and yet donald trump has sort of taken it upon himself to abuse his power in this way for purely political purposes i don't -- i think he's got it totally wrong. i don't think the american people will tolerate that and that's why we're pushing for this bill. >> senator, good to see you, as always thank you for joining us senator chris van hollen of maryland that's it for "all in. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. good evening, rachel. >> good evening, ali thank you very much. appreciate it, my friend thanks to you at home for joining us this hour as well so this is one of those nights i tell you i had something all planned to talk about right at the top of the show, right i'd been planning it all day we worked on a whole big "a" block, reported it out, fact checked it, started producing it for television and then kerr splat, this happened this headline just dropped on the front page of "the new york times," quote, trump's request of an ambassador, get the british open for me. and he doesn't mean like i can't

figure how to work the remote. will you get that on tv for me he's not, like, trying to get tickets to go see the british open and maybe the ambassador can help him out he's also not, interestingly, trying to get the british open, a sporting event moved out of britain to america so it would be an american event and in some way that, you know, would arguably benefit the country. like, there's lots of different ways you can read that headline, but, in fact, you have to imagine the worst possible implication of that headline because that's what the story spells out here's the lead. quote, the american ambassador to britain, robert wood johnson iv, better known as woody johnson, the guy who owns the new york jets, told multiple colleagues in february 2018 that president trump had asked him to see if the british government could help steer the world-famous and lucrative british open golf tournament to the trump turnberry resort in scotland, according to three people with knowledge of the episode.

the ambassador's deputy, lewis a.lucana advised ambassador johnson not to do it, warning that to do so would be an unethical use of the presidency for private gain, these people said, but ambassador johnson apparently felt pressured to try anyway a few weeks later he is, in fact, raised turnberry playing host of the british open with the secretary of state to scotland the episode left mr. lukons and others deeply unsettled. emailed officials at the state department to tell them what had happened, colleagues said. a few months later, mr. johnson forced out mr. lukens, a career diplomat, shortly before his term was to end. and i know what you're thinking, right? president trump using his power as president, using the u.s. government to pressure a foreign government to do him a favor using the office of the

presidency to benefit himself. career civil servants forced from their posts after raising alarmi alarms about what was happening. we have seen this version of the movie before, right, we have the last time it ended with him being impeached. the new report in "the new york times" does differ from the ukraine dedebacle in one key way. when president trump was pressuring the ukrainian government, using the powers of the u.s. government to pressure the ukrainian government to give him dirt on joe biden that he could use in the election, he was pushing that foreign government for a political favor. what he appears to have been trying to get from the british government here was money. was a business favor for his business was a basically a personal financial favor that would put money in his own pocket. he wanted the british government to help put money in his pocket by sending major, major business to his golf resort in britain. and so he used the presidency, he used the u.s. government, he

directed employees of the u.s. state department that they should talk to the british government about drumming up business for his resort. so far the white house has no comment on this reporting from "the times." but, of course, this has been kind of a repetitive theme of the trump presidency last year you may recall the white house announced that the u.s. would host the next g7 conference of world leaders at a resort in miami that just happened to be owned by the president. it would have literally forced six major foreign governments to shovel money directly into the president's pockets if they wanted to attend that summit the trump administration amazingly said that had searched far and wide across the united states for the single-best venue in the whole country for the g7 and trump's sort of rundown resort in south florida was simply the very best venue in the entire nation. it was just a complete coincidence that the president happened to -- happened to own it the trump administration

ultimately dropped that plan when it proved too embarrassing, even for this white house. but right around the same time that the president was cooking up that scheme to try to boost his south florida property, he was actualively pursuing another plan for putting government revenue into his golf resort in ireland. you may remember this one as well last fall vice president mike pence had to go to ireland for meetings with the irish president. the capital of ireland is, of course, the seat of the irish government, right, that's in dublin very far from dublin, 180 miles of dublin, clear on the other side of the ireland -- of the island that is ireland, mike pence stayed at the trump resort in ireland his whole entourage, the secret service and everybody all stayed at trump's golf resort 180 miles from dublin on the other side of the country. mike pence commuted those 180 miles back and forth for his meetings because the president

told him to. that was also around the same time that we learned that u.s. air force cargo planes flying supplies to kuwait had mysteriously started refueling at a tiny, mostly disused airport in scotland, but handily when the crews of those planes had to stop at that tiny airport in scotland to refuel, they were all being directed to spend the night at donald trump's golf resort, which was half an hour away from that otherwise obscure airport. those cargo planes usually refueled at, you know, u.s. military bases but the military instead spent millions of dollars on more expensive fuel at this tiny, mostly disused scottish airport, and perhaps coincidental, ended up overnighting all their crews at trump's hotel because of it now, the air force later released a report on this saying they looked into it and it turns out it was all fine, but, you know, this keeps happening just, i mean, like a -- like a

first grader's understanding of what corruption means. using the presidency, using the powers of the u.s. government, using the resources of the u.s. government to puppt money into e president's pocket, into the trump family coffers this is a recoursive theme in this presidency. this is more from tonight's scoop at "the new york times" on the president's efforts to get the british open moved so that it would be held at his british golf club. scottish golf club specifically. quote, mr. trump and his children have struggled for more than a decade to attract professional golf tournaments to the family's 16 golf courses, knowing those events draw global television audiences and help drive traffic. they own most of the courses outright as opposed to simply selling the family name, as is the case with several of their hotels and residential towers and the courses generate about a third of the family's revenue with the tournament seen as a crucial way to publicize them. this has been particularly

important for the two trump resorts in scotland and one in ireland which have been losing money under mr. trump's ownership. mr. trump himself was intensely involved in proing them before he was elected, regularly burning writers and the editors of golf magazines to play with them, offer after whisking them to scotland on his private jet costly investments to build or upgrade their courses, including 150 million vested at turnberry, the most recent annual frankfort turnberry shows it lost nearly $1 million in 2018 and, you know, if you are donald trump, if you are a businessman with failing properties, a lot of them that lose a lot of money, but you now have the powers of the country's highest office at your disposal, well, sure, call up your hand-picked ambassador and tell him that what he needs to do as your ambassador and he needs to get the british government to get the british open moved to your golf tournament -- moved to your golf club which is losing money.

i mean, what's the point of rewarding one of your biggest campaign fund-raisers with a sweet ambassador gig in london if he can't use the ambassadorship, he captun't usei job as a u.s. ambassador to try to drum up business for you and the kids the president has been trying to get away with stuff like this throughout the time that he has been in office now it appears that he did get an ambassador to help him do it. it's like another day, another one of these, it never ends. any one of these would be the biggest scandal of any modern presidency any one of them. this is just fricking tuesday. what does this mean for the president? what does this mean for that ambassador and for the whistle-blowering deputy ambassador who appears to have been fired right after he raised alarms about this back in washington joining us now is "the new york times" london bureau chief and the lead biline on this bombshell reporting tonight. mr. land her, thank you for making time tonight.

i know it is especially late where you are so i'm particularly appreciative that you're here. >> glad to be here, rachel >> i am elaborating a little bit on what you reported in the sense that i am expressing my distaste and disfavor for the -- what is in your reporting, but aside from my expressing my opinion thatdid i get anything g about your reporting or did i miss anything important in terms of what you and your colleagues were able to dig up? >> no, think you did a pretty good lay down of the president's apparent motives in this case. i think the one thing that is worth emphasizing is the terrible position that this puts career diplomats this is not what the u.s. ambassador to england is he's a political appointee, woody johnson. but deputy lewis is a career diplomat, a foreign service officer, longstanding, and for him and many of his colleagues this kind of request is just -- is really deeply shocking. and as you say, it's not the first time it's happened

so thee diplomats are being put into a position where really they could never have imagined they would encounter in their careers. >> and let me ask you do expand on that a little bit because obviously the career diplomats involved here are being asked, as you say, to do something unimaginable by the white house woody johnson, not a career diplomat, a trump fund-raiser, a trump friend who was put in this plum ambassadorship job, but the way you and your colleagues tonight put this i thought was really interesting and i wanted you to expand on it a little bit. beyond the legal and ethical red flags, asking such a favor from his host country would put mr. johnson in an untenable position as the emissary of the united states why would asking for this kind of favor for the president's personal business put the ambassador in an untenable position >> well, i think for a couple of reasons. one, it would be sending a signal to the british government that the chief emissary of the u.s. government is willing to

engage in venal and possibly illegal behavior on behalf of the president. and secondly, for the simple reason that having compromised himself this way, the risk he takes that if there's a difficult situation, a tough meeting he has to have, a demand he needs to make in the future, his hosts can say to him, well, you know, gee, mr. ambassador, remember when you made that suggestion about the golf course a few months ago so it's just something that as norm eisen, who is an expert on government ethics and also served as an ambassador under president barack obama said in our article, it's really diplomatic malpractice and it just puts any diplomat, and particularly an ambassador, into an almost impossible position in terms of his standing and his credibility with the host government >> i think that's a really, really important point because what it means when you sort of take a larger view of that is that not only was the president

seeking to use the u.s. government for personal gain he was trying to get a foreign entity to do something that would provide him personal profit and using the state department as the lever to do that. but inso doing he was not only seeking gain for himself, he was actually hurting the interests of the united states, in terms of our diplomatic leverage and relationship with, you know, admittedly a close ally, but that -- it impedes our ability to do the real work that we need to do, in terms of sticking up for american interests around the globe. >> yeah, that's right. and i think that's why in the case of lewis lukens, he was very blunt with the ambassador, according to our reporting he basically warned the ambassador not to do this. he said it would be a misuse of his position, it would be a breach of diplomatic protocol, it would be possibly illegal so lukens left no doubt that he thought this was a terrible idea, and from what we know in

our reporting, ambassador johnson was also not, you know, thrilled to be asked to do this. i think he understood the position he was being put in, but interestingly he concluded, for whatever reason, he didn't speak to us about it, that he had no choice but to go ahead and make this, you know, very unorthodox request of the british government >> does your reporting indicate that -- that mr. lukens was fired as retaliation for him raising these concerns >> yeah, i'm -- i'm glad you asked me that. the timing of it would suggest that, and, indeed, mr. lukens appears to have had a number of issues that he clashed with the ambassador on, but the actual trigger for his dismissal, which is also in the article a bit further on, is that lu lukens gave a speech at an english university in which he mentioned a trip president obama had made to senegal during the time that lukens was the ambassador there,

and he told anecdote that was mildly positive about president obama. and what we are told is that ambassador johnson got wind of this speech and summoned mr. lukens to meet him and said you're done here so it was also the -- the sort of cardinal sin he made of saying something nice about a president who was his former boss and who he hosted as u.s. ambassador in senegal. that was the actual event that got him forced out of his job. but certainly a series of other things, including this particular episode, had built up tension between lukens and the ambassador >> telling a mildly positive anecdote about a previous president seems like either a thin hook for getting fired or a thin pretext if you're getting fired for some other reason, but stacking those things up in terms of knowing what the

precipitating event is is important. one last quick question for you. you also say that some of thee complaints were raised with the inspector general at the state department there was some sort of review. no reports from the review have ever been made public. is it your expectation that anything might ever be made public or that congress might obtain the results of any such review that happened about this troubling incident >> well, one thing to also perhaps clarify a little bit there is an inspector general report that has been done on the london embassy, and it gets into issues that actually go beyond what happened with the turnberry request. there are issues involving some of the ways that the ambassador has interacted with members of his staff. some comments he's made to female employees that have been presented to investigators for the state department who were conducting what was a very routine investigation of the embassy now, that report has been filed.

but it has not been made public. remember, the office that that report would have been conducted under the auspices of the inspector general's office that inspector general was recently dismissed for reasons that may have nothing to do with this particular case. but as a result, it is quite conceivable that there is simply a backlog of reports going through this office at a time when the inspector general has been -- has been dismissed, hence, that might be the explanation, but to answer your direct question, it's not clear. the report has been, you know, up until this moment shelved and so we will wait to see what it says and whether it will be shared with the public >> mark landler, "new york times" london bureau chief, co-author of this scoop tonight along with lara jakes and maky haberman mark, i really appreciate you

staying up to zero dark thirsty and congratulations on this reporting. >> thanks for having me, rachel. >> all right i will tell you again, the headline tonight in "the new york times" just posted that according to "the new york times," the president directed the u.s. ambassador to britain to tell the british government that they needed to move the british open golf course to the president's golf resort in scotland according to "the new york times," the ambassador actually did it actually did bring this up with the british government he, quote, raised the idea of turnberry playing host to the british open with the secretary of state for scotland. in the, you know, mr. smith goes to washington version of this part of the trump presidency, this starts impeachment proceedings, but, you know, it's tuesday, so presumably we just have to wait for what breaks on wednesday and then we decide when you combine them all which one rises to the top all right. coming up next, what i thought would be at the top of

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today is july the 21st on july the 341st, the $600 boost that everybody's been getting in their unemployment benefits because of covid is due to expire. people are unemployed in our country by the tens of millions right now. not because of some broad economic downturn with broad economic causes, but because americans were literally, you know, asked, told, expected, in some cases mandated not to go to work because of a public health imperative, because of a fatal contiguous virus sweeping the nation when people are out of work for a specific reason like that, when the economy hasn't gotten sick, commit has been put into an induced coma in order to try to keep hundreds of thousands of americans from dying from this freaking disease, well, the government then assumes responsibility to help people out who did what the government told them to do, who did what the government needed them to do

for the country. except now that help is set to run out. now, the whole idea of having congress back in session in washington this week was that they were going to get it together to fix that to pass something to mitigate more of the damage caused by the ongoing out of control epidemic. including extending relief to people who the country still needs to not work. this isn't like rocket science that they're trying to do here they're not working on middle east peace they're not even trying to name like a freaking post office or something. the epidemic, it turns out, is still raging out of control, so they just need to pass another relief bill or extend the benefits for the existing one at a bare minimum go on. you can do it. not that hard. alas, here's the headline in "the washington post" tonight. quote, white house, comma, gop in disarray over coronavirus spending plan as deadline nears on expiring emergency aid. what in the hell are we doing,

senator ted cruz asked white house officials and gop colleagues at a planning lunch republicans control the white house, obviously, and the u.s. senate apparently they have no idea, even amongst themselves, what they want to do. they didn't bother coming up with options that they even minimally agree upon among themselves, let alone something that they might eventually agree on with democrats who control the house. they just didn't do anything they didn't get anything together and so now, according to "the post," quote, the whole process appears likely to spill into august, something the white house and congressional democrats had hoped to avoid because it would mean more than 20 million americans would lose emergency unemployment benefits when they expire at the end of this month they have not mapped out a plan what would happen to these people as the pandemic's turmoil continues to weigh on the u.s. economy. we are six months since the first case was deciding iagnoses country. it turns out the virus did not

magically disappear, but it appears that the ruling party in washington is still not quite up to speed on the fact that you actually have to do something to make the virus go away you actually have to come up with ways to cope with it killing tens of thousands of americans in the meantime, and that work doesn't just magically do itself, right governing competence you actually have to do it but, you know, you go to the pandemic with the government that you have, not the government you might want or wish to have, as donald rumsfeld might say. for us it has been quite the fatal revelation, the government that we have for this pandemic this, for example, was today as of today, he is still saying this >> mr. president, you've been saying for months the virus would simply disappear, and now you're saying that it's likely to get worse before it gets better if it does keep getting worse, if americans keep dying, are you responsible for that >> well, the virus will disappear. it will disappear.

>> this weekend, as we ran up against that six-month benchmark since the first person in the u.s. tested positive for covid-19, "the new york times" did this big deep dive scathing review of how the white house has blown it so badly, including the specific scoop that most of the people, previously unreported fact from "the new york times" this weekend most of the people making the real decisions about federal policy on covid on a day-to-day basis, quote, are aides fwho fo the most part have no experience with public health emergencies according to "the times," the sole public health official who worked with the white house group making most of the key day-to-day decisions was dr. deborah birx who is being criticized now for being, quote, a constant source of upbeat news for the president and his aides. dr. birx is specifically faulted by a lot of experts in states that for overrelying on a model about what was going to happen to the course of the epidemic. well, just for perspective here,

the folks behind that purportedly rosy model that the white house has been relying on, which has been the source of some happy talk from these inexperienced aides and their one public health adviser in the white house, that same group of researchers have now produced a paper about their projections. this paper has not been peer reviewed but we have obtained a copy of it because they have made it public you know, it's a dense document. it's a dense, statistics heavy paper, but the point of it from these researchers at the university of washington is that they're making three different projections for the year three different projections for how many of us, how many americans this thing is going to kill by the end of this year three scenarios. in the rosiest possible scenario, where americans get as good as anyone on earth -- we get as good as the population of singapore at mask-wearing, where we get 95% of americans wearing masks in public, and we get states reimposing mandatory

social distancing measures in that rosy scenario, the death toll still by the end of this year will be somewhere between 175,000 and 220,000 dead so best case, we're still going to have 40,000 americans die at a minimum between now and the end of the year. that's if we've got mask compliance that is on singapore's levels the middle scenario that they project is that we don't change what we're doing in terms of masks, but states do still reimpose some social distancing mandates in that scenario, the sort of middle scenario, well, just just killed another 100,000 ameri-cans over the next four months or so total death toll in that scenario is the range of 234,000 to 398,000 americans dead by the end of 2020. all right. so if you don't add that intensive mask compliance, you can add at least another 100,000 dead to the americans who have already been killed, but we might go almost as high as 400,000.

that's the middle scenario then there's the bad scenario, which is the scenario where we keep opening up. which is crazy, right? but welcome to our world this is the world we're living in it's somewhat crazy. the researchers explain this delicately they a, quote, we forecast the expected outcomes if states continue to remove social distancing mandates at the current pace what they call the mandates easing scenario. and under the mandates easing scenario, the american death toll by the end of this year will be at the low end of the range 288,000 dead at the high end, 650,000 americans dead by the end of this year. which is insane. we're at about 140,000, 141,000 deaths right now, right? we're risking more than quadrupling our death toll by the end of this year so says the researchers behind the purportedly rosy model the white house has been counting on to give them bad news. right? but that's -- that's their

worst-case scenario. what did they call it again? the mandates easing scenario right? so that worst-case scenario they're saying will only happen, this risk of at least doubling, if not more than quadrupling our death toll, this risk of hitting over 600,000 dead americans by the end of this year per this model done by thee researchers that the white house has been so fond of, they're saying there's only a risk of that if we start everything back up again which, of course, would be nuts. that said, here was the president tonight. >> we had to shut things down to save potentially millions of live we did that. and now we've started them up. and i think we've really started it up very successfully. >> i think we've really started it up very successfully. the whole shutdown thing, that's behind us. now we're opening up it's been super successful, he says that's the easing mandates scenario that the researchers at the

university of washington, that the white house has been citing so frequently in their new paper, they say that leads to somewhere between 288,000 and 650,000 americans dead by the end of the year. by the way, there's news from john hopkins tonight that the american daily death toll from coronavirus has once again hit more than 1,000 americans dead in 24 hours. it's the first time we've hit the 1,000 people dead in one day threshold in a couple of months, but we are back to that now. and, of course, the president today saying on that occasion, on that same day, i think we've started it up very successfully. the virus will disappear it will disappear, he says today. last night we talked here on the show to the top elected official in hidalgo county, texas about how every hospital in his county is full and they have been all month. how they have overtopped their morgue capacity and are asking for funeral directors from other parts of the country to please come help them process the dead.

they're bringing in refrigerated trucks to store them until they can figure out what to do with the corpses. they begged for a field hospital to be set up somewhere in hidalgo county to supplement the hospitals they've got. the state of texas turned them down for that. they're facing a doubling of hospitalizations over the next two weeks with their hospitals already full tonight at midnight that same county executive that we spoke to last night is going to try to implement this new local order telling people in hidalgo county, texas that they must shelter in place, they must stay at home. while the republican governor of texas says that's not enforceable and he'll block it remember seeing that in lots of places where republicans are in control. tonight in iowa city, iowa, the mayor there is, as of tonight, trying to institute a wear a mask ordnance for iowa city. the republican governor of iowa, kim reynolds, says that's not enforceable and she'll block it. tonight in atlanta, georgia, the legal battle continues over the city of atlanta trying to institute a wear a mask

ordnance the republican governor of georgia, brian kemp, says that ordnance is not enforceable and he's suing the city of atlanta to block it. we are six months in we are back up to 1,000 deaths a day as of today. the president is still leading his party and saying we're starting everything back up. all those mitigation measures we had, those were in the past. we're starting everything back up, he says very successfully. this thing's going to just disappear. and the governors are now labboting on that, don't you dare try to stop the spread, i'll block you because this thing's going to disappear we're opening back up. since months in, 141,000 dead and counting, they are still doing this today marks 15 weeks until the november election. alike and customize your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. what do you think? i don't see it.

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today you can see another

significant federal law enforcement presence here, in what's really been kind of a stunning militarization of city streets in washington, d.c these officers are federal law enforcement of some variety. i would love to tell you more, but they're not wearing any identifying badges, insignias, nameplates they won't tell me who they are or where they're from or where they're with >> garrett haake reporting in washington, d.c. last month. we first saw the mysterious unidentified federal officers on the streets of d.c. last month they didn't have identifying insignia for any law enforcement agency, no name badges nothing even when asked by protesters or members of the press, they wouldn't say who they were or what agency they responded to. they might have been random guys with big arms who might have been part of a local militia group. attorney general william barr suggested at one point that the officers weren't wearing any identifying ig significant yeah or name badges simply because

they didn't have them handy when they deployed. but the pattern was like it's been on so many things, they did get pushback and that's made them stop what they were doing in the short term, but it wasn't enough pushback, it wasn't painful enough pushback for them to stop trying again somewhere else some time soon, and so now it's not d.c., now we've got these mystery unidentified militarized federal officers of some kind, maybe, this time on the streets of portland, oregon, for the past week federal officers have been responding to protests in in portland, including with tear gas and batons and less than lethal munitions. videos posted online show mystery officers in military fatigues driving around the city in unmarked vans abruptly grabbing and detaining protesters without identifying tells. multiple protests say they've been picked up without any explanation or by whom they were simply plucked off the street and thrown into unmarked vans and even as we've begun to piece

together the origins of these officers from the various departments of the department of homeland security, their presence has clearly inflamed tensions in portland, oregon protests following the death of george floyd have been going on for weeks, but they have intensified since the federal officers have been there using these violent tactics. once again last night, thousands of protesters gathered in the cities downtown. for the third day in a row they were joined by a group calling itself "the wall of moms." dozens of women having formed themselves into a human shield to try to protect the crowd from the federal agents saying in some -- in some cases, feds stay here, moms are here. leave our kids alone but just as has happened on previous nights, the largely peaceful demonstrations last night ended again with protesters violently clashing with federal officers. state and local leaders in oregon want the federal officers gone including oregon's governor, the state's congressional delegation, even, interestingly,

the federal u.s. attorney for oregon, who is himself a federal justice department employee. he's called for an investigation into these mysterious arrests. the state attorney general, the oregon a.g. has sued the federal government, comparing the tactics for detaining protesters to flat-out kidnappings. she's asked for a restraining order from a federal court to stop the arrests we spoke with her about that here last night. portland's mayor, along with the mayors of 12 other u.s. cities, sent a letter to doj and homeland security department calling for an immediate removal of though federal forces from states and cities that don't want them. they're calling for the white house to back down from stated plans to send more federal agents to more american cities the president openly saying that the places he wants to send these officers are to cities that are controlled by democratic leadership. joining us now, i am very pleased to say is the former secretary of homeland security during the obama administration, jeh johnson. he also previously served as general counsel of the defense

department secretary johnson, it's a real honor to have you with us tonight. thanks for making time. >> thanks, rachel. good to see you. >> let me just ask your top-line response and understanding about this the controversy having been in charge of the homeland security department and knowing a lot about its capabilities, its responsibilities and the things that it's asked to do, do you think that people are over -- overreacting in their response, their concern and now ultimately in these lupawsuits trying to sp the department from deploying these officers ins way that we've seen play out in the streets of portland? >> short answer, no, i don't believe people are overreacting to what is going on in portland. so the object of all of this, so far as i have been able to figure out, is the hatfield federal courthouse in downtown portland and an adjacent federal building, forces of dhs that have been deployed to the scene are, first, the federal

protection service, which is a component of dhs that reports directly to the secretary. and its core mission is the protection of civilian federal buildings across the country interestingly, most members of the federal protection service are actually private contractors. and then in addition to that, what the acting secretary has done as -- is to also deploy components of immigration customs enforcement and customs border protection that are personally trained for special operations they do wear camouflage, but they're supposed to wear emblems, patches that indicate that they are federal law enforcement. now, the problems with doing this problem number one, i do not understand how a federal law enforcement officer can arrest someone, put them in a government vehicle, take them away without probable cause. i do not understand that

problem number two, if the mayor and the governor and the entire congressional delegation of the state are saying don't come here, i'd have to stop and ask exactly what i am doing. problem number three, and you made reference to this would deploying such a force heavily armed in camouflaged gear like what you see right now on the screen, if you deploy them, is it going to inflame tensions is it going to be unduly provocative and make the situation worse not better and problem number four -- and i used to talk to dhs component leadership all the time. let's not engage in controversial one-offs that will have the ability to undermine and compromise our core missions across the homeland security department and so i see a number of problems with this, and i think people should be upset it does, rachel, smack of a

political tone to it in an election year. the richard nixon 1968 law and order playbook on steroids >> there's been a lot of interpretation of the what the president's political motives might be for doing this. the president has fed some of that by discussing this in explicitly partisan terms, talking about needing to or wanting to deploy federal officers to places where democrats are in control if this is improper for all of the reasons -- improper and irregular and unwise for all of the reasons that you just laid out, what is the right way to stop it? i spoke with the oregon attorney general last night about her lawsuit to try to get a court to basically enjoin the federal government from doing this we've seen interest -- interestingly from the federally-appointed u.s. attorney in oregon looking at these arrests as potentially as kidnappings off the streets of portland is this the sort of thing that

there should be a legal barrier to or is the only correction to this -- this -- these actions by the president essentially political backlash >> rachel, to be sure, the federal government should protect federal property if federal profit is under threat from vandalism or destruction. but in my experience in public life, things are rarely black and white. there is very often a nuanced, balanced approach to how you go about the mission. without being unduly provocative, very, very clearly during times of heightened national tension, during heightened threat environments you'll recall the terrorist attacks we had across the homeland in 2015 i directed the federal protection service to deploy a heightened presence at various federal buildings across the country, but there's a way to do

that without being unduly provocative, without being unnecessarily provocative of a civilian population that we are, first and foremost, sworn to protect and supposed to be protecting >> yeah. it could be done if that was the intention. former secretary of homeland security under president obama, former general counsel of the defense department, sir, it's really kind of you to make this time i miss talking to you on all sort office things any time you'd like to come back, any time you have things to share with us, i hope you come back. i miss seeing your face. all right. thank you, mr. secretary. >> in the trump era, in my homeland security lane there are a lot of things we can talk about. >> all right i will hold you to it. i will call you back all right. we've got more news ahead. stay with us thank you.

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we have gotten and it had a chance to go through the it. it's a lawsuit against bill barr and the bureau of prisons director and the warden of the prison where cohen has been in solitary confinement for two weeks now. they argue he had his purr low, because of the coronavirus, he had his home confinement rescinded and he is back in prison to keep him from criticizing president trump. quote, on july 2nd, michael cohen tweeted that he was putting the finishing touches on what promises to be a tell-all book with mr. trump. u.s. pro pro bags officers presented him with an unconstitutional demand. as a condition of his release, a release that was necessary to protect his health, he had to agree to a complete bar of speaking two or through any mia,

including video ya a book, he was fearful for his life he didn't refuse, instead, he and his lawyer sought clarification on and limitation on the prohibition on speaking they could run the requesting up the chain. instead, three u.s. marshals arrived and said it wous an order in the bower row of prisons. he stated he was willing to sign the agreement. he was denied the opportunity and led away in shackles you know, to be clear, it is not against the rules to write a book if you're a federal prison. they are trying to make it against the rules for michael cohen to write a book. you're not supposed to be able to do that in a country with a first amendment. that said, that is what they have done here and the point of throwing mr. ho could hen not just back in prison but in solitary

confinement that keeps him to write a book that spills the tea, mr. cohen's lawyers say it's working, since reminded back to prison even, he hasened made progress on his book. he is concerned about resuming work in custody, fearing retaliation. you know, think what you will about michael cohen. you don't need to find him a sympathetic character here to find out what is happening the first amendment is there to protect speech, the power that did bont like. that is exactly what this is right? and listen to how they explain it to the court. basically, why we should all care regardless to our personal feelings is not about politics. >> reporter: personalities in. a plain violation of the constitution this is emprisoning mr. cohen in

punishment for drafting a book, and preparing to public it the manuscript sits at the zenith of first amendment protection it's the profound commitment to the kpimt it mate well include unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials. such speed is more than self-expression. it's the essence of self-government. the fact he is writing a book is the grounds on which they have locked him back up the judge in the case has set oral arguments for thursday, 11:00 p.m. eastern this is going to move fast they are trying to get him out of prison right now. watch this space don't just think about where you're headed this summer. think about how you'll get there.

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>> that's going to do it for us tonight. and breaking news from "the new york times," the president according to the times requested to the u.s. ambassador to britain request to the british government move the british open tournament to his personal golf club they apparently did so make that request to benefit the president's personal finances and business that is reported tonight bee