's porpimportant that you t that out. for donald trump to be impeached he does not have to have necessarily been proved to have committed a crime that's in that criminal code. right? but the people around donald trump have used that criminal code as ways to protect him. i'll give you one example that hopefully you can explain to us. william barr who is the attorney general of the united states, presumely our attorney, the public's attorney, apparently the department of justice used the fact that they couldn't find a campaign finance violation in what the ambassador was describing there, they're saying you want this money, we want this investigation that helps our 2020 campaign. but because they decided that's not a campaign finance violation, they then brush aside the whistle blower's complaint, even though it appears that within the cia they were saying no, there is a crime here, that they did see a crime that they

thought was something that was actionable by the doj. the doj brushes it aside and says it's not a campaign finance violation. are they using the code to protect donald trump saying if we can't find an actual crime, there's nothing to see. >> they're using it as both a shield and a sword and they're using it inappropriately and unfairly in my view. it's great to parse these things out. to impeach the president you don't need a crime but to go after pompeo for what he did apparently being on a call that he then said well, you know, i understand it's based on second hand information, well guess what, chief in you have firsthand information because you were on the call. that was a flatout lie. he looked the american people in the eye and he lied and then he helped to bury that call in this, you know, double secret probation server where it didn't belong. he committed any number of actual violations of this code and here is what i think is the single greatest threat at this

very moment. bill barr has basically abdicated his responsibilities to investigate crime and to enforce the laws that are in this big blue book and as a result, no one is being held accountable. i think militates in favor of i know the representatives have a lot on their hands right now. they need to pay attention to whether barr should be impeached for walking away from his responsibilities to enforce the laws of the country against his fellow republican wrong doers. >> i bring that back to him michael mcfaul because we now know this multiperson scheme to try to undo what robert mueller found, they have decided they're going to go on a quest like going after ahas been in the motion, that they're going to try to prove that russia didn't do it. the ukranians are the ones that with corrupted. that ukraine somehow hid the

democrat server and on this quest it appears that bill barr is participate ng that, that barr himself is out there trying to go around the world and prove that russia is innocent. in your view does that mean this is a scheme that actually goes not just to the president but to the department of justice and the state department all -- you know, across this administration? >> well, first let's just take a step back and realize just how crazy this quest is. i love your metaphor. you know, that the president brought it up in his call with zelensky. that server, that crowd strike had in ukraine. president trump said like 20 times i just want to fight corruption. i don't care about the campaign. well, why do we know about the corruption about mr. manafort? because the ukranian parliament and ukranian investigators

exposed it. so you can't have it both ways. you can't say i'm just for corruption but i just want to talk about one person's corruption, not the other person's corruption. and i find it a huge waste of american resources and a huge undermining of american national interests. remember, we have major security reasons to be supporting the sovereignty of ukraine vis-a-vis russia and we are not doing that. we are undermining that with this search for evidence that does not exist. >> yeah, but we're out of time but i have to ask you really quickly. we're going to talk about this in our next hour but i want a preview from you, glen. with nixon, he committed the crimes, a bunch of other people went to jail including his attorney general. is it a possibilities that some of them helping president could wind up being in trouble themselves. >> the answer is absolutely yes. >> yeah, they should all go back

and read the nixon history. history does sometimes repeat. great to have you both here. thank you very much. up next, mike pompeo speaks out after the state department ignores a subpoena deadline. bpo. do you have concerns about mild memory loss related to aging? prevagen is the number one pharmacist-recommended memory support brand. you can find it in the vitamin aisle in stores everywhere. prevagen. healthier brain. better life.

last night to congress which is

our initial response to the document request. we've all known there's been corruption in ukraine, the united states has been engaged in trying to push back against corruption in ukraine for quite some time. >> secretary of state mike pompeo is explaining why his department missed a subpoena deadline to turn over ukraine related documents to three house committees. he's also still pushing the trump lie that this is only about fighting corruption in ukraine. even though pompeo finally admitted this week that he was on the phone call where donald trump asked the ukranian president to specifically investigate joe biden and his son in a debunked conspiracy theory. joining me now is former assistant chief of property toll in the state department and a former senior advisor and nick, i'm going to work with you. having worked at the department of state as you did, have you ever seen anything like this? and by like this i mean the

state department specifically using its resources to pursue a conspiracy theory long debunked and already debunked by a 40 plus million dollar investigation by a special counsel? >> absolutely not. i worked under clinton and carry during the obama administration and under their tenures they were secretaries of state who actually empowered employees of the state department. empowered the thousands of foreign service officers all across the country, all across the globe who were doing the work of the nation to protect our nation's interests abroad and to promote diplomacy abroad and to see what secretary pompeo is doing here is offensive to me, it's offensive to foreign service officers who are just day in and day out trying to do the hard work of diplomacy across the globe. >> we know that within all of these agencies including state you have your career people who are diplomats, who are trained

diplomats and then you do have political appointees. they've given a lot of money, it's not uncommon. in this case you have the mr. sondland who is the ad hoc ambassador to the european union. he's always in washington, he's currying favor with trump. would it be unusual for someone like that to be directing the activities of the career staff and directing them to essentially put pressure on a foreign government to launch specific probes and investigations in exchange for the money that congress has appropriat appropriated? >> not appropriate at all. that's why you see with the ambassador with the leader of the state department and this administration are having a problem with her and they remove her. she was doing the work at the senior foreign affairs officer and they removed her.

so if you don't sort of as the president has said, play ball, you exit and they put it someone who they think will do their bidding for them. >> yeah. and you know, let me bring you into this, because the communication side of this is -- maybe even more insane than the weird chase a conspiracy theory ahab quest of these investigations that are trying to force ukraine to do. i want to read you a little bit of "washington post" this morning. trump calls the foreign leaders have long worried aides leaving some genuinely horrified. some contend that trump's behavior had at times created unnecessary tensions with allies. i want to go through a couple of the calls specifically. this is cut 3 for my producer

rs. trump asked the former kgb officer for his guidance in forging a friendship with kim jong un. there was an even more important paren at the top of it. trump calls putin the very first time he calls him, he's solicitous of him. he's praising him and saying what a great leader he is. he seems to be absolutely trying to ingratiate himself and said oh, my people didn't tell me you wanted to talk to me. i'm so excited you want to talk to me. that's the way he talks to putin in the very first call. there's a call to the aauthoritarian leader of the philippines where he tells him who's overseen a brutal campaign that's resulted in the killings of thousands of suspected drug dealers that he's doing an unbelievable job on the drug problem. there's a call where he has a call with teresa may, the then prime minister of great britain in which he says that he doubts the intelligence that says that

russia killed its own former operatives in the uk even though the intelligence services of great britain says yes, they did and he has this debate with her and lastly that in calls particularly with women leaders he's particularly rude and dismissive, but in calls with aauthoritarian dictators he's grateful. >> he said he'd put america first but all he's done is make america look weak in front of authoritarian leaders. he's made it very clear that there's a pay for play system here in the united states now. right? if you spend enough money he talks about the saudis, they give us a lot of cash. you are able to get away with anything, so it is not an administration that represents american values and ideals of how to work in the world. it is clearly a pay for play almost with the ukraine situation an extortion plot because it was that the ukraine did not give a particular type

of public statement they would not get the military assistance that was deemed necessary and the only person to win in that situation is actually vladimir putin who has rolled in and taken over a piece of their country. so inadvertently or not, donald trump is doing putin's work for him. >> and i'm just going to read a little bit of this. i'm going off plot here. i'm going to read you a little bit of this article. in one of his first calls with the head of state president trump fawned over rush president telling the man who ordered interference in the 2016 election that he was a great leader and apologizing for not calling him sooner. he pledged saudi ooofficials that he would help the monarchy enter the group of 7. he promised the president of peru that he would deliver to his country a c-130 military cargo plane overnight. a logistical nightmare and he asked the former kgb officer for

his guidance. you said you've worked rnd two heads of the department of state. a president promise military planes to a foreign leader? congratulate another leader for claiming he personally kills drug dealers and promising to let saudi arabia into the group of seven? any of that normal? >> absolutely not. and you see this time and time again with this president whether he's propping up putin, saudi arabia, other dictators, north korea and it's not normal and frankly, the american public should be worried about this. >> let me ask you a question specifically related to ukraine. the trump side of this is trying to argue that the reason they were intervening in ukraine is they felt that the prosecutor who had replaced a previous prosecutor was not doing a strong enough job in corruption and that the trump admin -- the obama administration including the vice president wanting this person to be gone, that that was an example of biden's

corruption. when you were at the department of state, who all wanted him gone? how widespread was the belief he should no longer be the prosecutor in ukraine? i don't have experience with that, but i will say again, why are we focused on this? because the trump administration is trying to further the personal and political interests of this president and secretary pompeo at this point is now an accomplice to that. >> and to that very point, you know, mr. sho kin who was widely -- the european union wanted him gone, there were no republicans who disagreed with that, that they thought this this guy was corrupt, that he shouldn't be there anymore. how ironic is it that this administration, the united states under donald trump is saying that they're the ones who are trying to fight corruption in ukraine when it appears that donald trump on the phone in

transcripts his own administration released was attempting to corrupt the president of ukraine? >> i mean, the ironies are never ending with this administration. right? and in trade deals with china donald trump is advancing trademarks for ivanka trump, his own daughter yet somehow we need to be investigating biden who's not even in office right now. so this is clearly all politically motivated and the fact that he was even involved in this is part of the problem. he's ambassador to the eu, not the ambassador to the ukraine but everybody is effectively terrified of the president and his k ball of politicos who have according to an unspeck tor general report released earlier this summer, they have called people traitors, holdovers, they've effectively made career diplomats fear for doing any of the work they've been trained to do and the priority is keeping the boss man happy, so everybody just run rough shod over

diplomacy. >> and very quickly, how unusual would it have been when you were working on the communications side in the state department for you to have been asked to concoct a statement for a foreign government to make promising that they were going to investigate the former vice president of the united states and that they were going to advance a conspiracy theory and do that publicly. would that have been unusual? >> that would have been horrifying. we all take an oath of office and we do these jobs of pun lbl service because we genuinely care about the united states and the constitution. that would be absolutely something that if we did not tell my boss we shouldn't be doing this, i would have gone to the inspector general or somebody or at least again, we had teams where politicals, careers, military, everyone worked together for a common purpose and what we're seeing right now is that purpose is divided. there's the purpose of donald trump and the separate purpose of advancing u.s. interests and this state department is not capable of doing either. >> both veterans of the department of state which is

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. coming up, the impeachment inquiry has now engulfed the vice president and mike pence is proving once again why he's the second in chief. more a.m. joy after the break. n. more a.m. joy after the break. ♪

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the president made it very clear that he -- he believes -- he believes our other nations around the world should look into it as well. >> mike pence's unwaivering sycophant si to donald trump has been unwaivers since friday. the request came after the "washington post" reported that a top pence advisor was now on the infamous july 25th phone call. cnn reported that pence was informed of the call a day after it happened and provided a transcript according to sources familiar with the matter. congressman, let me read you the pence office's response to the request for documents related to that call and his knowledge of it. received the letter after he was released to media and has been forwarded to the counsel's

office for response. it does not seem to be a serious request but another attempt to call partisan impeachment. it sounds like donald trump wrote it. at this point we have the president and the vice president and the department of state pretending they don't have to listen to subpoenas. >> right. >> that's unprecedented, obviously, but what do you think that mike pence's game is here because he's now implicated. >> that's right. >> he's going even further in. >> i think the house should respond by opening an impeachment inquiry into the vice president of the united states and they should also include the secretary of state and others. i consider the facts, consider what with know already publicly available, the vice president cancelled his trip to the inauguration in may to attend a political rally for donald trump. there was not a significant obligation he had to attend to. we know the infamous phone call

at the end of july with trump. the text messages all occurred between the end of july and throughout august preceding the president sending vice president pence to meet with zelensky on september 1 where he told the vice president, we're not giving you the aide. we're not giving you the assistance. all of this was occurring at the same time. so to suggest that vice president did not know about a quid pro quo or that the leverage was being used to get an investigation into biden would suggest that the president knew, the secretary f ostate knew, the attorney general knew, 12 people on the phone call knew, the ambassador to the eu, the acting ambassador to the ukraine, the special envoy to the ukraine, at least one whistle-blower, maybe a second but mike pence didn't know anything about this? it's not believable. >> yeah. >> vice president pence is the ivanka trump of the vice presidency. he expects us to appreciate the fact that he's working within this administration on behalf of

the people, but in moments of consequence he disappears. in moments of scandal he suggests he knows nothing about it. he and ivanka are complicit. she hides behind her $5,000 dresses and $10,000 bags. mike pence has mastered hiding behind this professed evangelical humility. neither one are credible. i think they should set a schedule, say this is our schedule for hearings, you're invited to come and testify, defend yourself but we're voting on week 11. >> and you made a really good point because mike pence vanishes into the draperies whenever anything goes wrong. on the michael flynn situation he supposedly had no idea it was going on, was lied to and this is why flynn -- so he keeps on -- he's the excuse that he's just sort of the pristine figure, but not only is he involved in everything to your very point, the start of this conspiracy theory that donald

trump seems to really believe in that really russia did nothing wrong, that the reality is that the evil ukranians, they're the ones who went after him, but started by going after manafort. and so the conspiracy theory is this. this is in the yiems. there is an idea promoted by rudy giuliani that ukraine's government sabotaged mr. trump's 2016 campaign. a lawyer looked into the finances of paul manafort and spoke with the embassy officials. now, this is meaning that ukraine actually caught manafort from taking the pro-russian president. manafort then gets in trouble and goes to prison. who -- who picked mike pence to be the vice president of the united states? who brought mike pence to the table? paul manafort. he's manafort's man. >> that's right. and mike pence's job was to convince the rest of the republican party to go along with donald trump. and this is exactly the type of

behavior from mike pence where he is fully complicit. mike pence was the validater to the republican party. in the mids of all this conspiracy, it's important we focus on impeachment. but understand the national security implications of what was going on as well. russia interfered. we know that russia invest crimea and the ukraine. the world wide response was to push back on russia. what was happening was this counter culture national security doctrine within the trump world pedalled by manafort, later by giuliani and supported by vice president pence that somehow we have to focus on the ukraine, give a pass to russia, the national security implications of what were going on touches the vice president juz as much as it does the president and the entire republican party who covers for them. >> if donald trump was to be impeached and for some reason 20 republicans were to vote to remove mike pence would become the head of state and instead of

having been implicated in all this as well. >> i think trump says you want to look at my phone calls you should look at his. they're tied at the hip and mike pence continue to try to hide. the house has a mechanism, impeachment is not just for the president of the united states. it's for other high officers as well. i'm not suggesting they would uncover enough to impeach the vice president to bring articles but the clarity of the house for all of history to suggest that this scandal reaches to a foreign policy implication that is hurting our own national security and has shown disloyalty by the president of the united states to the american people should investigate who knew what when outside of the oval office, but to the office of the vice president, the secretary of state, ag and omb. investigate them with clarity so that all of history knows that this entire team is corrupt and tainted. >> and do you -- do you foresee having served in the republican party and been a republican i

assume most of your adult life. >> yeah. >> can you forsee any republicans we know mitt romney has at least said something, that this is wrong. a couple of republicans come out and say this is wrong. can you foresee any republican senators even romney voting to convict this president and voting to convict if let's say you get what you want and they are all placed on the impeachment -- >> hurt is the bell weather in the house. there are some outgoing members, susan brooks of indiana. roby really no love lost with trump. it was more because they were conservative, southern democrats. you may see a few. in the senate i think romney votes for a clean article of abuse of power if the democrats win over. i think he does. the question is do the democrats send over a couple more articles that allow him to vote no on say obstruction of congress or something. and the real dispositive question is, can romney bring anyone with him or is this

his -- is he on the mountain top now as the republican counter to trump. and he may be okay with that. because 2020 is coming and so is 2024 and there will be an effort to rebuild the republican party. the american people might not find it a believable effort but romney might be the champion of that. >> and here's the irony. donald trump auditioned mitt romney to be his secretary of state and he took that humiliating dinner. >> thank you very much. really appreciate it. and somehow donald trump remains like teflon. it'm psychonothing sticks. we'll see. we'll see if that holds up with the rest of trump world. that's next. the rest of trump world. that's next.

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hour 36 in the stakeout. as soon as the homeowners arrive, we'll inform them that liberty mutual customizes home insurance, so they'll only pay for what they need. your turn to keep watch, limu. wake me up if you see anything. [ snoring ] [ loud squawking and siren blaring ]

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[ inaudible ] the conversation you just heard between richard nixon and his former attorney general, john mitchell, in 1973, was later used to convict mitchell on charges related to the watergate cover-up and to send him to prison. mitchell was one of several officials who wound up in prison after watergate. the lesson there is that while trump may consider himself to be

invincible, thanks to that cannot indict memo at the doj, history suggests the people surrounding the president are not always safe. it was the release of these secret tapes that ultimately brought nixon down. unlike trump, nixon fought to keep those tapes secret. he did not admit to his crimes out in the open. trump, meanwhile, not only admits to his crimes, he sometimes commits them on the white house lawn. >> likewise, china should start an investigation into the biden, because what happened to china is just about as bad as what happened with ukraine. so, i would say that president zelensky, if it were me, i would recommend that they start an investigation into the bidens, because nobody has any doubt that they weren't crooked. >> this really should come as no surprise, because donald trump has repeatedly welcomed and even solicited foreign campaign help,

and he has a history of admitting to his misdeeds on camera. >> russia, if you're listening, i hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. i think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. regardless of recommendation, i was going to fire comey, knowing there was no good time to do it. and in fact, when i decided to just do it, i said to myself, i said, you know, this russia thing with trump and russia is a made-up story. but i think you might want to listen. there's nothing wrong with listening. if somebody called from a country, norway -- we have information on your opponent. oh, i think i'd want to hear it. >> like nixon, trump has managed to induce lots and lots of government officials, from his vice president to his secretary of state, to various white house officials and diplomats to his george mitchell, attorney general william barr, to join in. trump has already landed people

in prison, those who committed crimes to please or to help trump, along with many others who were indicted in robert mueller's russia probe. so, the question for trump's people, the people that he's corrupted as part of his own immensely corrupt government, is how dirty are they willing to get? and are they risking sharing the fate of people like mitchell and flynn and michael cohen and paul manafort? joining me now is elizabeth holtzman, author of "the case for impeaching trump." former assistant watergate special prosecutor jill wine-banks, msnbc legal analyst maya wiley, msnbc contributor barbara mcquade, and karine jean-pierre, chief public affairs officer at moveon.org. thank you all for being here. i'm going to go right down the middle of my intro here and go right to jill wine-banks. because let me play you -- this is a congressman. this is a republican congressman back in 1973 actually calling for nixon's impeachment. take a listen to this. >> after having read and reread and sifted and tested this mass

of information which came before us, i've come to the conclusion that richard m. nixon has beyond a reasonable doubt committed impeachable offenses, which in my judgment are of such sufficient magnitude that he should be removed from office. >> that gentleman's name is representative lawrence hogan, and i believe he is the father of the current governor of maryland, larry hogan, if i'm not wrong. so, it is possible that when people see the evidence, they come to the conclusion that the president has committed high crimes and misdemeanors. so that's high crimes and misdemeanors. but what i want to ask you about, jill, is the people around richard nixon. because not a few of them went to prison. can you just remind folks of who around nixon wound up not on the impeachment truck but on the going to jail truck? >> well, it was a big group of people who went to jail. it was his white house console, john dean, who also cooperated with us and was -- i'm waiting for the john dean of this

scandal to come forward, and it may already be the whistle-blower. it could be mr. taylor from the state department, in addition, his attorney general, john mitchell, went to jail, his chief of staff went to jail, mr. haldeman. his chief domestic adviser went to jail. there were a big cast of characters that went to jail because they committed crimes, and they did it because he set a tone that it was all okay. i am above the law, and whatever i do cannot be criminal. we have clear evidence that donald trump, abetted by william barr, is in exactly the same position of i'm invincible, i can do anything. he has publicly stated that i have total authority to do whatever i want, and that was the audition memo that attorney general barr wrote to get the job. so, we're in really a big fix here because the government has become completely lawless, and

they must be held accountable. that is essential. and i believe, like representative hogan, that facts matter. and i believe that even the most loyal republicans who are now standing silent -- they may not be coming out for impeachment, but they aren't defending this terrible threat to national security, in fact, to world security, because by not giving the equipment that was necessary to protect ukraine, they are leaving ukraine vulnerable to russian further incursions, and that's a terrible thing. >> yeah. i mean, even mitt romney, and mitt romney, who, you know, corrine, i will remind folks, he did that humiliating audition, where he sat for dinner with donald trump to try to become secretary of state. the irony being, had he actually gotten the job, the likelihood is that mitt romney wouldn't have done what mike pompeo has done. >> exactly right. >> wouldn't have been willing to go around selling these crazy conspiracy theories to prove russia innocent and wouldn't have been willing to ignore subpoenas. but he'd be much more likely to

do the right thing. this is what he wrote on twitter. he said, "when the only american citizen trump singles out for china's investigation is his political opponent in the midst of the democratic nomination process, it strains credulity to suggest that it is anything other than politically motivated." so there is a chance there are some other lawrence hogans, maybe. >> i think that's right. i think republicans, senate republicans in particular, because we know the ones, the republicans who support donald trump in the house, they're all like die-hards. they're the ones who are out there. it's the senate republicans that we really kind of have to key in on, and they've been pretty quiet, right? they've been hiding, except for ben sasse and as you mentioned, mitt romney. and i think that's probably why mitt romney didn't become secretary of state. i think donald trump knew that. because what does donald trump want, right? he wants loyalty, which is what he's getting from pompeo, you know, what he's getting from pence. and it's a one-way street with donald trump. he will throw them under the bus, as he tried today do with pence -- >> yes.

>> -- after that press meeting where he was just kind of like, you should go look at pence's -- >> look at his phone! >> -- his phone, yeah. and threw him under the bus. so, this is where we are. and republicans have to really think about this. they have to think, are they really going to really grab onto this wagon, this unstable wagon that trump is having now, who is a one kind of doing this, you know, this kind of war room on his own, hell-bent on doing it, and it's a twitter deck, and it's really, that's it, and watching cable news tv. and this is where we are right now. i mean, republicans really have to step up here. and you know, the other thing, too, is we don't know how this is going to end up. we've never been in this place before with impeachment on national security. so, we just -- this is unchartered territory for him. >> yeah, absolutely. and barbara mcquade, i want to come back. between what corrine and jill wine-banks has said, there are a number of people allowing

themselves to become corrupted along with trump. and nixon's example is nixon didn't go to prison, but a whole lot of people around him went to prison because people were willing to commit the crime for him, help him do what he wanted done. once you've done it, he may not have liability under that doj memo, but you might. and i wonder if when you look at the fact that the attorney general of the united states is flying around the world attempting to prove this conspiracy theory that it was ukraine, not russia, that attacked our election, when you have the state department, the head of the state department, our secretary of state participating on the call, lying to the american people about being on the call in which donald trump is pressuring a foreign government to help him with an election in which he's committing a crime, for which apparently he can't be prosecuted right now, where you have senior white house officials hiding the evidence of transcripts of donald trump's calls in a place that they're not supposed to be, in a high-security server, when you have foreign diplomats pressuring ukraine, essentially trying to strongarm them to help

donald trump with this conspiracy theory investigations in exchange for aid -- i could go on and on and on, the number of people who are participating. do any of these people, barbara, face potential legal liability? can any of these people pretend, as the white house and the secretary of state are pretending, that they don't have to listen to subpoenas, that they, like trump, are above the law? >> no, joy. any one of these people could be charged with a crime, as we saw, as jill explained in the watergate scandal. you know, whenever you've got a public corruption investigation, even at just the garden variety, the kind of cases that i was involved with, when you approach people, you would often tell them, look, you can be a witness or you're going to be a defendant in this case. the choice is yours. and already, i think we're seeing people making that calculus. kurt volker resigning abruptly last friday and agreeing to come testify and bring those text messages, which are incredibly damning. i have seen cases charged on far less, where they are talking

about the scheme and the scandal. i think gordon sunlin has extreme exposure based on what is said in those. i think bill taylor is someone at the state department who looks like somebody who wanted to do the right thing. he is someone who is going to face that decision of do i want to be a witness or do i want to be a defendant? and i think in the coming weeks, we are going to see some people choose to be witnesses so that they don't become defendants, and we're going to learn more about this scandal. >> right. i mean, maya, when you look at one of the other previous -- there have been so many -- previous trump scandals, this attempt, which is also around ukraine, to try to force there to be a peace deal. remember this peace deal that paul manafort and michael flynn and others were trying to pitch. because again, it's all about getting russia right. it's all about getting them off the hook for what they did in 2016, getting them back in the g7. this seems to be the constant theme. pretty much everybody, except for the son-in-law, kushner, that participated in these attempts to strong-arm ukraine into a peace deal with russia,

so russia would be cleaned up, are in jail. paul manafort, who was playing ball with the pro former russian president and the black book who got exposed, who is now the center of the conspiracy theory, in jail. you've got michael flynn on his way to being sentenced for it. you've got roger stone on his way to eventually being sentenced. you go on and on and on, the people who were a part of the original russiagate scandal, most of them are in prison or headed there. so, then the template is for donald trump's friends and associates and those obedient to him -- he may not go to jail. we don't know what's going to happen to thhim, but they might >> and remember one of the things donald trump was doing quite publicly, which was equally disturbing and lawless, is what we're seeing now, is dangling pardons to hold in loyalty. and i think that's part of why we see people like -- i think corrine's absolutely right -- donald trump threw pence under the bus, but pence got right back on it this week by

defending him. >> it's so true. >> so, the calculus is still i think so far absolute power corrupts absolutely. and while i don't think it can last for all the reasons we've already heard, and certainly, i think there's going to be a lot of folks who have real concerns right now today, even if they don't admit it, that they, too, will not only be under the bus, but the bus is going to roll over them more than once. what that means, though, for the rest of us, is watching william barr in particular. you know, we should call this out. the fact that we are hearing that he in particular may have been directly involved with obstructing urgent and credible complaints that came to the department of justice through the lawful channels -- this is two trump appointees -- as independent oversight lawyers, general counsel and cia and the inspector general, saying this is urgent and credible, and

somehow, under the william barr doj, this kind of disappearing and denying oversight from congress. so, this is the kind of thing that right now, you know, the wagons are still circling, but i do think that it's impossible, impossible for congress not to go very hard on impeachment inquiry and look at william barr and pence and pompeo as part of this explicitly because they appear from everything that we're seeing publicly to be quite complicit. >> right. and elizabeth holtzman, former congresswoman holtzman, if you were sitting right now on the house judiciary committee -- we just had david jolly, former republican congressman, said they were certain to have a date certain of impeachment on trump, but also on vice president pence, also of william barr, also of mike pompeo, and say this is all happening, folks. you are invited to come down and testify. if you don't show up, you're

also going to be held in contempt of congress. would you do that? would you start holding people in immediate contempt? or what would you do? what would you advise democrats to do right now? >> well, i wouldn't bring impeachment proceedings against the vice president, because that might stop prevent proceedings against the president. no republicans are going to come along if nancy pelosi's going to be the next president. so, you have to really think about that carefully. i mean, that's one of the consequences of that. one of the reasons that we were able to impeach richard nixon is that gerald ford had been picked to replace spiro agnew and was the vice president. so when nixon was removed, there still was a republican president. contrary to what donald trump says, this is not a coup. impeachment is not a coup. you replace the president with someone of the same party. if you don't have someone of the same party there, then that becomes problematic. so, i'm very concerned about that kind of move, but it's clear that pence was deeply involved, so how do you hold him accountable? it may be criminal liability

after trump is out of office and after the republicans are out of office in 2020. i don't know the answer, but the fact of the matter is, right now, deadlines are not a good idea. we don't know what information is going to come out. dominos are falling. this is unraveling. we saw that happen in watergate. now we have possibly a second whistle-blower coming forward. not only did we have cia general counsel refer this matter to the justice department, refer the whistle-blower's complaint to the justice department or -- i don't know if it was a formal complaint, but complaint to the justice department, but the council for the national security council joined in that. so we had two midlevel bureaucrats saying that what the whistle-blower was saying was so serious and outrageous that it required a criminal referral. this was criminal matter to them on the face of it. you have now the attorney general's justice department

fixing this. two attorneys general under nixon were convicted of crimes, not just mitchell, but his successor. so barr better be thinking about what's going to happen to him. what barr did was also to deep six this, just like patrick gray. he was also involved in watergate. d-6, important materials that should have seen the light of day. so, we have a complicit government, justice department, state department, the heads of it are engaged in what may be obstruction of justice and other kinds of criminal behavior, and the president of the united states. i think adam schiff is doing the right thing in the right way. they have to move deliberately, promptly, quickly, but they can't set deadlines, artificial deadlines won't work. >> let me go around and just get everyone's take on that. i'll start with you, jill wine-banks. but here's the challenge. if, for instance, donald trump -- you know, it's hard to imagine 20 republicans having enough courage to vote to convict, to be honest, even if they were given multiple

different counts where they could vote yes on some and no on others. it's very hard to imagine it, but let's say that happened. if mike pence were to become head of state, mike pence is as deeply involved as donald trump is, so you really don't change anything if mike pence is in place and if all of the other people that were involved, all of the conspirators remain in place, and you still particularly have william barr, who is somebody who is completely now out of the realm of being the public's lawyer and just acting as -- we just heard elizabeth holtzman say, to deep six investigations against trump, and to raise investigations against his enemies. how does anything change if donald trump is no longer at the top of this sort of, you know, web of corruption, but pence is then at the top of it? >> well, i think a couple things happen. one, the american voters will actually see, and i remain sort of a pollyanna that i believe facts ultimately matter and that, in fact, even 20 republican senators might come

to their senses and say, the country is at risk if i don't vote this way, and the facts are clear. and i think in this case, we have very clear facts. there is -- and liz and i talked about this before the show -- you could impeach pence first. the problem is that donald trump then has to name his replacement. but i think that maybe a deal could be struck where he was told, if you don't make a replacement, then nancy pelosi does become president. and so, you are going to be impeached and convicted. you need to make this replacement so that the proper party remains in power. i also just want to add, i'm hearing all of these watergate phrases of deep six and throwing under the bus, and there's also another one of circling the wagons, which is relevant here, where the white house circled the wagons and said, we're going to feed them somebody. we have to give up somebody in order to -- if we give them the

hors d'oeuvre, maybe they won't go for the main course. and that's what's happening here. and there was also a rush into the prosecution offices. it was who's going to get the best deal by being the first in? and you had john dean and jeb mcgruder running entire offices, saying, i'll cooperate, i'll cooperate. and i think that's going to start happening. and once we get to that level of cooperation, the dominos are going to fall, and it's going to happen fast. >> your thoughts. >> yeah. so, look, we have pompeo, who is an enabler. we have pence who is a partner in crime. we have barr, who is doing the cover-up. and they're all going down with the ship. they're not going to take that exit ramp. they're going to stay on that ship with donald trump. and here's the thing, if donald -- i think, i believe, if donald trump goes down, he's going to take everybody with him. he's not going to let barr or

pence or pompeo come through this alive. he will literally take them out. so when it comes to democrats, this is the second thing i wanted to say -- when it comes to democrats, i think this is the difference between mueller and where we are today where we're actually in an impeachment inquiry. with mueller, the mueller probe, mueller wasn't leaking, right? it was just one side of the argument that we were hearing, which was donald trump and all of his enablers and all of his, you know, folks who are following him really hard. and so, they were muddying the waters, and we had nothing to really push back. >> right. >> this time, the ukraine -- the ukraine thing is very clear cut. we know exactly what donald trump did. he admits it. his lawyer admits it. and so, it's just easier to see. and now, democrats have the upper hand on the messaging. >> yeah, maya. >> yeah, i agree. so, first of all, all of these points are important. i think what's critical to remember here is congress does

actually have a deadline, because if it doesn't want to be perceived as having a coup, it does have to get this done in some period of time so it doesn't look like it's influencing the 2020 election. of course, this is about the rule of law, not that, but that means that all of these people we're talking about -- pompeo, pence -- they're fact witnesses, and they're fact witnesses because they're going to not corrupt -- they're going to obstruct congress as they have been, which does mean congress has to be very aggressive on a timeline and do exactly what i think adam schiff has indicated and nancy pelosi, which is, since you're going to obstruct us, we will add them as articles of impeachment. and as articles of impeachment, we will take a vote and we will check all of the facts and information with the american public so that they can also make the decisions they have to make in a democracy. >> right. and you know, barbara, i do want to ask if you think that at some point -- because even if congress were to try to hold somebody, you know, to

obstructi obstruction, right, this would then also go to william barr. we know he's the sort of mitch mcconnell of the justice department, where he's the grim reaper for anything that might hurt donald trump. i wonder if for him, the threat of potentially being john mitchell, of potentially being prosecuted, if, in fact, the democrat becomes the next president of the united states and there's a real attorney general in place, rather than what he -- whatever it is that he considers himself to be -- whether then that becomes an incentive for him to behave any differently. >> yeah, once upon a time, i would have thought yes, but he has made it clear that he doesn't care about his legacy. we're all going to die some time, and he seems to be bent on pushing president trump's agenda. some things that have been very surprising to me about his role is his personal travel overseas to try to gather evidence to undermine the origins of the russia investigation, this narrowing of the referral to the public integrity section, to look at trump's conduct solely through the lens of campaign

finance violations and not to consider other crimes, which is always done, such as bribery or extortion. and then the last thing -- don't forgot that several months ago, president trump gave william barr, the attorney general, the sole authority to decide what matters can be declassified over the director of national intelligence, an incredibly unusual order that now seems a little bit clearer in the rearview mirror, that he's the one who gets to decide what the world sees and what remains hidden. >> and last question then to you, elizabeth holtzman. who do you want to see? if you're the next person to be called, if you are now magically the head of the house judiciary committee, who do you call? >> well, that's a tough question. there are a lot of people out there. i think there's some -- i think we have to pin down a little bit more information, if we can, about the whistle-blower's complaints.

but the area that hasn't been totally tamped down is the issue of the withholding of the armments and the motivation for that. trump has never come up with a satisfactory reason as to why he restored the arm shipment -- >> arms money. >> -- the arms money, and that needs to be explored just a little bit more, because it's quite clear that this was all a facade to force ukraine to investigate trump -- i mean, biden, and come up with false information. i mean, he was killing two birds with one stone. he was also placating putin and also helping himself politically. this is an outrage, and it goes back to watergate, because what was the cover-up in watergate? it was the misuse of the powers of government to influence an election and to cover up that influence, and we're seeing the exact same thing happen all over again, and they will pay a price. now -- >> joy, can i just say, too -- >> yeah?

>> adam schiff should have bill thompson in there right away, because the people who are clearly willing to do the right thing and tell the truth in, and then judiciary, should go after barr. >> you mean taylor. >> taylor, sorry. >> before we go, let me find out, jill, what's your pin? >> my pin is trump morphing into nixon. >> oh, wow. >> wow. >> on the day that he left on marine one after resigning. >> wow. his hair looks a lot better in that pin, though. it looks like really -- it's got sort of a flow to it there. it's, yeah, it's quite fabulous. thank you very much. i want to also mention just for our viewers, we did list -- we reached out to a bunch of senators to try to get comment on donald trump urging china to investigate the besideens. we've put the list up there. you can see it's quite a long list. our booking team and producers have been very busy trying to get a senator, anyone with any courage, to comment about donald trump on camera urging china to investigate the bidens, which he's now added to what could be impeachable offenses. unfortunately, we couldn't get

anyone to respond. but any of them is always welcome to come on. we would like to urge any republican senator who would like to come on this show, you are welcome to come by. we're quite local. you can come right by in d.c. we'd love to have you on. elizabeth holtzman, jill wine-banks, barbara mcquade, karine jean-pierre, thank you very much. and another whistle-blower may really have trump fuming because it involves the one thing he's tried to keep hidden from you, the taxpayer, for years. you, the taxpayer, for years. ♪

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there's been a report that there is another whistle-blower complaint about efforts to influence the audit of the president's taxes. have you seen that complaint? >> is it accurate to say that there has been an individual who has stepped forward and made some allegations, and the legal counsel for the ways and means committee, doug letter, who has argued in front of the supreme court, they are proceeding on the basis of trying to interview the individual. >> one of the many things that may be keeping donald trump up at night is the concept of the whistle-blower. there's the first one, a cia employee who flagged to congress that trump pressured ukraine to dig up dirt on joe biden and root around for proof of trump and giuliani's pro-russia conspiracy theories. and now, potentially a second whistle-blower on ukraine. another intelligence official

who "the new york times" says could come forward soon, citing two people briefed on the matter. and then, there's the whistle-blower that must eat at donald trump the most, because this one has quietly raised the alarm about donald trump's tax returns. according to the "washington post," an irs official reported that they were told that at least one treasury department political appointee attempted to improperly interfere with the annual audit of the president's or the vice president's tax returns. it's a process that's supposed to be protected from political interference. and joining me now is congressman gregory meeks of new york, the democratic senior member of the financial services committee. and congressman, thank you so much for being here. >> good being with you, joy. >> so, let's talk about this for a moment. so, it does now appear that there is yet another whistle-blower who could come forward, potentially, and challenge -- and this is not saying release the tax returns but saying that there was some interference with the way that donald trump was audited. your thoughts.

>> my thoughts is, i think there is going to be a wave of patriotic americans who are going to start coming forward, because there's been a lot of things that have taken place behind the scenes and the cover-up has begun by this president. so, i think -- you know, for example, i just did an op ed not too long ago. if you remember a year ago, there was a group of folks called anonymous, that they were trying to hold things from within. well, a year later, you see that this president would not be able to be contained from within, and so, folks are going to start stepping up and start talking about what they've seen behind the scenes, because they realize it's time for it to be courageous and to be patriotic. so, i think that you'll hear things about this income tax as well as various other pieces will start coming through because people are going to start standing up. >> right. we know that donald trump sues very easily and he's sued to try to stop his own organizations that have access to his tax returns and his financial records from coming forward when they're subpoenaed. we now know via "the new york times" that the treasury department's inspector general

is investigating how the department handled a congressional request for trump's tax returns with treasury secretary steven mnuchin, has refused to turn over. so here we have him refusing a congressional request. we know in 2019, they received unsolicited communication from an employee about the tax returns and inappropriate influence. just on the question of the way that the trump administration officials respond to subpoenas and respond to oversight from congress, is there anything -- and i think you probably get asked this all the time, that congress can actually do? because we know that the attorney general would never, you know, submit anything against them, if you are to hold them in criminal contempt. what can congress do to force these guys to comply with your subpoenas? >> well, what we are going to do, i think that you'll find that other than subpoenas, there's going to be contempt proceedings put forward. but also, then it becomes apaer apparent that what this administration is doing is a cover-up. and all of those who are

complicit in it, as in your last segment -- you know, you heard about a number of individual, staffers and others who went to jail. those who are complicit in the cover-up will then be taken down also. so, i think it's time for them. they're still going to have the decision to make a part themselves and how history depicts them also. so, we are not going to sit back and just say he's not doing anything. it then becomes part of a cover-up, an obstruction of justice of which we then make include therein in an article of impeachment, once we get all of the facts that come in. and that's where i think that they'd better start complying with what we're doing, because the committees are very serious, congress is very serious about these very serious events. it's a very serious time in which we live in. >> and could you foresee impeachment then spreading to the vice president as has been suggested on this show earlier today to the secretary of state and to william barr.

>> i think that, yes, i think that what happens is that all of them will have to testify at some point. that's what it looks like to me. as i look at pompeo, he made a statement when he was talking about hillary clinton. he said it would be malpractice for them not to have hillary clinton testify, and she did, when they went after her. so, it would be malpractice, i think, on our part if we get to that point, they refuse to comply, they hide evidence, that we don't subpoena them to come in to testify and see what they have to say and/or if they tell the truth or not. >> and lastly, as a new yorker, i can't not let you comment on mr. giuliani. do you think that, you know, in the case of bill clinton, people went after his law license -- do you think that given his behavior, rudy giuliani should have his law license challenged for the way that he's behaved as donald trump's attorney? >> well, i think that if you look at giuliani, he's falling into the same as dean under the

nixon administration. he seems to be one of the chief individuals to bring in the project of cover-up, you know. and i think that the acts that he's made is probably criminal. >> new york congressman gregory meeks. thank you so much for your time. >> my pleasure. >> thank you. and coming up, trump world really, really wants to talk about how scandalous it is for senior politicians' children to make money overseas. okay. we'll get right on that after this quick break. okay we'll get right on that after this quick break [upbeat action music]

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(pilot) we're going to be on the tarmac for another 45 minutes or so. what's fascinating about the way that you write about russia is that they have the same resource and this dependence of oil on their resource, and they're in a struggle between not wanting the west to control them, wanting to control it themselves, and then the things they've got to do in order to keep control, the things putin is willing to do. >> that's right. and i think that's for me why i ended up writing the book, because as you know, i'm sort of obsessed with russia's attack on our election in 2016. and i was trying to think about it from russia's perspective. >> rachel maddow's amazing must-read new book "blowout" is in stores right now! i had the chance to sit down with rachel this week and get

into it and read it and it's amazing. make sure that you tune in tomorrow to "a.m. joy" for our full interview. doesn't it look amazing? you will not want to miss that. you see how amazing it looks, so don't miss it. coming up next, we will tell you all about the irony of the trump kids complaining about nepotism. day. you take dayquil severe liquicaps and crush it. dayquil severe. the daytime, coughing, aching, stuffy-head, fever, sore throat, power through your day, medicine. but super poligrip gives him a tight seal. snacking can mean that pieces get stuck under mike's denture. to help block out food particles. so he can enjoy the game. super poligrip.

must be hot out there, huh? not especially. -[ slurping continues ] -what you drinking?

gasoline. right, but i mean, what's in the cup? gasoline. [ slurping ] for those who were born to ride, there's progressive. welcome back to "a.m. joy." it's one of those mornings where we are watching a ton of news. e we are watching a ton of news. he didn't speak the language. he didn't know anything about

the industry he was in. he didn't have any discernible duties, and he's getting paid $50,000 a month? and then he gets $1.5 billion from china? >> the whole thing is ridiculous, shawn, whether it's the biden scandal and that this has gone on. beyond that, look at the stuff going on in their personal lives. you think they'd let donald trump jr. get away with that? >> rest in peace, irony. trump world is still pushing its conspiracy theories about hunter biden and begging the media to get involved, please! but as connor freesdorf puts it succinctly in "the atlantic," if hunter biden are fair game, so are trump's kids! let's bring in elizabeth spires, former editor in chief of "the new yorker" and david frum, senior editor for "the atlantic" and author of "trumpocracy." you have ivanka trump getting chinese trademarks for voting machines, april 2017, three new the day she met china's president, xi jinping. you have ivanka trump getting six new trademarks, including

the voting machines, donald trump jr. in indonesia kicking off sales of luxury condos. you've got all of these wonderful things donald trump is selling, all sorts of businesses all over the world that he's selling for money, money, money. and his kids are involved in all of it. what is happening here? >> well, when you see poor eric and don junior, you realize there are buy valves with more self-awareness than the trump children. the biggest trump next-generation scandal is one that didn't quite come off. in the period of the transition, between the election and inauguration, jared kushner met with senior officers of the ainge bang financial concern in china with a view to get hundreds of millions of dollars to rescue his desperately failing project on fifth avenue. that was exposed in time by "the new york times," and so the deal did not happen. but this was not a $50,000 pay day. this was not a $50 million pay day. this was a multiple hundreds of millions of dollar pay day. no one has to defend hunter biden. i think hunter biden should be

out there with a statement saying i made mistakes, and i undertake now -- i'm taking a job at -- i'm going to go work in kansas city, do trust in estates work or something that he's not going to in any way embarrass his father. presidential families should behave themselves in more circumspect way. but the trump family is so far and away the most corrupt in american presidential history that you really can't think of who's in second place. >> yeah. i mean, you know, our friend, chris matthews, reports them as sort of the romanovs. you look at jared kushner, elizabeth, who he got a $90 million pay day -- a real estate company part owned by jared kushner has received a $90 million in foreign funding from an opec offshore vehicle since he entered the white house as a senior adviser to his father-in-law, donald trump, and the investment has flown in from overseas to the company cadre which kushner works in as an equity envoy to the u.s. you had jared kushner running around the world, as david mentioned, looking for money to rescue 666 fifth avenue, which he paid $1 billion for, overpaid

for it, needed a rescue, was running around, suddenly, qatar gets cut off from the united states when they say, no, we're not giving you the money. all sorts of goings on. they are almost inviting us to look into this by saying that presidential children should not be making money overseas. this is all they do. >> yeah. i mean, yeah, corruption is a trump family value, and that's part of the reason why jared fits in so nicely with the family. i think they all believe that ethics are disposal, but to hear trump talking about corruption in government and getting rid of it is sort of like hearing al capone talk about mob activity in chicago. you know, it would require them to completely change the way that they operate and who they are. and this is who they are. >> well, and the thing is, is that if we were to, david, get into an investigation of family members making money, the trump family, the adult children, earn money only because of their surname. their surname is trump. therefore, they earn money. it's not as if they have started separate businesses. for the hunter biden thing to be equivalent, he would have had to have been an unpaid adviser

inside the obama white house and also sitting on the board of that company in ukraine. >> look, when this is all over, i do think we are going to need a stricter ethic about what presidential families should do. there's still time to save sasha and malia from a mistake. and hunter biden is putting down a good marker. this shouldn't happen. what he did wasn't right, especially since has father had formal authority over ukraine. that was not right. but we're into a different warp speed with the trump family. and what's sad actually about the trump children, who are terribly broken people -- it raises a moral question -- like what do good people do when bad people get in trouble? that when donald trump jr. talks about hunter biden's, you know, disorderly personal life, that's all true, but donald trump jr.'s personal life is disorderly, and people refrain from commenting on it because it would be cruel. >> right. >> these -- the trump children think they are actually businesspeople. they think what businesspeople do is go around the world and take payoffs for leasing their

name. actually, businesspeople, when they earn rewards, it's because they've taken a risk commensurate with the reward. and selling your name to a corrupt foreign entity is not risk-taking. >> yeah, and you know, what are their skills, elizabeth, that you've been able to discern? because it does seem that what the trump children are good at is selling their surname and selling access to their dad and taking unpaid jobs in the white house where they also sell access to their dad and pretend to be diplomats. what are their actual skills in terms of their own abilities as businesspeople? >> well, you have to consider, they've never had to do anything else, you know. they've always worked in the family businesses. they've never understood the constraints of a normal job, like you know, millions of americans do. so, this is actually probably the only thing that they know how to do. and they don't consider it abnormal. they know people who are in an elite class of businesspeople and children of businesspeople who have done the same thing. so, they look around and they don't think that this is

exceptional, and they don't fully understand that things that they may have been allowed to get away with in the business sector they can't get away with now that dad is in office. >> yeah. well, they think they can. it's interesting they think that his immunity to prosecution, it all translates onto them. tiffany's in law school, though. maybe she'll be the one to save the family brand. david frum, elizabeth spires, thank you both very much. coming up at the top of the hour, how donald trump's conspiracy theories launched this whole ukraine mess. but next, reverend al sharpton joins me to talk about the real rudy giuliani. rudy giuliani.

>> i you're the worst mayor the city's ever seen. you're the biggest criminal in the city. >> hey, john, what kind of hole are you in there? sounds like you're in a little hole. john? are you okay? you're breathing funny. >> no, i'm not john. i'm sick and you cut me off on medicaid several times, too. but i guess you don't give a damn about that either. >> stlz something really wrong with you, john. stay on the line. we'll take your name and your number and send you psychiatric help, because you seriously need it. >> even before he was trolling for dirt to help donald trump's re-election campaign and

appearing in weird tv appearances, and before he was labeled america's mayor after 9/11, rudy giuliani was infamous to new yorkers for his drastic cuts to social services, and particularly to black new yorkers who watched him preside over some of the most notorious incidents of police brutality in the city's history. my next guest knows the real story of rudy giuliani very well. the reverend al sharpton joins me now. rev, thank you so much for being here with me. you know, a lot of people think of 9/11 when they think of rudy giuliani, but as somebody who lived in new york at that time, i think about patrick dorisman, the guy who committed no crime, was shot by police and rudy giuliani released his arrest records. i think of amadou diallo being shot down by police and rudy giuliani having no empathy for these men when they were killed. which giuliani is the real one? people seem so shocked that he seems so weird now. >> i am really taken back when people are surprised at the passion and the level of real

acrimony he has toward the enemies of donald trump, when that's the rudy giuliani we've always known. he and i have always been on political opposite sides, and although we've been cordial of late, he knows that i know that we are still adamantly passionate and will do what we have to do about what we believe. and he was a right-wing, very conservative, and did not mind dealing with standing up and saying whatever he wanted to say, no matter who it offended, when he was the mayor. when we dealt with cuts to social services, as indicated in the clip you played, when we dealt with police brutality matters or civil rights matters, he had no problem telling people he wasn't meeting with them, he wasn't talking, he wasn't going against the police. he led a police rally when david dinkins, the only black mayor we've had in the city, was the mayor. and they were out there using all kinds of racial language,

and he was the spokesperson of the mayor, never denounced that. so, the rudy giuliani that people are trying to act like they're shocked at seeing now, that's who he is! whether you agree with him or not, i must say, he's been consistent in terms of those of us that's known him. that's the rudy we marched on. >> yeah. i mean, i'm glad you mentioned mayor dinkins, because in a lot of ways, his takeover of new york city after david dinkins is sort of equivalent to the way that donald trump has been sort of a reaction to president obama. >> absolutely. david dinkins was elected in '89 talking about the gorgeous mosaic bringing the city together. he was defeated in '93 by rudy giuliani. rudy giuliani, who benefited from a report on the crown heights riots that condemned the dinkins administration in large part, even though it exonerated a lot of the activists that they claim were there, weren't there. but they were very, in my opinion, very unfair in the

report of david dinkins, and they had put on the ballot in staten island that they could vote to secede from the city. that drove up his support. he came in exactly like donald trump came in after the first black president who ran on we must come together, not black or white, red or blue. it's the same thing played local that played later nationally. and giuliani reined in, i do not play to interests, i'm not bowing, i'm going to stand up to these guys, the al sharptons will not run this city. same way donald trump is sitting around tweeting and vetting now. it is the same act, different performers, bigger stage, same results. >> and almost the same number of marriages, i think, as well, too, because there's a whole lot that they have in common. i have to quickly switch to this because i have to take advantage of you being here. there's been a lot of talk. a lot of people are very angry about the sentence for amber guyger, who's a former police officer who was sentenced to ten

years in prison for busting into the home of botham jean and killing him. what do you make of this as not only a civil rights activist, but as a pastor, to this whole amazing grace moment, where the family forgives, which i think the family has a perfect right to do? but there's a larger narrative that sort of suggests that that is what black folks have to do, that when there's police violence, the only response that's appropriate among african-americans is grace. >> well, first of all, i think that the sentence is certainly much lower than what meets the crime. to get ten years for murder. this man was murdered in his own house watching television and eating ice cream. i think it is absolutely inappropriate and unjustifiable. she should have been given more time. the forgiving part -- i understand the family. as you know, a man once stabbed me, a white male while i was leading a martial against the racial violence in the bensonhurst section of brooklyn. i forgave the man, but the man

still had to be held accountable for the crime. and what disturbed me more than the family or the young brother that wanted to not be part of the poison that killed his brother and wanted to forgive the killer of his brother because people grieve the way they want, and i think that we must respect that. what got me, joy, is the judge and the lady in the court that was a court officer that was combing this woman's hair and the judge that hugged her and gave her a bible. you are officers of the court. you didn't lose anybody. there is nothing for you to forgive. it's sending the signal that the criminal justice system comforts murderers, whereas if the brother wanted to forgive, the family wanted to forgive, that's one thing. you're there to uphold the law, and this person had been convicted of murder. >> yep. absolutely. well, i want to, first of all, thank you for being here because i know this is your busiest day

of the weekend. not only do you have your saturday morning meeting, but you also will have "politicsnation" today, this afternoon, which everybody needs to tune in and watch. and i also want to say happy birthday. >> thank you. >> because you just had a big birthday. >> and thank you for coming to the birthday party and doing a little dancing with me. people didn't know you've got moves. >> i've got to keep up. >> you've got moves, joy! >> i did my best to keep up with reverend al sharpton, my big brother, reverend al. thank you very much. appreciate you. >> thank you. more "a.m. joy" after the break. thank you. more "a.m. joy" after the break. sleep. our liquid has a unique botanical blend, while an optimal melatonin level means no next-day grogginess. zzzquil pure zzzs. naturally superior sleep.

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