on behalf of all the men and women at the networks of nbc news, good night. have a good weekend unless you have other plans. rachel's got the night off. she'll be back on monday. but just in the last 90 minutes, the fda has approved the second vaccine to provide protection against the novel coronavirus. the fda has officially granted emergency use authorization to the covid vaccine manufactured by moderna. tonight's approval means that millions more americans will receive vaccinations by year's end. moderna is expected to ship close to 6 million doses right away. that process is expected to begin as early as this weekend, capping off what's already been an historic week. after months of pain and suffering, it was emotional for

me at least to watch those little needles go into the arms of health care workers across the country day after day. today the vaccination effort grew a little wider. it's no longer just health care workers getting the vaccine. the occasion was marked today with streamers and matching sweaters. >> today is the day those living in nursing homes and assisted living will start getting covid vaccines. the first resident got a vaccine just a few minutes ago. that comes days after health care workers began getting their vaccines. >> history has now been made here in connecticut. the very first resident of a nursing home has received the covid vaccine, and this starts the launch of the vaccine program here in connecticut. now, we want to show you some pictures taken inside this facility. the first, very first patient here in connecticut to get the

covid vaccine is 95 years old. her name is jeannie peters. we are told that she wanted to get her hair done for this historic occasion. she also wanted to make sure that her sweater matched her face mask. >> wait for it. streamers. there you go. congratulations, jeannie. today the pharmacy chains walgreens and cvs began the long, important work of vaccinating nursing home residents across this country. the first shots were given today in florida, ohio, and connecticut to residents like jeannie. the rollout's going to continue in dozens more states on monday. about a third of all covid deaths in the united states have been residents of nursing homes and long-term care facilities. this past week was the deadliest on record for people living in congregate care facilities, so it was an incredible visual to see the most vulnerable among us get inoculated today. vaccinations also continued today in navajo nation, a place that has seen the highest per capita coronavirus cases in the

entire country. today staff and residents at a navajo senior care facility were among those who got their shots. unfortunately not all the visuals this week were as hopeful. >> this time is the most crucial. it's been the entire year. in the spring, it was not that bad here. we had covid cases, about you it wasn't like you saw pictures of new york. today we have 140 covid patients in a 213-bed hospital. i think it's only going to get worse before it gets better. >> we're going to get her in. >> rosa? right here. >> what's going on with her? >> she has problems breathing. she's not eating.

she has diabetes, severe diabetes, high blood pressure. >> rosa, how many days have been feeling this way? >> she's doing better already. okay? we're going to do everything we can. that's what i can promise you, okay? >> all right, rosa. i'm going to put this on. >> that's a constant battle.

we're doing that all day long, 24 hours a day. i think if you didn't take it seriously before, now is the time to take it seriously. >> code blue, icu north at 18. code blue, icu north at 18. >> we had this built on friday in anticipation of the surge continuing to peak, which on sunday it got there. >> our icu is overwhelmed with patients, so we're going to double-bunk them in here. normally these patients would be in the icu upstairs, but all of those beds are full. we created an additional ten-bed outside of icu. those are all full. we have six more patients holding in the operating room. and then we could hold up to 24 more patients in this area. it is completely full right now. as soon as one goes out, another one comes in. they are all covid-positive,

every single one of them. >> everyone's getting sick with covid at the same time, so our staff are calling out faster than we can get staff in. we've received a couple traveler nurses from the state of california recently, which is wonderful, but the hard part is that everyone's fighting for the same resources at the same time. all of the hospitals in california are struggling. >> "the washington post" bringing us that remarkable, devastating look inside saint mary medical center in san bernardino county, california. the icu at st. mary's is operating at 300% capacity right now. they've run out of room to put people, so they're treating patients in the lobby. and at this point that really is the only option left because as you heard that doctor just say, all the hospitals in california

are struggling. california recorded more than 52,000 new coronavirus infections yesterday. hospitalizations hit an all-time record. right now los angeles county appears to be one of the new worldwide epicenters of the coronavirus, one of the most infected counties in the most infected state in the most infected country in the world. in l.a. county, more than 1,000 people are in the icu with covid. that number is quadruple what it was on november 1st. by january, forecasters say upward of 3,000 people in los angeles may be in need of an icu bed. one l.a. doctor telling the "l.a. times," quote, there are simply not enough trained staff to care for the volume of patients that are projected to come and need care. our hospitals are under siege, and our model shows no end in sight. the abysmal situation in california is, of course, on the heels of news that california next week will be receiving 40% fewer doses of the pfizer covid vaccine from the federal government than they were

originally told to expect. rachel reported on this extensively last night, that a whole cascade of states across the country started throwing up flares about how they were being told by the federal government that they would not be receiving the amount of vaccine that they were anticipating next week. and the cuts were drastic. some states were told to expect 30%, even 40% less vaccine than they were originally told they would get. as far as we could tell last night, this is not a supply problem. the maker of the vaccine, the pharmaceutical company pfizer, said in no uncertain terms last night that they had the vaccine the states were expecting. the federal government just never bothered to tell them where to send it. quote, pfizer is not having any production issues with our covid-19 vaccine, and no shipments containing the vaccine are on hold or delayed. we have millions more doses sitting in our warehouse, but as of now, we have not received any shipment instructions for

additional doses, end quote. now, pfizer's only job here was to make the vaccine. from there, it is the federal government's responsibility to figure out how to get those doses out of pfizer's warehouse and into the arms of american people. thousands of americans are dying every day. how many more deaths could be prevented by those doses that are just sitting in a warehouse right now? doctors, nurses, hospital custodians, nursing home residents, long-term care workers. these are people who have appointments to get the shot in the coming days and weeks. does this mean that some of them are going to have to wait even longer now because their dose isn't coming? whatever the long-term consequences of this might be, the short-term concern is still figuring out what went wrong here. what's still going wrong? today the vice president received his first dose of the pfizer vaccine as did the speaker of the house and the senate majority leader.

they all got their vaccine in public as a way to boost public confidence that the vaccine is safe. that confidence is only useful if the american government can actually manage to distribute it. the hhs secretary, alex azar, said today when asked what went wrong, what broke down in the distribution process to cause all those states to have their vaccine shipments slashed, alex azar said nothing. he told abc news this morning, quote, there's nothing actually to fix. there was some misunderstanding from certain of our governors, end quote. while secretary azar was telling the american people that everything was fine, that those silly governors just read the invoices wrong, he was flat-out blanking their calls. the governor of michigan, gretchen whitmer, said she called secretary azar to ask him why the government slashed michigan's next shipment of covid vaccine by 29%. he did not return her call. governor whitmer said, quote, the federal government is slow-walking the process of getting the addresses to pfizer

for some reason i cannot get an answer to. we have michigan hospitals and nursing homes ready to administer this vaccine. and the bottleneck appears to be the white house, and i can't get an answer why. here's the thing. no matter what happened here, whether fewer doses of the vaccine are set to go out next week or not, or whether it was a big misunderstanding or not, something went wrong. the governors of california, michigan, montana, missouri, connecticut, georgia, illinois, kansas, montana, nebraska, nevada, new hampshire, iowa, and indiana, they all read the information about their vaccine supply given to them by the federal government and came to the conclusion that they were getting less vaccine than was previously promised to them. more than a dozen people do not independently arrive at the same wrong conclusion, and even if this is just some big misunderstanding, that in itself is a problem. that is something to fix now. the federal government appears to have failed the first test, telling the states how much vaccine they're going to get and

when they're going to get it or at least telling them in a way that was clear and easy to understand. right now is the easy part. vaccines are being doled out in small numbers to limited high-risk populations. what happens when the time comes to give it to everyone all at once? joining us now, laurie garrett, a health policy analyst, a pulitzer prize-winning science writer who has been a kind of voice of reason over the course of this crisis. laurie, thank you for being here. we got hints of this the other day when the incoming administration suggested that the -- or at least doctors advising the incoming biden administration warned that the trump administration's plans and projections about how this vaccine is getting out here do not seem to be accurate. what do you make of this situation? >> ali, i think there's a lot going on here, and it's many different levels, and it may not be quite as politically motivated as it seems, though we can't utterly discount that. first of all, general gustave perna is in charge of operation

warp speed, and he told reporters three days ago that because of the big nor'easter that was coming in to slam the eastern and midwestern states with snow and high winds, that it was likely there were going to be airplane disruptions and transportation disruptions. and as a result, he was going to hold back some of the promised vaccine as a security precaution. he didn't say exactly how much, but it appears that did occur and that that was, in part, because of concerns that fedex and ups would not be able to make all their deliveries. and indeed fedex and ups did have a lot of flight delays. lots of airports were shut down, at least temporarily, over the last few days. and so that i all have been some legitimate snafus and concerned, and obviously given how precious a cargo of pfizer vaccine is at this point, losing a flight load or having a plane sit on the

tarmac and the vaccine goes bad would be a horrible, horrible thing to have happen. so you can sort of understand that. but there's been no clarity beyond the initial comments made by governor perna three days ago on this. and all the states have either been told, you know, you've misread the instructions, you've misread the invoices, or nothing, just nothing, just wall of silence. and the real crisis with this, ali, is that, you know, we're still at very early stages with very small amounts of vaccine that we're trying to roll out. we haven't even come close to getting to the point of trying to roll out 20 million doses a day, 30 million doses a day around america. and for that scale and what's supposedly coming, assuming the vaccines really do roll out of those warehouses and are really produced and fill the warehouses, what's coming up is

going to be a scale of activity that the national governors association said on november 25th would require $8 billion of additional resources for the states because all of the state public health departments are now completely overwhelmed. they don't have a single extra human to do anything, much less be in charge of distributing vaccines and so on. and the response from the federal government was this week the cdc said, hey, 50 states plus territories, here's a check for $227 million of the $8 billion you said you absolutely had to have. >> yeah. just in the last few minutes, laurie, the governor of washington state, jay inslee, tweeted some new information

about this story that you and i are discussing, about states receiving fewer vaccines next week. he said this, quote. i had a very productive conversation tonight with operation warp speed regarding the reduction in state vaccine allocations for next week. it appears this is not indicative of long-term challenges with vaccine production. general gus perna, whose candor i appreciated, explained that prior allocations were inadvertently based on vaccine doses produced, not all of which have yet completed quality control and are releasable. this discrepancy was the source of the change in allocations. at this time there's no indication further reductions are likely to occur. that is good news. we continue to celebrate the availability of this vaccine and what we hope to be a stable supply going forward. so that speaks to your suggestion that gus perna's on it and that it may not be political. it is a little bit amazing, though, that you had alex azar

on tv saying nothing is wrong when, in fact, something is wrong, and the governor of michigan saying she can't get a call back from him. it's sort of -- it's a continuation of a picture you and i have been talking about for a few months. putting politics aside, just being effective about this. >> ali, you and i have talked about the gun that can't shoot straight, and this is certainly what we've been seeing with the federal government. it's ironic that on the r&d side of operation warp speed, we have seen reality materialize in record speed with now two approved vaccines and three or four in the near pipeline. so that's incredibly exciting. but getting it out of the door and handling all the logistics is a nightmare. and one of the reasons it's really been exacerbated is that the trump administration's policy from the earliest days of this epidemic in america, going back to february and march, has been to say the states are in charge. we're just going to hand everything over to you. you find your ppes. you find your personnel.

you find this, that, and everything else. and now -- >> right. >> hey, you figure out how to distribute vaccines. >> now they're not. >> exactly. >> laurie, thanks a million. i -- i look forward to the day you and i don't have to talk and just talk because we want to. laurie garrett is a health policy analyst. >> we'll get a nice tall bottle of wine. >> i will look forward to that day. unfortunately we're coming up on the first anniversary of when you and i have talked about this, but we will one day be past this and thank you for your guidance, laurie garrett. as we mentioned at the top of the show, california has become a new epicenter of the virus in this country. cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are surging at a breakneck pace. hospitals there are overwhelmed. one of the hardest hit is cedars-sinai medical center in los angeles. the director of the icu unit at that hospital, dr. isabel pedraza, made this comment about her experience treating covid patients right now.

quote, you could spend the majority of your day really fighting to keep some of these patients alive, seeing their suffering and their family suffering, and then walking out the door and listening to news about how this isn't a big deal and how wearing a mask is infringing on constitutional rights and how this is a hoax. it takes its toll. she continues, quote, to see the fear in their faces, the isolation, i don't think people understand what they're in for if they develop severe covid. joining us now is dr. isabel pedraza. she is the director of the medical intensive care unit at cedars-sinai. thank you for your time. i know this is a difficult time because you and your staff are crushed under the workload. and despite the news that laurie and i were just talking about and despite the emergency use authorization of the moderna vaccine, which will start shipping on sunday, the fact is tens if not hundreds of thousands of more people will suffer this infection. many of them will get sick, and

over the course of the next month, many of them will end up in icus like yours. >> yeah, i think that's the unfortunate reality because i think we haven't been able to contain this now for going on ten months. so, yeah, i think that -- that's what we're facing. >> the "l.a. times" is reporting that icu availability in southern california is at 0%. the patients are still getting intensive care, and that strategy can work to a point. but eventually there may be too many critically ill patients for the limited numbers of icu doctors and nurses available, leading to greater chances of patients not getting the specialized care they need, and that can lead to increases in mortality. and that article, dr. pedraza, was just talking about covid patients. if you have zero availability in hospitals, that means everybody

else who needs intensive care on a daily basis because of heart attacks and because of car accidents and things like that also suffer. >> i mean i think that's true. the fact is that there's a limited number of beds, and, you know, the advantage is we've had now, you know, months to prepare for this because we've been through this before. i think the difference now is that we're in the winter months, which is typically our busiest time of year, and our beds are full. and, you know, as a hospital and, you know, colleagues across l.a. county are doing the same, we're coming up with solutions to create more beds. but it is very troubling to see this trend and know that, you know, we're at the beginning of the winter months, you know, and i think that what we're seeing now is probably directly related to the thanksgiving holidays, and it's really troubling to most of us to think what's going to happen, you know, a couple of weeks after the christmas holidays. >> given what you've seen and

the timing indicates that some of this surge is related to thanksgiving because as you said, there's media out there right now, right now as you and i are speaking, saying that there has been no surge. there was absolutely no consequence to everybody traveling and having gatherings at thanksgiving. for those for whom this became reality after the first time they saw their loved ones in a long time, what should they be thinking about for the rest of this holiday? we're in hanukkah. we're headed toward christmas. what should people be thinking given the lessons we just learned. >> they should be thinking this is something that comes along once a century and that, you know, unless everybody does their part, we're not going to get over this. i was watching earlier the footage from san bernardino and, you know, this reminds me a lot of what was happening in new york, to my colleagues that i was speaking to in new york back in march.

it feels sometimes like people who don't work in a hospital are living in an alternate reality because i -- they can't see what we see. i mean it's -- it's -- it's incredibly demoralizing to walk out of the hospital after you've spent your day, you know, really working at 110 of your capacity and see that, you know, the rest of the world sometimes doesn't seem to understand that. >> are you feeling a little better after those images that you've seen this week of health care workers getting immunized? >> yeah, and i actually got my vaccine yesterday, and i haven't been able to stop smiling every time i talk about it. so, yeah, it's very -- it's a big relief. >> good. well, it's been a while since we've had something to smile about on this front, so at least we've got that. thank you to you. thank you to all of the people at cedars-sinai and all of the hospitals across the country who are working so hard to keep us safe.

dr. isabel pedraza, thank you for your time tonight. stay safe. so how did suspected russian hackers burrow into so many u.s. government computer systems for so long, and why didn't we catch them? we're going to get some answers from someone who was there. that's next. t.s with exciting stunts. so to help you remember that liberty mutual customizes your home insurance, here's something you shouldn't try at home... look, liberty mutual customizes home insurance so we only pay for what we need. it's pretty cool. that is cool! grandma! very cool. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

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it was just ten days ago when we received the first reports about a massive months-long cyberattack that breached multiple federal agencies and a number of companies across the globe. and to no one's surprise, all signs point to russia. intelligence officials, while not acknowledging this publicly, strongly believe the hack was carried out by russia's premier intelligence agency, the russian foreign intelligence service. the hackers have reportedly breached at least half a dozen federal agencies and critical infrastructure, including the pentagon, the departments of state, treasury, commerce, and homeland security to name a few. and we did not learn about this

cyberattack from our federal government as you might expect. they weren't even aware. instead, we learned about the intrusion from a private security firm, which is troubling, i guess. when the federal government did finally get around to acknowledging the hack, the department of homeland security's cyber security and infrastructure security agency, cisa, said that these hacks go as far back as march. the agency warned that the attack posed a, quote, grave risk to the u.s. government. when an attack on such a broad scale as this, we would hope that our government and our leaders are on top of it. by all accounts, though, it doesn't seem like that. donald trump hasn't even acknowledged the attack. he hasn't said a word. and congress is growing impatient. members of the house oversight and homeland security committees

received a classified briefing on the attack today, and they were not satisfied, saying the briefing left them with, quote, more questions than answers. now, while congress searches for answers, the questions remain. how were the russians able to get inside federal networks for months without being detected in the first place? here's how "the washington post" headlined their piece on how unprepared the government was. quote, the u.s. government spent billions on a system for detecting hacks. the russians outsmarted it. cisa officials told congressional staff that the system did not have the capacity to flag the malware that was signaling back to its russian masters. it was, of course, just two weeks after the election when the president took a hammer to cisa. our government's top cybersecurity agency, and feared its head, this man, christopher krebs, for debunking trump's election misinformation and assuring the american public that our election this november was the most secure in u.s. history. the administration also forced out krebs' top deputy for good measure.

priorities. what should the federal government have done differently to detect these hacks, and how do we fix this gaping hole in our national security infrastructure? joining us now is matthew travis, who up until a month ago served as the deputy director for the department of homeland security's cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency, cisa. mr. travis, thank you for joining us tonight. >> good evening, ali. good to be with you. >> i know you know things that you probably can't tell us on tv, but given what you can tell us, what do you believe happened here? >> well, i think first we need to give some credit to the adversary here. this was a very creative, sophisticated, and patient attack that also displayed an acute understanding of how federal government agency networks are defended. so call it a supply chain attack. call it a third-party attack. you know, the defense of federal networks is a shared responsibility between those agencies themselves, cisa, and the office of management and budget where the federal cio and

the chief information security officer reside. one of the technologies that cisa provides is intrusion detection systems that sit on over 101 federal civilian executive branch agencies. you think of that in terms of the perimeter, a perimeter around those networks, almost leek a perimeter around one's house where you have a sentry out front. these systems are designed to block malicious ip addresses, these indicators of compromise that come from adversary nation states or other cyber criminals. but what the russians did here is they were using a third-party application, essentially a friendly, trusted source. so when those ip addresses came in, they're let in just as a sentry guarding a building or organization would let in friends or trusted vendors to deliver or to visit. and so it was really a very insightful way to -- it's why they call it a trojan horse. essentially they snuck in their malicious code through the solarwinds orion application. because that was a trusted service to many federal agencies and many fortune 500 companies, that's how the malicious code

was embedded in these federal networks. >> so i want to read you two things about this. your description was really good. it may be the first time i've ever understood that. it says these are write-ups on this from the a.p. it says, it is likely that the adversary has additional initial access vectors and tactics, techniques, and procedures that have not yet been discovered. and "the washington post" writes about this, purging the intruders and restoring security to affected networks could take months, some experts say, closing the digital back doors initially created by the russians will not suffice because they appear to have stolen keys to an unknown number of official doorways into federal and private corporate systems according to investigators at fireeye, a cybersecurity firm that was also hacked. so given what you just described and given these characterizations of it, what

happens now? >> well, it's going to be quite an effort to do that forensic analysis, due the damage assessment of exactly what data might have been exfiltrated or what other malicious code may have been placed in these networks. i no longer have access to the intelligence reports, but if it were attributed to russian actors, apt-29, this cozy bear, their tactics in the past would lead one to believe that they would have placed other types of malicious code potentially once they gained access. and in fact if other platforms, whether microsoft platforms, whether widely used platforms are also infected, this is going to take a while. the spread of this compromise will be wide-ranging. i doubt it would just be the united states who's affected by this, and it's going to take a while to do the forensics to really ascertain what was compromised, what was stolen. >> you and your boss were both let go by this administration for singing a tune the president didn't like about the election. does that -- does that

compromise our security when the top people are politicized? >> well, the team at cisa is in capable hands. the acting director is a tremendous executive, and i don't think it's -- that's not really the damage. the continued rhetoric undermining the election is really where the damage is occurring. obviously director krebs and i would have liked to have finished out the term, and we'd be there, you know, working this problem now, working with our private sector partners and those federal agencies coming up with remediation plans. obviously we can't do that now, but the team at cisa is strong, and they're working at it hard. >> it's a noble response, sir. i'm not sure i'd be as big-hearted about it if they did to me what they did to you. but thank you for being with us tonight. you certainly have made this very clear and made it very understandable, and we appreciate that. thank you for your hard work in trying to keep america safe. matthew travis is the former deputy director at the cybersecurity and infrastructure

security agency, cisa. thank you for your time tonight. >> thanks, ali. >> we'll be right back with much more, including a report that president trump is about to issue a whole slew of pardons. stay with us. students of color typically do not have access to high quality computer science and stem education. ♪ i joined amazon because i wanted to change education and i am impatient. amazon gives me the resources to change the world at a pace that i want to change it. ♪ we provide students stem scholarships and teachers with support. ♪ i'm a fighter and i'm fighting for all students. anna could only imagine a comfortable night's sleep without frequent heartburn waking her up. now, that dream... . ...is her reality. nexium 24hr stops acid before it starts, for all-day, all-night protection. can you imagine 24 hours without heartburn? joint pain, swelling, temy psoriasis. for all-day, all-night protection. cosentyx works on all of this. cosentyx can help you look and feel better by treating

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we had some reporting from axios this morning about a, quote, wave of pardons expected today from president trump. now, if that is his plan, he only has a couple of hours left, so he better get to it. as far as who might be included in this rumored wave of pardons, where to begin? the president has publicly mused about pardoning his campaign chairman, paul manafort, who was sentenced to over seven years in prison after being convicted on multiple financial fraud charges brought by special counsel robert mueller. like the pardon for roger stone, a pardon for manafort would essentially be a reward for protecting trump. the mueller report lays out how manafort's lies and obstructions stymied the special counsel's investigation into the trump

campaign's ties to russia. or how about a preemptive pardon for trump's personal attorney, rudy giuliani, who was spotted at the white house today. what could be more fitting than a pardon for the man at the center of the ukraine scandal on this day, the one-year anniversary of trump's impeachment for that very scheme. giuliani's reportedly been under investigation by federal prosecutors over his own ukraine activities. his boss could nip that in the bud if he wanted to. "the new york times" reported earlier this month that along with discussing a pardon for giuliani, the president has discussed pardons for his own three eldest children and his son-in-law. none of them have been charged with any crimes, but maybe donald trump knows something that we don't. cnn reports that the president is also considering a pardon for trump organization chief financial officer allen weisselberg. i mean it's honestly hard to imagine something that screams corruption more than granting a preemptive pardon to your family

business's money man. sure, why not? meanwhile, axios reports that the president has just been offering pardons willy-nilly to anyone who crosses his path. according to sources with direct knowledge of the conversations, quote, trump has interrupted conversations to spontaneously suggest that he add the person he's speaking to -- speaking with to his pardon list. quote, the offers haven't always been welcome. one source felt awkward because the president was clearly trying to be helpful, but the adviser didn't believe they had committed any crimes, end quote. are you sure you haven't committed any crimes? are there any crimes you'd like to commit before january 20th? how about a pardon just in case? of course the biggest question is whether donald trump is going to attempt to pardon himself. and if he does or if he continues to pardon people who have committed crimes in concert with him or to protect him, is there anything to stop him? we've got the perfect person to talk about this. joining me now is congressman

jamie raskin of maryland, a member of the judiciary committee and a former constitutional law professor. congressman raskin, you are the perfect guy literally to talk about this tonight. how close can donald trump get to himself with these pardons? >> well, let's start with why all of this is such a corruption of the pardon power. the president has the power to pardon in order to correct manifest injustices with an exercise of justice or to balance the operation of justice with mercy. now, we're dealing with a president who has no concept of what justice means or injustice or mercy, so he doles out pardons like a mob boss would, to reward his political friends and conversely he uses his power over the department of justice to punish his enemies. so all of this, of course, leads to the question of, well, is he going to end up granting a pardon to himself? and the constitution talks about granting a pardon. that would be an odd grammar, to grant a pardon to yourself, to

give something to yourself. it also defies the structure of the pardon power and the whole nature of it. after all, if you could pardon yourself, it would mean you could put up pardons, for example, for sale on the internet and take the highest bidders. and then in order to prevent yourself from being prosecuted for bribery, you could pardon yourself. so it would be the perfect way to completely marketize your office. nobody has ever attempted that before. the department of justice has taken a position against it. it cuts against what madison said in the constitution, which is the cardinal principle of justice is that no person can be a judge in his or her own case. but of course this president wants to test the outer limits of people's credulity and their willingness to indulge him. so we'll see whether he goes there. but the idea that he's suggesting it as some kind of christmas present to his friends and family is just outrageous,

as if, you know, what do you give your kids when you've already given them everything? oh, throw in a presidential pardon while you're at it. >> i'm fascinated. i mean normally i can get through quotes without laughing, but the idea that he's actually offering them to all sorts of people is fascinating. andrew weissmann, whom you know, a mueller team prosecutor in the manafort case, wrote this op-ed in "the new york times" in which he said, a judge found that paul manafort lied to us repeatedly, breaching his cooperation agreement. he, like roger stone, was surely holding out for a dangled pardon. the evidence of donald trump's obstruction includes mr. trump's efforts to influence the outcome of a deliberating jury in the manafort trial and his holding out the hope of a pardon to thwart witnesses from cooperating with our investigation. can anyone even fathom a legitimate reason to dangle a pardon? so you've just described it. andrew weissmann is talking about it.

at some point does the law address this? does the constitution or other law somehow deal with the fact that you can't do that? >> well, one thing that we should recall is that, you know, if a president were literally to sell pardons, to take money for pardons, that would be bribery. arguably the pardons themselves would be legally valid. in other words, if someone tried to prosecute the person who got the pardon, the court would have to honor the pardon. and yet the underlying bribery itself could be prosecuted. and, remember, the president can only pardon for federal offenses. the president cannot pardon in a way that is effective against state criminal prosecutions, which is why he's living in absolute dread and fear of prosecutors from new york, who, you know, are looking at everything from tax fraud to embezzlement to real estate fraud and so on. those are offenses that he cannot pardon himself for absolutely because he can't

pardon anybody for prosecutions in state court. >> congressman raskin, i always enjoy talking to you. i learned something about the constitution, and as you know, most of my law before this presidential term came from "law & order," so you make me smarter every time we have these conversations. congressman jamie raskin of maryland is a member of the judiciary committee, and he is himself a constitutional law professor. thank you again for your time tonight, sir. >> ali, thank you very much. happy holidays to you. >> and to you. the fight for georgia's two senate seats is heating up. we're going to have the latest on the races that will affect the fate of all 50 states and everyone who lives in them. that's next. brush, the answer is yes. the clock may be ticking towards worse... parodontax is 3x more effective at removing plaque, the main cause of bleeding gums parodontax

here's the headline today from the atlanta journal constitution. turn out in georgia u.s. senate runoff approaches presidential levels. with 18 days left until election

day, 1.1 million georgians have turned out to vote in georgia's two senate ren off elections. that is almost as many of the number of georgians who had voted in the presidential election this many days out. that news comes just as we learned nearly 76,000 new voters most of them young have been registered to vote since the general election cut off earlier this year. for context 76,000 is roughly seven times the margin that joe biden won the state of georgia by earlier this year. which may be why georgia republicans have spent the last week in court doing everything in their power to try and make it harder for people in that state to cast their ballots. just yesterday two federal judges had to throw out not one but two different republican lawsuits challenging the way georgia collected and verified absentee ballots. then the republican party of georgia filed yet another lawsuit challenging the state's absentee ballots.

today that lawsuit was also denied. all of this is happening as the president seems to all but have abandoned the two republican candidates in georgia because he continues to feud with georgia's governor and the secretary of state, both republicans. trump is angry about their refusal to help him try and overturn the results of the presidential election. "the new york times" reporting today that mr. trump had been tentatively planning to go to georgia on saturday, according to a senior republican official, but he's still angry at the state's republican governor and secretary of state for accepting the election result and simply doesn't want to make the trip, end quote. democrats by contrast are putting everything they've got into supporting democratic candidates raphael warnock and jon ossoff. earlier this week president-elect joe biden held a drive in rally for ossoff and warnock will also releasing a one minute tv ad endorsing the two candidates. today it was announced former

president barack obama will cut three separate political ads for raphael warnock. and next week kamala harris will be head today the peach state to throw her support behind the two candidates. one other big name canvassing for the democrats in georgia grammy award winning rapper common. commons joins me tomorrow on velshi 9:00 a.m. eastern to share what he's learned going door-to-door in georgia. and sunday i'll be in georgia myself on the next stop of velshi across america. i'm going to show you how tour guides in historic savannah, georgia, are staying in business despite the mere trickle of visitors. i would like to hear your best ideas for supporting small businesses this holiday season and in the months to come before that vaccine is fully distributed. i don't mean buying lots of take out. i do that already. but send me your advice to shopping small. and i might read it this sunday on-air. as for this show, we will be right back. on-air as for this show, we will be right back your journey requires liberty mutual.

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the clock is still ticking

for congress to pass its spending bill or face a government shutdown, but now their looming deadline is two days and not two hours away. earlier this evening the house and senate passed a two-day stop gap, an extension that would keep the government funded as they continue negotiations. it now goes to president trump for his signature, and once he signs it the new deadline will be sunday. the sticking point is the $900 billion covid relief bill that senate majority leader mitch mcconnell and house speaker nancy pelosi want to attach to the must-pass spending bill. lawmakers have blown past deadlines all week as they try to hammer out a deal. here's what we know so far. the bill is expected to include things like money for small business loans and vaccine distribution funds. it would also include a second round of relief checks for millions of americans below a certain income threshold. there was some optimism that the full deal could be struck this afternoon, but that evaporated earlier today. meanwhile these negotiations are playing out as millions of americans are about to see their

unemployment benefits run out the day after christmas. at least lawmakers have bought themselves some time to get something done. watch this space. that does it for us tonight. rachel will be back on monday. from 8:00 to 10:00 a.m. it's now time for "the last word word" with my friend mebi who is here for lawrence o'donnell. you and i have worked together, we have a lot in common. because this is different, because i have never introduced you as the host of "the last word," i thought i would do something different. i posted -- i didn't tweet because you and i tweet a lot -- i posted it on parler. i've been on parler for over a month. i had actually zero followers on parler, and now i'm up to 62. you performed magic for me on parler. >> becau