we will be back here in studio next week and in a few weeks, i' i'll be doing a live why is this happening december 8th. catch me and my amazing guest tony kushner. you can find all details on our website. you do not want to miss it. and that is all for this evening. the rachel maddow show starts right now. good evening, rachel. >> good evening, chris. and hello to your fine audience. hello. i love these live shows you're doing. so awesome. ma much appreciated. happy to have you here. by this time next week, congress will have completed the first two public hearings in the impeachment proceedings against president donald trump. the first one's going to happen on wednesday. i will tell you one of the things i did today as 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're planning on doing mid-morning on wednesday, now is the time to find that little

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 that the first hearing that wednesday hearing is going to be dramatic if only because it's the first hearing. i mean, there just haven't been have many public peaimpeachment marryings against sitting presidents of the united states in our history. so wednesday's going to be exciting if only because it's such a historic occasion. but in terms of the specifics w he know we'll hear from bill taylor and from george kent. now, over the course of the past few days, we have received transcripts from each of the depositions those officials gave behind closed doors in the initial phase of this impeachment inquiry, which took place behind closed doors. we've talked a litd built 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's

going to be strong and dramatic and will sort of set the broad frame for what the president is being impeached for. but then after the 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 yovanovitch, who is 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 close-door depositions by lieutenant colonel alexander vindman. we know from public reporting that colonel vindman has already offered to testify at a public 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 that 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, theestimony that we got released from her today, i am -- i don't know if you'd call it desperate. but i am -- 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've been a normal policy process toward ukraine. basically, getting hot wired and turned into this whole other thing that was apparently designed to benefit president

trump's re-election prospects instead of benefitting what was supposed to be u.s. policy toward ukraine. fiona hill's the one that gave us that vivid account of what happened inside the white house when the three amigos, when the president's agents in this scheme stepped in and tried to pervert the whole process engaging with the government of ukraine to pervert that process so it instead would be turned to benefit president trump politically. and i -- i am starting to -- to -- 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 governments do all the time. why are you trying to make this a bad thing now? now that it's president trump doing it. everybody does stuff like this. well, it's fiona hill's account of how this all played in the white house that absolutely

gives lie to that. that shows that 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 people, by non-partisan career folks, who know how these things are supposed to work. here's her talking about 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 well it was very nice to meet you. i can't discuss a meeting at this time. she said it was quote, very abrupt.

question, and did you have a concern with ambassador bolton after this meeting? answer, i did. question, describe that. answer, ambassador sondland said to ambassador kurt volker and also secretary of energy rick perry and the other people who were with him, including the ukrainians, to come down to a room in the white house, the ward room, to basically talk about next steps. that is also unusual. i mean, he meant to talk to the ukrainians about next steps about meeting? question, the white house meeting? answer, yes, the white house meeting. meaning the white house meeting between president trump and president zelensky, which gordon sondland had just blurted out could only happen -- 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 says quote, bolton pulled me back as i was walking out afterwards and said, go down to the ward room right now and find out what they are talkingabil a

and come back and talk to me. so i did go down and ambassador sondland in front of the ukrainians as i came in was talking about how we had an agreement with chief of staff mulvaney for a meeting with the ukrainians 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 are going to set up 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 into

further -- 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? yes. and kurt volker. oh. and then after that, in her testimony, she gives the part you probably already seen in a few headlines. she says after this, you know, crime scene she basically just witnessed in the white house, she, as instructed, went back to go talk to her boss, national security advisor john bolton. 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 a 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. so this is -- i mean, 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 released every day. that's why i have these circles under my eyes. but all this material we've got, it shows as we head toward public impeachment hearings next week, it shows you among other things how they put together their witness list, right? they're like 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 clu whee where the only three cards. you already know who done it, when, and why, and in front of whom. we just have to figure out if they used a candle stick and where professor plum was. it's done. it's all there. but -- but there is another piece of this that i now understand that i'm not sure i did before today, before reading the fiona hill 400-plus page long transcript. and this thing is, i think, important to try to get our

heads around just as members of the public who are going to be watching this thing. i think it's at least helpful to get our heads around this before those public hearings start next week. and that point that i finally sort of figured out today, and maybe everybody else got this before me, but what has finally sunk in for me is that, you know, the questioning at these hearings is going to be done at least a little bit by the committee chairman who is leading the impeachment inquiry. by congressman adam schiff. he is a former prosecutor. he's very sober and restrained. you have heard him in congressional hearings. you know what he's like. we also know that on both sides they're going oh defto defer a their question time to professional committee staff, who are also well-trained lawyers who are going to be able to sort of draw this out perry mason style over the course of continuous questioning that isn't broken up into little blocks like we've seen with other dissatisfied hearings. but it's not just going to be the majority members and the majority committee staff. right? it's not only the democrats who are going to be asking the questions here. republicans will get their equal

time, too. both their members and their staff. and what i'm finally relational is i think that might be the best part. and we know the republicans are kind of panicking about who that he have got the impeachment committees. there is a republican congressman named devon nunez who has 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. if so, who doesn't have a farm. he's the one who ran to the white house at the beginning of the russia investigation and said the whole thing about trump tower being wire tapped. i mean, devin is probably the top man. they appear to be swapping devon nunes out now for a different member of congress named jim

jordan. one of the things we now know is that in this case, in the fiona hill deposition, jim 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 that they're basically trying to continue the scheme for which president trump is being impeached. apparently, the way they are approaching this is that they really want to try to make the case that, you know what, russia didn't interfere in the 2016 election. actually, it was ukraine trying to help hilary clinton and, you know what, they were all trying to help hilary clinton and that's why hillaary clinton los. 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 then not pay taxes here on it in the united states. he was set up. and the reason he was set up was to make russia look bad?

i mean, it's weird. like the counterargument 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 close-door depositions thus far. check this out. here she is in a back and forth with a republican committee staffer who works for jim jordan who is presumably going to be like the best the 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 ukrainians' efforts to affect the outcome of the election, the u.s. election? answer, i am 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? this article? >> answer, i've seen that article. question, okay. >> answer, and i am very confident based on all the

analysis that has been done, and again i don't want to start getting into intelligence matters but i am very confident the ukrainian government did not interfere in our election in 2016. question, okay. but you're aware of the reporting? answer, i am aware of the rofrtirofr reporting but that doesn't mean that amounts to an operation by the ukrainian government. fiona hill quote, there is no ukrainian effort to sub vert our elections, which is comparable to anything that the russians did in 2016. if we start down this path, not discounting one one individual or a couple 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, look, i feel very strongly about this. the lawyer, evidently. hill, i'm not trying to mess about here. lawyer, evidently. hill, yes and so you should too in terms of our national security. lawyer, 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 upend our election. upend our election to mess with our democratic systems. republican lawyer, okay. i'm just asking you about -- hill, because if you're trying to peddle an alternative variation of whether the ukrainians subverted our election, i don't want to be part of that and i will not be part of it. lawyer, i'm not trying to peddle anything. fiona hill. well, it's the thrust of the question that you are easking here. you know, what we are dealing with now is a situation where we are at risk of saying that 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. lawyer, i'm not going down that path. fiona hill, the russians are the government that have been proven from the very top to be targeting our democratic systems. republican lawyer, okay. fair enough. hill, and i'm sorry to be very passionate. but this is precisely the lawyer

i'm just trying to get your -- fiona hill. this is precisely why i joined the administration. i didn't join it because i thought the ukrainians had been going after the president. lawyer, i didn't say you did. i'm just trying to get your reaction to. fiona hill, well, my reaction obviously is pretty strong because, again, the lawyer, i know. again, i'm extremely concerned that this is a rabbit hole that we are going to go down here -- that we are going to go down in between now and the 2020 elections. and it will be to all of our detriment. i am just trying to basically say here that i have very obviously strong feelings about our national security. and just want to -- if i have done anything, she says, if i have done anything, i want to leave a message to you. that we should all be greatly concerned about what the russians intend 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 they're planning on doing, that is very useful to them.

that is useful to them. that is useful to the russians. what you're doing here with this disinformation and these conspiracy theories that just happen to exonerate russia for what they did, i mean this is a -- this is a portrait of fiona hill. but this is a 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 veteran russia intelligence officer, trying to talk her into the idea that really wasn't president trump on to something here? don't you agree that maybe ukraine is the one who intervened in our election, not russia? and they should now cough up these investigations that will make hilary clinton look bad and joe biden and all that. i mean, dr. hill, wouldn't you say? and she just destroys them, right? and also, puts in 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 the adversaries that 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, you know, showtime in terms of this presidency and the possibility that the house will impeach him and that the senate will be asked to consider whether to remove him from office. we know heading into next week that the list of witnesses the house has assembled, even just with those first two hearings, is a serious and formidable 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 that are 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 you know, there is reporting today that rudy giuliani is still on the president's legal team. he says that 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 on board. do you remember this guy? who was trump's acting attorney general for like five minutes after trump fired jeff sessions but before he hired bill barr. this guy isn't working for giuliani. but if you remember him, i'll -- it'll give you relevant context here. you might remember that one of the many controversies and almost sort of unbelievably pathetic trailing ends in matthew w matthew whittaker's career before trump inexplicably named him acting attorney general.

one of the things we learned about whittaker is he had been involved in a company called world patent marketing. and world patent marketing was shut down as a massive criminal fraud scheme. this was one of the real doozies when it came to trump administration personnel vetting. they named this guy to be attorney general when nothing in his skrecareer suggests he woul ever approach anything to that job title. literally six months before they named him attorney general of the united states, that scam he had been associated with, world patent marketing, was fined $26 million by the ftc for running a fake invention promotion grift. they got shut down and fined $26 million. that was like the next thing on his resume. if world patent marketing isn't ringing a bell for you, i will tell you what you will remember. one of the most prominent, protubrent -- that's not the word -- 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 marketing company that got shut down. that company, the big guy toilet company, 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 and getting shut down as a criminal fraud scheme. their legal representative in that unsuccessful fight, the big man toilet company, their legal representative through their whole shutdown as a scam, that is now rudy giuliani's defense lawyer. while we are told rudy giuliani is still himself on the president's legal defense during the impeachment. also, on the president's legal team, well, here. again for context, remember

yesterday's news that the president had to pay $2 million and agree to shut down forever his fraudulent, fake charity the donald j. trump foundation as part of a settlement in a new york court? one of the things president trump had to stipulate to was the fact that 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 settlement 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 shut down 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 cutter. 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? for 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 a very serious thing and it is being fought very 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.

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hear from fiona hill's transcript which we got today. this is her responding to questioning from a new york republ republican congressman named lee zeldan. gen one of these republican members who republicans are thinking about trying to insert into the

impeachme impeachment inquiries. well, listen to what happens between fiona hill and lee here. hill says, quote, remember i've been the national -- 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 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 that, in fact, it wasn't them who were involved in 2016. lee, so that i don't misunderstand your answer, based on your personal knowledge, you're not aware of redacted being connected to any ukrainians attempting to interfere with the u.s. election? fiona hill, correct. and i also just want to point out here our intelligence agencies were pretty thorough about the investigations and things here. look, and i'm sorry to get testy about this back and forth because i'm really worrie worrit

these conspiracy theories. you just have the senate report informing us all yet again bipartisan, non-partisan senate report about the risk there is to our elections. if we have people running around chasing rabbit holes because rudy giuliani or others have been feeding information to the hill or politico, 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 i went into this administration. we are in peril as a democracy because of other people interfering here. the russians were who attacked us in 2016 and they are 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. lee zeldin disappeared into a poof of smoke. joining me now, jamie raskin, member of the over sight committee. sir, thank you very much for joining us. it's good to have you here. >> great to be with you, rachel. >> so you guys have released more than 2600 pages of

testimony. i feel it in my bones because we've been trying to keep up here. tell me about the -- 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 that there was anything going on behind closed doors, in fact they had 50% of the questioning. we had 50% of the questioning. i see no sooner have we begun to release all 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. 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 to 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 ukrainians 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 say, yeah, but it's not an impeachable offense because there's nothing particularly

egreengs about it. in fact, no president in the history of the united states of america has ever done anything remotely close to that. that is, to shake down 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's being occupied. so they -- 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 in 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 that 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 that the president's republican allies on the hill are looking at the brett cavanaugh supreme court hearings as a model, which would suggest that we're in for some, forgive me, some histrionics, some sort of carnival tactic. 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? >> well, i think you're right. that is always the hail 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's against you, you pound the facts. if both the facts and the law

are against you, you pound the table. we already saw them conduct their faux civil disobedience where they became the first sit-in protestors in american history fighting for high crimes and misdemeanors. so it's just an embarrassment and a disgrace. 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. >> i just -- to that point, i mean, i don't know how this is going to go. but i feel like the -- my -- my worry here reading so many hundreds of pages of these transcripts and seeing what the story is that's been laid out and having a lot of respect for the experience and the 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 what 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 -- 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. i'm sort of just positing it to you. >> 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 ju rish judiciary committee and the judiciary committee is now filled with people who are battle-scarred veterans of these

circus-like provocations and tactics by the republicans and i think you are going to find a majority on the judiciary committee that's really ready for them. the other thing, though, is that 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 despits and the dictators and the strong men and the tyrants on the march for racism. they are scapegoating people. they are demonizing george sores and so on. you're playing along with the authoritarians and we got to stand up for democracy. i through you're going to find 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 our forefathers and foremothers fought for in the revolution and the civil war and the civil rights movement and the labor movement and the women's movement but we're throwing away the chances for a lot of people around world to have democracy and human rights too. so we understand the stakes of thele struggle. >> congressman jamie raskin. thank you for your time. thank you very much. >> thank you, rachel. >> we got much more to get to. stay with us. >> we got much more to get to. stay with us i am royalty of racing, i am alfa romeo. when youyou spend lessfair, and get way more. so you can bring your vision to life and save in more ways than one.

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jury and i'm forced and compelled to come here today. >> steve bannon speaking to reporters today about his reluctant witness. yes, i'm a really reluctant witness. i was under subpoena. i was forced to be here. he neglected to mention in that answer that, in fact, before he was subpoenaed, he voluntarily spoke for -- spoke with prosecutors in this case and even though he was under subpoena by robert mueller to speak to the grand jury, he also without a subpoena spoke to mueller's 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 dock documents and e-mails that had been stolen by russian intelligence. bannon said quote the campaign had no official access to wikileaks or julian assange but roger would be considered if we needed an access point because he had implied or told me he had a relationship with wikileaks and julian assange. in the last few weeks of run up in 2016, you might remember wikileaks teasing an october surprise that was going to be a terrible thing to hurt clinton's campaign. the group said they would release that surprise on october 4th at a press conference. they held the press conference but didn't actually release anything that day. we now know steve bannon e-mailed roger stone. he said in his 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 hinl.

him. that that's the president's campaign chief at the 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. sundown vitamins

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i was forced to go to the grand jury and i'm 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 into that car and instead wheel around and make that, yeah, i don't want to be here, i'm forced and compelled, to make that statement, the reporter who asked that question was politico's josh gerstein. he was there for bannon's testimony today. josh is the senior legal affairs contributor and he joins us now. josh, thanks very much for being here. >> hey, rachel. good to see you again. >> so why as you ask bannon that? i mean, he was all ready to get in that car and boogie but your question really stopped him 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 the last day or two his arm is

twisted to 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 stens ivnsivel with the mueller investigation. he even cooperated with these prosecutors who questioned him today. but when he gotten on the witness stand, not only publicly but to the jury seemed to want to make clear that he was a very reluctant witness. he kept using those words compelled, forced. said if it was up to him, he wouldn't have shown up voluntarily unless he had been subpoenaed. so this seems to be the message he wants to put 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, you 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 resal recalcitrant witness than 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. great riches will find you when liberty mutual customizes your car insurance, so you only pay for what you need. wow. thanks, zoltar. how can i ever repay you? maybe you could free zoltar? thanks, lady. taxi!

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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. his name is shawn hawkins. he was born in plymouth and served on the plymouth city council before he decided to run this year. and he won. he ousted the current mayor who has been in the job for 18 years. as of tuesday this week shawn hawkins is the first african-american ever elected mayor in plymouth, north carolina. we talked to mayor-elect hawkins. 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. change was reflected in the city council too. 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 stand by this president while he's being

impeached is 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 night of news to get to. ahead in this hour, all of the legal problems swirling around trump world today. steve bannon under oath at the roger stone trial. we'll talk to someone heard how bannon tied the campaign to wikileaks. and trump defender jim jordan is facing new accusations of doing nothing to stop sexual abuse when he worked in ohio university. this as republicans move to put him on the house i