week. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. good evening, thank you, my friend. much appreciated. thanks to you at home for joining us. super happy to have you here on this friday night. show you a thing point of personal privilege. look. that's my mom on the right. and that's her sister, my aunt, on the left. that's the two of them getting vaccinated tonight. my mom is 79. my aunt's 82. i can barely keep it together. my dad is due for his vaccination tomorrow. first people in our family, extended family, to get vaccinated. and tonight here for the interview, for the first time during the coronavirus crisis is the man who at least on a personal level for my family made that possible. i mean, how many people do you know said they would not get vaccinated against the coronavirus unless and until dr.

fauci got vaccinated? unless and until they heard from dr. fauci personally that it's time, that it's safe. that this is how we're going to beat this thing. how crucial has the public's trust in this one scientist been? since the start of this global and national nightmare? it is an unprecedented thing in american history. and dr. anthony fauci joins us tonight for the interview. dr. fauci, i feel like we have a lot of catching up to do. i've been trying to get an interview with you on the show since march. now that there's change at the top in washington, great to finally have you here, sir. a real honor. >> thank you very much, rachel. it's about time. don't you think? >> boy, do i. let me start off by asking you just about how the new administration is starting over, the first couple of days had about 30 actions by the new president. many of them on coronavirus.

everything from using the defense production act more to try to meet supply shortfalls, to requiring people to quarantine when they come in from other countries, to setting um a new pre-clinical program to advance therapeutics. lots and lots of direct individual actions by the president right off the bat. are there any of them that you disagree with? >> you know, rachel, no, i don't. i mean, this has been a very well-planned out -- it's the national strategy for coronavirus and pandemic preparedness. it's about 101-page document. it's very finely detailed. and one of the things that i found really very encouraging and gratifying in the meetings that i've had, you know, first before, just a few days before the actual inauguration, and then yesterday, for example, when i was with the president and the vice president, to things that he said to us,

myself and other members of the team in private, were just so encouraging. i mean, he said, let science speak. let science be the thing that drives us. let's just be open and honest and transparent. we're not going to get everything right in respect will be some mistakes, some missteps. the response to that is to fix it and not to point blame and point fingers. it was just an amazingly refreshing experience and conversation that we had, and he wasn't doing it for show. this was, like, behind closed doors in the white house where he was just telling the team how he wanted this to go looking forward. that was, like, on the second day that, their first day after the inauguration. so we have a plan. we have a lot of things that have already been implemented, such as the executive orders that you mentioned. i mean, i, myself, one of the first things that he asked me to do was to represent him as the

leader of the delegation to the world health organization executive board. i get up, 3:00 in the morning, to, to be the representative at 4:00 a.m., which was 10:00 a.m. geneva time to do something that the rest of the world was really looking at. and that is, getting us back into the w.h.o. making sure we're an important part of the collaboration, the cooperation and the solidarity needed when you have a global pandemic. we hit the ground running. >> i know that the president, the outgoing president, i should say the former president, made this generalized case that wasn't specific to coronavirus, but made a case that international cooperation and then us being part of international or even just multi-national efforts was weakness. was a generosity that americans shouldn't afford. particularly at times of crisis that we should take care of ourselves. seems clear from your enthusiasm for the u.s. rejoining the

w.h.o. that you think that's not just an act of international, american benevolence. you think that's good for us? can you explain why that is. >> oh, absolutely, rachel. it's good for us and it's good for the rest of the world. when you are dealing with a global pandemic, the response must be global, and if there's anything, any phenomenon which is antithetical to this idea about pro verbalism and keep everything out is exactly the opposite what you need to do with a pandemic. by definition, pandemic, the entire planet that's involved. so in many ways we're not different than other nations. we're not different than other regions and the only way we're going to get this thing under control and crush it, which i feel we will if we do it and pull together, with the kind of solidarity, cooperation and

collaboration, it just makes no sense to think that you are going to exclude the rest of the world, when you're trying to respond to a global pandemic. it just doesn't make any sense. >> we've now had not that many weeks experience, a few weeks experience in our country administers the two approved vaccines so far. pfizer and moderna. has anything emerged these weeks to indicate one of those is any more effective, safe or easily tolerate and that the other? or essentially should the american public as people find out they've got an appointment to get vaccinated. today i find out my aunt and mom got appointments and were going in. i was first in tears i was so happy and asked which vaccine they were getting. i'm not sure what that was supposed to mean to me. have we discerned which vaccines you got and how they work?

>> the big picture, the united states government involved in the facilitation or testing of six candidates. two have already been shown to be highly efficacious. 94% to 95%. they're the same type of vaccine. we call it a vaccine platform. this one happens to be the mrna platform. we have others that are close behind that will soon evaluated for efficacy and safety and likely will have the same positive fate as these two. but the two that are out are essentially identical in the sense of very, very little if any discernible differences. they're 94% to 95% efficacious. they have a good safety record. so when people ask me, which one did you take? it just so happened that the moderna was one shipped to the nih where as you know i work. so i got the moderna one.

if the pfizer one had been shipped it would haven't were exactly the same. i would have said no difference whatsoever. so whatever your mother and your friends got, i believe it would make no difference if they got moderna on pfizer. >> how close are we to the approval of any of the one-dose vaccines, and mathematically obviously that's going to make a difference in terms of the size of the pipeline, in terms of getting vaccine out to the community. how close are we to those? >> real close, rachel. i would think that no more than two weeks from now. the data will be analyzed in a similar fashion. the way we analyzed it with the moderna and the pfizer candidate. that is an independent data and 15i6r7 monitoring board. look at the data, determine if it's ready to be given to the public, to the company to go to the fda and ask to see if they could get an emergency use authorization. you know, i don't want to get

ahead of them, but i have to tell you, i would be surprised if it was anymore than two weeks from now that data will be analyzed and decisions would be made. that's really good news, as you said, because that would be if it does get an emergency use authorization, yet again another candidate that does have some differences. and that's good, because it gives a wider range of flex act. one, it's a single dose. that's really important, because you can expect to start to see results you know, 10, 14 days or so right after and then when you get to 28 days you probably continue to go up. but it has a less stringent cold chain requirement. which is really good. by moving it around and making sure you don't waste doses. >> do we have any lessons learned so far in terms of distributing the vaccine most efficiently? not in the abstract and not in the generic sense but getting it into americans' arms right now

in 2021? are there some settings or delivery sites we thought would make sense to give vaccinations that haven't been all that good at it, that we should shift away from? are there lessons learned already? >> there really is. it hasn't been perfect when it goes from the delivery and the distribution into people's arms. we like to have done better. i think you can you can abstract this and say planned it, looks like it's going well. then when you get on the phone and talk to people, as i say in the trenching you see that not everybody is perfect. that's understandable. it's a new process just initiated. however, getting back to the plan i mentioned that you asked me about, that president biden had put forth, it's that there's a very strong emphasis on getting the vaccines, one, more of them. the equipment that you need. using the defense production act, to get as much as we can, and making sure we put into

place at the local level the capability of getting it to people in a situation where it might be difficult. community vaccine centers, getting pharmacies involved. getting mobile units involved. so one thing we've learned that the science and the development of the vaccine has been breathtaking, i might say. i mean, we did something in less than 11 months. about 11 months that normally would have taken years to get a vaccine that goes from the identification of a brand new virus to the time you're actually injecting it into people. a successful vaccine that is safe and effective. that's unprecedented. now what we've got to do is get the logistics getting it distributed and into people's arms in an efficient way. we're not there yet. there have been missteps. we've got to do better. what the president and vice president have said is the goal, which i think is a challenging goal, but a reasonable goal, to

get 100 million doses, not doses. get 100 million people vaccinated in the first 100 days. so that's the thing we're going to strive for. ultimately you want to get the overwhelming majority of the population, and i would think that would have to be about 75 -- excuse me, 70% to 85 percent of the population to get that umbrella of herd immunity, which then when we get there, rachel, when you start talking about getting back to some form of normality. in order to do thatyou have to pull out all stoppers and get as many vaccinated as possible and that's the plan as part of the national strategy. >> i feel like there's, started to understand this as sort of different columns of necessity, and one of them is science. as you describe. it was a breathtaking scientific achievement to have the development of safe and effective vaccines that quickly. then we've got the implementation, a logistics and

governance thing in terms of getting shots into people's arms. but then also the public health issue of prevention, and on that we've been terrible. even with all of the success in column one and the hopefully the new commitment to column two, on prevent, still having hundreds of thousands of americans infected every day, and for them, and especially having something close to me get very sick with the illness. i've been focused on the issue of therapeutics. treatment for people who didn't get the vaccine in time. for whom previous didn't work, who did get it. i know that's a new focus, too. what can you tell us about, if anything's on the horizon in terms of treateding people already sick to prevent them from dieing? >> yea that's something we are really challenged with and have to do better with. we have treatments now relatively speaking, more effective for people with advanced disease to prevent them from dieing and to prevent them from having a deteriorating

course. so, for example, there have been clinical trials that have shown in individuals hospitalized, even those who require mechanical ventilation or who have a requirement for high-flow oxygen. if you give them a drug and a randomized placebo-controlled drug, you can diminish significantly the 28-day mortality. we have monochloral antibodies. boats specific for the virus to derive from individuals by taking their cells out and the having those cells produce these antibodies. there are a number of them that have been promising enough that they have been granted emergency use authorization. we've got to get more of that, and we've got to give it to people earlier. but the real goal, rachel, is to do what we did so successfully with hiv. to get direct, acting anti-viral drugs so that when someone comes

in with symptoms to prevent them from going in the hospital, you might give them a seven to ten-day course, unlike hiv, which requires a lifetime of course, but the same type of drug. one that's a very powerful drug, directly acting on the virus itself. that's something that we're putting a lot of effort in, and when we get that, that will really turn around the entire situation of our ability to prevent someone from progressing and going into a state where they really have advanced disease. >> that's the sort of theory of the case for the best shot for therapeutics, but is there anything that looks promising along those lines already? or is this something that's years away in terms of development? >> no. well, you know, normally under business as usual-type things it might have been years away. but there are a number of companies that have candidates that they're looking at, that

might look pretty, you know, the companies are a little shy telling you about things, but being at the nih where we fund scientists doing this i think it's going to be much sooner than we think. that once you get something that looks like it's a hit, as we call it, namely, something that really does act. you get it into a phase one trial quickly and because the situation is so dire in the sense of the need for therapeutics, you move it along. you don't just want to forget about safety. safety is always important. if you can show it's safe, has good anti-viral activity we can move relatively quickly on that. as i mentioned there are a couple of candidates looking promising in the test tube, and then from there you go to an animal model and then get it into humans. >> dr. fauci, what do you tell people who are dealing with a long-term symptom from covid? people who technically recovered

but still have impairment months later? some stuff for some is very severe. months after they have, you know, technically recovered from the disease they're still not able to work. people have long-term and very serious conventions. is that something that's being studied systematically? >> oh, very much so, rachel. this is a real phenomenon. i, myself, personally, am dealing and helping a number of people who have a post-acute covid-19 syndrome just as you accurately described. they are virologically okay. the virus is no longer identified in them, but they have persistence of symptoms that can be debilitating. extreme fatigue. muscle aches, temperature disregulation. some even have situations where what they call brain fog. it's very difficult for them to focus or to concentrate. it can be really quite disturbing. we are doing a lot on that.

we had a workshop in december that my institute sponsored bringing in experts from all over the country and the world. we're going make a major investment in research dollars to try and find out the full extent of this, and any hints towards what the underlying mechanisms are, what we can do to treat it. we take it very seriously for the simple reason that even if a small fraction, and it appears to be more than just a small fraction of people, have persistent symptoms, when you look at the 24 million, 25 million people in the united states who have been infected, albeit not all had symptoms but even those who have symptoms and globally, approaching 100 million people having been infected, this can be something that really could be an issue. that's the reason why we're taking it very seriously. >> very, very happy to hear you

describe it that way and to know about your personal involvement. dr. fauci, would you mind sticking with us just a second? a quick break but i haven't even scraped the surface of the things i want to ask you about yet. >> sure. >> great. we'll be right back with dr. anthony fauci right after this. stay with us. y fauci right afts stay with us. hnology makes it brilliant. the visionary lexus nx, lease the 2021 nx 300 for $359 a month for 36 months. experience amazing at your lexus dealer.

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so now you having this shot, like a weight off your shoulder? peace of mind? >> yes, it does. gives me a lot of peace of mind. i believe in science, and i don't think dr. fauci would be on tv every day telling people to take the vaccine if it wasn't good for them. because that's how much respect i have for him. >> maureen weill getting her vaccine dose in new orleans, louisiana. telling us that she got it in part because she has faith in science and knows that dr. fauci wouldn't tell you to get the vaccine unless it was time to gets the vaccine.

back now with dr. anthony fauci more than 30 years, infection disease doctor, at the nih. you know how much american people have faith in you and have trusted you. i want to tell you that i have -- not only have faith and trust in you. i have faith in the career scientists throughout the nih and cdc and other god standards across country. and freaked out how the cdc in particular got pushed around, not just behind-the-scenes pressure it affected their recommendations. we know they're under review now that president biden is there. i feel it never should have happened, and hoping the next president doesn't do something like that. can you help us understand how that happened seemingly so easily?

>> yeah. i mean, it's such an unusual abherrability situation, rachel. i don't take any pleasure in disciting an administration and the people around the president, but we had a situation where science was rejected. a lot of pressure was put on individuals and organizations to do things that were not directly related to what their best opinion would be, vis-a-vis the science. i had pressure put on me but i resisted it and i had to do something that was not comfortable, but i did it, and i had to be directly contradicting not only the president but some of the people around the president who were saying things that just were not consistent with the science.

i am not a political appointee. so, you know, this whole idea about you know, we're going to fire him and that kind of stuff. i mean, i didn't want to be at odds with the president, because i have a lot of respect for the office of the presidency. but there was conflict at different levels with different people and different organizations, and a lot of pressure being put on to do things that just are not capable with the science. and i think the only way that happens is when you have leadership from the very top and people surrounding the leadership that essentially let that happen. it's a real -- i've served now, this is my seventh administration, rachel, and i've been advising administrations and presidents on both sides of the aisle, republicans and democrats, people with different

ideologists, and even with differences in ideologist, there never was this real affront on science. so it really was something i hadn't seen in the almost 40 years i've been doing this. just one of those things that is chilling when you see it happen. >> and it's -- it's capitol hilling, i'm sure even more chilling up close but from the outside terrifying, because the existence of the pressure, however aberrant from prevention administrations that you had seen, a way from the course on the way the president responded to a lot of issues. from the outside we couldn't see, how much of a fight was it? was there -- was there pushback? was there struggle? were there people threatening to resign and taking a stand when the cdc was being told you can't say that about the safety of

people engaging in choir practice or telling the cdc change its recommendations on asymptomatic people exposed? was there a fight? >> you know, rachel, you're asking me to make judgment on people and i don't really want to do that. i'm sorry. you know, i certainly fought back, and, you know, i'm still surviving. so maybe the reason that happened is because i'm not a political appointee. but, you know, people were influenced, unfortunately. i got to tell you, at the same time that some might have been, a lot of people weren't. there were a lot of people in the cdc and the fda who are really suffering under that. you know, these are two organizations that are really, really good organizations, and i think everybody needs to understand that. up know? they were saying, well, they may have lost faith in it. no. i mean, i have colleagues and

dear friends in both organizations that i would stand next to them anytime of the year, and they're just really, really good. i really hope that the american people understand that. that those are really sound organizations. >> as i said, i preface this with my faith remains in the career scientists at the nih and cdc and know people at both organizations and have a long time precedes this. alarming to see their work corrupted, and it will be an important thing under this administration to see them independent, back, able too speak their mind even when they may have disagreements with a political line from the administration. two things that -- ask you about one at a time. one of the problems that we've had as our national response has been that there hasn't been enough testing. hasn't been easy enough access to testing. that is waxed and waned over

time but you can generally say that's true. one. things concerning watching from the outside was to hear, for example, the president argue there shouldn't be more testing, because that's the way that you find more cases, so we don't want to do more testing. >> yes. >> is part of the reason we haven't had enough testing over the course of this year, a deliberate effort to make sure that we didn't do too much testing or that we were trying to do much as we could and it was a failure in terms of competence? >> no. i think the testing situation, you know, we started off really with some stumbles, as you well know, in the first test that came out from the cdc. had a real techiccal problem that set us behind the eight ball for a while. tried to correct it. there was a difference of opinion, rachel, about the testing of only those people who had symptoms versus people who did not have symptoms. right from the very beginning i had said we should flood the system with testing. we should make sure that people

are tested even though they don't have symptoms, because we know it can be spread with, by people who don't have symptoms. a lot of people on the coronavirus task force who felt that way also. i mean, there be people like my colleaguess debbie berke and othe -- debbie birx and others felt we should expand the testing. it happened. end of the day, come back and say we've tested more than any country has ever tested. well, that's true, but the testing of people to determine on a broader level what the pen penetrant was was not done at the level i and others felt should be done, and we should still be doing much more right now. we should have tests, rachel, where someone could have a point of care test that they bring home, do themselves without a

prescription that's sensitive and specific and can tell you with a really good degree of certainty whether you or your family or the people that you want to come into your home are infected. we've got to get those tests. we're getting closer to tests that have the sensitivity and specificity to do that, but we should have had that available a long time ago. >> dr. fauci, should we expect to hear from you and from other senior scientists and senior supervises of these agencies, and on a regular basis? i know that as we've talk and the country really trif trusts n particular but seen muzzling of other senior folks within the government. will we have more access to you to the public? >> i'm positive of it. i've been wanting to come on your show for months and months. you've been asking me to come on

your show for months and months, and it's just gotten blocked. let's call it what it is. it just got blocked because they didn't like the way you handle things and didn't want me on. when they sent it down, why go on "the rachel maddow show," because i like her and she's really good. doesn't make a difference. don't do it. i don't think you'll see it now. you'll see a lot of transparency. my not see everybody much as you want but not deliberate holding back of good people when the press asks for them. i mean, we were assured that that's the case. you know, that goes along with what you were mentioning before about different types of pressures that are put on. it was a tough situation. it really was. >> dr. fauci, a lot of people who got put in tough situations in this, in this administration

i think the observation, maybe that person is better off resigning, quitting, protesting telling us what happened. i don't think anyone in the country felt the right thing to do was to quick and you staying there was an anchor for a lot of people for a really long time. sorry for what you went through and happy to see the spring in your step and light in your eye and we get to talk to you and the country gets to hear from you from here on out. >> thank you very much, rachel. really a pleasure to be with you. >> thank you. dr. anthony fauci, of course, needs no introduction and no good night. top infection disease expert. now, we have been asking for him, from march, repeatedly. he was never anything but kind. the fact he is willing to tell you and tell me, live, i would love to do it and i was told from the white house i couldn't and here's how they said it. that's -- that's transparency. that's legitimate definition of transparency. and i would hope anybody from

the administration who's watching this now, don't just pat yourself on the back for the fact dr. fauci is now allowed to come here and talk to me. i would hope and i expect that what this means, this new commitment to letting the science speak and letting scientists do their own work, means when dr. fauci gets calls to go on with mr. hannity or mr. carlson or some of the other even further-right networks and hosts who disagree with you and who have been saying things about the coronavirus you think are wrong, i hope this transparency extends to letting the nation's scientists go make their case particularly to people who have been misinforming and telling the people of this country misinformation or politically motivated misinformation in particular on this. the scientists have to lead for all of us. that's how we're going to get out of this. we'll be right back.

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air tonight the "new york times" posted this ex-explosive new story by reporter katie benner. the previously unknown story of a -- of president trump's attempt apparently at a nixon-style saturday night massacre as an effort to overthrow the election using the justice department. it is absolutely stunning. trump and justice department lawyers said to have plotted to oust acting attorney general. here many the lead. justice department's top leaders listened in stunned silence this month. one of their peers they were told devised a plan with president donald trump to oust rosen as acting attorney general and wield the justice department's power to force georgia state lawmakers to overturn its president's election results. the unassuming lawyer who worked on the plan, jeffrey clark, devising ways to bolster president trump's continuing legal battles and pressure on georgia politicians. because attorney general jeff

rosen had refused the president's requests to carry out these plans president trump was about to stid whether to fire mr. rosen and replace him instead with jeffrey clark. department officials convened on a conference call and asked each other what will you do if he was dismissed? unanimous answer. resign. their informal pact ultimately helped persuade president trump to keep mr. rosen in place calculaing this would eclipse accusations of fraud. this decision came only after jeffrey rosen and clark made with an episode of trump's reality show "the apprentice." albeit one that could prompt a constitutional crisis. even before this insane plot,

she detailed -- insane plot of the justice department, acting attorney general under extreme pressure from president trump to declare he found something that would justify over turning results of the election. back to her report. "when president trump said attorney general william barr was leaving the department officials thought he might allow jeffrey rosen a short reprieve before hessing him about supposed voter fraud. after all, mr. barr would be around another week. instead president trump summoned mr. rosen to the oval office very next day after announced barr would leave. the president told rosen he wanted the justice department to file legal bries supporting his allies seeking to overturn an election loss." wanting justice department to side with the president's cockamamie lawyers and lawsuits designed to overturn the election. the president urged jeffrey rose ton apoint special counsels for

widespread voter fraud and domainian vote herb machines. the president repeatedly didn't understand why the justice department hadn't found evidence that supported conspiracy theories about the election some of his personal lawyers had espoused with that lack of interest in doing the president's bidding to throw out the election results and keep him installed as president, that's apparently what led president trump to embrace this other lawyer at the justice department. jeffrey clark, who he appointed to run the civil division within doj. by all accounts jeffrey clark was on the same page as the president on this stuff and why the president wanted him to be installed to take over the whole department. according to the "times" report tonight "mr. clark mentioned jeffrey rosen and the deputy attorney general rich donohue that he spent a lot of time reading on the internet. a comment alarmed them because

they inferred he believed the unfounded conspiracy theories mr. trump somehow wouldn't the election. clark said he wanted to holds a press conference announcing investigating serious accusations of election fraud. mr. rosen and deputy general rejected that proposal and clark drop fld a letter he wanted attorney general rosen to send to georgia state legislators which wrongly said that the justice department was investigating accusations of voter fraud in their state and they should move to void joe biden's win in that state. that was also rejected, but yet despite all of this, jeffrey clark was apparently unswayed. he met with president trump the weekend before congress was set to meet to certify results of the election. after jeffrey clark talked with the president -- he then called jeff roenz acting attorney general and informed him that per his conversation with the president he would be

taking over. at the justice department. only later after jeffrey clark and the acting attorney general mr. rosen presented their individual cases as to why each of them should be running the just is department that the president backed off. mr. trump apparently according to katie benner's reporting swayed by the argument a sat night massacre would result all over senior leadership apartment the justice department would resign if the acting attorney general was ousted and instead installed this guy to declare jb didn't win the election. swayed that that might be enough of a kerfuffle it might prompt congressional investigations to distract what what he was trying to do again, mind-blowing reporting from the "new york times" tonight. according to the "times" jeffrey clark said this report contains inconsiste inconsistencies. now former president trump

declined to comment for this report, but it is -- it is stunning stuff. particularly when we just learned about the schedule for the president's trial for him using a violent mob and illegal pressure tactics against georgia state officials to try to eng do results of the election and stay in power. just learned he's going on trial in the united states senate for those efforts to overthrow the election by illegal persuasion and by force. and now we know more of the depths of it. absolutely stunning stuff with all sorts of implications. more on this next. stay with us. ♪ got my soul ♪ ♪ got my mouth ♪ ♪ i got life ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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install and even tried to install a new attorney general who had pledged to use the power of the justice department to force the state of georgia to void joe biden's win in that state. the president was only stopped from doing this when the entire top leadership of the justice department said that they would resign in protest if he went ahead with it. here is what one former top official at the justice department, david loveman, had to say about it tonight. he said, quote, before the insurrectionist assault on the u.s. capitol there was an attempted coup at the justice department fomented by the president of the united states. joining us is david laughman. i should tell you he previously served as chief of staff to the deputy attorney general in the early 2000s. it is really good to see you here. thank you for being here on short notice. >> thank you for having me, rachel. >> so you've read this article in "the times", as have we.

we are sort of still absorbing it. can you explain for an audience that may not be familiar with the intricacies of how the justice department works and how much power the president is supposed to have over what the justice department does, how serious this is, how serious a diversion this is from the way things are supposed to work? >> right. well, look, i thought i had lost the ability to be shocked by the former president's attempts to sub you gate the department of justice to his political will but i was wrong. you know, we saw the coup attempt at the capitol on january 6th. little did we know one had been attempted at the department of justice. it is completely irregular and astonishingly improper for the president to have put pressure on the acting attorney general to serve as an instrument of his effort to cling to power by bringing lawsuits or filing briefs in support of existing lawsuits by his political supporters to cling to power. ultimately, it appears from this

article to assist in an effort to derail the counting of electoral college battle on january 6th. >> had this worked -- i mean it seems like from katie bennet's reporting tonight, it seems like this didn't work because the rest of the leadership at the justice department said they would resign in protest. the president was worried that would create such a kerfuffle it might lead to more complications for him, more investigations for him, more trouble for him. but had this worked, had the president been able to decapitate the justice department, install a new acting attorney general who would bring the justice department weight to bear on his efforts to essentially undo the election, could that have worked? i mean if the justice department put its full weight behind what the president was doing with his personal lawyers, what effect would it have had? >> you know, i think it ultimately would just have been another hour of shame for the department of justice. it is hard to believe that

district courts adjudicating these lawsuits, they might have been shocked by the department of justice joining the fray, but i don't think ultimately it likely would have mattered in their adjudication of these suits. so it is hard to see what the strategy was on the part of mr. clark or whoever was advising the president that it was a winning hand. it would have brought the department lower in the estimation of the american people. it is good to see that men and women in other leadership positions in the department of justice rallied to the institution, put this effort down, but we once again see that it can be a thin line between that sort of principle and character and a lurch towards despotism. >> we have seen some interesting potential professional consequences for some of the lawyers who brought these cases for the president after the election. there's what amounts to a sort

of concerted effort now in new york to try to have rudy giuliani lose his new york law license. we have also seen calls from high places for sanctions for some of the president's other lawyers who brought these meritless, frivolous and at times sort of insane claims trying to undo the election in various states. if, in fact, the acting head of the civil division at the justice department, jeffrey clark, was part of that, wanted the justice department to be part of that, was willing to pursue those things as well, is there anything improper about his own actions here? is he potentially looking at any trouble himself for having jumped on board this train? >> well, that would be left to the assessment by whatever bar to which he is admitted. arguably, his efforts at a policy level to push this forward may not be as egregious as lawyers who actually sign their names to briefs filed with

the court. but, look, it is an hour of ignominy for mr. clark and astonishing, too, for mr. rosen in private practice and someone reporting to his boss, mr. rosen, he was trying to undermine mr. rosen and the entire department of justice to facilitate the president's desperate bid to hold on to power in the closing days of his administration. >> david laufman, former counterintelligence chief at the justice department. thank you for joining us on this story and on short notice. i really appreciate it. >> thank you, rachel. again, we are learning tonight about the timing, the schedule for the president's senate impeachment trial. it looks like that will be conveyed on monday and the trial will start on february 9th. it was just reported in "the new york times" tonight may affect perceptions of the president's culpability for what happened here and how that impeachment trial goes forward. we will be right back. stay with us. we will be right back. stay with us

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programming note for you. monday night i'm going to be sitting down with the new senate majority leader, chuck schumer, at the u.s. capitol. this will be his first national interview since he has become the leader of the united states senate. monday night, right here at 9:00 p.m. eastern. i will see you then. now it is time for "the last word" with lawrence o'donnell. good evening, lawrence. >> good evening, rachel. best interview of anthony fauci yet. i learned more with him