south carolina. that is "all in" for this evening and for this week. "the rachel maddow show" starts now. >> i'm so glad you played that, ali. that was excellent. thank you for doing that. thanks to you at home for joining us as well. happy friday. happy to have you here. well, this sort of changes everything. um, one of the increasingly awkward dynamics in the impeachment proceedings against president trump is that even the president's most ardent supporters, by and large, they have already given up arguing that the president's behavior was okay, and that is perhaps inevitable, given this impeachment for this conduct. i mean, it is hard to argue that it is, you know, coolio with the constitution or with the american people or even just with republicans for a president to solicit help from a foreign government in the form of stuff he can use against his domestic political opponents. i mean, the president's supporters in the white house tried for a while to argue that it was okay that he asked for

that stuff from a foreign government because he was asking for it for free? there was no quid pro quo! they tried that for a while. it was kind of a besides-the-point argument, because it doesn't matter if you agree to trade for information to use against your political opponents at home. it doesn't matter if you give them something in exchange for it. you're just not allowed to solicit that. you're not legally allowed to ask for it at all, whether or not there's a quid pro quo. even still, though, that besides-the-point no quid proceed argument fell apart like a paper suit in the rain when we started to get mutually corroborating testimony in the impeachment inquiry that, in fact, yes, there was a quid pro quo, and the president had insisted on it personally. then, of course, the white house chief of staff just flat out admitted it to the press. so, it's just been a mess. they have had to abandon any

defense of the substance of what the president did. they really can't defend it. so, they instead tried to argue that it maybe wasn't as bad as it seems. the white house has basically confessed to it being just as bad as it seemed, so that is no longer operative. what they have evolved from thereafter -- what they involved into thereafter was this argument about the process of impeachment? inside congress, that has taken the form of republicans complaining about how the impeachment committees have been taking depositions from witnesses, even what room they've been doing it in. the room is the problem. this cockamamy argument and why it is not okay for democratic committees to use closed-door depositions with witnesses, but it is okay for republicans to have done that, i mean, it's just been kind of weak. and i think that's why it's been kind of a circus. there usually is an inverse ratio between the volume at what an argument is made and the quality of its logic.

but now tonight, it really does appear that we've kind of hit the end of the line for republicans and for the trump white house in terms of trying to argue the impeachment inquiry away. you might remember earlier this month the white house said officially in writing that the trump white house refuses to recognize the legitimacy of impeachment. as "the new york times" succinctly put it in their headline the day the white house tried to pull this off -- "white house declares war on impeachment." i mean, the basis of this claim from the trump white house was the sort of astonishing letter signed by the white house counsel, pat cipollone -- a letter to congress telling congress that the entire ad strar administration, the executive branch, would be carrying on as if impeachment wasn't happening. they would not be responding to any document requests. they would not be allowing any witness from any part of the administration to come forward and cooperate with the impeachment inquiry because the

impeachment is illegal. it's unconstitutional or illegal or very bad or something. i mean, the letter was nutball. it started off -- "i write on behalf of president donald j. trump in response to your numerous legally unsupported demands made as part of what you have labeled, contrary to the constitution, a scare, quote, impeachment inquiry." then it's sort of downhill from there. "president trump and the administration respect your unbaseless efforts to overturn the democratic process. the president and his administration cannot participate in your partisan and unconstitutional inquiry." the white house counsel went on in his letter to attack the, quote, lack of democratically accountable authorization that makes clear the illegitimate partisan purpose of this purported, scare quotes, impeachment inquiry. they won't even admit it's an

impeachment inquiry. they're saying, you're calling it that, but we know it's not. i mean, it's one thing for -- we're sort of used to the president arguing that, like on twitter or standing in front of the helicopter, but this is a lawyer. this is the white house counsel who sent this off-the-hook, cross-eyed letter to the house of representatives. and then they released it publicly, because they wanted to make clear that they incontinueded this letter to be their final word on the subject. based on this letter, nobody from any point in the administration should participate in the fake impeachment because the fake impeachment is fake. and the immediate reaction of the legal world to this letter was like, whoa, are you sure that was written by a lawyer? it was just greeted with widespread ridicule. it wasn't a particularly legal or legalish argument. but that is being put forward as the official position of the white house. and that crazy letter from the white house has now been used and cited by other government agencies in their efforts to try

to block witnesses from those agencies from testifying when they've been called to testify before the impeachment committees. for example, the department of defense referred to this crazy white house counsel letter this week when they warned the assistant secretary of defense laura cooper that she shouldn't show up and testify to the impeachment proceedings this week. the pentagon sent a lawyer to her -- excuse me, sent a letter to her lawyer the night before she was due to testify -- "this letter informs you," the lawyer, "and your client, ms. cooper, of the administrationwide direction that executive branch personnel cannot participate in the impeachment inquiry under these circumstances." and then it says, "see tab c," and what's at tab "c" is an attached copy of the crazy-pants white house counsel's letter that says, neener, neenor, neener, don't think this is real. so, this is an odd strategy. i mean, it's all odd strategy. this is the trump white house asserting the impeachment

inquiry doesn't exist, it's illegal and unconstitutional, so we're not even going to allow you to use the word. it's one thing for the white house to assert that. it's another thing for the white house counsel to assert that. but now we are seeing that crazy argument cited in writing as the basis for other government agencies telling their own officials that they shouldn't show up and testify, because the white house says the impeachment isn't real. i mean, it's a little bit nuts. i should say, federal agencies have not had great luck in trying to stop their officials from testifying to the impeachment proceedings. we've already seen eight witnesses that we know of show up to give depositions or transcribe testimony, including a bunch of current administration officials who went and gave that testimony, despite these stern letters from the white house saying, no, no, no, we said this doesn't exist. but here's the other part of this. the justice department, led by bill barr, has also been trying its own version of this in the courts. i mean, alongside the white

house's crazy letter arguing that the impeachment isn't real -- it's not a real impeachment, it's not legal, it's not constitutional. we're pretending like it's not happening. alongside that from the white house counsel's office, the actual justice department has also been arguing the same thing in court. they've been trying the court filings version of that bizarre white house letter. the justice department has been trying to argue in court that, like the white house says, this impeachment isn't real, it isn't legal, it's not really happening. well, that was ultimately destined to run into a brick wall. and tonight it has run into a brick wall. as of tonight, we have a ruling from a federal judge saying quite bluntly that what the justice department is trying to argue here is wrong. literally, that's on page two of the ruling. it's the shortest sentence i have ever seen a federal judge write. the entire sentence is "doj is wrong." it's a long ruling, 75 pages, from beryl howell, who is the chief judge of the federal district court in washington.

but it really rings clear as a bell. permit me. "the department of justice claims that existing law bars disclosure to the congress of grand jury information. doj is wrong. in carrying out the weighty constitutional duty of determining whether impeachment of the president is warranted, congress need not redo the nearly two years of efforts spent on the special counsel's investigation, nor do they need to risk being misled by witnesses who may have provided information to the grand jury and the special counsel that varies from what those witnesses may tell the judiciary committee." the committee's application for an order authorizing the release of grand jury materials related to the special counsel investigation is granted." so, this is congress winning and the justice department, the position of the trump administration, losing. and there's two major findings here. one is that the judge finds that the impeachment proceeding is a real thing! it's legal. it exists.

she says, "contrary to the doj's position, an impeachment trial is, in fact, a judicial proceeding under rule 6e." the reference to rule 6e there means that one of the major consequences of this ruling is that all of the stuff that is redacted from the mueller report as grand jury material, that is all going to be given to the impeachment proceedings now. that is all going to be given to congress. the actual redacted words from the report, what's behind the black boxes, and also the underlying transcripts of grand jury testimony and exhibits that underlie those redacted portions. you might remember from watergate, the way the watergate investigation evolved, right, was that there were special prosecutors for watergate, and then ultimately, the judiciary committee in the house drew up articles of impeachment on the basis of what those special prosecutors found. well, how did that work? how did the evidence get from one place to the other? well, in watergate, the justice

department famously told the court that all the grand jury material that had been collected by watergate special prosecutors, right, all of the evidence that they had got from witnesses, talking to the grand jury about the president's behavior, about the whole watergate scandal -- all of that grand jury material collected by archibald cox and leon jaworski, the watergate special prosecutors -- justices agreed that that material collected in the investigation needs to go to congress, because congress needs to decide if this is a basis for impeaching president nixon. and in fact, that grand jury material was packaged up into what's now been called the watergate roadmap, and that watergate roadmap of grand jury material is what the judiciary committee used to draw up the impeachment articles against richard nixon, which ultimately led to his resignation. so, that's the relevant, most-recent precedent here. clear as day. when it came to this special counsel investigation, though, the bob mueller investigation,

the justice department under bill barr decided they didn't like that precedent, and they flipped and decided they wouldn't support that kind of position anymore. they would not support the grand jury material collected by special counsel mueller being handed over to congress for potential impeachment the way that happened in watergate. the justice department said, yeah, we know we did this that way before, but we're not going to do it this time. well, judge howell addresses that in a sort of kidney punch of a footnote here. she says, "when queried about reconciling doj's current position with its historical support of providing grand jury materials to congress for use in impeachment inquiries, doj responded that its position has "evolved." the judge continues -- "no matter how glibly presented an evolved legal position may be estopped." and consider yourself estopped.

so, attorney general bill barr tried to make it so congress couldn't see the evidence that was collected by robert mueller. this judge in this ruling today says, actually, yeah, congress gets that. now, the other important implication here is that there's been this attempted argument among the supporters of the president in congress, and you've seen it picked up some in conservative media -- there's been this argument, this sort of pseudo legal argument that maybe the house could have a more legal impeachment proceeding. maybe the house could be doing something even more proper if they took a full vote authorizing the impeachment. all right? that's been part of what the president's defenders have argued -- unless the house takes a full vote supporting this impeachment inquiry, then it's not a real impeachment inquiry. it's been a weird claim all along, because honestly, if nancy pelosi organized a full house vote on impeachment inquiry, she'd get a full house

vote on it. it's just weird that they've been arguing, she must do that, or it isn't real. the judge today dispatches that once and for all. she says the argument in favor of this idea that it's not a real impeachment unless there's a full house vote, she calls that, "cherry-picked and incomplete," and she says more significantly, this so-called test has no textural support in the u.s. constitution or the governing rules of the house or rule 6e, which is the rule that concerns handing over grand jury materials to congress. more broadly, she says, the white house has brought this on itself. "the white house's stated policy of noncooperation with the impeachment inquiry weighs heavily in favor of disclosing these materials. congresses need to access grand jury material relevant to potential impeachable conduct by a president is heightened when the executive branch willfully obstructs channels for accessing other relevant evidence," meaning the case for letting this stuff go to the congress wouldn't be nearly so strong if

you weren't completely obstructing everything they're trying to do in this lawful impeachment inquiry. so, yeah, you can say you're beating your chest and calling it fake and all these things you're going to do, but ultimately, this is a court order, and you're not helping yourself, and that material is going to congress for them to consider as part of your impeachment. now, in terms of what the impeachment committees are actually going to get when they get this material, judge howell has ordered that it be handed over by october 30th. presumably, there could be an appeal that stops that from happening on such a tight time frame. but if they do get what judge howell is ordering them to get, judge howell goes out of her way to highlight a number of subjects that are addressed in this material that congress doesn't yet have that she's now ordering that they should get. she goes out of her way to address subjects in this material that would seem to be quite relevant to these impeachment proceedings against president trump, including, as she describes it, "evidence

suggesting that then-candidate trump may have received advance information about russia's interference activities." she also describes indications that, "then-candidate trump may have had advanced knowledge of damaging leaks of documents illegally obtained through hacks by the russians." she's like, that's what's in the grand jury material, evidence about trump having advanced knowledge about what the russians were doing. so, if you're thinking about impeaching him in terms of foreign election interference, you're going to want to see this! so, i mean, there's some major takeaways from this ruling. the first, as you can see clear as day, plastered on the front page of "the new york times" tonight -- "the impeachment inquiry is legal, judge rules." which means that republicans were already reduced to these process arguments about how the impeachment inquiry is somehow unfair to them. they are now going to have to try to find something else. just arguing that this isn't a real impeachment, that's going

to be -- that's no longer going to fly. it's no longer going to fly in congress, but it's no longer going to fly for the white house to use this as their justification to try to block executive branch officials from testifying in response to duly authorized congressional subpoenas. the judge says, no, no, no, this is legal, this is a real impeachment. but on the substance, this also means that all the redacted grand jury material from mueller's report is now going to be turned over to congress. and i mean, the judge does a good job pointing out some of that material and how it may be quite explosively related to the impeachment proceedings that are already under way. and i don't want to put too fine a point on it, because we'll see this stuff when we see it, but even if you are only interested in what the impeachment committees might be about to get on ukraine specifically -- sketchy dealings with ukraine -- since that's the heart of what trump is being impeached for, well, i mean, in volume one of the mueller report, there is stuff in that report that is

clearly about sketchy dealings in ukraine. i commend you to page 143 of volume one of the report. and now if those grand jury redactions are going to go away, congress is about to get all of that stuff about whatever these sketchy dealings are described in having to do with ukraine that mueller investigated and got material about but hasn't yet told congress because it's redacted for grand jury purposes. those redactions are going to go away. and congress is about to get all of that stuff in the midst of an impeachment inquiry that it turns out has been legal all along and is chugging along at quite a pace. i mean, not only was the house impeachment of president trump declared absolutely legal by this federal judge today, it looks like investigators running that inquiry are about to get access to a lot of new germai g potentially explosive things for those arguments. and when you have bad arguments,

you tend to lose the argument. and when your bad argument is intended to keep the truth from coming out, the truth in the end always has a way of coming out. much more to get to tonight. stay with us. much more to get to tonight. stay with us when you shop for your home at wayfair, you get more than free shipping. you get everything you need for your home at a great price,

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it has been two years since the stories of sexual predation by movie mega producer harvey weinstein burst into the public consciousness through blockbuster reporting from "the new york times" and shortly thereafter by ronan farrow at "the new yorker" magazine. whether or not weinstein's predatory behavior had been an open secret in hollywood or not, most of us don't live in hollywood. and so, what we, the public, have now seen unpool over time has had a few different layers and a few different layers of impact. at first, it's the story of harvey weinstein's perdation itself. the sexual harassment allegations and rape allegations stretching over decades, and it follows the same pattern -- allegedly isolating young women, getting them alone, women either in a position of working for weinstein or being dependent on

him as a big hollywood produceer and then the alleged behavior, just textbook sexual harassment up to and including serious allegations of serious sexual assault. the same description from all these different women over and over again -- him taking off his clothes, him exposing himself, demanding sex, demanding sexual contact of various kinds, refusing to take no for an answer, and then him allegedly retaliating against young women who managed to get away from him, managed to escape, managed to rebuff what he was trying to do. and because there was such a distinct pattern in the allegations, because the allegations stretched over such a long period of time, because it was supposedly this kind of open secret in hollywood, the reporting was really, really disturbing, right? i mean, it's a horror show in terms of the individual encounters that have been recounted by these women, but it's a story about america, too, right? this rot in the culture right at this apex of american culture that allowed this very powerful

guy in the american movie business to allegedly commit these acts over and over again with the complicity of so many people, victimizing even women who were well known and seemingly powerful in their own right. even if you didn't care about hollywood, this was a riveting story with all kinds of very upsetting implications. the second part of the weinstein story was the reporting about what he did to keep his alleged behavior secret, or at least shielded from the media or from legal scrutiny for so long. the high-power, household name, famous lawyers and the very expensive pr firms. these folks making legal threats for him, arranging financial payouts to his accusers that came with nondisclosure agreements so that the accusers couldn't talk, organizing smear campaigns against the accusers when they did talk to make them seem crazy, to undermine their claims. and then beyond that, there was this other layer of stuff we've really never heard about before,

which is about, i guess what you'd call the more baroque tactics he brought to bear. ronan farrow reported vividly on weinstein offering a private intelligence firm staffed by former agents of the israeli intelligence service. these agents adopted fake identities, pretended to be all sorts of different people to try to get close to at least one of weinstein's accusers to try to gain trust to find out what this accuser might plan to say about weinstein, also to gather dirt that could be used to undermine accusers, to make them, again, seem nuts, seem unreliable. and it wasn't just the people who weinstein had allegedly attacked who might speak about their experiences with him. the reporters going after the weinstein story were also targeted by these intelligence operatives. while reporting on the story, farrow writes about trying to shake off the suspicion that he was being followed only to later uncover evidence that he was, he had indeed been the subject of a

surveillance operation. ultimately, he met and then interviewed one of the men who had been following him on foot and surveilling him through his phone. so, weinstein deployed all of these intimidation tactics against the women accusing him and against the reporters and media outlets who were digging into the allegations against him. he also deployed himself, personally making calls and sending emails to news executives, a lot of whom he knew through the business. according to farrow's reporting, sometimes these calls were belligerent, weinstein defending himself, demanding information, insisting stories be submarined, trashing the women who were accusing him, but also in emails farrow obtained, it was clear that weinstein could be ingratiating and slippery, talking about deals he was really looking forward to doing with those executives. ultimately, though, the stories weinstein tried to stop from coming out, they did come out. jodi kantor and megan tooey were

first at "the new york times" and ronan farrow days later at "the new yorker." together, those reporters earned the freaking pulitzer prize for those stories. harvey weinstein is awaiting trial on several charges including predatory sexual assault. he's pled not guilty and denied all allegations of nonconsensual sex. but the last part of the harvey weinstein story, the part that's being told right now, is the story of how the story got told at all, the story of great journalism and how it gets done. and in the last few weeks, we've had two of these journalistic thrillers published. jodi kantor and megan tooey told their story in "she said." we spoke to them on the show last month. now ronan farrow is telling his reporting story in "catch and kill." in his book, farrow describes the pressure brought to bear on him and his sources and his employers, and really, everyone around him as he tried to report this story. the private detectives following him around, the legal threats, the constant approaches from people representing themselves

as fellow journalists or as emissaries from decent-sounding non-profit organizations, people it would later emerge were, in fact, intelligence agents working on behalf of this israeli private intelligence firm. there was also the alliance between weinstein and executives at "the national enquirer," which farrow says published smear pieces about him when he broke unflattering news. farrow reported that the "inquirer" had gathered dirt on weinstein's accusers and explored paying at least one of them for her story, not so they could run it, but so they could bury it. and if that sounds familiar, that's a carbon copy of the relationship that the "the quirer" had with donald trump, whose lawyer is currently in prison for hush money schemes between trump and "the enquirer" during the 2016 campaign. but one of the central allegations of ronan farrow's book is amidst this atmosphere of relentless, even creative

intimidation and pressure, the story he was working on about weinstein almost didn't get told. and farrow says that's because his employer for the first several months of his reporting, nbc news, slow-walked and even at times tried to stop his reporting. farrow says he was repeatedly told to pause any new reporting while his story was reviewed by increasingly higher-level executives at nbc, that some executives seemed to feel the weinstein story was not newsworthy or not worth the trouble. and yes, that's while nbc executives, as i described earlier, were getting repeated calls from weinstein himself, not to mention his lawyers. it was only when nbc news allowed ronan farrow to take his reporting elsewhere that it found a home at "the new yorker" magazine. he had worked on the story at nbc for seven months before going to "the new yorker" in august of 2017. seven weeks after ronan left nbc, the "times" published their weinstein story, and five days after that, farrow published his weinstein story, the piece he had started at nbc, but it ran

in "the new yorker" magazine. and that piece included the most serious allegations against weinstein to that point -- three allegations of rape. nbc news has strenuously denied the allegation that it intentionally stymied ronan farrow's reporting. they say his story was simply not up to nbc's standards nor ready for network tv in august 2017. they say the network was prepared to continue working on the story to get it into shape but that ronan wanted to move more quickly, and so they allowed him to go to a print outlet instead. according to nbc, when ronan farrow left, he had no weinstein accusers on the record. farrow says that when he left nbc, he had, quote, an explosively reportable piece that should have been public earlier." nbc news says his "new yorker" article bore little resemblance to his nbc news reporting. but again, that "new yorker" piece was less than two months after he left this reporting at nbc and took it somewhere else.

nbc letting this story get away is, i think the best way i can put it is, when you take nbc's word for it, nbc letting that story get away is a shame, but in ronan farrow's telling, it's not a shame, it's a scandal. nbc is saying, essentially, it's too bad that story got away. we were really hoping to get it to air once it was ready. ronan farrow is saying, no, you were stopping me from getting it to air, and that's why i had to leave. but that's not the only allegation that farrow levels against nbc news in his book. about seven weeks after his reporting appeared in "the new yorker" in 2017, nbc abruptly fired the longtime host of the "today" show, matt lauer, after what they called a credible allegation of sexual behavior in the workplace that was brought to the company's detention. the company never detailed what the specific allegation was that led to matt lauer's firing, but "the new york times" and "variety" quickly had reports out with multiple allegations against matt lauer. in his book, ronan farrow

interviews the woman who made the complaint to nbc human resources that resulted in matt lauer getting fired. she tells farrow that it was reading the accounts of weinstein's accusers in his "new yorker" piece that convinced her to make her complaint about lauer in 2017. and now, in farrow's book, for the first time, we learn what she alleges happened between her and lauer. she says while she was covering the olympics in sochi in 2014, matt lawyer raped her in his hotel room while she was both too drunk to consent, and she says she repeatedly told him no. matt lauer has vehemently denied this account. he says the encounter was consensual. farrow alleges in his book that this woman was one of several nbc employees with sexual misconduct allegations against matt lauer who received big payouts accompanied by n nondisclosure or nondisparagement agreements. nbc says these payments, those agreements were all standard, they weren't specific to anybody making any allegations against

lauer. the company says management was unaware of any allegations against matt lauer at all before the one allegation for which they fired him. nbcuniversal did an internal investigation last year that said as much, that concluded that. but i'll tell you, there has been consternation, even inside this building, inside msnbc and nbc news, that that matter was handled with an internal investigation, with the company, in effect, investigating itself, rather than hiring an external firm to do it. now, nbc news is obviously our parent company here at msnbc. the allegations about the behavior of harvey weinstein and matt lauer are gut-wrenching at baseline, no matter who you are or what your connection is to this story, but accusations that people in positions of authority in this building may have been complicit in some way in shielding those guys from accountability, those accusations are very, very hard to stomach, and i can tell you that inside this building, this

issue, the weinstein story having to leave the building in order to get told, and combine that with another previous gigantic story on a related subject, the "access hollywood" tape billy bush story also having to leave this building in order to get told, and the amount of consternation this has caused among the rank and file people who work here would be almost impossible for me to overstate. i've been through a lot of ups and downs in this company since i've been here. it would be impossible for me to overstate the amount of consternation inside the building around this issue. since ronan farrow's book was published, i have been trying to get answers about some of his key allegations. as to whether or not ronan farrow was told to hit pause on any new reporting at a time when nbc didn't think there was enough to go to air with, we have independently confirmed that nbc news did that, that that did happen, he was told to pause his reporting. in light of farrow's assertions that there was a pattern at the company of women making allegations against matt lauer and being paid off and signing

away their rights to speak about it all before matt lauer was ever fired, well, we doubled back with nbc, and they confirmed their denial that that ever happened before matt lauer was fired. but as far as we can tell, there has never been an independent investigation of that. so, until there is an independent investigation of that, if there ever is going to be one, that remains nbc's word versus ronan farrow's reporting and assertions. in terms of the specific question of women signing away their right to speak about any such incidents, well, there we actually have a little bit of news tonight. nbc news is now telling us on the record that there is nothing in any nondisparagement or nondisclosure group agreement that anyone may have signed with this company that can legally prevent you from talking about your experience. here's the statement from nbcuniversal. this is from a spokesperson from nbcuniversal -- "any former nbc news employee who believes that

they cannot disclose their experience with sexual harassment as a result of a confidentiality or nondisparagement provision in their separation agreement should contact nbcuniversal, and we will release them from that perceived obligation." so, that's new. that's news. as to whether or not any external review will be done of the handling of the weinstein story and why that story couldn't be broken here but it later broke with another news organization, whether the company would submit itself to an external journalistic review to try to restore some confidence that the company isn't just, you know, further investigating itself and clearly itself on issues like this, well, again, we did get a statement on this, this time from nbc news. shortform, i'll tell you their answer is, no, that's not going to happen. "over a year ago, nbc news released a 12-page, transparent accounting of the weinstein reporting." that's another internal investigation. they told us tonight, "once again, we stand by it."

so, since ronan farrow's weinstein reporting and the saga to get it to print described in his book, you should know that he has gone on to break stories about decades' worth of allegations of sexual harassment and assault by the chairman of cbs, les moonves, one of the most powerful television executives in the history of this country. those allegations led moonves to resign last year. ronan farrow also reported with jane mayer the stories of four women who accused new york attorney general eric schneiderman of physical abuse. sneiderman resigned his post as new york attorney general three hours after that story broke in "the new yorker." just last month, the director of the elite m.i.t. media lab stepped down less than a day after ronan farrow reported on emails and documents he had obtained showing that the lab was more deeply involved than it had admitted with billionaire pedophile jeffrey epstein and had accepted lots of money from

him, even after they knew he was a convicted sex offender. ronan farrow's reporting has changed how we understand sexual predation by very powerful men in this country and how we understand the vast resources they can bring, even on powerful institutions, to shield themselves from accountability. and that's worth talking about anywhere, anytime, and ronan farrow joins us here next. , anyn farrow joins us here next. we present limu emu & doug with this key to the city. [ applause ] it's an honor to tell you that liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. and now we need to get back to work. [ applause and band playing ] only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

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with judy cantor and megan tooey at "the new york times," he won the pulitzer prize for his reporting in "the new yorker" about harvey weinstein's decades of sexual misconduct. his book about that controversy and the resources weinstein used to try to stop it and why he said that story didn't make it out the door at nbc news. that book is called "catch and kill: lies, spies and a conspiracy to protect predators." it's everywhere. ronan, pleasure to have you here. >> it's a pleasure to be here. thank you for doing this. >> i summarized first the context of this story, how i think your book fits into it and what i've learned since. let me ask you if i got any of that wrong or if you want to push back. >> i think that was a very accurate, very fair summary. >> and i do think it is new, the statement from nbcuniversal tonight, that anybody who believes they are constrained from talking about sexual abuse or harassment from a nondisparaging confidentiality clause, if they come forward, they will be released from that. >> it is new and executives

deserve praise for that. as of today, rachel, i have spoken to multiple women who knew that i was going to be talking about this more and expressed agony over the fact that they are constrained by these agreements, which to be clear, this is a very meticulously fact-checked book. nbc's responses and rebuttals are woven into it, including their claim that this is a coincidence that they were paying out the women who have the harassment complaints against lauer and others. that said, these women consider these to be payouts to silence them. executives involved told me they were payouts to silence them. the fact that they are ending that and releasing these women is significant. it should be a model for other companies. >> let me ask you about that specifically, because i have been trying to track this down myself. it's such a specific claim. it's so empirical that i feel like i naively believe that i should be able to get to the bottom of this by the time that i had you on the show tonight, independently variable myself. >> it sounds like you've made some headway. >> but on this issue of whether or not enhanced severance or these other types of payment deals and the types of language

people sign when they leave, whether women who had allegations against matt lauer were treated any differently, other than other people who left the company under circumstances that didn't have anything to do with any claims of sexual misbehavior -- i feel like those are two data sets that you can compare. did you actually get access to normal severance to compare this to? >> yes, and it's laid out very clearly in the book. you can judge for yourself. but this was described as atypical, not part of the general process of people leaving the company by just about everyone involved in these transactions, except for these spokespeople putting out the statements now, on the inside -- not only the women who received these payouts and their agents, but also senior executives on the nbcuniversal side who brokered these agreements described them openly as sexual harassment settlements. >> okay. in terms of this change that's been announced tonight right here from nbcuniversal, saying that these nondisparagement or confidentiality clauses don't constrain women from talking about these things -- based on your reporting, what you just

described and some ongoing reporting since the book, it sounds like you think that women will come forward now, once they have been released. >> that will be their choice, but i do know that, as i said, women felt constrained, they were agonized over that, and i think this will go a long way towards making them feel that they can discuss this openly. >> why do you think that you were told to pause for the reporting on your weinstein story on nbc news? i was able to independently verify this. nbc news confirming to me that happened, but they say it was due to concerns about your reporting and a breakdown of trust between you and the investigative unit. why do you holistically, not in any one of these instances in particular, but holistically, why do you think they asked you to pause your reporting? >> important to note the past rounds of legal and standard reviews there was no breakdown of trust. i was told specifically there were no issues with the reporting again and again. and over the course of the reporting that we lay out here, there is a paper trail of the shutting down of the story, and that includes noah oppenheim,

the president of nbc news on six occasions ordering us to stop reporting. the head of the investigative unit underneath him, ordering eight times to stop reporting. that eventually escalated to ordering us to cancel interviews. and look, you can judge for yourself, it's laid out in the book, whether what we had was enough. we had a tape of weinstein admitting to sexual assault. we had multiple named women in every version of this story. but that actually is not the point. the order to stop was unjournalistic, and this is not just my account. it's my working-level producer's account. he recently wrote a piece for "vanity fair" saying, i witnessed all of this, it was an inappropriate shutdown of explosive reporting we had, and we were concerned that people were going to continue to get hurt. what the book lays out is that this was a set of executives making these decisions, all the way up to our parent company, who were cornered on some very difficult issues within the company. and if, indeed, they are moving towards more transparency, releasing women from ndas, maybe, eventually, this independent review that people inside this building have called for again and again, those would be positive steps. >> in terms of canceling

interviews, the interviews that you say nbc canceled, were those interviews in shadow? were those interviews on camera, off camera? what kind of interviews? >> that includes fully on-the-record offers to go on camera full faces. a wonderful brave woman, emily nestor, who's gone on record in recent days and talks about in the book how she offered while the storeway on nbc -- rose mcgowan was full-faced on the record for many months. rose mcgowan was getting intimidated legally and was frustrated with nbc slow-rolling the story for months and months, pulled out. the moment that happened, emily nester said i will record my interview again, had previously been in shadow, full face. the executives here were not interested in that. so it included a combination of interviews in shadow, which we do very often in our investigative stories, including ones that i've aired on this network, and also full-face, on-the-record accounts that were very explosive and ultimately were part of "the new yorker" story. >> when nbc news told us tonight -- again, i think this might be an unprecedented

statement from them -- "we very much wanted to break this story, which is why we assigned it and supported it editorially and financially for seven months. we are profoundly disappointed that we weren't able to do so." now that might sound like an expression of feelings, i will say that inside the building, that expression of profound disappointment that the story didn't get broken here is meaningful to me because i feel like i've been waiting to hear that, but i wanted to put that to you and ask you how that strikes you and whether you might -- whether, i don't know, whether you share the sense that that's a significant expression? >> the book is in many ways a love letter and tribute to fellow reporters, including great reporters across this building at nbc news. many of them are sources that allowed me to tell this story. they are anguished over this. they were lied to. the general counsel of this company in this book says we had no settlements in this period where we ultimately lay out a paper trail of seven settlements. there is a feeling in this building, as you alluded to, that coverage is being distorted and good journalists have a problem with that. i think the transition from an almost sort of trumpiam response of we dig in, we reiterate the

talking point that there wasn't a there there to the story, to something that more forthrightly acknowledges disappointment and a need to release people from nondisclosure agreements. that is immensely positive and i can >> there's one other aspect of this, ronan, that i want to ask you about. i'll ask you both about as a lawyer and a reporter but if you could stick with us through the break, i'll ask you about it after this. back with ronan farrow contributor of new yorker magazine, author of new best seller "catch and kill." we'll be right back. "catch and" we'll be right back. e hands... or a camera...or a website. should we franchise? is the market ready for that? can we franchise? how do you do that? meg! oh meg! we should do that thing where you put the business cards in the fishbowl and somebody wins something. -meg: hi. i'm here for... i'm here for the evans' wedding. -we've got the cake in the back, so, yeah. -meg: thank you. -progressive knows small business makes big demands. -you're not gonna make it, you're not gonna make it! ask her if we can do her next wedding too! -so we'll design the insurance solution that fits your business. -on second thought, don't...ask that. that fits your business. pacifica: ted! goin' oneighbor: yes. takin' it off road station wagon?

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in this context makes it feel -- i can feel the music behind us. >> there's a scene of portent where you do the brave thing after the story broke. people speaking to power about their bosses is how we have an honest conversation about this. >> let me ask you what it's like in this building, confronting your reporting and knowing as much as i do from being in here trying to figure it out, verify some of this stuff u i feel like in a lot of different institutions -- one that keeps coming to me is u.s. attorneys offices -- but a lot of institutions and news organizations and legal institutions, different places, there are moments when improper external pressure will be brought to bear and it's up to integrity of the outfit that that external pressure not be a shock to the system that it blows up the product of that entity, but rather it's expected.

so there's an air lock, there's an insulation. there's some sort of anticipation in a way to structure the work of that entity in a way that it isn't affected by external pressure. i feel like it ought to be that way. you i feel like we've developed that in a small way on my show. do you feel like a big news organization like nbc news, especially when it's integrated into this much larger nbc family, can effectively do that? is it possible to do that structurally? do you have to rely on individual bravery? >> i think it requires both. we need to push our great news organizations, and i put nbc news in that category, to be transparent and accountable, and as you say, to have a firewall between the executive suite, when it receives this kind of pressure, and repertoryial decisions. that did not happen here. executives descended and at a point where the normal process was playing out and a request was issued to the president of the news organization to go to

comment, to seek comment from harvey weinstein, that process was stopped. the point of this book and the reporting in it, and the fact that we fact checked it so carefully is to make it clear this isn't about a tit for tat or me, it's a set of facts laid out there was a lack of a firewall. that shouldn't happen at cbs or ami with "the national enquirer" and all the reporting about that that's in the book, and it shouldn't happen at nbc news. you're seeing a lot of great journalists in this building asking tough questions. it's not for me to say what should happen in response to that. i'm not an activist, i'm a journalist, but i'm happy people like you are asking those hard questions. >> ronan farrow, "catch and kill: lies spies and a conspiracy to protect predators." >> thanks for being here. >> thanks for all you do. >> we'll be right back. stay with us. to remind you to go in for your annual check-up, and be open with your doctor about anything you feel - physically and emotionally. but now cigna has a plan that can help everyone see stress differently. just find a period of time to unwind.

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where does the time go? that does it for us tonight. see you get back on monday. have an excellent weekend. time for "the last word" where katy tur is in for lawrence tonight. >> have a good weekend. >> thanks, katy. i'm katy tur in for lawrence o'donnell. the butt dial heard around the world. we have details about rudy giuliani's accidental calls to an nbc reporter including his attacks on the bidens and his apparent need for a lot of cash. a former "apprentice" contestant who accused donald trump of sexual assault in 2007 presented evidence in a new court filing to back up her claims. what's next in the ongoing court case?