and 9:00 a.m. in the west. sentence commuted. former trump supporter weighs in about the commuted sentence of roger stone. hospitals on the verge of running out of room and in one state, a mutation that may make the virus even more infectious. mickey mouse back to work. disney opens as cases spike in florida. is it safe? and more than 50 victims, 56, in fact, to be exact, and i'll talk with the lawyer. now the first republican lawmaker is weighing in, utah senator mitt romney, vocal critic of the president, labeling this as unprecedented, historic corruption. big word there is. josh lederman, good morning to

you. this decision, although expected by some, it was still shocking to a lot of white house aides, right? >> reporter: that's right, alex. we're learning this hour from sources close to the administration, according to nbc's carol lee and pete williams that attorney general bill barr actually tried to convince the president not to offer this clemency to roger stone. the attorney general, in recent days, had called the prosecution of roger stone righteous and said that the sentence that roger stone had been given by the judge was in barr's view fair. the attorney general apparently unsuccessful in convincing the president not to go ahead and offer this commutation to his long-time friend, roger stone. but we know there's also opposition from other aides within the white house who were concerned about the political ramifications of the president offering this clemency, worried

that there would be blowback from people who thought the president was intervening in the impartial, fair justice system, but we heard from the white house nonetheless last night, saying the president was offering this clemency to roger stone, who he said was a victim of a russian hoax. the white house going on in a statement to say that the president doesn't want to interfere with the efforts related to prosecution, but at this time, in light of the egregious fact, he's commuting the sentence. the president going on to say, roger stone has already suffered greatly and were treated unfairly. roger stone is now a free man. but the concern here, alex, not just that the president seems to have been doing a favor for a friend, but whether the president wanted to offer clemency to roger stone, essentially in exchange for what roger stone has said was his decision not to cooperate fully with prosecutors by providing them information, potentially

incriminating information about president donald trump. take a listen to what house intelligence chairman adam sc hichlt hiff has to say. >> if you lie for the president, cover up for the president, if you withhold information that could incriminate the president. he will make sure that unlike other people, you don't have to go. there are now two standards of justice in this country, one for the criminal pals of the president and one for everybody else. >> reporter: but even as this outrage mounts from a lot of democrats, even a few republicans, alex, there's not a whole lot that anybody is really going to be able to do about this, because the pardon power that the president has, as well as his clemency power to offer commutations is pretty absolute. you can't go to a court and ask them to reverse the president's decision and essentially what critics are left with is the ability to make a political argument that the president shouldn't have done this and should be punished for it in

november. but as far as trying to actually stop or block this action, there are not a lot of avenues for anybody to do that. >> thank you for the reporting from the white house for that. joining me now, as we continue this conversation, sam numberg. it's good to see you. it's been a bit. let me ask you this. given your history working with roger stone, what went through your mind when you heard roger stone would not be going to prison, and have you communicated with him? >> i've not talked to roger since 2017 and i didn't want to talk to roger even when i could have, because i didn't know what would happen either if he went to jail or if he was commuted. i'll give him a call in a couple of weeks. i wanted to be sure that they couldn't say i was having any influence or was colluding with him on this. i was happy to hear about this. i understand that some people say there's political fallout. alex, the reality is that there would have been tremendous political fallout from the

president's right. he faced tremendous pressure from advocates in the house, from advocates on fox news, from advocates in conservative media. but the reality is, too, remember, he commuted the sentence. roger is still under appeals. and the justice department acted horrendously. and i'm not surprised that barr was against this. barr, you know, wanted roger to be the pound of flesh for everyone. that's the reality. all we were asking is for barr to treat roger the way he treated flynn, and shame on barr. >> so, sam, you're interpreting one side of this. there's another way to look at this. and that would be whether or not roger stone knows anything that could hurt donald trump and, if so, would that have impacted trump's decision to keep his friend out of prison? >> the reality is, as i said to you before, i believe roger and

donald spoke about. [ inaudible ] roger, however, despite his best efforts, had nothing to do with the hacking, nothing to do with the releasing, nothing to do with the strategizing of wikileaks or whoever else. therefore there's no criminal conspiracy. that's why this case should never have been prosecuted, much less go over the witnesses they had. steve bannon either lied to mueller or the house. he has his own problems, is under investigation in the southern district. >> roger stone was convicted of lying as well. how is this different? look at what mitt romney was saying about it. >> well, mitt romney, mitt cromney lied to us that he was going to run a competent presidential campaign against barack obama. mitt romney has hated roger for a long time. that trial, i had problems with

it, too, amy berman jackson said things at the manafort trial, al alex, that made her conflicted to do this trial. it came out she lied. of course, the judge said she didn't. even on the accounts of witness tampering, you had randy say at the end of the day you may have it statutorily but i didn't feel like i was ever threatened. that's what roger is appealing. >> so, sam, you're just saying that a jury foreman and a judge were lying. where is the proof on that? >> no, i'm saying the judge was biased, conflicted, should not have done it. >> how about the jury foreman? >> yeah, the foreman lied. the foreman absolutely lied. are you familiar with it? i'm not here to attack -- i'm not here to fight with you about it. the foreman lied. >> so, if you -- if the jury foreman lied, sam, that means the jury foreman took all of those jurors, the other 11 with

the foreman, correct, in saying yep, we agree that it's a lie. that's a pretty serious allegation. >> okay. so if she has a problem, she can sue me. i think she's a liar. in fact, go look at the facebook post she put up and then go look at what she said when they were questioning her if she had any bias. it's outrageous. i want the audience to look at this. if this was a democrat or anybody else, this was a c kangaroo court. your buddy tweets last night maybe we should put roger in a grand jury now. andrew, you could have put roger in a grand jury. he offered to meet with you guys. you had it in your head that you wanted to indict him. and you lost. this is a loss. at the end of the day, there was no criminal conspiracy i want to make this clear. no criminal conspiracy. therefore, it was immaterial what roger said.

it was immaterial that roger and the president had these conversations. the other issue is, why should roger go to a jail? the same that has released nonviolent criminals for covid. you can't make this up. >> sam, he was convicted by a jury. you can argue this and continue to do so, and i'm sure you'll be back again on the broadcast and may continue to do so then, but let's leave that right now and remind folks again, he was convicted by a jury, notwithstanding all you're saying there and the allegation the therein. something i want to get your opinion on, the rising anti-trump sentiment within the republican party. let's take a look at a part of a new ad taking direct aim at gop senators, produced by the lincoln project. >> some day soon, the time of trump will pass. this circus of incompetence, corruption and cruelty will end. when it does, the men and women in trump's republican party will

come to you, telling you they can repair the damage he has done. they'll beg you to forgive their votes to exonerate trump from his crimes, ask you to forgive their silence. learn their names. remember their actions. and never, ever trust them. >> how effective do you think this ad is? what do you think the impact might be? it's a republican group. what do you think the president is thinking, as he sees this? what's going through his mind? >> well, i think that -- [ inaudible ] then that's their view. the party doesn't agree with them over 90%. i don't think the problem will have a problem with turnout.

alex, to me, this group is a little strange. does that mean they want joe biden, nancy pelosi and chuck schumer all in power, like we had? >> look, i will say this, sam. i think it does when you look at the options. and i will say, having spoken with one of the founders of the group, 43 alumni for biden. that's the name. it consists of several hundred people. cabinet members, former cabinet members during the bush 43 administration and people who worked in the white house. and they're all saying of the two, we are actually supporting joe biden publicly, they're doing so. so, i'm just saying, i think that answers your question. i wish i had more time for more questions. nick is in my ear, telling me we have to go. see you soon, sam. coronavirus pandemic, u.s. on another record daily high of cases, number of new infections topping 70,000 for the first

time on friday. that number driven by an explosion of new cases across the south and west. as case numbers are surging, hospitals are struggling to keep up. in florida, nbc affiliate wfla reporting a new record of 435 patients hospitalized friday, at least 52 hospitals in the state have no available icu beds left. and this comes as disney world is set to reopen for the first time in nearly four months with new restrictions in place, to help prevent the spread of coronavirus. we'll bring you a live report from orlando in a minute. hospitals in texas are also feeling the strain. nbc news reports houston hospitals are scrambling to open additional icu beds, forcing hospitals to treat hundreds of coronavirus patients in their emergency rooms. 12 of the busiest hospitals in the area are increasingly telling emergency responders, got to turn away. we cannot safely accept new patients. as mentioned, the magic

kingdom is accepting visitors again. it comes amid the surging infection rates, which has made florida one of the biggest coronavirus hot spots in this country. let's go to my colleague, nbc's chris pallone. the weather doesn't look too promising. i have to ask about the expected turnout today. the question is, how can they enforce social distancing guidelines? >> reporter: yeah. hi there, alex. you noticed it. this is something that you can't really plan for. although it's a regular occurrence here in summer, in orlando, florida, just these belly washers that come by. i don't know if it's dampening the spirits of people inside the magic kingdom and animal kingdom, two parks that opened today. it's a different world for park goers who came out on this first day of being opened. they're being greeted at the front gates with temperature checks. everybody over 2 years old has

to wear masks, 4,000 hand sanitizer setups across the parks that people are going to now. i've been cruising social media all day to try to see what it looks like inside the park. obviously we're not inside the park here. crowds appear to be sparse, people are reporting, to put it a certain way. certainly not the high number of people that you would expect on a saturday in july at this theme park, and that's by design. the only people being allowed in are people who make reservations. there's three classes of folks who can make reservations. people who have hotel reservations, who had tickets already before the pandemic and pass holders. so, they're limiting the number of people who can get into the parks. they're social distancing in lines. there are no more parades, no more fire works, anything that will draw a large crowd in an area. no more indoor performances. on social media, i've seen they're taking the famous disney characters and instead of having them go up to kids and take

pictures, they're putting them on trolleys, carts and letting them drive through so everybody can see them. it's been closed for four months. obviously, analysts say that the did izny corporation has been losing millions, perhaps billions of dollars as parks around the world have been closed. they've been eager to open up. like you said, it's against the backdrop of florida being the fastest-growing state in the nation with coronavirus infections. the park opened up for previews on thursday and friday for pass holders and some employees, and we heard from one who went earlier this week who kind of described what it was like to be inside. >> it was with a lot of deliberation and careful consideration that we made the decision to actually stick to our reservation. we decided to continue living our lives and that we believe that we can do this safely, with a lot of research and a lot of work with our kids, be able to make this trip happen. >> reporter: okay. just a correction.

that was a family that's coming from california to visit today, and they were explaining why. we'll be out here, all day, keeping an eye on this. obviously, controversial move to open the parks in the midst of this pandemic, as fast as it's growing in florida, we'll have to see what happens in the days and weeks ahead, alex. >> i apologize for making you stay out there in the rain. we do appreciate it. i'm going to guess that has something to do with the park not being as crowded as it might have otherwise been, were it to have been brilliant sunshine today. chris, thank you very much. officials in arizona just added more than 3,000 new coronavirus cases, bringing the statewild total to just under 120,000 cases. the rate of positive testing, 11.7%. joining me now from arizona, assistant professor from university of arizona college of medicine, also working in an emergency room. that's why we're glad to have you here, doctor. not only is arizona seeing a

record number of cases, but the state's health department is now reporting icu beds are 89% full. how about you and what you are seeing there in the er, how dire is the situation? >> alex, thanks for having me. that 11.7% is way lower than the state's numbers and far lower than what we're seeing in the er. for a couple of weeks now, everybody has tested positive. i discussed this with my colleagues. we actually all talk about it every time there's a negative test. it's so hard to get a negative test in the er. in the community you're more likely to get a negative test because those people aren't as sick. but the state's positivity numbers were 32%. 32, which is way, way higher than 5% threshold. this is on top of how busy our hospitals already are, how tough it is to find a bed. what's scary is that the sickest patients are still yet to come and we're already filling full. we're in a scary moment. maybe there will be a miracle.

none of the numbers look like they're going that way and it definitely doesn't feel that way in the er. >> counting on a miracle, i think, is a fool's errand at this point. let's hope, but -- meanwhile, age breakdown, half the cases are in younger residents, from 20 to 44. dr. akhtar, is that surprising to you? those coming into the er, are they younger than those we had previously seen, people a little bit older? >> i've actually seen fairly young patients coming in with sickness from the very beginning. we have quite a few young patients who come in sick. elderly people definitely do worse than the younger people. there's no denying that. but young people get generally sick. we have young people who have died and on top of that, they're vectors for disease. it comes as people are talking about opening up schools. even if they don't get as sick as the elderly, they can easily

spread it to the elderly. they're getting sick, very sick, and spreading it to everyone. we live in a society with other people and people are infecting each other and we're having trouble getting beds for them, whether they're covid or not covid. >> that's frightening. what about the research that has identified some sort of mute at strain of the virus? they think it will be more infectious than what we've been experiencing so far in the country. what does that mean for doctors and patients? >> yeah. so, you know, tgen found that mutation. we work closely together. and this is sort of what i've been kind of fearing all along. we've been so focused on vaccines and antibodies, and those are all very important, but nobody is talking about as much about prevention. we are, but people seem to be focused on treatment rather than

prevention. this happens with viruses. they mutate. we know that. many viruses have mutate. even if you come up with a vaccine, even the flu vaccine when it's really good is about 60% effective. that's really awesome but it's not 100%. the coronavirus is already mutating, as you've seen. it may be more infectious, may be less infectious, may be more deadly, less deadly but virus mutate. that's what they do. the best way to prevent it is not getting it. >> best of luck. naacp ceo says facebook is a threat to democracy. why he says the meeting produced nothing. says the meeting produd nothing. reinventing. it's what small businesses do.

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video showing a couple of defacing black lives matter mural. passersby confront ed the coupl, asking why they were there. >> we're sick of this narrative. that's what's wrong. >> the narrative of black lives matter? >> the narrative of police brutality. the narrative of oppression, the narrative of racism. it's a lie. >> america's great. >> it's a lie. >> this is racist, what you're doing. >> this is racism, is what it is. >> huh. well, for their efforts, days later, nicole anderson and david anderson were charged with a hate crime. joining me now from the new black lives matter mural outside trump tower here in new york city. gary, this california couple may have taken their cues from the president himself. >> reporter: yeah, that's right. we're walking down fifth avenue here in new york, something we don't get to do very often.

mayor bill deblasio has designated this area, and it will be that way a couple of days. this mural of black lives matter was right here in front of trump tower. when the president got word that it was going to be painted right in front of his former residence, he was not pleased, calling black lives matter a symbol of hate. mayor deblasio was here with reverend al sharpton and a number of others, he responded. here is what he had to say. >> we're not denegrading anything. we are liberating fifth avenue. we are liberating fifth avenue. who fills this city? who fills this nation? so when we say black lives matter, there is no more american statement, there's no

more patriot statement because there is no america without black america. >> reporter: as we mentioned with president trump not being thrilled with this mural, a number of people across the country are not thrilled that these murals are all across the city and the country. you mentioned the situation in california. there was also defacing happening in salt lake city, utah, along with charlotte, north carolina, where a car drove over the mural and there were tire marks on that. along even up to rural vermont where there was brown paint splattered across the black lives matter mural. for people in support of it, they say there needs to be substantive change than just a mural, from colorado to new jersey, with real serious police reform. that's what people are looking for, alex. >> there's a lot of interpretation about it but the words black lives matter, all true. thank you for that. a stand-off with facebook is unresolved after meeting with

facebook ceo mark zuckerberg and sheryl sandberg. company also boycott. two-year civil rights audit released found facebook has made painful decisions in recent months that have real-world consequences that are serious for civil rights. joining me now, derek johnson, ceo of the naacp. welcome back to the broadcast. first off, i want to hear about this meeting. i'm curious about the mood, the tone, and if you got any sense that zuckerberg was receptive to you. >> the meeting has gone like previous meetings. they were always pleasant meetings. there appears to be more interest in having meetings than resolving the issue that groups have been talking about for over two-plus years. we have to take precautionary measures to ensure people are safe and our democracy is protected. facebook gives very flowery

words but no action. >> i guess i'm going to understand the answer to your response when you say you went in with ten suggestions and you left with nothing. what is it that you think facebook is resisting most? >> possibly to fall to public pressure. what we're saying to facebook, if your statements of concern and your value, statements in writing is true, you will be proactive in ensuring that our communities are protected. you wouldn't allow white supremacist groups and others to meet on your platform, recruit on your platform and carry out actions based on discussions on your platforms to cause harm, like what happened a month ago when a federal officer was killed because of a group. if you are truly committed to democracy, you would not allow domestic or foreign nations to use your platform to give misinformation to voters or to seek to suppress afric african-american votes.

they have the tools, the resources, the skills. it's the most advanced platform of its kind and they've not done anything to address it. >> so then, derek, how is it that mark zuckerberg, sheryl sandberg, anyone else with whom you speak, justifies keeping these things on their website? >> one of the things that came out of the meeting that was most frustrating, they conflate equal partnership with hatred and racism. we can make sure people are safe. we can protect the first amendment rights of speech and we can do so in a land where we respect people's political perspective. but you cannot equate the two things. they are not the same. this is not the first time we get into a discussion and the issue of partisanship has been put into the conversation of hate speech and protecting democracy. >> derek, i'm sorry that you left that meeting with no

answers to the ten questions, but let me read what facebook said to msnbc in response to this. here is their statement. we agree that we must be front footed and take aggressive action against hate and voter suppression. that's why we have invested billions in people and technology to keep hate off our platform. we have created new policies to prohibit voter and census interference and have launched the largest voting interaction campaign in american history, we have banned more than 250 white supremacist organizations and are holding ourselves accountable by producing regular reports about our content moderation efforts. derek, thank you. >> great words, no action. disney world reopens today as florida is the new epicenter of the coronavirus. why he is comfortable with the park's plans to get back to business. park's plans to get back to business

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the u.s. set an all-time high for new cases friday. california's governor has ordered the release of 8,000 prisoners by the end of august because of rising infections. in new mexico, the navajo nation finally seeing a drop in the number of cases due, in part, to aggressive testing and strict public health orders. and in florida, disney world opened to all visitors today, despite more than 10,000 new cases in the state. joining me now is orange county mayor jerry demmings. let's get right to disney world, which has officially reopened to the public safety -- rather to the public today. there are strict safety measures in place. given the state of the vie vrus surging across florida, are there any concerns that park goers will be safe?

>> good morning, alex. i am fairly certain that the park will be able to reopen safely. we are talking about walt disney world. and i can tell you that here within this community, when disney made the decision to shut down and close its doors four months ago, that was an enormous decision that was made in order to help us stop the spread of the virus within our community. during that period of time, they have been working really tirelessly to come up with a plan of action that would keep our residents safe, keep their businesses safe by visiting disney. if there is one place on planet earth that i believe can get it right, it is disney. because this is really a living layout that we're talking about. none of us have lived through a pandemic before. and with the modern day world we live in, with the technologies that we have, i can say to you that after reviewing disney's reopening plans, they have an

abundance of safety and sanitary protocols that have been put in place that includes the wearing of masks, that includes multiple hand washing stations throughout the park and continuous cleaning of the areas where there are high-touch places. in addition to that, they have created an environment of social distancing within their scheme of creating an experience for their guests there at disney world. so i believe that they will be successful in doing this. i'm watching it very careful during the next few days to make certain it is a safe opening. >> look, i'm sure you are. i have no doubt that disney is behaving responsibly at this point. what about park goers? can this be effective? can whatever disney is doing be effective if people don't wear their masks all the time? >> wearing the mask is

absolutely critical. and that is a requirement that they will have in place with the exception of individuals who have some type of health crisis or small child or infant. they're required to wear masks in order to enter the park itself. and so they're going to be monitoring this and, you know, i'm excited about the reopening of the magic kingdom, animal kingdom so far. in addition, as you know, the nba will be playing at the disney wide world of sports, at the espn complex coming up. and those professional players and athletes, coaches and staff will be engaged in that, they're going to be isolating in a bubble, if you will. they're not going to be leaving, going off site from the particular facility itself. they're going to be staying right there. and so by doing so, they're probably going to be in an environment that's safer than would have been, if they had

been in a general community at large. >> you mentioned the general community. let me get a sense from you about how bad things are there in orange county. can you put that in perspective? >> well, we have over 16,000 positive cases of the coronavirus here within our community, which has grown significantly in the last month. but i will say that we are well within our hospital capacity. we haven't exceeded the hospital capacity, which says that the criticality of individuals who are testing positive is not what it is in some other locations. in miami-dade county here in florida, they have some 58,000 positive cases. we have a little over 16,000. i don't mean to diminish the numbers, because those are individuals, we've seen 78 people die as a result of the virus here within our community. so we know it is a serious virus to have to deal with, but we've been pretty proactive in putting measures in place to try to contain the virus and also make

it a safe experience for everyone, as we reopen here. quite frankly, keeping our commerce shut down is not sustainable over time. we do have to learn how to protect our livelihoods and, at the same time, protect our lives. so, there's a happy balance there. i work really closely, on a day-to-day basis, with the florida department of health and others in this community to monitor the numbers. if we see where those numbers can be attributed directly to an outbreak caused by people visiting the park, then we'll make some adjustments, but i believe that given what i've heard and seen, we should be okay. and if we are successful, this will serve as a model, really, for other communityies to be abe to adapt to the current environment of a pandemic we are living within. >> orange county mayor jerry demmings will be watching closely.

we will as well. thank you for your time. e. we're at the movies and we need to silence our phone.

who knows where that button is? i don't have silent. everyone does -- right up here. it happens to all of us. we buy a new home, and we turn into our parents. what i do is help new homeowners overcome this. what is that, an adjustable spanner? good choice, steve. okay, don't forget you're not assisting him. you hired him. if you have nowhere to sit, you have too many. who else reads books about submarines? my dad. yeah. oh, those are -- progressive can't protect you from becoming your parents, but we can protect your home and auto when you bundle with us. look at that. it's like walking into the chocolate factory and you won a golden ticket. all of these are face masks. this looks like a bottle of vodka. but when we first got these, we were like whoa! [laughing] my three-year-old, when we get a box delivered, screams "mommy's work!" mommy's work. with this pandemic, safety is even more important to make sure we go home safe every single day.

new developments on the case involving the president's tax returns. the federal judge oversee iing that case gave trump's lawyers a wednesday dale deadline to say whether he will further challenge a subpoena for his tax documents. this comes days after the supreme court ruled in favor of the manhattan d.a. seeking the president's financial records. joining me now, "washington

post" reporter who covers the trump family and its businesses. how do you expect the president's lawyers to respond? >> i imagine in both cases, in the case in new york and involving the house, they will challenge the subpoenas under new grounds. in new york, the supreme court said look, you don't get any special immunity from subpoenas because you are the president but get the same protection against subpoenas that you or i would have, anyone would have, if they're too broad, too burdensome. i imagine trump will do that. his lawyers have shown that they're willing to take advantage of anything possible. and i imagine they'll do anything they can to add new challenges and delays. >> ultimately is it only going to be about buying time? is there going to come a point, and perhaps after an election, after november, if this president is not re-elected,

once he is citizen trump, will there come a time he is going to have to answer all of this? >> i think in new york, there will. i don't know if it will be before or after the election, but certainly in new york, the manhattan d.a. is conducting an investigation. i think eventually they'll get to a point where he can sum up trump's records. will we ever see them? that depends on whether the manhattan d.a. indicts anybody as a result of the investigation he's doing f that happens, some of these documents will come into the public domain as court evidence, exhibits in a trial, but probably not until then. >> okay. as for the president, he has repeatedly called his personal finances a red line. if and when these documents do see the light of day, what would we learn? what kind of questions would this answer? >> a lot. i mean, it depends on how much we saw. president trump has a whole web of interconnections, business relationships, debts, ongoing business problems that he knows about and his business partners and lenders and other people know about but we, the public,

don't know about. there's a whole side to his life, a whole side to the connections he brings to the white house that we don't understand at all, because we don't have these documents. any documents showing his finances that would sort of illuminate that private side of his life would tell us, i think, something pretty meaningful about how he sees the world. >> do you think anyone who had absolutely nothing to worry about would work this hard to keep these documents a secret, or react in the way we've seen this president react? he calls the ruling a hoax, a witch hunt. what could he be hiding? >> it's a great question. this is how he has dealt with everything in his life. he uses the court system as much as he can against the investigators, against people who are after him. this was true at trump university and in a lot of other cases. i don't think you can look at this and say, well, there's got to be something really damning in there, or else he would be showing us his tax returns. he has done this any time someone has tried to look into the black box that is the trump

organization. sometimes people have, despite his efforts and what they've found has been damning. in this case, it's hard to say this is special behavior. no. this is how he treats every request for information. >> all right. thankfully, i love to get the request in to you for your information and you share it with us. david fahrenthold, thank you. the more we hear about ghislaine maxwell. the man who chased her and epstein for years wrote a book about it, and joins me next. catch all your breaking news from me and all your favorite msnbc hosts on nbc live tune in. listen commercial free with tune in premium at tune in.com/msnbc2020. t tune in.com/msnbc2020 this network is one less thing i have to worry about. (vo) then you give people more plans to mix and match so you only pay for what you need verizon unlimited plan is so reasonable, they can stay on for the rest of their lives. awww...

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♪ ♪ now is the time to support the places you love. spend 10 dollars or more at a participating small business and get 5 dollars back, up to 10 times with american express. enroll now at shopsmall.com. ghislaine maxwell is expected to make her first court appearance next thursday.

she is charged with enticing a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts. joining me now is brad edwards, the attorney who represents over 50 of jeffrey epstein's accusers, also author of "relentless pursuit: my fight for the victims of jeffrey epstein." big welcome to you. while negotiating a bail package, her legal team said, quote, ghislaine maxwell is not jeffrey epstein, which sounds like they're trying to downplay her role in all of this. this is what one victim had to say about her involvement. >> so, efrl times, i was in the car with her, and she would ask the driver to stop the car. and she would dash across to the school or the park, or wherever she was going, and she would write down her phone number for a child, a young girl. and then i would see that child at the house. and she would say, they're auditioning. i found a model in the park. >> wow! >> yeah. >> auditioning? i found a model in a park.

what's your interpretation of that? do you think she should be held to the same standard as jeffrey epstein would have been, if he were still alive? >> well, yeah, of course. what her lawyers are saying is true, to some extent. she's not jeffrey epstein. like i said in the past, without ghislaine maxwell, there would be no jeffrey epstein. at least in the early days, in the '90s, her role was to help ease some of these young girls, ease their mind and bring them to him and let him do the rest. he wasn't somebody grabbing somebody from the street. he needed somebody with the perfect situation of ghislaine and that was her role as maria farmer pointed out. >> do you think her claims that she hasn't seen jeffrey epstein in ten years are true? >> no. i don't believe that's true. i think that for the last six or seven years, they saw each other very infrequently, but regardless, we're talking about a time period from '94 to '97

and one that extends probably until 2006 or 2007 when they were constantly together. so it's sort of irrelevant. >> it's been about a year or so since jeffrey epstein was arrested. why have they taken so long to get ghislaine maxwell into handcuffs? >> given the fact that we're talking about crimes they're looking at from '94 to '97 and the southern district prosecutors didn't really become involved in the case until probably january of 2019, and their focus for the first part that have year was on jeffrey epstein, it isn't really that long to get kind of the next person in line indicted. especially with covid, which i'm sure caused some delay as well. >> you have a point there. she reportedly has several different path passports but was found in new hampshire. is it interesting that she was

hide in the united states in plain sight? >> i think that's probably the reason that they've laid it out in their brief regarding why she should get a bail. they knew that this time was probably going to come. they wanted to make the argument she could have left and she didn't. therefore, that's a reason why you should trust she's not going to flee this time. i think that this was contrived, that she stayed here. >> yeah. this is something i can't wait to get your response to. according to reports, police found your book "relentless pursuit" on her bedside table when they arrested her. what is your reaction to that? >> you know, i don't know ghislaine the way i knew jeffrey. i had a lot of interactions with him. that's something he would do. read about what it is that the person who investigated us most knew, and how that evidence was accumulated and how the civil lawsuits allowed for both the

arrests of jeffrey epstein and ghislaine maxwell. it says something about your composite, the fact that you want to read those things especially at a time like this. >> we'll be speaking to you again, given the parameters of this case. thanks. to bradenton, florida, where florida governor ron desantis is holding a press conference about the covid rage in his state. let's take a listen. >> given emergency use authorization by the fda. we were scheduled to get some more later in the month, but there was a need to be -- that's why i worked with the vice president and secretary azar to get that expedited so there wouldn't be a gap in treatment. those will be arriving today and that will -- a lot of vials and hopefully we'll be able to serve the patients' needs. we also have more than 1,000

personnel, contract personnel who are going to be deployed around the state to offer support for different services that are being undertaken. some of it will be long-term care covid only facilities. some of it will be supporting some of the normal medical operations. some of it may be supporting testing. when we talk to people around the state, particularly with the hospital system, a lot of it is just making sure there's enough personnel to do all of this. covid is very labor intensive. there's a lot of procedures that go in place in terms of the isolation. obviously, they have a lot of personnel who are involved in testing people, both who come into their hospitals and people who are participating in some of these drive-through or walk-up test sites. personnel is something very significant. we're doing a lot of that to be able to help. if you look at kind of where we have been now with this testing, you know, when we first started out, the tests were very scarce

nationwide. i think florida probably had more test results in one day, yesterday, than probably the country did as a whole in the beginning part of march. if you look, we had about a 10.8% positivity rate at the end of march, beginning of may. that kind of went down. and then we really had a good stretch from kind of the end of april through that june 13th where we were 5.1% or under. sometimes we were 2%, 3% in terms of the positivity. as the cases expanded -- excuse me, as the testing expanded, the positivity was manageable. so, yes, you had more cases, but that was kind of what you would expe expect, you know. if you test 200,000 at a 3% rate, you're going to get more cases than if you test 100,000 people at that. so when we started to see more cases, yes, we've been testing

more the last three weeks by far than we have before, but you see that the positivity goes up to 9.6 prs and next week in june, 12%. then we were 14.8% for the last part of june, beginning of july. this week so far has ticked down a little bit. last two days have been in the 12.5%. if you look around the state, there are definitely areas where you think we may be seeing some declining positivity and there are other areas that have been pretty consistently 20% range like miami dade. here in manatee, they've been 10% the last two days. and the majority of their new cases have been under the age of 45. sarasota is reporting 5.2% of the tests positive. yesterday was 9.5%. and i think some of the folks

here will attest that, you know, we may be seeing some decline in this part of the tampa bay area. some of the other areas, particularly north, in places like pasco, you may be seeing more positivity. but this is something that we're looking at very seriously. so, we're going to get the test results to complete the week. we'll be over 400,000 tests easily for the week. so that's a huge, huge amount of tests. and a lot of it is positivity rate. there's obviously going to be some prevalence, but if it gets into the single digits, that's something that's much more manageable. so we increased from the end of june into july, but then have kind of -- it's been plateaued for the last two weeks, which is a good sign. we would rather be plateaued at 4%, but we didn't want to see it continue to just go up and up. we tested 2.4 million people. that is one for every nine

people in the state of florida. it will be interesting to see what other things have been tested at this level in our country in modern times, but this is something that, as a whole, the country has done a lot of tests. obviously, florida, you know, we're doing a lot particularly in the last however many weeks when the demand has been high. if you look at where the cases are coming from. a lot of the cases are in that -- between 15 and 54, which as you can see, you know, those are not the age groups that are producing significant fatalities. in fact, if you're under 55 and you don't have significant co-morbidities, the fatality rate for this is incredibly, incredibly low. if you look at the 75 and plus, 85 and plus, those are where the bulk of the case fatalities are in terms of those who are positive cases. and a lot of that are nursing homes. i'll talk about some of that in

a minute. we really believe that those in that 65 and up age group are at an increased risk and we're continuing to advise them to limit close contact outside the home and to avoid crowds as much as possible, but this is a pretty dramatic, i think, picture of showing how this virus operates and who tends to bear the brunt when they get infected. and that 25 to 34, if we were going back six weeks, it would not have been anything special on this map in terms of how many tests. i mean, there had been positive tests there for sure. real dramatic increase in terms of positive cases in that age group. far and away now, they're the number one age cohort, that 25 to 34-year-old. if you look to see each individual age, how many there, we're still