president saved 60,000 gallons of precious jet fuel. of course it later became clear that was negated when air force one flew empty across the country to fly nixon and his party back home to the white house from california. and on that note, that is our broadcast for this tuesday evening. thank you so very much for being here with us. on behalf of all of my colleagues at the networks of nbc news, good night. covid haircut number two. do not judge. all right. this is on page 106. that's right at the start of chapter 8. quote, i sat at the diening roo table with the shoe in front of me, trying to figure out what the point of it was. i looked through the remaining boxes under the tree thinking that perhaps the shoe's twin had been wrapped separately.

but, no, there was just the one, a gold lame shoe with a four-inch heel filled with hard candy. both the individual candies and the shoe itself were wrapped in cellophane. where had this thing come from, i wondered. had it been a door prize or a party favor from a luncheon? donald came through the panty from the kitchen. as he passed me, he asked, what's that? i said, it's a present from you. really, he said? he looked at it for a second. ivana, he shouted into the foyier. she was standing on the other side of the christmas tree near the living room. ivana! what is it, donald? this is great. he pointed at the shoe, and she smiled. maybe he thought it was real gold. it had all started in 1977 with a three-pack of bloommys underwear, meaning bloomingdales underwear, retail $12. my very first christmas present from donald and his new wife,

ivana. that same year, they had given my brother fritz a leather-bound journal. it looked as though it were meant for somebody older b you it was really nice. i felt a bit slighted until we realized that the journal was two years out of date. well, at least the underwear they gave me wouldn't expire. the president has been trying like mad to make this book not appear in print, but here it is. a bunch of other journalists, including me, got an advance copy today. i read the whole thing cover to cover, including the prologue, the epilogue, and the acknowledgements. the book is called "too much and never enough: how my family created the world's most dangerous man." and it's a family story. i mean the president is one of five siblings. there were three boys and two girls in his family. his two older sisters are elizabeth and mary ann, more on mary ann in a second.

the president also has a younger brother, whose name is robert. you might have seen robert in the news recently because it was in robert's name that basically the president has tried to stop this book from being published, by using his anti-first amendment lawyer to bring a lawsuit against this book's publisher. we'll have more on that in a minute as well. but the president also, once upon a time, had an older brother as well, an older brother named fred, who died years ago at the age of 42 after years of alcoholism. well, fred's daughter, mary, who is now 55 years old, she has a ph.d. in clinical psychology. her name is mary trump, and she is the author of this book, which comes out next week. i can tell you tonight some of what's in it because i am not embargoed from telling you some of what i have just read here. so i'm going to tell you some of what i've just read here. honestly a lot of it is a family portrait like the story about

the random gold lame shoe. what's that? it's my present from you. you know, family portraits can be either just weird or maybe interesting depending on your level of interest in that particular family. but when the family member in question here is now the president of the united states, who is currently at the helm of, i think what is inarguably the most disastrous presidency in modern american history, a family portrait of him and how he became who he is and who he has long been, it can send a chill down your spine even when it's also sometimes funny. for example, given the president's current somewhat terrifying relationship with the u.s. military, which recently includes him ordering what he called heavily armed u.s. troops into u.s. streets to deploy against u.s. civilians and, you know, him requesting military parades in his own honor, given the unnerving nature of his

relationship with the u.s. military, it is additionally unnerving to read the family story version of him and the military and how that touches perhaps on these current concerns. on page 169 of mary trump's new book, it is a little bit unnerving to read about how the president threatened to disown his own son if his son joined the military. quote, when my brother fritz and i pointed out that all our cousins would still benefit from the will, our uncle rob told us, quote, any of them could be disowned at any time. donny, meaning donald trump jr., was going to join the army or some bs like that and donald and ivana told him if he did, they'd disown him in a second. the president threatening to disown his son if he joined the military. casts a shadow, looms a little bit over what we understand about his bizarre relationship

with the military and his perception of their role in his administration, i guess is the nice way to put it, now that he's president. then there's the family lore and the lived experience of the author when it comes to our president's feelings about women and the way he talks about women and what he thinks is important about women. and this is, i guess, in keeping with a lot of other things that we have learned about him over the time. but, still, it's additionally unnerving. this is from page 150 of the book. quote, the next day, i spent the morning exploring the property. there were no other guests, so the entire place felt empty and strangely quiet. i took a quick swim before lunch which was scheduled for 1:00 p.m. as formal as mar-a-lago was in some ways, it was also much more casual than our usual family gathering places. so i felt comfortable wearing a bathing suit and a pair of shorts to lunch, which was being served on the patio. donald, who was wearing golf clothes, looked up at me as i approached, as if he'd never

really seen me before. holy bleep, mary. you're stacked. she was his niece. he had known her since birth. holy bleep, mary. you're stacked. the reason that mary trump was at mar-a-lago for that barfy little seen in the book is because the president by that point has asked his niece, had asked mary trump to ghostwrite one of his books for him, one that was to be called "the art of the comeback." and mary trump details in chapter 9 of the book the difficulty she had in trying to prep material for writing that book because even though she describes being set up with an office inside trump tower and getting basically full access to the operations of the trump organization, even though she was even invited to listen in on speakerphone to lots of mr. trump's phone calls that he was on all day, she says she could never actually figure out what he did in terms of work. he didn't really seem to do any

work, so she couldn't figure out exactly what she was going to write about him. what she thought was going to be her saving grace for ghostwriting this book came when her unk the, donald trump, volunteered to her he had started writing something for the book himself, and she could use it. she says he was very excited about it. quote, one night as i sat at home trying to figure out how to piece together something vaguely interesting out of the uninteresting documents i'd been poring over, donald called. he said, when you come into the office tomorrow, rhona's going to have some pages for you. i've been working on material for the book. it's really good. he sounded excited. finally i might have something to work with, some idea about how to organize this thing. i still didn't know what he thought about his comeback or how he ran his business or even when role he played in the deals he was currently developing. but the next day, rhona handed me a manila envelope containing about ten typewritten pages as

promised. i took it to my desk and began to read. when i finished, i wasn't sure what to think. it was clearly a transcript of a recording donald had made, which explained its stream of consciousness quality. what it was was an aggrieved compendium of women he had expected to date but who, having refused him, were suddenly the worst, ugliest and fattest slobs he'd ever met. the biggest takeaways were that madonna, the pop star, chewed gum in a way donald found unattractive, and that katarina wit, a german floik figure skater, who had won two gold medals and four world championships, she had big calves. mary trump concludes that chapter by saying, quote, i stopped asking him for an interview. this theme about how how the president talks and thinks about women extends in weird fashion even to other members of his immediate family. at the very beginning of the book, we're treated to a scene where the author, mary trump,

the president's niece, is among a number of trump family members who are invited to the white house for a family dinner in the spring of 2017, just a couple of months after the president was first inaugurated. at that dinner at the white house, the president, surrounded by his surviving siblings and his nieces and nephews and his own children and their spouses, the president, according to mary trump, says this. quote, then, diet coke glass in hand, donald made some perfunctory remarks about my aunts' birthdays, after which he turned to his daughter-in-law. lara, he said, i barely knew who the "f" she was, but then she gave a great speech during the campaign in georgia supporting me. by then, mary notes, the president's son and lara had been together for almost eight years. who the heck is that? my daughter-in-law?

i didn't even know who the "f" she was honestly. in mary trump's telling, he does not say "f." he says the f word. i didn't know who the "f" she was honestly. he says this honestly in front of the whole family, in front of his son to whom this young woman is married, and he says it in front of her. he said he didn't know who the "f" she was until she gave this seem about him, and then he noticed her. there's also a bizarre scene in which the author, the president's niece, mary trump, is introduced for the first time to the president's third wife, the current first lady, melania trump. and the way in which that scene is bizarre is because in mary trump's telling, the president lies about his niece. he tells a big, weird lie about mary trump right in front of mary trump, right in front of her. he lies about her while introducing her to his new wife. he tells mrs. trump, melania,

that his niece, mary, had a terrible drug problem that she has bounced back from. and mary says she said in the moment, whoa. no, no, no. i've never done drugs in my whole life. but he continues, and he continues to insist that she had a terrible drug problem that she bounced back from. and he continues to insist this in front of her. she says, quote, he slid me a look and smiled. he was embellishing the story for effect, and he knew that i knew it. a fairly close member of the president's family has just written this book that in part is about -- it's like if there's sort of a theme in the book, it's definitely a psychological analysis of the president and his father and how he became the type of person that he is. but the sort of plot point that you keep coming back to in like every anecdote about him, both with the family and in dealing with the public and in business,

is just about how easily he lies and that he will do so for any effect. and in this part of her family's history, she's suggesting that he does it basically for pleasure, that it's one of the ways he enjoys himself is to tell lies even in front of the people about whom those lies are being told and continuing to do it even though at least one of the people present while he's telling the lie knows he's doing so. he likes it. it's unnerving, right? it's unnerving, you know, in a pandemic when that's the president. did you see today that he started hyping hydroxychloroquine again from the white house as a coronavirus miracle cure? does that give him pleasure? mary trump says again, he slid me a look and smiled, knowing that he was lying and knowing that i knew it. since the book started sneaking out from under wraps today, if you have heard one thing about

it, you may have heard the allegation that mary trump makes that the president paid somebody to take his s.a.t. test to get him into college. here's how that is spelled out in the book. quote, since september 1964, donald had been living at his parents' house and commuting 30 minutes to fordham university in the bronx. his attendance at which he would avoid mentioning in the years to come. donald was determined to secure a degree commensurate with his new ambitions at his father's company even if it only secured him bragging rights. aware of the reputation of the wharton school of business at the university of pennsylvania, donald set his sights on upenn. unfortunately, even though his older sister mary ann had been doing his homework for him at fordham, she couldn't take his tests and donald worried that his grade point average, which put him far from the top of his class, would scuttle his efforts to get accepted at penn. to hedge his bets, he enlisted joe shapiro to take his s.a.t.s

for him. that was much easier to pull off in the days before photo i.d.s and computerized records. donald, who never lacked for funds, paid his buddy well. now, it should be noted that the white house is vehemently denying that the president paid somebody to take his s.a.t.s. it should also be noted that the president has gone to great lengths to make sure that his transcripts and all of the records from his schooling have been all kept secret from high school and college and all the rest of it. so even the ambient details here are hard to check. but as for his sister maryanne, who mary trump says did his homework for him when he was in college, mary trump also alleges that donald trump pulled political strings to get his older sister maryanne appointed as a federal judge. she recounts how donald trump had his personal lawyer at the time, roy cohn, call and lobby reagan attorney general ed meese, that his older sister

should be nominated to the federal bench. and she of course was. she got a federal seat and became a fairly respected appellate court judge in the federal judiciary. but that brings us to some of the most interesting stuff here of all, and honestly on to something that we're waiting on right now from the u.s. supreme court in a decision that could come as soon as tomorrow. it has always struck me as one of the great overlooked, jaw-droppers of the scandal-ridden trump era that just one of the things that's happened since he's been in office is that his older sister, federal judge maryanne trump barry, really did have to give up her lifetime seat on the federal bench in order to avoid a judicial ethics inquiry into a massive, multi-million dollar alleged, years-long tax fraud scheme that she reportedly engaged in with her family, including with her brother, who is the sitting president.

i mean we don't even think of that as one of the trump scandals, but like that's bigger than any other presidential scandal of my lifetime. it's one of the forgotten scandals of this presidency. i mean, you know, there was billy carter, right? there was roger clinton. there was -- what was the -- neil bush, right? i mean there are presidential sibling embarrassments. but since when has a presidential sibling had to resign from the judiciary to avoid scrutiny of the things she did with the president with taxes and their family money? this from page 193 of the book. quote, this is mary trump speaking in her own voice. quote, i met with maryanne, her aunt, the president's older sister. i met with maryanne again shortly after the article ran. she denied all of it. she was just a girl after all, she said. when a piece of paper requiring her signature had been put in front of her, she'd signed it no questions asked.

she said, this article goes back 60 years. you know that's before i was a judge. she said this as if the investigation had also ended 60 years before. she seemed unconcerned that there would be any repercussions. although a court inquiry had been opened into her alleged conduct, all she had to do was put an end to that was retire as a judge, which she did, thereby retaining her $200,000 a year judicial pension. well, the article in question, mary trump says i met with her again shortly after the article ran. the article in question, the one that caused the president's sister to resign her lifetime appointment as a judge because that was the only way she could preclude the judiciary from running an inquiry into what she allegedly did -- the article in question was of course the pulitzer prize-winning gigantic investigation into the president's financial past that "the new york times" published in october 2018. that is where we learned from

"the times" reporting and from a ton of documents they exclusively obtained -- that's where we learned that the president had received hundreds of millions of dollars from his father, not the $1 million loan that he had long publicly claimed was his sole inheritance from his father. that's where we learned about the president and his family running this reported scheme by which they systematically undervalued their assets to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars basically to cheat on paying taxes. that's where we learned that the president and his family created a -- went so far as to create a fake company to siphon money out of their father's company without having to pay taxes on it. the scheme worked by marking up building and construction costs but then president trump and his siblings reportedly just pocketed the difference without ever paying any tax on that money. that reporting from "the new york times" is also in part how mary trump, the author of this new book, learned that the

settlement she and her brother agreed to concerning trump's father's estate -- that's how she learned that the settlement that she and her brother agreed to with regard to that estate undervalued that estate by hundreds of millions of dollars, thereby she says cheating her and her brother out of millions of dollars of their share of it. she also says that fraud, that deliberate undervaluing of the father's estate, is itself a fraud. that means she doesn't have to abide by the confidentiality agreement she signed as part of that settlement. that confidentiality agreement is part of how they are trying to stop her from publishing this book. she's saying, yeah, i signed it, but i signed it as part of a deal that was a fraud because we've learned from "the new york times" and other reporting, thanks to documents that i gave them, that the estate that was being settled by me signing that piece of paper was being drastically misrepresented as a way of cheating me. so am i going to abide by the

confidentiality agreement? no, i'm not. i'm publishing my book. and whether a restraining order pursuant to that confidentiality agreement still applies to her is still being litigated. but the book itself now is in journalists' hands. and, you know, family lore, family legend, family grudges, family fights about money, you know, take it for what it is. but the reporting on this particular family's fortune and the reporting on the family tax schemes, and the reporting on whether or not the president and his family engaged in a massive and potentially ongoing federal tax fraud that is the real source of the president's purported fortune and purported fortune is the entire basis of his political persona -- well, that stuff is not family lore. that is really, solid reporting. and we now know per mary trump's

book -- we now know by her own account that she was a major source for that reporting that won the pulitzer prize in "the new york times". screw over your family members for years and decades. and, sure, maybe it's all fun for you and profit in the short term. but it's all fun and profit until that family member you've been screwing over for years and decades finally decides to open the door to a really good reporter who is standing there on their doorstep. and that part of the story and that really good reporter joins us live. stay with us. you're first. first to respond. first to put others' lives before your own. and in an emergency, you need a network that puts you first. that connects you to technology to each other and to other agencies. built with and for first responders.

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okay. when the supreme court ruling comes out tomorrow or next week sometime about whether or not subpoenas can be used to obtain the president's tax returns and finances, that's when you're going to want to start reading from page 185 of mary trump's new book. i'll give you a head start. quote, a couple of months after my aunts's april 2017 birthday party at the white house, i was in theive willing room lacing up my sneakers when the front doorbell ring. i don't know why i answered it. i almost never did. 75% of the time it was a

jehovah's witness or mormon missionaries. the rest of the time it was somebody wanting me to sign a petition. but i opened the door. and when i opened the door, the only thing that registered that the woman standing there with her shock of curly blonde hair and dark rimmed glasses someone i didn't know. h hi. my name is suzanne craig. i'm a reporter for "the new york times." journalists had stopped contacting me a long time before. with the exception of david corn of mother jones and somebody from front line, the only other person to leave a message before the election had been from inside edition. nothing hi to say about my uncle would have mattered before november 2016. why would anybody want to hear from me now? the futility of it annoyed me. i said, it's so not cool that you're showing up at my house. she said, id understand. i'm sorry. but we're working on a very important story on your family's finances and we think you could really help us. i said, i can't talk to you. she said, at least take my card.

if you change your mind, you can call me anytime. i said, i don't talk to reporters, but i took her card anyway. a few weeks later, i fractured the fifth metatarsal on my left foot. for the next four months, i was a prisoner in my own home. i received a letter from suzanne craig reiterating her belief that i had documents that could help rewrite the history of the president of the united states as she put it. i ignored her letter. but she persisted. after a month of sitting on the couch scrolling through twitter with the news constantly on in the background, i watched in real time as donald shredded norms, endangered alliances and introduce upon the vulnerable. the only thing about it that surprises me was the increasing number of people willing to enable him. as i watched our democracy disintere disintere disintegrating and people's lives unraveling, i kept thinking about susan craig's letter. i found her business card and i called her. i told her i wanted to help but i no longer had any documents relating to our lawsuit years

before. she told me jack bar no, sir ski might still have them. jack barnosky is the lawyer mary had used when they sued over the terms of trump's will. ten days later, i was on my way to jack barnosky's office. the headquarters of his law firm were located in one of two on long buildings sheathed in plu glass, bitterly cold air pushed between them across the wide open space of the enormous parking lot. it's impossible to park anywhere near the entrance. after i found a spot, it took me ten minutes to get to the lobby on my crutches. i negotiated the escalator and marble floors very carefully. by the time i arrived at my destination, i was tired and overheated. 30 bankers boxes lined the two walls and filled a bookshelf. the room's only other contents were a desk and a chair. jack's secretary had kindly put out a pad of paper, a pen, and some paper clips. i dropped my bags, leaned my crutches against the wall and half fell into the desk chair. none of the boxes was labeled.

i had no idea where to start. it took about an hour to familiarize myself with the contents of the boxes and compile a list, which required wheeling around the room on my chair and lifetichting boxes on desk. jack reminded me i couldn't take any documents out of the room. he said, they belong to your brother too, and i need his permission, which wasn't at all true. when he turned to leave, i called after him, jack, wait a second. can you remind me why we decided to settle the lawsuit? he said, well, you were getting concerned about the costs. as you know, we don't take cases on contingency. although we knew they were lying to us, it was he said, she said. besides, your grandfather's estate was worth on $30 million. it was almost word for word what he had told me when i last seen him almost 20 years earlier. i told him, ah, okay, thanks. i was holding in my hands documents that proved the estate had actually been worth close to

a billion dollars when he died. ive just didn't know it yet. after i was sure jack had gone, i grabbed copies of my grandfather's wills, floppy disks with all of the depositions from the lawsuit, and some of my grandfather's bank records, all of which i was legally entitled to as part of the lawsuit. i stuffed them into my bags. sue came to my house the next day to pick up the documents and dropped off a burner phone so we could communicate more securely going forward. we weren't taking any chances. on my third trip to the law firm, i went through every box and discovered there were two copies of everything. i mentions the fact to jack's secretary and suggested it obviated the need to get my brother's permission. i would leave a full set of documents for him in the unlikely event he ever wanted one. i was just beginning to look for the list of material "the times" wanted when i got the message from jack. i could take whatever i wanted as long as i left another copy. i hadn't been prepared for that. in fact, i had plans to meet suzanne craig and her colleagues, russ buettner and david barstow, the other two

journalists working on the story, i had plans to meet them at my house at 1:00 with whatever i managed to struggle out. i texted sue with the news i'd be late. at 3:00, not 1:00, i drove to the loading dock beneath the building and 19 boxes were loaded into the back of the truck i had borrowed. i was driving a borrowed truck because i couldn't work the clutch in my own car. remember she had a broken foot. it was just beginning to get dark when i pulled into my own driveway. the three reporters were waiting for me in david's suv, which sported a pair of reindeer antlers and a huge red nose wired to the grill. when i showed them the boxes, there were hugs all around. it was the happiest i'd felt in months. when they left, i was exhausted and relieved. i hadn't fully grasped how much of a risk i was taking. if anybody in my family found out i was doing, there would be repercussions. anything would pale in comparison to what they'd already done. i finally felt as though i might be able to make a difference

after all. while they were working on the article, "the times" reporters invited me to join them for a tour of my grandfather's properties. on the morning of january 10th, they picked me up in difd's suv at the jamaica train station. we started at the high lapder, the building where i'd grown up. over the course of the day we tra sersed snow drifts and patches of ice in an effort to visit as much of the trump real estate empire as possible. after nine hours, we still hadn't managed to see all of it. i had traded in my crutches for a cane by then. i had no idea just how many. more disturbingly, my own father had apparently owned 20% of some of these buildings i had never heard of before. on october 2nd, 2018, "the new york times" published an almost 14,000 word article, the longest in its history, revealing the long litany of potentially fraudulent and criminal activities that my grandfather and my aunts and my uncles,

including the president, had engaged in. through the extraordinary reporting of "the times" team, i learned more about my family's finances than i had ever known. again, mary trump only believes she is able to publish this book and able to speak about it because she thinks the confidentiality agreement that she signed in settling that lawsuit with her family 20 years ago, is null and void because that settlement was a fraud, because the family was materially misrepresenting the size of the estate in order to cheat her and her brother out of millions of dollars. it should also be noted that the president's finances, including his tax returns, are the subject of a supreme court case on which we could get a ruling as soon as tomorrow as to whether or not congressional investigators and new york state prosecutors can access that material and review it for ongoing investigations of the president. suzanne craig from "the new york times" joins us live next. - [narrator] did you just reward yourself

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the investigation that "the new york times" published in late 2018 into donald trump's finances and his family's finances would go on to win a pulitzer prize with an exclamation point. that report revealed the extent to which the president's money really had come from the fortune his father left him and not through his own work in business, an inherited fortune that "the times" reported was inflated through, quote, dubious tax schemes, and, quote, instances of outright fraud that president trump carried out along with his siblings. that report led, among other things, to the president's older sister, maryanne, stepping down from a lifetime seat as a federal judge so as to avoid an ethics inquiry into her finances. but now in a blockbuster new book, mary trump, the president's niece, says that she was a source for "the times" in that report. i should also mention mary trump also quotes a lot of really nasty things the president's

retired judge sister has said about him since he has been in the oval office. now we are awaiting a ruling any day now from the united states supreme court over whether the president's financial records and taxes have to be turned over to state investigators in new york and congressional investigators. and while we await that and while we start to appreciate how financial entanglements and fights like that can lead to all sorts of dubious and -- well, all sorts of, all sorts of interesting family lore, that "new york times" opus remains the best key that we have to understanding how our president got his money and whether his supposed business fortune really may have been the product of a long-running criminal scheme along with members of his family. joining us now is susanne craig, investigative reporter for "the new york times" and with her colleagues russ buettner and david barstow, winner of the pulitzer for that investigation of the trump family finances. thank you so much for making

time for us tonight. i'm really glad you could do so. >> thanks for having me. >> so i would never ask you about your sources, and i'm not going to tonight. but mary trump in this book is volunteering that she was a source of yours and provided you and your colleagues with documents for your reports. i do just have to ask as she recounts this part of her family saga and what she learned and what she understands about her family and money and all this, does it comfort with yoport wit reporting and what you and your colleagues found at "the times"? >> it's interesting because we spent 18 months going through it and we learned a lot about how of sort of the trump thinks about finances and one of the things that mary trump brings up in her book is appraisals. i think we learned pretty quickly when we started to go through both the confidential documents that we had obtained and public documents, we start to see how they treat appraisals, and when they have

something that's charitable, the appraisal goes really high so they can get the tax deduction. when they have something they want to lower their tax bill on, the appraisal goes lower. so there's definitely a lot of things that happened that we saw that went to appraisals, and we looked at, you know, a number of things that they did over years that had to do largely with low appraisals so that they could avoid taxes. >> part of the fight over the publication of this book, which officially comes out next week, is whether or not mary trump is bound by a confidentiality agreement she signed as part of a court settlement over the settlement of the president's father's gigantic estate. she's fighting that by saying, listen, the settlement of that ea estate was itself fraudulent because assets were systematically undervalued. that seems to be in keeping with

the pattern you describe in terms of the way the -- >> what i think about this, i break it up into two pieces. one is i think, you know, fred trump died, and a lot of things went into his will and ended up in probate, and it sort of looked like he was worth $30 million. so when mary trump and her brother kind of saw that, they probably thought, well, that's his estate. but in fact in the previous years, in '96 and '97, donald trump and his siblings pretty much took out most of everything that fred trump, their father, owned, and they put it into trusts. so when fred and mary actually see what's gone into probate court after their grandfather dies, it's basically the carcass of really what he owned, which was hundreds of millions of dollars. so the value of what ended up there was maybe $30 million, and they had a separate suit where they were saying that their

aunts and uncles took advantage of fred trump and, you know, diminished -- you know, basically got them disinherited. they had poisoned his mind is one point. so there's sort of the impression they were left with and then their fight to get, you know, just were they disinherited or not and what role did their aunts and uncles play. but then also you have when they go to settle, their aunts and uncles, they came to an agreement, and fred and mary signed over actually what they inherited in 1981. and part of what mary trump talks about in the book is the threats that were made, you know, during that process to get them to sign it over. and there was definitely appraisals involved all throughout, and i think that this is going to continue to play out in the courts, you know, going forward. it's already, you know, in front of a court right now as she struggles to get out of the so-called nda that she's in where she can't talk. >> susanne, after the opus that

you published in "the times" for which you won the pulitzer, you subsequently reported that new york regulators, new york investigators were looking into the tax schemes that you and your colleagues reported at "the times." we obviously are now awaiting a supreme court ruling as to whether or not new york investigators can subpoena the president's financial records. that's there along with a similar question about whether or not congressional investigators can look at the president's tax returns. is there anything that you can tell us tonight in terms of your understanding, your reporting about those investigations and whether or not the president and his family is potentially in trouble for any of the stuff that you guys were able to report out? >> i mean we haven't seen a lot of traction on the city and state investigations that started out. still something may come of it, but we haven't. i think what we're going to see tomorrow, potentially tomorrow, it's going to be one morning in the next few weeks, is whether or not the tax returns will be

turned over either to, you know, prosecutors in new york and also to congressional investigators. so there's kind of two things going on there. i don't know how that's going to land, but it's separate from the work that we did, which was, you know, other investigations that could be going on. >> susanne craig, pulitzer prize-winning investigative reporter at "the new york times." thank you so much for your time tonight, and i'm grateful to mary trump for the vivid display of how you do your work and how you persuaded her to provide this material. it's a fascinating window into how you work. thank you so much, susanne. >> it was a bit of a movie scene, so thanks for the reading. >> i appreciate it. i'm never going to be in the movies. this is as close as i get. i read stuff on tv and imagine myself there. more ahead here tonight. stay with us. to our artistic endowment program.

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large surge in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations right now. arizona of course is in terrible shape right now. texas is in terrible shape. florida is starting to get really terrible really fast. all three of those states are now having hospitals overrun while their case numbers and hospitalization numbers just keep climbing every day. it's scary. but california is having a real problem too, and here's something really specific that's going wrong in california that was not just like a bad situation that arose from the mire of this epidemic. in california, part of their big problem right now was a single screwup, a bad mistake that has now set off what is really a disaster. here's what happened. by mid-april, one of the largest state prisons in california had a big coronavirus outbreak. it started as just a handful of cases at the california state prison in chino, but it soon became dozens of cases, prisoners and staff alike. at the time there were more than 4,200 men imprisoned at chino.

that's nearly 20% more than the capacity that prison was built to handle. of course by their very nature, correctional facilities and specifically overcrowded correctional facilities like chino was, just a hotbed for any sort of contagious illness, any sort of outbreak. so when they knew that in mid-april, it was no wonder that by the following month, by may, coronavirus had just run through every dorm used to house prisoners at chino. by the end of may there were 635 confirmed cases at chino. there were nine men dead. given the kries crisis they had their hands. >>, the date department of corrections decided they were transfer prisons to other prisons in the state. one of those prisons was the infamous prison just north of san francisco called san

quentin. now, at the time san quentin had actually been doing very well in beating back the epidemic. so well, in fact, that at the time, san quentin had no infections. san quentin had no coronavirus infections in march, in april, and in may. but then came this influx of prisoners from chino, which had a terrible problem there. more than 120 prisoners were transferred from chino to that facility at san quentin. and they'd all been tested at some point before transfer, but it wasn't like they were particularly sticklers for the timing. i mean right off the bat they knew there were problems. many of the prisoners hadn't been tested for coronavirus for up to a month before they got sent from chino to this new prison at san quentin. and so at san quentin within days, they get the signs of their first infections. in the month or so since those transfers, san quentin has now become the largest coronavirus outbreak in california.

there have now been more than 1,500 confirmed cases at san quentin alone and at least six deaths. three of those deaths just came this weekend. and amidst this huge spike in more than 1,500 cases at san quentin, well, now the top medical officer for california prisons has been fired. and now with the virus having spread unabated throughout san quentin, it is -- i mean it's no wonder that a lot of people are worried on a lot of different levels starting, of course, with the prisoners and with their families. recently we had the chance to speak with the mother of one prisoner at san quentin. her name is rita zavala, and she told us this about her son's se cellmate recently testing positive and how her son is living now. >> our men, their lives matter too. they're human beings just like everybody else, and they should be treated like that.

not like animals. that's what i feel like they're treating them like. just letting them sit there, you know, if you make it, oh, good. if not, oh, well. you know, and that's not how to treat a human. they made mistakes, but they're paying for their mistakes, you know, by being in prison. but my son wasn't sentenced to death. but i feel like he is now because i don't know if he's going to get the virus and if he's going to make it through the virus because their medical is not the greatest, you know? >> that last point raised by ms. zavala is a critical one. you know, it's not just the number of men that are dying at san quentin that is the cause for alarm. it's also the huge number of prisoners who are positive there now who are requiring medical

care, and they're requiring advanced medical care which means they're getting it not just at the prison itself but within the whole local health care system. some hospitals within reaching distance of san quentin have become so taxed already by san quentin prisoners filling up their icus that they're no longer accepting any transfers of california state prisoners to their facilities. the situation has gotten bad enough that one local doctor told our nbc news affiliate in san francisco that san quentin is the chernobyl of covid. i mean it's one thing to look at prison outbreaks as a story about prisoners and their fate and whether, in fact, a sentence to imprisonment should de facto become a sentence of death. in this case, though, this is bad enough in northern california that this particular prison outbreak caused by the state is a serious problem for kroivg in the whole state. yes it's a problem for prisoners. yes it's a problem for staff. yes, it's a problem for families of prisoners and staff. but, yes, it's a problem for everybody. san quentin is now the little engine that could in terms of pumping out the virus into

california and taxing the abilities of northern california hospitals. nowhere is that being felt more acutely than in marin county where san quentin state prison is located. two weeks the president of the county's board of supervisors rang the alarm bell about the toll the outbreak was taking not just within that prison but on the county itself. she wrote a letter to governor gavin newsom asking for help in getting this thing under control not only so the prisoners can get the care they need, but so the local hospital system can withstand the hunl stresses that they are now under because the largest outbreak in the state is in that prison. the county supervisor sent out that cry for help two weeks ago. this weekend, marin county set a couple of new coronavirus records. and the engine for coronavirus in this county is this prison. we're going to talk about this tomorrow with one of the decision makers trying to fix this. watch this space. 24/7 protection.

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estate of my colleague, and so i shall now take my leave. that's going to do it for me tonight. i'll see you again tomorrow. now it's time for the last word with lawrence o'donnell. good evening, lawrence. >> oh, come on, 20 seconds into the real estate. good evening, rachel. so you got the book, the book. you just did in the last hour, and tim o'brien is here and he has read the book. not so much that i'm going to talk about the book. i'm going to listen to tim o'brien about the book that i -- that i haven't read. that i can't wait to read. >> this is -- i will loan you my copy that i have read th this is your kind of book. so i will give you mine. >> just pass it through the screen. i will get it, just reach out drkt, just under the