and thanks to you at home for joining us at this hour. happy to have you here. south of the acquired are, northeast of new zealand. northeast from australia, theirs is an american territory. it's the only inhabited territory that it's in the southern hemisphere. fabrics torn apart, that has an impact on places. i'm sure it has an impact in many of the places in your district as well. congressman bowman, thanks so much for making time tonight. >> thank you, chris. that is all in for this monday evening. rachel maddow show starts right now. good evening, rachel. >> good evening, chris. thank you my friend. much appreciated. good to have you back. thanks to you at home for joining thus hour. happy to have you here. south of the equator for most of

the time they have been an independent country, for nearly 40 years of 60 years they've been a country, samoa has been run by the same ruling party. in fact the same guy, the same individual man, prime minister from that party has been in power as prime minister for the last 22 years. but, he lost the last election this year in april. samoa had a really, really close election, really hard fought by which again, the prime minister's party, ended up with one less seat in parliament than the opposition did. and in a parliamentary system that means it's the opposition party since they have the majority, they get to form the new government. and that party's leader gets to be the new prime minister. and that transition, that really big transition in samoa was supposed to happen today. parliament was supposed to

gather to swear in its new members with the new party in the majority they would then swear in the leader of that party as the new prime minister. samoa would have a different party, different prime minister for the first time in 22 years, that big important transfer of power was supposed to happen today in samoa. it did not. maybe. depending on who you ask. this weekend there was a shock announcement in samoa that actually parliament would be dissolved. they would not convene today to swear in anyone let alone the new prime minister. the equivalent of this in our system -- we have a president not a prime minister, it's not exactly parallel. you can imagine what this would be like in our system. the weekend before biden is due to inaugurated and trump announces the inauguration is cancelled. actually more accurately maybe the analogy would be that vice president mike pence announced

that actually the electoral college votes would not be counted on january 6th. the congress would not be in session, would not convene that day to formalize the election results so there would be no formal election results so the inauguration was now in question. the equivalent of that happening. right? that of course was the fantasy. that was the trump fantasy behind the january 6th attack on our election. right? with all those republican senators ted cruz and josh hawley, a big majority of the republicans in the house, that's what they tried to do around the american presidential election, don't count the votes. don't make it official. see what happens when inauguration day comes around. in samoa this weekend, this whole same idea behind the whole trump fantasy on january 6th, it came to fruuation. they actually went ahead with it. what's supposed to be the outgoing political party, the outgoing prime minister, they went ahead and said no.

parliament is not going to convene. parliament will not meet anymore and that means the new prime minister can't be sworn in and take power. that was the announcement on saturday, indefinite suspension of parliament with no reasons given. that was saturday. yesterday, sunday, the supreme court stepped in. the samoan supreme court ruled unequivocally this decision to suspend parliament, to dissolve parliament was illegal. parliament must be convened as planned. the new prime minister can assume power. that was the clear ruling from the supreme court of that country. that ruling was yesterday. and then this is what happened today. you'll see the guy in the red robe and the white wig here. you probably already guessed. he's a chief judge of the supreme court in that country. and he arrived at the parliament today with the ready to be sworn in prime minister elect.

it was the ruling of his court, the supreme court, that said parliament must convene today to swear in the new leader. he walks up to parliament here, he grabs the door handle and it's locked. pulls on the door, the door is locked. he's there representing the judiciary. he's the highest ranking judicial official in the country, the highest ranking judge on the supreme court and he is locked out of the parliament and the rightly, newly-elected prime minister of samoa is also locked out of parliament. now, they made the most of it after the door was locked and he turned around, they went out to a tent they had set up on the lawn outside parliament and held there a swearing in ceremony from her party for all the new members. also a swearing in for her, the prime minister elect. she's the first female prime minister of samoa, sworn in in a

tent outside parliament because she was locked out of the parliament building. the old guy, the one who has been in power for 22 years, he says, well, that swearing in wasn't official, doesn't count. after all, it was in a tent. it wasn't in parliament. and therefore he says that he is still the leader of the country. her prime ministership is not in effect, it's not official. he's refusing to go. refusing to let her take power. also refusing to recognize the ruling of the country's supreme court telling him otherwise. and so tonight when i say did the transfer of power take place? i don't know. who is the prime minister of samoa right now? the duly-elected new prime minister, the woman, i think, in reality, but officially the old guy won't go. which in technical terms in a coup. him keeping the parliament doors locked and refiezing to relinquish power so the newly,

duly elected prime minister cannot replace him it's a coup and at this point it's a bloodless coup, thank god. but this is how democracy's get their throats cut and bleed out. dude has been there for 22 years and over the course of the 22 years he's made these gradual legal changes making it harder and harder for people to dissent from his rule. made it harder and harder for any opposition parties to actually run and compete against him. and that kind of stuff was enough -- those kind of legal shifts were enough to keep him in power. now he lost an election and it's time to go, he won't accept that. he won't accept that the election had a result result and that the consequence of that election result is that he is no longer in power. i mean, this is how it happens. this is from "the new york times" today. quote the former prime minister made it clear he will not vacate his position without a fight. despite the former prime

minister and his party have rejected multiple calls to concede. an expert on autocracy at the australian university tells the times quote, they do not want to relinquish power. before it was a veneer of democracy, she says. but now this is real democracy in action where power has to be relinquished and the voice of the party is not to former leader's liking. he's not doing what he should be doing. that's conceding. i don't know what's going to happen next in the island nation of samoa. i know that as americans we have a specific kind of myopia about democracy, about small d democracy. we're farsighted about stuff like this as a country. i think it's easier for us to see stuff like at work when they're far away. blurrier and harder to understand when they're closer to home. and so, you know, speaking of not conceding, one of the things

we got eyes on tonight, we'll be covering later this hour, is the worsening weirdness, the sheer ridiculousness of the republican-led recount of the presidential election results in arizona. which remains a story that is actively laugh out loud funny. i will admit it is absurd that trump supporters just seized 2 million ballots and the voting machines and now going to declare that they found their own results of the presidential election which they like better and guess what their results will be, right? it's absolutely absurd. they're not going to only do it in arizona, georgia, wisconsin republicans will make them do it there, too. there are republican-controlled counties all over the country that are starting to do it as well all to declare that joe biden isn't really the president and last election, 2020 election shouldn't really count because trump didn't really lose his re-election bid. i mean, it is actively nuts, especially the closer you look at the cast of characters involved and what their crazy

theories are about why the election shouldn't count. the sillier and less consequential it seems. but you know, widen the aperture a little bit, step back for a second, look at the new poll that came out today that finds a robust majority of republican voters nationwide, 53% of republican voters in america believe that right now donald trump is currently the lawful president of the united states. and joe biden is therefore an illegal usurper occupying the white house even though he lost the 2020 election to trump. a majority of republicans already believe that. where does this go as they now start to uncount the election from 2020 and invent theories and explanations and wild tales about what happened to the voting machines and what happened to the ballots that mean that the 2020 election shouldn't be counted?

i mean, the way it worked in samoa is they didn't storm the capitol. they just locked out the incoming prime minister elect. they just locked the door. so their equivalent of an inauguration couldn't happen. the court intervened, they ignored the court so now it's a coup. you just hold on by force, that's a coup. and it's a question of how long everybody holds their temper right now and tries to talk this out, how long before some further force before a locked door is brought to bear here and i hope that does not happen. but, you know, we've shown here that force is not going to be a big threshold issue for us. force is not going to be a problem for the side that's refusing to concede in our election. again, though, sometimes it's harder for us to see this stuff up close than when it's far away. another direction but also far away, belarus, the guy in charge there has been in power

for 26 years. belarus used to be part of the soviet union. it's only had a president since 1994. this same man has been in that job, has been president there since they established the office of president 26 years ago. he's the only president independent belarus has ever known. alexander lukashenko is sort of joined at the hip with russian president vladimir putin. they talked about joining their two countries together. hasn't happened yet but could any moment. lukashenko is frequently called europe's last dictator. i honestly don't like to say that because it feels like a jinx to me. depending on how things are going, sure, he is a dictator there now for sure, but why do we think he's going to be the last? don't jinx it. authoritarianism is having a moment. dick ta sorships feel like they're on their way back. why do we think he'll be the last one in europe. that said the people of belarus seem like they're kind of done with him. in august, as we were gearing up

for our own presidential election last year, lukashenko was facing his, the version of elections that he allows. and he had done what all good dictators do. he had, for example, thrown into prison the most promising opposition candidate who was running against him. what he didn't expect, i think, is that that candidate's wife, teacher, who never been involved in politics before, she took up the banner and ran for president in her husband's place while her husband was in prison. and citizens of belarus went to the polls in august and it kind of seems like she might have won. and so how does a dictator respond to that? the elections aren't supposed to be real. they're supposed to be just for show. lukashenko, declared victory for himself, a landslide overwhelming victory which everybody knew was not true and people turned out in the streets by at least the hundreds of thousands, if not the millions,

protesting. the biggest protests ever in belarus protesting against the infinite dictatorship they were stuck in, protesting against the false democracy. if he says he won, then okay i guess he won. millions of people protesting. tens of thousands of people were arrested. some died in custody. hundreds of people made credible allegations of torture by police in custody. they would air videos like this of forced confessions by people showing the signs of being beaten. woman holding up this photo here, this is the one who ran against lukashenko in august and what she's holding up a a photo of somebody beaten very badly after being arrested for taking part in the protests. the candidate, she's in exile now. she's been forced out of belarus. she has to live in lithuania, all the protest organizers have all been arrested or kmased out of the country since the election that it look like she won against lukashenko.

but put up that priest picture again. look what she's holding up there. you see obviously the very photo of a very injured man. that's hard to see. you see how the photo is water marked, words written and a pattern diagonal. i thought those were tattoos on the guy who were beaten. it's a media water mark. nexta is an opposition media outlet in belarus. that has only been able to survive because its leadership has also fled the country. its editor, also in exile in lithuania, he is 26 years old, designated by lukashenko as a terrorist in november for running a media outlet that had the temerity to report on the protests against that country's dictator. media outlet that published photos like that one of how people were abused by the police

after they were arrested. this weekend the dictator in belarus lukashenko sent up a fighter jet, sent up a fighter jet to intercept a commercial passenger plane that had taken off from greece and flying to lithuania. those are two eu countries. it was over belarus's air space. the fighter jet forced the plane to land inside belarus. and the 26-year-old they took off that plane was that young man who is the editor of nexta. that media outlet. the young man who lukashenko designated a terrorist for the crime of him running a media outlet that covered the protests. they arrested that young man on the tarmac. took him into custody in belarus. he turned up in a forced confession video today obviously under duress and bruised confessing in weird technical language he's never used before to all the things lukashenko charged him with. absolutelyl terrifying to it.

in a dictatorship we're trained to expect anything. but we almost never expect something this dramatic, right? something affecting this many countries. something this violent of how the world is supposed to run. there's plenty of bad leaders in poorly run countries around the world. very few where random passenger planes minding their own business are threatened to be shot down by military force just for being there when they're not taking off from that country or landing there, they're just flying over it. in response to what lukashenko did the european union has now blocked any belorussian planes from entering eu air space or landing at eu airports and calling all eu airlines to stay out of belarus indefinitely. since it will use his military to hijack passenger aircraft passing through full of civilians. this was a ryanair jet forced

down. the ceo called it a state-sponsored hijacking. ryanair an airline based in ireland. the irish foreign minister called it aviation piracy. piracy. state-sponsored terrorism. state-sponsored hijacking. what do we do about that? who fixes that? i mean, it's consequential stuff for the whole world. whether or not you identify with the opposition in belarus and want them to get rid of their dictator, whether you heard of belarus, and what does this mean in terms of the world and how we move about it? between russian military equipment being used to shoot down a civilian airliner over ukraine in 2014 and now russian allied military equipment force down a passenger plane over belarus, passenger aviation is having to do weird stuff to avoid former soviet air space. commercial passenger airlines have to stay away from ukraine

because some russian missile might shoot you down there. they also now have to stay away from belarus because some russian-made fighter jet might force you down. i mean, belarus and ukraine are big countries. air travel routes over that part of europe and asia have to be as round and about weird to stay clear of is a somali pirates in the horn of africa. it makes us easier as americans to see these dynamics at work. timothy sneader, yale history professor the author of "on tyranny" it's a very short pocket size practical bible for resisting rising authoritarianism. and he had this to say about it which i find really helpful. no matter how important you are, it's unlikely that a dictator scrambled a fighter plane to force down passenger flight so he can arrest you. this just happened to the young

belorussian roman pro se vich. he told the truth about his own country. lukashenko sought to stage fake electoral victory. the wife of one of his opponents ran against him and almost certainly won. after lukashenko announced a victory any way, belorussians protested peacefully in large numbers for months. he worked for nexta a telegram television provided the facts of what was happening in their own country. does history nap no one is there to report it. foreign journalists were banned from belarus. nexta were among the few sources of people abroad who wanted to learn about the democratic movement. democracy is about rule by the people. and it depends on our awareness and confidence that people around the world care about it. democracy rises and falls as an international phenomenon. i'll say that again. democracy rises and falls as an

international phenomenon. a place consigned to dictatorship san inspiration for others around the world. people like to vote and have their votes counted is a dangerous truth for most of the world's governments. for putin's regime in nak russia, the spectacle of a neighboring country that wanted clean elections seemed like a terrible threat. the protests were slowed by pure violence from the belorussian regime supported by russia. tens of thousands of people have been detained in belarus, many of them tortured in custody, even against this background, reporters have been a special target. the hijacking of a plane now to arrest one reporter comes amidst arrests and imprisonments of many others. the supposed offense is truthful reporting. property sew vich can face the death penalty in prison. without the words they provide

us, without the words and the images they provide us, we have no chance of getting to the truth about oligarchy, war, elections, any issue that really matters. no technology can replace them. there are far too few of them and each one is precious. we should support them everywhere. abroad and at home. reporters are the heroes of our time. eastern europe and everywhere else, watching the risks they take and the price they pay, we should be ashamed to have any association with any one who would say reporters are enemies of the people. sometimes it is easier to see these things from far away. than it is to see them right here in front of us. joining us now is timothy schneider professor of history at yale university, the best selling author of "on tyranny." thank you so much. real pleasure to have you here tonight. >> very glad. >> you talk about democracy being a global phenomenon that rises and falls in a global way

and the necessity of people seeing democratic movements at work, both as an inspiration and as essentially shoring up our courage to do it ourselves. given that, in the face of this flagrant, flagrant sort of offense in belarus, what's the right way for people who support democracy to stand up for roman proset vich and for democracy here? >> well, i think you already made the basic point really beautifully, which is that if we want to have democracy, we have to have facts. and if we want to have facts, we have to have the people who produce facts. this is a problem all around the world. as you say it's a problem we might see it in our own case if we see it abroad. it seems extreme to have a dictator scramble a jet in order to arrest and abduct and now punish one journalist.

but we mad a president who referred to journalists as enemies of the people. we're not belarus. we have far, far, too good journalists paid good money to cover news. we can recognize these people for courageous and heroic and the necessary work that they do. when it comes to belarus, i think we have to recognize the belarus isn't a neighborhood. this thing that just happened is an outrage. the belorussian state and economy will be punished for it. but there's no way this could have happened without russia. there's no way this could have happened with at the very least russian permission in a way just by talking about belarus and punishing belarus, we're missing that larger international question because of course what we said at the beginning that democracy rises internationally,

it also falls internationally. russia has that very much in mind and russia is just as concerned if not more so about courageous journalists who report about democracy, who report on protests about democracy, who leave a legible record for their own country, for people in their own country and around the world. >> talking with the staff of the show today about this story and about this topic, talk a little bit about press freedom and small d democracy and some of the dots i've been trying to connect here, but one of the other things that people are raising to me which has really stuck with me is that it does feel scary and unsettling to see the degree to which authoritarians, particularly those aligned with or in the model of vladimir putin or putin himself, their willingness to use force against their own people or against people they perceive as enemies anywhere in the world. this willingness to assassinate

dissidents or to go after people in britain, in germany, even in the united states, the fact that this was a plane that was flying between greece and lithuania, two eu countries that was nevertheless forced down a plane full of civilians who had nothing to do with belarus. it does feel like there's sort of emboldening thing that is happening with authoritarians along the putin model that is a real test for the west in terms of how much they can get away with outside their own borders. >> yeah. absolutely. on the one hand, these men are in a very fragile position. lukashenko, even putin, they're not popular anymore. they -- lukashenko's case, he lost an election to someone he thought he never could lose an election to. in putin's case, he facing a parliamentary election in september, he's also going to lose. so on one side they're fragile, but it's their very fragility which emboldens them abroad and

fragility demands there's some kind of spectacular as they see it success abroad. it was interesting to watch russian propaganda today admire lukashenko for his boldness. the russians are saying this is a wonderful thing. we wish we had done it. so, it's this combination where they're weak and therefore they have to act abroad as though they're strong. they're losing at home, but around the world democracy in general is weakening. and so, if you're in a democracy, you can't take it for granted. you have to realize that you're in a fight and that the values you're asserting have nothing to do with the way the world has to be. you have to build them out into the world. and in the dramatic case like this, there's a real opportunity to do something dramatic which i'm afraid we're about to miss. >> timny snyder, the author of "on tyranny" professor at yale university. thank you for your time.

i was happy to talk with you about this tonight. >> thank you very much. just within the last hour i will tell you that president biden has put out a statement on what happened with the belarus -- with the belorussian opposition journalist being arrested after that plane was forced down. president biden calls it a direct affront to international norm says the united states condemns it in the strongest possible terms calling it an outrageous incident. he says he's asked his team to develop appropriate options to hold accountable those responsible in close coordination with the eu and other allies and partners and says he applauds the courage and determination of belorussians fighting for basic rights including roman protosevich. the united states will stand with the people of belarus. statement from president biden tonight. we'll keep you posted. we have a lot more to get to tonight. stay with us. a lot more to get o tonight. stay with us do you have a life insurance policy you no longer need? now you can sell your policy, even a term policy, for an immediate

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whatever else happens in our

lives, it will always be true that we collectively lived through a really quite unprecedented moment in american history in which the immediate past president of the united states had to pardon his campaign manager, had to pardon his longest standing political adviser, foreign policy adviser, the deputy chair of his inaugural and deputy campaign chairman went to prison and his personal lawyer went to prison and his other personal lawyer is under federal criminal investigation and he himself personally is named by prosecutors as unindicted cospear tor in multiple federal felonies and he himself personally is currently as we speak under active criminal investigation in two states. this is our life. congratulations. this is what we have done. but even amidst that indicted and/or imprisoned and/or cospear tors of former president who wants to be president again, his

campaign chairman specifically still manages to stand out and still making news today. you'll recall his name is paul manafort. he was convicted of multiple felonies including tax fraud and bank fraud, much of it connected to millions of dollars in secret payments he got from his former employer, a pro-putin authoritarian leader who used to rule in ukraine, manafort served a small portion of his federal prison sentence before president trump pardoned him right on his way out of office but there's remained an enduring mystery around manafort's short lived cooperation agreement with special counsel robert mueller and why it collapsed. manafort lied to them about a whole bunch of things and in lying to them that voided his deal, voided the cooperation agreement that he had made with them. the judge looked at all the evidence of that and agreed with prosecutors. but much of the court record of that episode has remained unredacted. until now.

when they sought to void manafort's plea deal and have them effectively locked up and had the key thrown away because he shouldn't get any credit for cooperating since he was continuing to lie to them, he wasn't really coop right, in the process of trying to get that done, mueller's lead prosecutor andrew weissman told the judge that paul manafort had, quote, a series of lies about redacted -- manafort told a series of lies about redacted, redacted, redacted. now, speaking act those lies, weissman told the court, quote, the issue of blank blank blank blank blank is in the core of what it is that the special counsel is supposed to be investigating. of course the core of what the special counsel's office was investigating were connections between the trump campaign and russia while russia was interfering in our election to try to help trump win. that's what we had. now the court released less redacted versions of that transcript and other documents around manafort's case. and so now we know today in

black and white what trump's campaign chair lied to prosecutors about on pain of considerable prison time for doing so. here is andrew weissman speaking to the judge. quote, the issue of internal campaign polling data being sent to blank who the defendant conceded is extremely close to the senior leader in russia, is in the core of what the special counsel is supposed to be investigating. from another new document newly unredacted, manafort lied to government about his sharing of internal trump campaign data with kilimnik. that would be con tan teen kilimnik, long-time business associate of paul manafort the u.s. government says is a russian intelligence agent. just last month the u.s. government asserted that manafort shared those polling data with kilimnik and kilimnik shared them with russian intelligence. we have long known the broad outlines of this story we now know from these newly reunredacted filings that number one, manafort lied to

prosecutors about the nature of the data he was sharing. he insisted it was no big deal. it wasn't internal, valuable material. it was all just stuff you can get publicly any way. that was a lie. also, he lied about whether he was giving it to someone who he knew would pass it on to the russian government. here is the judge, quote, the event we are discussing involved sharing internal confidential polling data covered by a nondisclosure agreement not only outside the campaign but sharing with it a foreign national with a specific understanding and intent that it would be passed on to other foreign nationals in this case russians. why would donald trump's kremlin linked be sharing with a russian intelligence officer while russia was carrying out an attack on our election to try to get trump elected. that's fully what half the mueller investigation was about how the trump campaign was involved in it and perhaps

assisted it. what we thought happened, happened. trump's campaign chair, paul manafort, sharing this kind of data with a russian intelligence officer is the proverbial smoking gun in terms of how the trump campaign was involved in it. giving russia material they could use to target their interference on trump's behalf which they then did. andrew weissman the prosecutor who led the case against paul manafort joins us next. e case a manafort joins us next

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didn't expect that we would still be getting these, but i now have a feeling we'll be getting these for a long time. newly-unredacted court filings and transcripts started to be released on friday, have continued to be released over the course of today reveal that trump's 2016 campaign chairman paul manafort lied to prosecutors repeatedly handing over internal intensetive campaign polling data to a

russian intelligence officer, man named konstantin kilimnik. documents show kilimnik bragging on eight separate occasion about him having ax says to internal, non-public trump polling data. in one court transcript we're just seeing today for the first time, a prosecutor in the special counsel's office andrew weissman describes what exactly trump's campaign was providing to this russian intelligence officer in august, 2020. at that crucial turning point in the campaign while russia was working to try to get trump elected. weissman told the court, quote, they're at a meeting where they specifically talked about battleground states, the voters they wanted to appeal to there and talking about trends. the word trend is all over the data. joining us is andrew weissman, the author of "where law ends inside the mueller investigation." thank you for joining us tonight. great to see you, mr. weissman. >> nice to be here.

>> i know you have to be careful your ethical obligations to to justice department as a former prosecutor are real and present and i know you take these very seriously and don't want to ask you to talk about anything you're precluded to talk about from the ethical constraints you're under. with that said, at the time you were detailing manafort's lies to the court in 2019 and can see so much more of that with these new unredactions, we've learned since then that he was passing on polling data to the russian intelligence services. you told the court at the time that the polling data was about battleground states and the word trend was all over the data. how should we understand the point you were making to the court there? what should we take away from that given the public information we had since then? >> well, you know -- there was a group of people that focussed on paul manafort was that if there

was going to be coordination with russia by members of the trump campaign the thought was that paul manafort's team, the most likely person, not that there wouldn't be other efforts and attempts which were documented whether it was roger stone or in the trump tower meeting but paul manafort given his connection to ukraine, as you noted, and pro-russia regime seemed like the likely target. and the kilimnik meeting starting in august 2nd and going until past the election and the actual inauguration where we saw not only what it was that the trump campaign was giving but there was also discussion of what it was that russia wanted in return which was an effort to take over half of ukraine, which was discussed before the election and after the election. so, there was quite a lot of

data there, as you noted, one of the things that we learned recently was we did not know what kilimnik did with the data. obviously we had strong suspicions that he would pass that on to russian intelligence officers, but that's now been confirmed by this administration. and, you know, one has suspicions about where that came from. but that's now been set in stone by the current dni of what to kilimnik did with this. >> can you talk about the suspicions a little bit? i mean, it is interesting that you and the special counsel's office were able to figure out that manafort had given this stuff to kilimnik. as you said, you did not determine or say what kilimnik did to it. but we have this declarative statement now from the dni, from the biden administration intelligence community saying, yeah, then what kilimnik did is he gave it to russian

intelligence which of course was running the operation to try to elect trump. why do you think the biden administration was able to declare that, to be able to publicly confirm that now? >> this is just what i would say my informed speculation but i don't have any inside basis for this, but i assume that that came from a foreign government that knew the information at the time of our investigation but did not want to come forward given that trump was the president and they waited until he was out of office to share that with american intelligence. as i said, i don't know that that is, in fact, what happened but that would be an explanation for why it is that american intelligence was able to learn this so quickly. rachel, one thing i would point out just given the first segment on belarus, i think that this story and the story you told

about belarus are actually quite connected because we like to think that we're quite different than belarus, but this is really a story about, you know, the corruption in our electoral system, about facts being undermined by the president's use of the pardon power, and the inability to get to the bottom of exactly what happened due to obstructive conduct by various people. there's really an unfortunate parallel between your first segment and this one. >> yeah. and unfortunately doesn't have to be an analogy, in this case we're talking about some of the same players involved in the same kind of corruption, just different parts of the world. andrew weissman, former senior member robert mueller's team, former fbi general counsel, andrew, great to have you here. thank you. >> thanks so much, rachel. all right. we have more ahead tonight.

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for a full week the made up audit of the presidential election results in arizona has been put on hold. they were so far behind schedule they've been stretching this thing out so long they had to vacate the space they were using to do the audit to instead make way for high school graduations. as they were off for a week and moved back in. the arizona recount thing is back on as of today. the whole clown car started back up again this afternoon. now, as you know, as we have been covering, the audit is run by a firm owned by a trump-supporting qanon supporters, the firm called cyber ninjas despite having zero experience performing any kind of electoral audit anywhere before. well, today we learned that this firm cyber ninjas has less experience than we previously understood. last week in an attempt to bolster his credentials as his firms continues to make a mess of this so-called audit in

arizona the ceo of cyber ninjas bragged publicly about what an awe her to tative firm. worked with some of the largest names in the financial services space. really? cyber ninja ceo has, in fact, claimed that his company has done projects for such big name financial institutions as citi bank and jp morgan chase. well, the associated press reached out to those big financial institutions to find out what their experience was like working with cyber ninjas, perhaps they could back up with cyber ninjas were saying that big financial institutions trusted the cyber ninjas with all their sensitive information so the people of arizona should trust cyber ninjas with their ballots and voting machines. yeah. turns out not so much. from the associated press, quote, two of the companies cyber ninjas lists as former clients citi bank and jp morgan bank says through spokespeople they have no record of hiring cyber ninjas.

shocker. the recount of the presidential election results, the so-called audit, has just been one disaster on top of another since the day it started. the whole operation restarted today with no end in sight. watch this space. o end in sight watch this space

people took to the streets in minneapolis this weekend marching with family members of george floyd, whose death at the hands of minneapolis police officers was one year ago tomorrow. one of the officers in that arrest, derek chauvin, has, of course, been convicted of mr. floyd's murder. three other officers are still due to face trial, but tomorrow mr. floyd's family is going to meet in washington with speaker of the house nancy pelosi with several senators and then they're going to head to the white house to have a meeting with president biden himself. now this all comes as the police reform bill that's named after george floyd, has passed the house but it's been stuck in the senate for months now. we of course will be watching tomorrow on this anniversary to see if the anniversary itself

but also these events tomorrow including this meeting with the president tomorrow by mr. floyd's family will be watching to see whether that ups the pressure on the political forces that have been holding up that bill. watch this space. that's going to do it for us tonight. i'll see you tomorrow night. "way too early" with kasie hunt is up next. ♪♪ ♪♪ exactly one year after the death of george floyd, pressure intensifies on lawmakers to strike a compromise on police reform. the question is, where do talks stand this morning? plus, new movement from key republicans on whether to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the capitol riot. the question is will it make any difference? and new video of the dissident journalist who was detained after having his flight intercepted by authorities in belarus. the question is how is the world responding to what's being called a state-sponsored hijacking? it's