would have completed the first two public hearings in the impeachment proceedings against president donald trump. the first one is going to happen on wednesday. i will tell you one of the things i did today is i just cleared my wednesday morning calendar. we think these hearings are planned to start at 10:00 a.m. eastern time. so if you've got something you were planning on doing mid-morning on wednesday, now's the time to find that tiny bottle of liquid paper you keep in your third drawer to white out whatever else you had on your calendar that day. we know the first hear, that wednesday meeting was going to be dramatic if only because of the first hearing. there haven't been very many public impeachment proceedings against a sitting president of the united states in our history. so wednesday is going to be exciting if only because it's such a historic occasion. but in terms of the specifics we know that day we'll hear from ambassador bill taylor and from the deputy assistant secretary of state george kent. now, over the course of these past few days we've received transcripts from each of the

depositions that those officials gave behind closed doors in the initial phase of this impeachment inquiry, which took place behind closed doors. and we've talked a little bit on the show this week about the strength of taylor and kent's testimony, the basic claims that taylor and kent are able to attest to as witnesses. because we've seen their deposition transcripts, we fully expect that their testimony is going to be strong and dramatic and will sort of set the broad frame for what the president is being impeached for. but after that first hearing on wednesday, there's going to be a second hearing on friday. that one will have as a witness the u.s. ambassador to ukraine, marie marie yovanovitch whose firing as our ambassador in that country appears to have been part of the scheme that president trump was trying to carry out in ukraine. pressuring that country to gin up investigations that he hoped could help him in his re-election effort against the democrats. and we don't yet know who the other witnesses will be that the house is going to call for public testimony at these public

hearings. nor do we know at this point how many public impeachment hearings there's going to be. but today they released two more transcripts from closed door depositions by lieutenant colonel alexander vindman. we know that from public reporting colonel vindman has already offered to testify at a possible hearing if the house impeachment committees decide that they want him to do so. based on the transcript released from his closed door testimony today, it seems like a good bet they will want him to testify. we also got a very long transcript today from fiona hill. she is a very interesting character in this drama. and now that we have seen her testimony, the testimony that we got released from her today, i am -- i don't know if you'd call it desperate, but i am close to desperate to know whether or not the impeachment committees are going to call fiona hill to testify at a public hearing as well. because fiona hill was the top russia expert at the national

security council. as such she was deeply involved in ukraine issues. russia is at war in ukraine. she has testified in detail about witnessing what should have been a normal policy process towards ukraine basically getting hot wired and turned into this whole other thing that was apparently design said to benefit president trump's re-election prospects instead of benefitting what was supposed to be u.s. policy towards ukraine. fiona hill is the one who give us that vivid, vivid account of what happened inside the white house when the three amigos, when the president's agents in the scheme stepped in and tried to pervert the whole process of the u.s. government engaging with the government of ukraine to pervert that process so that it instead would turn to benefit president trump politically. and i am starting to gather that the defense now will be -- the president's defense, the president's supporters in congress, their defense is going to be that what the president

did and what the president had these officials do on his behalf was totally normal, the kind of stuff that gumps overnments do the time. now that it's president trump's doing it, everybody does stuff like this. well, it's fiona hill's account of how this all played in the white house that actually gives lie to that, that shows this is not at all the way that normal government interactions happen with a foreign government, particularly a government like ukraine. what the president did was both weird and shocking and objected to instantly by nonpartisan career folks who know how these things are supposed to work. here's her talk about a meeting at the white house on july 10th. she said, quote, ambassador sondland blurted out, well, we have an agreement with the chief of staff, meaning white house chief of staff mick mulvaney, for a meeting if these investigations in the energy sector start. hill said, quote, we all kind of

looked up and thought that was somewhat odd, and ambassador bolton, then national security advisor john bolton, immediately stiffened and he ended the meeting. question to fiona hill -- right then he just ended the meeting? answer, yeah, he said it was very nice to meet you, i can't discuss a meeting at this time. she said it was, quote, very abrupt. question -- did you have a conversation with ambassador bolton after this meeting. answer, i did. describe that. answer, ambassador sondland said to ambassador volker and other people who were with him including the ukrainians to come down to a room in the white house to basically talk about next steps. that is also unusual. i mean he meant to talk to ukrainians about next steps about the meeting. question, the white house meeting? answer, ques, the white house meeting. meaning the white house meeting between president trump and president zelensky which gordon

sondland just blurted out that meeting could only happen if ukraine started these investigations. he just said it explicitly and said it had all been arranged already through white house chief of staff mick mulvaney. hill said, quote, bolton pulled me back after i was walking out afterwards and said go down to the ward room right now and find out what they're talking about and come back and talk to me. so i did go down. ambassador sondland was talking about how we had a meeting with mulvaney if they were going to go forward with investigations. my director for ukraine, she says, quote, was looking completely alarmed. we believe the director for ukraine in this context is colonel alexander vindman from the national security council who sits at the ukraine desk there. he's looking, quote, completely alarmed. fiona hill says, quote, i came in as this discussion was under way, and i said, look, i don't know what is going on here. look, i don't know what is going

on here, but ambassador bolton wants to make it very clear that we have to talk about how we're going to setup this meeting. it has to go through proper procedures. and sondland started to basically talk about discussions that he'd had with the chief of staff, mick mulvaney. he mentioned mr. giuliani, but then i cut him off because i did not want to get further into this discussion at all. question, so it was you personally who heard ambassador sondland mention burisma? correct. in the ward room? correct. and mr. vindman was also there and heard it? y yes, and kirk volker. oh. and then after that in her testimony you've probably seen it in a few headlines -- she says after this crime scene she basically witnessed in the white house she as struktded went back to talk to her boss. she says i went back to talk to ambassador bolton and ambassador bolton asked me to go over and

report this to the national security council's lawyer, to john eisenberg. he told me, and this is direct quote from ambassador bolton, you go and tell him -- you go and tell eisenberg i am not part of whatever drug deal sondland and mulvaney are cooking up on this. and you go and tell him what you've heard. this is already the kind of stuff that they've got from their closed door depositions, which they are now one by one releasing publicly, right? we're getting hundreds of pages of these depositions released every day. that's why i have these circles under my eyes. all this material as we're heading towards impeachment hearings next week, it shows you now ware seeing these transcripts among other things how they put together their witness list. you saw what? and who else was there? they saw it too? can we talk to them? it's like the world's simplest detective novel. this is like clue where there's only three cards. you already know who done it and when and why and in front of

whom. we just have to figure out if they used a candlestick and who professor plum was. it's done. it's all there. but there's another piece of this that i now understand that i'm not sure i did today, before reading the fiona hill 400 plus long transcript, and this thing is i think important to try to get our heads around just as members of the public are going to be watching this thing, i think it's helpful to get our heads around this before those hearings start next week. and that point that i foinally sort of figured out today, maybe everybody got this before me. but what finally sunk in for me is the question of these hearings is going to be done by the congressman adam schiff. he's a former prosuter and sober and restrained. we also know on both sides they're going to defer a lot of their question time to professional committee staff who are also well trained lawyers who are going to be able to draw

this out perry mason style over the course of continuous questioning that isn't broken up into little blocks liesk we've seen with other dissatisfied hearings. but it's not going to be just majority members and majority committee staff. it's not only democrats asking questions here. republicans will get their equal time, too, both their members and their staff. and what i'm finally realizing is i think that might be the best part. and we know the republicans are kind of panicking about who they've got on the impeachment committees. there's a republican congressman named devin nunes who's become kind of a figure of fun. he's like suing somebody who pretends to be his cow and maintains a twitter account in that guise. he's suing the fake cow on twitter. it's a little weird. devin nunes ran for office this last time saying he's a farmer, he's a farmer. he's the one who ran up to the

white house with that evidence at the beginning of the russia investigation and said the whole thing about, you know, trump tower being wiretapped. i mean devin nunes is supposedly their top man on the main impeachment committee, which is house intel. they appear to be swapping devin nunes out now for a different member of congress, a different republican named jim jordan. but i want you to check this out because one of the things we now know in this case, in the fiona hill deposition, gym jordan's top staffer is doing a bunch of the questioning in these depositions. and i think it ultimately epitomizes what the republicans are going to try to do here, which is they're basically trying to continue the scheme for which president trump is being impeached. apparently the way they are approaching this is they want to make the case, you know what, russia didn't interfere in the 2016 election. actually it was ukraine trying to help hillary clinton and you

know what, they were iall trying to help hillary clinton. and that's why hillary clinton lost -- wait. and paul manafort was framed. paul manafort definitely didn't take all those off the books millions of dollars from pro-putin political parties in ukraine and not pay taxes on it here in the united states. he was setup. and the reason he was setup was to make russia look bad? i mean it's weird. like the counter argument here is weird. but it's apparently what they're going for. including like the setting up paul manafort part. and i don't know if they're going to call fiona hill as one of the public hearing witnesses, but i just want you to see how she handled this. in the closed door depositions thus far, just check this out. here she is in a back and forth with a republican committee staffer who works for jim jordan who's presumably going to be the best republicans have got at these public hearings. question, are you aware of the allegation there's been some reporting there was a big article in 2017 about the

ukrainians efforts to effect the outcome of the u.s. election. answer, i'm aware of the articles. question, and do you give any credibility to some of the basic charges in there, such as redacted, are you familiar with that? would it be helpful if we marked this as an exhibit? answer, i've seen that article. question, okay. answer, i'm and confident on all the analysis that's been done -- i'm very confident the ukrainian government did not interfere in our election in 2016. question, okay. but you're aware of the reporting? answer, i'm aware of the reporting, but that doesn't mean that amounts to an operation by the ukrainian government. fiona hill, quotes, there's no ukrainian government effort to subvert our elections which is comparable to anything that the russians did in 2016. and if we start down this path not discounting what one individual or a couple of individuals might have done, if we start down this path ahead of our 2020 elections we are

setting ourselves up for the same kind of failures and intelligence failures that we had before. republican lawyer, okay. hill, i feel very strongly about this. i'm not trying to mess about here. the lawyer, evidently. well, let me help you understand here, i'm trying to understand. fiona hill, it is a fiction that the ukrainian government was launching an effort to up end our election. up end our election to mess with our democratic symptoms. republican lawyer, okay. hill, i'm not sure where we're going with this line of inquiry here. lawyer, i'm just asking you about -- hill, because if you're trying to peddle an alternative variation whether the ukrainians subverted our election i will not be part of it. lawyer, i'm not trying to peddle anything. fiona hill, it's the thrust of the question you're asking here. everything that happened in 2016

was a result of ukraine in some fashion? lawyer, yeah, i'm not saying that. i'm not. hill, well that's certainly what it sounds like to me. the lawyer, i'm not going down that path. fiona hill, the russians are the ones that have been proven from the very top to be targeting our government systems. and i'm sorry to be very passionate. but this is precisely. the lawyer, i didn't say you did, i'm just trying to get your reaction to -- fiona hill, well, my reaction is pretty strong because again i'm [ expletive ] tremely concerned this is rabbit hole we're going to go down in between now and the 2020 elections. and it will be to all of our

detriment. if i have done anything i want to leave a message to you that we should all be greatly concerned about what the russians intends to do in 2020 and any information that they can provide, you know, that basically deflects our attention away from what they did and what their planning on doing, that is very useful to them. that is useful to them. that is useful to the russians. what year doing here with this disinformation and these conspiracy theories that just happen to exonerate russia for what they did, i mean this is -- this is portrait of fiona hill, but this is portrait of republican members of congress and these top republican staffers and the way they're going to approach the impeachment inquiry. they're trying to talk fiona hill, this russian veteran intelligence officer, trying to talk her into the idea really wasn't president trump onto something here? don't you agree maybe ukraine is the one who intervened in our election, not russia and they

should cough up these investigations that will make hillary clinton look bad and joe biden and all that, dr. hill, wouldn't you say? and she just destroys them. right, and also puts into context authoritatively and with some passion why it's so bad for the united states that the republicans are approaching it this way. what is so dangerous to our national security and who they are helping by doing this, which is not the united states of america. it's our adversaries who seek to do us the most harm, and they are playing that game for those adversaries. so that's what it's been like behind closed doors so far. the public impeachment hearings start next week, which means it's show time in terms of his presidency and the possibility that the house will impeach him and the senate will be asked to consider whether to remove him from office. we know heading into next week the list of witnesses the house has assembled even with those first two hearings is a formidable and serious bunch. if fiona hill is any indication

from her closed door deposition, the republican questioning of these witnesses is going to be a thing to behold. now, in addition to the republican members of congress and their own committee lawyers and committee staff they're going to be asking these questions. and again, we've got a preview of that already. the president's also drafting his own legal team in terms of who he will have on his side, his defense in the impeachment. and there's reporting today that rudy giuliani is still on the president's legal team. he says he is still the president's lawyer. he has also simultaneously just lined up his own team of criminal defense lawyers for himself. and we've talked about this a little bit already this week, but now we've got a little more detail on one of the additional criminal defense lawyers rudy giuliani has just brought onboard. do you remember this guy who was trump's acting attorney general for like five minutes after trump fired jeff sessions but

after he hired bill barr? this guy isn't working for giuliani, but if you remember him -- i'll give you relevant context here. you might remember one of many controversies in the unbelievably pathetic trailing ends in matthew whittaker's career before trump inexplicably named him acting attorney general, one of the things we learned about matt whittaker he'd been involved in a company called world patent marketing. and world patent marketing was shutdown as a massive criminal fraud scheme. this was one of the real doozies when it came to trump administration personnel vetting. they named this person to be attorney general when nothing -- literally six months before they named him attorney general of the united states, that scam he'd been associated with, world patent marketing, was fined $26 million by the ftc for running a fake invention promotion grift. they got shutdown and fined $26

million. that was like the next thing on his résume. now if world patent marketing isn't ringing a bell for you, i will tell you what you will remember. one of the most prominent, protuberant -- that's not the word. one of their most memorable promoted inventions was what they called the masculine toilet. remember this? you remember this because regular toilets don't work for really big guys. yeah, that was one of the inventions they were promoting at the matt whittaker world patent company that got shutdown. that criminal fraud scheme that was associated with the man who trump appointed attorney general of the united states also had to have a legal representative through their ultimately unsuccessful fight to avoid paying tens of millions of dollars in fines. their legal representative in

that unsuccessful fight, the big man toilet company, their legal representative through their whole shutdown is a scam, that is now rudy giuliani's defense lawyer. while we're told rudy giuliani is still himself on the president's legal defense during impeachment. also on the president's legal team, well, here again for context remember yesterday's news a the president had to pay $2 million and shutdown forever the fraudulent fake charity, the donald j. trump foundation as part of a settlement in federal court? one of the things president trump had to stipulate to was the fact he used his charity to illegally give $25,000 to a state attorney general who was considering at the time whether or not she would have her state join a case against one of the president's other big fraud schemes -- the trump university scam, for which the president ultimately had to pay a $25 million fraud assessment just

before he was sworn in as president. the president sent her a $25,000 illegal donation from his fake charity. and immediately thereafter that attorney general decided that, oh, no, actually her state wouldn't join that lawsuit against trump university. within 24 hours of having to pay that $2 million fine and shutdown his fake charity and admit to that illegal payment being made through his fraudulent charity, president trump also announced within 24 hours that that former state attorney general to whom he had made that illegal $25,000 payment, she's also going to be on his impeachment legal team. just as soon as she unregisters as a foreign agent for qatar. according to the associated press tonight, that is in process. so i mean, man, get ready. this is the world's most serious thing, right? we're the most powerful country on earth and our elected

representatives are considering the awesome and very seldomly used prospect of removing the commander in chief from his office against his will for high crimes and misdemeanors. this is very serious thing and it is being fought sear seriously on one side with very, very serious witnesses lined up in their corner. and then there's the other side, too. we will be right back. here's th, too. we wl ilbe right back. ♪ (dramatic orchestra) performance comes in lots of flavors. there's the amped-up, over-tuned, feeding-frenzy-of sheet-metal-kind. and then there's performance that just leaves you feeling better as a result. that's the kind lincoln's about. ♪ that's unnecessarily complicated. make ice. making ice. but you're not because you have e*trade which isn't complicated.

their tools make trading quicker and simpler so you can take on the markets with confidence. don't get mad get e*trade. can you tell me the story again? every family has their own unique story. give your family the chance to discover theirs this holiday season, with ancestry.

one little bit i want you to hear from fiona hill's transcript we got today. this is her responding from questioning from a new york republican congressman named lee zeldin. zeldin is again one of these republican members who the republicans are thinking about trying to insert belatedly into the impeachment committees because they think he's so good and his questioning is powerful and they want to get rid of their existing members and put a guy in who's so great.

hill says, quote, remember i've been the national intelligence officer for russia before this for 3 1/2 years so a lot of the information i have is classified. and i don't know from my previous position about how many people were trying to gain influence into our politics and it's very much the russians who want to show in fact it wasn't them that were involved in 2016. lee zeldin, so i don't misunderstand your answer, based on your personal knowledge you're not aware of redacted being involved in ukrainians -- correct and i'm sorry to fete testy about this back and forth because i'm really worried about these conspiracy theories and i'm worried all of you are going to go down a rabbit hole, looking for things that are not going to be helpful.

you just had a senate report coming out about the risk to our elections. if we have people running around chasing rabbit holes we're not going to be prepared as a country to push back on this again. the russians thrive on misinformation and disinformation, and i just want to say that was the reason why i went into this administration. we are in peril as a democracy because of other people interfering here. the russians who attacked us in 2016, and they're now writing the script for others to do the same. and if we don't get our act together, they will continue to make fools of us internationally. whereupon lee zeldin disappeared into a poof of smoke. joining us now is congressman jamie raskin, a member of the committee who's sat in all eight hearings this week. so you guys have released more than 2,600 pages of testimony. i feel it in my bones because we've been trying to keep up here. tell me about how this works

structurally, releasing this testimony almost completely unredacted so we can see the narrative, see the questioning that all of these witnesses have given before you head into the public hearings part of this. why structure it that way? >> well, we want the public to see everything that we saw except for tiny bits of classified information. we want to obviously refute the republicans who said there was anything untoward going on behind closed doors. in fact, 50% of the questioning, we had 50% of the questioning. and i see no sooner have we begun to release all of these deposition transcripts for the public to read that the president is now saying he's opposed to public hearings and he doesn't want to go forward with the public having access to this. and i think the reason for that, you touched on just before in a perceptive way really their last remaining argument is that in fact everything that rudy giuliani and their team was up

was in fact leading to the truth and that it was not russia that engaged in a sweeping and systematic campaign to subvert our election as special counsel mueller found, as the fbi found, as the cia found. it was the crukrainians. and in fact the whole ukraine operation was really trying to get at the truth of some corruption that had been buried about joe biden. and all of that has been completely and utterly discredited by the witnesses here. so they don't really have anything left. they may double down on all of the right wing conspiracy theories, or the alternative is they just kind of go with the truth, and they say, yeah, but it's not an impeachable offense because there's nothing particularly egregious about it. in fact, no president in the history of the united states of america has ever done anything remotely close to this, that is to shakedown a foreign

government to get manufactured political information to go after a domestic political rival and withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in security assistance in the process that congress had voted for a besieged foreign ally resisting russian aggression at a time when part of their country is being occupied. so they don't really have many places to go, and i think you correctly identified how embarrassing it was for the republicans who just could not lay a glove on any of these witnesses who are war heroes, people who have devoted their lives to the state department. they are experts on russia. they are experts on the ukraine. they're experts on europe. and the republicans really don't know what to do at this point. >> it does seem like there's one other -- there's sort of a door number three they could choose here. we have seen as i mentioned the republicans very quickly at the very last minute trying to change the membership of the intelligence committee because

they want some of their members out who they don't think would be effective in that room and they want others in who they think would be more effective. nbc news is reporting tonight republicans on the hill are looking at the brett kavanaugh supreme court hearings as a model, which would suggest we're in for some sort of carnival tactics, some sort of disruptive tactics. have you and your colleagues prepared amongst yourselves about how you're going to deal with that kind of potential disruption? >> i think you're always right. that is always the while mary pass by our gop colleagues. it's just to engage in circus diversions and character assassination. you know, they teach you in law school if the facts are against you, you pound the law. if the law is against you, you pound the facts. if both the law and facts are against you, you pound the table. and we already saw them conduct their faux civil disobedience,

where they became the first sit in protesters fighting for high crimes and misdemeanors. i suppose it works only in a media environment where you're speaking to people who have no access to the facts and no access to the truth, and you're able to engage in these cult-like antics and provocations. >> to that point, i don't know how this is going to go, but i feel like my worry here reading so many hundreds of pages of these transcripts and seeing what the story has been laid outs and having a lot of respect for the experience and sacrifice of these witnesses you guys are bringing forward, i feel like there's a risk that democrats are sort of prepared to win the argument and to lay out the facts and to bolster in a prosecutorial way their understanding about what has

happened. and that works on paper, but if you are up against another side that is determined to make this not about those facts and not about this argument and instead about something that is made for tv and crazy and disruptive and discrediting to the whole process, i don't know the best way to fight against that. and i'm not sure i've ever seen democrats effectively do it. so i guess there's not a question there. >> it moves now into the public hearings where the public is going to get a real education into what happened and what this shadow campaign was to subvert the u.s. foreign policy by the president and by his, you know, appointed private deputies. but then it's going to go to the judiciary committee. and the judiciary committee is now filled with people who are battle scarred veterans of these circus-like provocations and i think you're going to find a majority on the judiciary

committee that's ready for them. the other thing is people in the majority have been very bolstered by this testimony. if you read dr. fiona hill, for example, she's someone who cut through all the nonsense and basically said you guys should cut this out because what's at stake is democracy. i mean, all over the world we've got the despots and dictators and strong men and tyrants on the march for authoritarianism, anti-semitism, racism. they're scapegoating people, and she's basically saying you're playing along on their side. you're playing along with the authoritarians, and we've got to stand up for democracy. and i think you're going to find that the democrats are going to be very tough and serious about just this point. because if we let it all go now, we're not just throwing away our constitution and our bill of rights and everything that ourfoou our forefathers fought for but

we're throwing away a lot of chances for people around the world to have democracy and human rights too. so we understand the stakes of the struggle and we're really ready for the battle to come. >> thank you for your time tonight. i hope you get a good nights sleep for next week. thank you very much. we've got a lot more to get to. stay with us. t a lot more to geo stay with us motor? nope. not motor? it's pronounced "motaur." for those who were born to ride, there's progressive. for those who were born to ride, little theo's nose had cause for alarm. his ordinary tissues were causing it harm. they left his nose raw, with each wiping motion. so dad extinguished the problem, with new puffs plus lotion.

puffs now have more lotion to soothe through the blows... and more pillowy softness, to cushion your nose. don't get burned by ordinary tissues. a nose in need, deserves puffs, indeed. at bayer, we're into the golden years. with better heart treatments, advanced brain disease research, and better ways to age gracefully. at bayer, this is why we science. whyou should be mad that airports are complicated... he's my emotional support snake. ...but you're not, because you have e*trade, whose tech isn't complicated. it helps you understand the risk and reward potential on an options trade. don't get mad. get e*trade.

sometimes being a journalist requires you to be fast on your feet literally. this was outside the roger stone trial today. watch what happens as the afternoon star witness, steve bannon, leaves the courthouse. >> yes, i was compelled to testify like i was compelled to testify, i was understand subpoena by mueller. i was understand subpoena by the house. i got a hand written subpoena in my house testimony. i was force today go to the grand jury. and i'm forced and compelled to come here today. >> steve bannon speaking to reporters today about he's a reluctant witness, i was under

subpoena, i was forced to be here. he said in court today he would not have been there if he'd not been forced to be there. he neglected to mention in that answer in fact before he was subpoenaed he voluntarily spoke with prosecutors in this case. and even though she was under subpoena by robert mueller to speak with the grand jury, he also spoke to investigators for hours and hours and hours. he doesn't want to talk about that, though. he wants to talk about seeming very reluctant to testify. i definitely wouldn't be doing this. steve bannon was donald trump's campaign chief. roger stone is the president's longest serving advisor. today steve bannon testified against roger stone. he was a witness for the prosecution. on the stand today bannon drew a straight line between the trump campaign and stone as the campaign's access point for wikileaks which of course was distributing democratic documents and e-mails that had been stolen by russian intelligence. bannon said on the stand, quote,

the campaign had no direct access to wikileaks to assange but roger would be considered. in the last few weeks of run up to the election of 2016 you might remember wikileaks teasing an october surprise. it was going to be a terrible thing to hurt hillary clinton's campaign. the group said they'd unleash that october surprise on october 4th at a press conference. they held a press conference but didn't actually release anything that day. after the press conference we now know steve bannon e-mailed roger stone. he said in an e-mail, what was that this morning? that e-mail was entered into evidence in roger stone's trial. prosecutors asked bannon today why he sent that after the wikileaks press conference. bannon responded, quote, he told me he had a relationship with assange. quote, it would be natural for me to reach out to him. that's the president's campaign chief from that time testifying

under oath as far as the trump campaign was concerned, when they wanted to communicate with wikileaks to obtain information from them that had been of course stolen by russian intelligence, they used roger stone as their effort to do that. they used roger stone for that purpose because he said he could get to julian assange. roger stone was their access point, and by extension he was their access point to the stolen material that was weaponized against clinton in the 2016 election. the reporter who chased down steve bannon as he was leaving court today, as bannon turned to say i'm only here reluctantly, that reporter joins us next. rel, that reporter joins us next. tom: the american people can fix anything.

the problem is corporations and the people who run and own them have purchased our democracy. here's the difference between me and the other candidates. i don't think we can fix our democracy from the inside. i don't believe washington politicians and big corporations will let that happen. the only way we can make change happen is from the outside. for me, this comes down to whether you trust the politicians or the people. and if you say you trust the people, are you willing to stand up to the insiders and the big corporations, and give the people the tools they need to fix our democracy. a national referendum. term limits. eliminating corporate money in politics. making it easy to vote. i trust the people. and as president, i will give you tools we need to fix our democracy. i'm tom steyer, and i approve this message.

liberty mutual customizes your car insurance, hmm. exactly. so you only pay for what you need. nice. but, uh... what's up with your... partner? not again. limu that's your reflection. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty ♪ (mom vo) it's easy to shrink into your own little world. especially these days. (dad) i think it's here. (mom vo) especially at this age. (big sis) where are we going? (mom vo) it's a big, beautiful world out there. (little sis) whoa... (big sis) wow. see that? (mom vo) sometimes you just need a little help seeing it. (vo) the three-row subaru ascent. love. it's what makes a subaru, a subaru. at outback, steak & oh no, it's gone.ck. phew, it's back with lobster mac & cheese. it's gone again. oh, it's back with shrimp now! steak & lobster starting at only $15.99. hurry in before these three are gone again.

outback steakhouse.

ahh, it's too expensive. actually, our unitedhealthcare medicare plans have renew active. a gym membership and more- at no extra cost. no excuses now. renew active. only from unitedhealthcare medicare. sleep number 360 smart bed. veterans day sale on the can it help keep us asleep? yes, it senses your movements and automatically adjusts to keep you both comfortable. save $1,000 on the new queen sleep number 360 special edition smart bed. plus, 0% interest for 36 months. ends monday. yes, i was compelled to testify like i was compelled to testify. i was understand subpoena by mueller. i was understand subpoe subpoen house. i was forced to go to grand jury and forced and compelled to come here today.

>> are you actually a reluctant witness, mr. bannon? the reporter who asked that question, that got steve bannon to stop in his tracks, stop getting in that car and wheel around and say i don't want to be here, i'm forced and compelled to make that statement, the reporter who asked that question of bannon today was politico reporter josh gerstein, and he joins us now. thanks very much for being here. i really appreciate you making the time. >> hi, rachel. good to see you again. >> why did you ask bannon that? your question really stopped him in his tracks and he wheeled around to give you that answer. >> well, as you alluded to rachel, he's been pretty much putting out word on the street for the last day or two that his arm has been twisted to participate and show up in the roger stone trial as a prosecution witness. and it's never been totally clear to me how much his arm has been twisted. as you mentioned he did

cooperate pretty extensively with the mueller investigation, even cooperated with these prosecutors who questioned him today. but when he got on the witness stand he not only publicly but to the jury seemed to want to make clear he was a very reluctant witness. he kept using those words, compelled, forced. he said if it was up to him he wouldn't have shown up. i don't know why precisely why it has to do with his audience for his current ventures, a media venture on impeachment and i think some of his other projects, if he was seen sort of in truck with the mueller team or the deep state. i don't think it would be a very good look for him with the breitbart crowd. >> just to put a fine point on this, when identify say he cooperated extensively with mueller and these prosecutors who brought this case against roger stone, what you mean is

even though he did get a subpoena to testify to the grand jury and today, those hours of interviews he did with prosecutors for mueller and prosecutors in the stone case, that was all without a subpoena. >> right, you're not compelled to do a preinterview with prosecutors. if you want to go strictly by the book and what's required, you can say i won't show up. you can demand immunity for example is another thing you can ask for. and i didn't hear anything from him that he asked for that. so you certainly can be a more recalcitrant witness then he was today. >> it's really hard for me to summon the energy in terms of roger stone's fate with how much theatrics and attention he wants. the core question as to whether

trump's campaign was trying to work with, trying to make contact with, trying to engage with the people who are releasing the documents that russian intelligence stole during the campaign. it seems that core question of whether that happened during the campaign and really being addressed substantively in the case. >> it is. and it does seem that roger stone was trying to cover up at least some of his interactions with people close to julian assange and wikileaks. you know, he eventually owned up reluctantly to his contacts with randy credico, who's a new york talk show host who had some ties with wikileaks. he never really admitted -- he had another reporter friend, sort of right wing conspiracy oriented writer, jerome corsi, who he'd also dispatched to london, and it seems like mueller's investigators were always a bit puzzled about why stone was being so secretive

about his dealings related to wikileaks, why he seemed to be lying about some of those dealings. and they seem to have suspected maybe he had another kind of, quote, back channel to wikileaks. but it seems they were never able to really nail that down. >> roger stone trial watcher, you do it so we don't have to, thanks a lot for being here tonight. we've got one last story for you this friday night, and it is a good one. stay with us. that's next. it is a good one stay with us that's next. along with support, chantix is proven to help you quit. with chantix you can keep smoking at first and ease into quitting. chantix reduces the urge so when the day arrives, you'll be more ready to kiss cigarettes goodbye. when you try to quit smoking, with or without chantix, you may have nicotine withdrawal symptoms. stop chantix and get help right away if you have changes in behavior or thinking, aggression, hostility, depressed mood,

suicidal thoughts or actions, seizures, new or worse heart or blood vessel problems, sleepwalking, or life-threatening allergic and skin reactions. decrease alcohol use. use caution driving or operating machinery. tell your doctor if you've had mental health problems. the most common side effect is nausea. quit smoking slow turkey. talk to your doctor about chantix. performance comes in lots of flavors. ♪ (dramatic orchestra) there's the amped-up, over-tuned, feeding-frenzy-of sheet-metal-kind. and then there's performance that just leaves you feeling better as a result. that's the kind lincoln's about. ♪ and my lack of impulse control,,

is about to become your problem. ahh no, come on. i saw you eating poop earlier. hey! my focus is on the road, and that's saving me cash with drivewise. who's the dummy now? whoof! whoof! so get allstate where good drivers save 40% for avoiding mayhem, like me. sorry! he's a baby!

in the spring of 1864 in the heat of the u.s. civil war an iron clad confederate gunboat started an assault on a gun garrison in north carolina. the attack on that confederate gunboat sunk a union ship and damaged another. within a few days the confederate navy had fully overtaken that union strong hold. it was an important battle. the battle of plymouth. today plymouth, north carolina, is a small town of less than

4,000 people. it's nestled right up alongside the roanoke river. it's a beautiful spot. that said the government in plymouth, north carolina, has never really reflected the population that lives there, at least not recently. the majority of the people in plymouth are african-american. the town's about 70% black, and it's been that way for a long time. plymouth has never been represented by a black mayor. and the city council has always been majority white. plymouth forever has been a mostly black town with a mostly white government. well, this week, tuesday, plymouth, north carolina, held an election like a lot of towns and states did this week. and this week on tuesday in plymouth, north carolina, elected themselves as brand new mayor. he was born in plymouth and served on the plymouth city council before he decided to run this year. and he won.

as of tuesday this week shawn hawkins is the first african-american ever elected mayor in plymouth, north carolina. he told us he decided to run because he wanted to try to bridge the gap between the local government and the people they represent. he told us, quote, so many people have felt left behind and excluded in what's taken place in plymouth. after the outcome of the election there were a lot of individuals really excited and they're looking forward to the change. for the first time in plymouth, north carolina, history three of the six members of the city council are people of color. this is mayor elect hawkins with two of the newly elected members. these elections this week brought big change to little plymouth, north carolina. these elections this week brought big change to virginia where democrats flipped the whole state legislator and to kentucky where democrats flipped a governor seat. and we look to off-year elections for signs what might happen in the really big votes

next year, for the house, the senate, the white house. those also loom with an impeachment inquiry currently working its way through congress. and these election results next week you don't want to oversell them. but they may call the question a little bit what republicans are going to do in the house and especially the senate. because deciding how much you're willing to standby the president while he's going to be impeached is honestly going to be a decision of both conscience and political calculation for republicans. did the election results we saw this week change the results at all for republicans? do they change their mental math at all when they think about it, thinking about how this next year is going to go and their own seats being at risk? open hearings in the impeachment inquiry start wednesday morning. that does it for us tonight. we will see you again monday. now it's time for the "last word" with ali velshi is in for lawrence tonight. it is a very busy