anyone who might have underestimated it up to this point. matt miller and john flannery on the breaking story, my thanks to you. thanks to viewers as always for spending time with us on "the beat" on more than one story. "the reidout" with joy reid is up next. >> it keeps changing by the minute. it's a story that i'm glad that you're there being on top of it and we're going to pick it up from here. thank you very much, my friend. have a good evening. good evening, cheers, everyone. we begin with a damning batch of emails, and no, not her emails, the republican battle cry when it came to hillary clinton, but rather emails detailing how donald trump and his cronies pressured the justice department to embrace the big lie and act on it. house democrats have released hundreds of pages of correspondence that include these emails dated during the final weeks of trump's one-term presidency. the emails were sent to top doj officials working under incoming acting attorney general jeffrey

rosen. pressuring the justice department to join the legal fight to challenge the election result on trump's behalf. the emails raise claims about election fraud in michigan that a federal judge had already dismissed. and they question pandemic voting accommodations in key battleground states. the emails did not come directly from trump, because as we know, trump acts like a mob boss. he doesn't give orders. he speaks in code. and he certainly doesn't leave a paper trail. which is why a white house assistant emailed rosen with a draft legal brief that trump wanted them to file with the supreme court. while then chief of staff mark meadows on january 1st sent rosen a youtube video link about a conspiracy theory involving people in italy supposedly manipulating u.s. votes through satellites. rosen forwarded that email to then acting attorney general, richard donahue, who responded, quote, pure insanity. none of this should surprise you. we saw with our own eyeballs the

ways trump tried to upend our democracy while bill barr lied and schemed to make trump's autocratic fantasies come true. it is, however, another layer of proof in what's now a myriad of hearings and panels, many which overlap, surrounding the anti-democratic rot that defined the trump presidency and which still impacts us today. this afternoon, in one of two congressional hearings on the security failures of january 6th, the house oversight and reform committee questioned fbi director christopher wray and general charles flynn, who happened to be the brother of disgraced michael flynn, trump's q-happy former national security advisor and promoter of the big lie. but instead of focusing on what was clearly an intelligence failure, the party of trump continued to downplay the horrors of january 6th. listen to some of the questions they asked today. >> i want to focus a little bit on the people who didn't do any physical damage, didn't engage

in any physical contact with the police, and at least appeared to me that day to be allowed in the capitol. >> do you believe that you had come under political pressure from leading democrats in this committee who want you to arrest 500 more people? >> why hasn't that officer that executed ashli babbitt been named when police officers around the country are routinely identified after a shooting? >> joining me now is congressman krishnamoorthi. thank you for being here. congressman, i want to start with you on this. did you feel that this hearing with republicans essentially serving almost as defense counsel for the people who invaded our capitol, from the clips that i have seen of it, did you feel like we got somewhere in this hearing today? >> well, i think that we further exposed how they're not only just accommodating the crazies, you could say, but they're

encouraging them, and what we learned from the testimony of the fbi director as well as others is that when you encourage these folks, they get to be violent, and that violence affects everybody, and it manifested itself in an ugly fashion, obviously, on january 6th. >> and you had a bit of a contentious exchange with fbi director wray when he essentially said he couldn't talk about leak subpoenas, et cetera. did you feel that he was being evasive? did you feel that he was being forthcoming in a way that we needed him to be as a country? >> unfortunately, he was evasive, joy. he absolutely was involved with this secret subpoena scandal, not only probably with the press but also with the house intelligence committee and the democratic members, their staff, and family members, and you know, we can't get to the bottom of this if the fbi director continues not to answer very straightforward questions about

this scandal. >> and before i bring in kurt, i have to ask you one more question about, just, as we set this up, you know, the idea that you had trump aides attempting to get the justice department to get involved in overturning the election. it sounds like january 6th began before january 6th, and may be continuing to this day, not just through the president of the united states, the department of justice, the people who did the january 6th insurrection, but also some republicans. what do you make of this new development? >> i agree. and i think that unless we get to the truth of exactly what happened before, during, and after january 6th, we're not going to see the end of january 6th. as you mentioned, we have the problem about the trump white house trying to pressure the justice department to basically file a lawsuit to overturn the election in six states, namely the states that trump lost. but we also have the problems of

january 6th. today, we, again, learned about the long delay between the time that there were urgent requests for assistance that were made to the d.c. national guard and to the secretary of defense and the delayed -- the huge delay in response. and then we also learned that not everyone has been brought to account, held to account after january 6th for what they did that day. and so, we have to deal with all of these issues now. >> let's do a wwrd moment, kurt. let me play for you, jim jordan, and this is him attempting to downplay these emails showing that trump tried to get his attorney general to overturn the election. >> they say the white house chief of staff -- chief of staff pressured doj. let's look at what the white house chief of staff said. he sent an email to mr. rosen, the acting attorney general, can you have your team look into these allegations of wrongdoing? wow. lot of pressure there.

wants him to look into something. every chief of staff, i get, for every single one of us sends the same kind of emails and letters every day. >> is that true? you used to be staff on this committee back when republicans ran it, kurt. >> no. that's not true. jim jordan, as always, is doing everything that he can to bend over backwards to defend this autocratic-type behavior from the trump administration from his former colleague, mark meadows, then white house chief of staff. and again, this is incredibly dangerous, joy. we have people who are at the highest levels of our government actively working to undermine a fair and free election. looking to use as their instrument of power, the justice department, a justice department that, in theory, is supposed to be free and independent of political pressure. and it just tells us that, like the congressman said, january 6th is just going to be the beginning here unless we get serious and start unearthing the true nature and the full

totality of what happened and hold those people accountable. january 6th will be the opening act if republicans are allowed to continue doing this, trying to look the other way as violence and mayhem happened right before our very eyes, doing everything they can to make excuses for the people. i mean, to have a congressman sit there and say, let's talk about the four or five other people. that is nonsense, and it just illustrates why republicans cannot be faithful partners in an effort to equally look at what happened and the events of what led to january 6th. >> and what would happen if republicans had the same set of facts? i mean, we had republicans defending ashli babbitt, the woman who tried to jump through the speaker's lounge door and who was shot by a police officer. what would republicans do in the place of democrats, kurt? if they had this -- these set of facts. >> republicans would not hesitate to launch an investigative tsunami against democrats, just like they did when they were in power, when

barack obama was president. when they did more than 100 subpoenas, held hearing after hearing, had investigations that lasted years, like benghazi, like fast and furious, like the so-called irs targeting investigation. republicans would not hesitate to wield the power of their majority to do everything they could to try to litter the name of barack obama, hillary clinton, and any high-profile democrat. and i think that there's a lot of appetite right now for democrats to use that majority, and it's not the same thing. let's be very clear. this is not an equal playing field. this is not -- it's such a false equivalency. we know that wrongdoing happened. we know that corruption has happened. we know this was the most corrupt administration in united states history. this is not a fishing expedition, as republicans will claim. this is not trolling and trying to go after your political adversaries. that's what republicans and trump did. this would be a defense of democracy, and it needs to

happen. >> let me play another clip from the hearing for those who didn't see it. this is congresswoman rashida tlaib. >> what i saw when black lives matter protesters were here, and those defending the right to choose, it seemed like all of a sudden y'all had resources. y'all had a plan then. why is it when white supremacist terrorists show up here to want to lynch the vice president, to attack the speaker, to attack our democracy, threatening the lives of members of congress, really the lives of just our whole livelihood and country, that no one seemed to want to show up? >> congresswoman, i can only really speak to the fbi's role and my view is we have one standard, and we've tried to apply it consistently in both situations. >> congressman, are you satisfied with that answer and are you satisfied that we're prepared going forward for the white supremacist and white nationalist threat in this country? >> no, i'm not satisfied with

the answer, and i think that we have to come to terms -- come to grips as a country and certainly as a government with this white supremacist danger. you know, the fact that we still haven't brought all these people to justice following january 6th, is very, very troubling, because joy, in their dark web and their dark corners, these white supremacists and alt-right folks think they got away with it and they think that january 6th was a victory for them. we cannot allow that to persist. so that's why i wanted to say -- i didn't have a chance because i ran out of time, but i think that the justice department needs to hustle here. and if they need additional resources, we will provide them through congress. but there's no more time for delay. he said that they've arrested 500. it turns out there were 800 to 1,000 people who breached the capitol. i don't know why the others have not been arrested at this point.

and why more haven't been prosecuted. until that happens, they will not understand the consequences of their action, and others will act accordingly. >> yeah. well, we still don't understand why when black lives matter protests happened, people were arrested on the spot, sometimes up to a thousand people. but these people were allowed to get on planes. have any of your colleagues explained why so many of them voted against giving the congressional gold medals to capitol police who saved their lives on january 6th? we're going to put up the list of those. andy biggs, boebert, andrew clyde, matt gaetz, gohmert, who apparently was also for what happened, paul gosar, marjorie taylor greene. have any of them explained to you why they voted against giving the congressional medals to these capitol police officers? >> no, and there is no explanation, joy.

and it goes to what paul gosar, the congressman from arizona was saying, that kind of gives you a window into the thinking behind why they think they were justified in not voting for this congressional gold medal, because they think that the people who committed the insurrection were actually in the right and that ashli babbitt, the woman who gosar said was executed, was doing her duty somehow in breaching the capitol and trying to get into the house chambers and pose a threat to others. and i think that is just completely bonkers. they've taken the bus to crazytown and they want all of us to go along for the ride, and i'm not going to, and neither are most of my colleagues. >> well, i hope that their constituents ask them to all post pictures of themselves walking out to meet those supposed tourists, walking out to greet them, because you know what they were doing? hiding. they were hiding from them.

they were running from them with everybody else. so, if those people were their friends and were such good people, which of you had the courage to go talk to them? which of you? post a picture. y'all all got -- y'all love to be on twitter. post a picture. we'll all retweet it. post a picture of yourself greeting those people. none of you did because y'all were terrifyed of them like everyone else. congressman krishnamoorthi, kurt bardella, thank you very much. breaking news, "the new york times" is reporting tonight that trump's money man, allen weisselberg, could face charges as soon as this summer. also, the biden-putin meeting is now just hours away. the only thing we know for sure, there won't be any putin fan boys on the american side this time. plus, why we can't have nice things. the corrosive influence of big oil on our politics and our society and the role that the oil barons are playing right now in blocking critical legislation. "the reidout" continues after this. legislation. "the reidout" continues after this slam, pan, still...fresh

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in a breaking story just moments ago, "the new york times" reported that the criminal investigation of the trump organization's cfo, allen weisselberg, is reaching its final stages. it raises the possibility that he could face charges this summer. according to people with knowledge of the matter. those sources also told the "times" that prosecutors have obtained mr. weisselberg's personal tax returns, providing the fullest picture yet of his finances. we've known for months that cyrus vance is putting tremendous pressure on weisselberg with the hope of ultimately flipping him against his boss, and that would be donald trump. joining me now is neil katyal and glenn kushner. i'm going to start with you. this is apparently focused on whether or not mr. weisselberg failed to pay taxes on valuable benefits that trump provided him and his family over the years for the "times" story, including apartments and leased cars worth tens of thousands of dollars in

private school tuition for at least one of his grandchildren. why should trump care about that? if mr. weisselberg was getting the gifts and not paying his taxes, what does that have to do with donald trump? >> it will add additional leverage to, hopefully, develop weisselberg as a cooperating against trump. when i read this reporting, the other thing it indicates to me is that allen weisselberg is resisting becoming a cooperating witness because he was already in the prosecutorial fold, everything would have gone radio silent regarding allen weisselberg but there's also a long game to be played here. i've had defendants who were not exactly like weisselberg, but they were people that i desperately needed to bring on board to build my case against the bigger criminal fish, and they wouldn't plead guilty. allen weisselberg may not plead guilty. so here's how we play the long game as prosecutors. we indict him. we try him. we convict him. and we sit down with him again

after a jury has said, guilty, but before a judge has sentenced him. and we say, what are you going to do now, chief? you still have an opportunity. we can still reduce your sentence somewhat, but guess what? you're not going to get as good a deal as if you had come on board and cooperated up front when you should have. so, there are still a lot of moving pieces to the allen weisselberg part of this equation. >> yeah, i mean, there's the mob boss sort of, you know, sort of allegory has been made with donald trump a lot, that he sort of operates in the same way and the question then becomes would allen weisselberg, who people might know him from having been on "the apprentice," he was the father's money man too, would he be willing to do time for donald trump? let me play you what michael cohen had to say about this when he was on this program about whether or not he thought weisselberg might flip. take a listen. >> i think donald trump is going to flip on all of them. what do you think about that? including his children.

what's going to happen when all of a sudden they turn around and start asking him about his tax returns or about the devaluation of the assets or the way that he took deductions? i don't do my taxes. it's my accountant. so he's going to turn on his accountant, point the finger. he's going to say, don junior handled that, ivanka handled that. melania. don't take me. take melania. he's going to tell them to take everyone except for himself. >> you see my surprise there. you know, neal, the question then becomes, if donald trump then eventually becomes the focus of attention, it sort of brings us back to a doj question. there's so many things that donald trump seems to have gotten away with, and i think people have gotten used to him getting away with things. but if there's a purely financial crime, a tax crime, can he ultimately expect to walk away from it just because his money man decides that he's willing to go to prison for him? >> no, i don't think so. and joy, we'll have to study this new reporting by "the new york times," but to me, it looks like the first domino for donald

trump is starting to fall. and this has been an inexorable path since the supreme court, 9-0, said trump tax returns have to be turned over, so these financial records that you're seeking about trump are now in the hands of prosecutors. we know that those new york prosecutors have convened a grand jury. they're going to sit for six months, three days a week. that's far longer than donald trump's ever worked so he's got to be worried about that. we know the prosecutors have sent a warning letter to the trump organization saying this is a criminal investigation. and so now we know this other thing, and glenn's absolutely right. this is how prosecutors bring cases and particularly against a reluctant witness like allen weisselberg. you sit and you take your time and you say, look, if you don't cooperate, here's what's going to happen, and it can happen before indictment, the cooperation, or after a guilty conviction, as glenn is saying. that's exactly how they operate, and i think prosecutors here know one other thing, which is that allen weisselberg knows where all the keys to the kingdom are.

he knows everything. so, most normal companies have a compliance office that deals with all these questions. not the trump organization. the trump organization's compliance office was basically, like, a giant sharpie drawing of the presidential seal or something like that. so, it's really all up to weisselberg. and so, if they can flip weisselberg, and i suspect they can because of that dynamic that michael cohen was just revealing, this kind of prisoner's dilemma where if weisselberg doesn't cooperate, he's got to worry that trump may turn on him. each of them has to worry about that and that becomes a race to get information and that's why i think ultimately bad news for trump. >> there's no one to pardon him because trump is not in office. for those of you who never watched "the apprentice," here it is. here's allen weisselberg on "the apprentice." >> replacing george this week is my chief financial officer, allen weisselberg. and you think george is tough? wait til you see allen.

allen? >> i thought that andy losing his lines of communication was a very serious matter. if this was a military maneuver and he lost his line of communication, you could lose an entire battalion. >> and this is the question, then, glenn, if you have somebody that close, he's putting him on tv, that's probably the only way he paid him, let nbc pay him. you've got his daughter, weisselberg's daughter under a lot of pressure. you've got the family under pressure. you're squeezing all of these people around donald trump. is it possible that cyrus vance could be doing that and not be interested in donald trump? >> very unlikely. i agree with neal that the allen weisselberg domino will fall. the only question is, does it fall while he still has an opportunity to cut a fairly favorable plea agreement with the prosecutors and perhaps keep his two sons out of the criminal mix, because they were both involved in trump's business orbit, right? so, if he wants to save himself

now, then his domino will fall much more slowly, but if the prosecutors have to go hard, go after him, go after his sons, go after his daughter-in-law, and anybody else in weisselberg's orbit who may have committed criminal offenses, boy, he is going to fall like a ton of briksz. bricks. >> it is amazing to watch how slowly this is happening versus how quickly matt gaetz's bestie threw him under the bus. thanks for scrambling to get on with us tonight. we're just hours away from president biden's meeting with russian president vladimir putin in geneva. the stakes are high, but cyberattacks, sanctions, human rights issues, and election interference likely on the agenda. up next, i'll talk to one of the experts who helped prepare biden for the encounter. stay with us. helped prepare biden for the encounter. stay with us centrum multigummies aren't just great tasting... they're power-packed vitamins... that help unleash your energy. loaded with b vitamins... ...and other key essential nutrients... ...it's a tasty way to conquer your day.

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meeting between president joe biden and russian leader vladimir putin. and it comes as russia has notably stepped up its malign activity over the past month. russian hackers carried out a new ransomware attacks against u.s. targets like meat packing company jbs and the colonial pipeline. russia backed the state-sponsored hijacking of a commercial aircraft by belarus, and last week, the country outlawed the political organization of putin's chief rival, alexey navalny. that's in addition to the big picture disputes like russia's election interference and their ongoing belligerence toward ukraine. the sheer number of issues on the table may explain why white house officials have downplayed their expectations for the meeting and that's according to nbc news, which reports that the best case scenario for biden, several people familiar with the planning said, is likely to be an error-free summit and headlines back home saying he delivered a tough message. unlike his predecessor, biden has long been skeptical of

putin. in fact, biden predicted just that in an interview 15 years ago when he was still a senator. >> i think that russia is sliding further away from genuine democracy and a free market system and more toward a command economy and the control of a single man. so, i'm not a big fan of putin's, and i think we should have a direct confrontation with putin, politically, about the need for him to change his course of action. >> not only is biden clear-eyed when it comes to putin, he's also doing his homework. axios reports that the president asked to be briefed by several russia experts ahead of his meeting. among other things, the group urged biden not to hold a joint press conference with putin or afford him any opportunity to try to upstage the final talks with new public proposals. that group of experts included former u.s. ambassador to russia, michael mcfaul, who joins me from geneva. ambassador mcfaul, thanks for

being here. i am fascinated by the little details of the ways in which the current team is trying to avoid allowing putin to upstage president biden, including having putin arrive first because he notoriously kept president obama waiting for 40 minutes, and he's always late. how does the stage craft impact the policy outcome? >> well, thanks, joy, for having me, and good work to whoever found that 2006 interview, by the way. that's some great detective work. >> it's will, our producer, whose birth it is today, so happy birthday, will. >> all right. shoutout to will. happy birthday. that's really good work. professor mcfaul gives you an "a" for your footnotes there for history. but joy, you're right. it's important to focus on the details, and there's a couple that just became clear today that i think suggest real achievement for the biden team, for their protocol team. first, as you just mentioned,

putin is scripted to arrive first. he'll meet the presidents here of switzerland, and then biden will do that second. putin is notorious for being late. he was late for many meetings that i attended, including one with president obama in 2012 when he was 40 minutes late. that's good. that's -- so we don't have the optic of biden waiting for putin. win for the biden protocol team. number two, no joint press conference. we all know what a disaster helsinki was. i think that will go down in history as one of the -- not one of, the worst summit between russians and americans ever, and it was that way because of the way that the president behaved. let's be clear. it was because of what president trump said, but it happened in that press conference. and secondly, just giving the stage to biden -- to putin, excuse me -- i think is not the right symbol that you want to send, so i think that was a win for the protocol team too. and then third, you said you were interested in small details. here's one other small detail.

in the small meeting that biden and putin will have at the beginning, they won't be alone. on our side, we'll have secretary blinken, and on their side, they'll have foreign minister lavrov, which means there will be note takers there. remember, trump didn't want any note takers in helsinki so we had no idea, frankly, what they actually agreed to in that meeting. that's a good sign. you always want to have a note taker, so we don't know what the substance is but i think in terms of the design of the meeting, it's a very good set-up for president biden. >> you know, and we kind of get the idea, having observed vladimir putin over the decades, that he -- what he wants is to undermine the idea that american democracy and that the system that we have here is the better one and to prove that his system is better. what do we want from a meeting like this? and i think it's also important, it's not being called a summit, that would elevate putin. it's just a meeting. what do we want from our interactions, in your view, with

russia? >> well, first, joy, i just was watching your show and i can't help but link what you were just talking about to the global stage. what happened on january 6th, the erosion of our democracy, and how people that won't stand up for it, that hurts the united states of america when we go into meetings with guys -- with leaders like mr. putin or xi jinping, and i just -- it frustrates me that people, domestically, don't see how that hurts us on this global stage. we want, as president biden rightly said in his previous meetings here in europe, to bring together the democracies of the world, as we deal with people like autocratic leader vladimir putin, but we can't do it if the united states of america is not trying to reform and restore our own democracy. on the biden side, i think he wants some very modest things. number one, he wants to launch what they call strategic stability talks, which is to get going on a new arms control

agreement that will some day replace the new start treaty, and that will be tough. that will be hard to do, so we should start that now. secondly, maybe some restoration of diplomatic relations. remember, our ambassador currently sits in washington. their ambassador currently sits in moscow. they're both here in geneva, by the way, but they're not doing their jobs getting some kind of normal diplomatic presence, the embassy that i used to run is a shadow of its former self. that would be an achievement. and third, and now i'm really stretching, i would hope, and i know that the biden team wants some progress on renewing humanitarian assistance to syria. it's set to expire in july. the security council resolution that allows that. that would be very tangible. that would be a win, not just for russia and the united states, for the people of syria. >> there is no one i wanted to talk to more about what is going on in geneva right now than you, sir. michael mcfaul, i always

appreciate when you make time for us so thank you very much. really appreciate it. all right, that was a great michael mcfaul. up next, happy birthday again to will robbie. remember the day when few -- when a few incredibly powerful corporations held a strangle hold over america's legislative process? well, good thing those days are behind us, right? right? no, not so much. stay with us. ight right? no, not so much. stay with us introducing the instant air purifier. carefully engineered with an advanced 3-in-1 filtration system, and plasma ion technology to remove 99.9% of the virus that causes covid-19 from treated air. so you can breathe easier knowing that you and your family have added protection.

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remember the bp deep water horizon spill back in 2010? it kind of looked like the beginning of the end of the power of big oil over american politics. president obama went off on them, lawsuits poured in, and they seemed like a goner. or maybe that's not the way it happened at all. as james ridgeway wrote in "mother jones" in june of 2010, oil companies have begun to

weigh strategies to fight off tougher regulations in the wake of bp's spill to end all spills. frankly, i don't buy it. ever since john d. rockefeller founded standard oil in 1870, the federal government has pretty much given the oil men exactly what they wanted when and where they wanted it. periodic government attempts to contain or regulate the industry have been little more than temporary annoyances, rather than major obstacles to big oil's power or profits. it shouldn't be much of a secret now that big oil largely runs things in the united states, keeping us trapped in the 20th century while they soak up federal subsidies from your tax dollars. so, fighting over whether to ram new oil pipelines through indigenous lands or poison the arctic with potential oil spills, and if we can please, please flip our federal vehicle fleet to electric as president biden wants to do in his infrastructure plan and fight climate change. oh, and also, can texans please not freeze to death when a freak

winter storm hits because the off the grid private oil authority fails? part of their power is because of their expertise in advocacy. it's not a coincidence that the green new deal has been turned into a form of cussing. they're really good at messaging good things that could save the planet and make our lives more convenient and cleaner and better into bad, socialist things. they've moved our foreign policy to the right, and pushed us into bad saudi policy and wars in the middle east out of a hunger to keep the free supply flowing and to control it. oil is the only thing that russia sells, basically, and it's at the heart of their frantic, desperate and diminishing power that vladimir putin obsessively uses against us and against his own people. in the big american oil barons of today, including multinationals who grew out of oil companies but are now multiindustry conglomerates like the koch brothers aren't just opposed to green energy. they also fight like hell against things like wisconsin.

they tried to crush them in wisconsin under scott walker. remember the dramatic protests and walkouts by democratic state senators in 2011 as republicans pushed to pass a sweeping anti-union bill that was quickly replicated in other states, cookie cutter style? the same way the current crop of anti-critical race theory and trans kids on the soccer pitch bills are. they've sought to -- education, funding college camera pugs programs that inject libertarianism into the curriculum, to crank out more rand pauls and fewer aocs, and surprise, surprise, they're not too fond of voting, because polls show that if everyone was allowed to easily and conveniently vote, majorities of americans would voted for a green new deal and more representation for union workers and a $15 an hour minimum wage and getting dark money out of the politics. you probably haven't heard of the advocacy group, stand together, and you may or may not know its partner organization, americans for prosperity, but it's one of the central

organizers from super wealthy americans like the koch brothers and dying industries to maintain control over our politics by controlling one of the two major political parties, in particular. jane of the "new yorker" obtained audio from a conference call on how to kill the voting rights bill, the for the people act. >> when presented with a very neutral description of h.r. 1, people were generally supportive, and the most worrisome part, which grover mentioned at the very beginning of his presentation, is that conservatives were actually as supportive as the general public was when they read the neutral description of h.r. 1. winning over public support for this is actually incredibly difficult. h.r. 1 stops billionaires from buying elections. unfortunately, we found that that is a winning message for both, you know, the general public and also conservatives.

>> h.r. 1, the for the people act, same deal. these folks are not just targeting republicans. they actually already have them in the bag. cnbc notes they're also pressuring conservative democrats like, you guessed it, joe manchin, to oppose his party's legislative priorities. they've got an entire website asking people to email manchin, touting what he's promised to oppose, ending the filibuster, the green new deal, additional supreme court justices, and voting rights. the senate's version of h.r. 1. and what it thinks he should oppose, raising the minimum wage, a bill to protect union organizing, and president biden's infrastructure package. now, if americans for prosperity sounds vaguely familiar, ding, ding, ding, you've heard about them before. during this era -- you heard about them before during this era, and that story is next. be a, and that story is next. among my patients i often see them have teeth sensitivity as well as gum issues. does it worry me? absolutely. sensodyne sensitivity and gum gives us a dual action effect that really takes care of both

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♪ sometimes you wanna go ♪ ♪ where everybody knows your name ♪ ♪♪ ♪ and they're always glad you came ♪ welcome back, america. it sure is good to see you. wanna help kids get their homework done? wewell, an internetca. connection's a good start. but kids also need computers. and sometimes the hardest thing about homework

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of the very real effects of big oil's impact on the world. an arctic scientist said global warming may have already passed an irreversible tipping point. and if as the world burns isn't enough, big oil is also not paying taxes. not getting regulated. and ruining our politics. the very people who have been killing the planet, pour tons of money into targeting progressive politics, specifically the organizations funded by the billionaire koch brothers, charles and the late david koch. he helped funnel billions into climate denying organizations for decades since his family made money on oil and gas. with his money he founded americans for prosperity, the group that mobilized the tea party. it is still going along with its other partners in the koch network waging a behind-the-scenes network to stop progressive priorities like

the for the people act and launching a tea party version 2.0 campaign to target president biden's infrastructure plan. whining about spending and taxes, targeting lawmakers from both parties in 27 states. joining me is sheldon whitehouse. i'm so glad you're available. i watch c-span and i have seen your presentations with charts about big money and its influence on our politics. i am obsessed with this. talk to me about how this works because the koch brothers funded the tea party. they are now backing this push to kill s-1, hr-1, the for the people act. they're now targeting democrats like joe manchin. >> well, the koch brothers and a couple of other creepy right-wing republican billionaires have basically built out what in the intelligence community you'd call a massive covert operation. it's primarily for oil and gas.

that's where it began is to propagate climate denial and block climate legislation in its most kind of powerful sense. it worked for big tobacco before but it really came alive to do climate denial. and like a good covert operation, they use anonymous money, they use cutouts, they use front groups, they use disinformation, they have people who pretend to be real scientists who can act like scientists on tv but say complete non-science if not, you know, nonsense. so it's a really, really significant operation. i'm really glad you're paying attention to it because frankly we have not been attend i've enough to it as democrats. >> one of the things that gets buried in the conversation about s-1 is the extent to which it is an anti-dark money bill. >> yeah. >> joe manchin used to be a backer of s-1. he's a co-sponsor of the bill. then all of a sudden americans

for prosperity posts this website, tells him be against the bill and now he's suddenly against the bill. you had him and kyrsten sinema, didn't even show up today to talk with texas lawmakers who are fighting for voting rights. so you have these organizations that are anti-voting rights. they want climate change science to be buried and now they're anti-voting but it's the money piece we don't talk enough about. do you agree with that? >> yeah. if you connect the dots a little bit, heritage action, which has long been a part of the koch dark money network was the group that was caught recently with the clip from their fund-raiser saying how they were anonymously funding voter suppression activities in all these republican states. that sometimes the republican legislators don't even know it's us and that they work through what they ominously called sentinels in these places to hide their role.

you had leonard leah, the mastermind of the court cap operation that pushed gorsuch, kavanaugh and barrett onto the supreme court. when "the washington post" did the big expose scheme he jumped out and jumped to the elections project which is dark money funded voter suppression. which, by the way, if you do the corporate links, it's related to the judicial education project, which is related to the judicial crisis network, which paid for the ads for gorsuch, for kavanaugh and for barrett. so it's the same central command scheme operating against climate legislation, operating for dark money, and operating to pull off this voter suppression stunt. frankly, democrats have had crap for countermeasures against it for a very long time. and it's really hard to fight a

group like that if you don't take them seriously and take it on. >> well, that was going to be my question is what can we do about it. right, they also have these organizations like alec, the american legislative exchange council that are also heavily involved in pushing cookie cutter legislation. there is that heritage action organization that they have a plan with alec to write voter suppression bills. if you just poll things like saving the planet from doom, and we are at this tipping point in terms of saving the planet from climate doom, we don't do anything, we're going to get past the point where we can stop it. most people want to do something about it and they say no, you cannot. then they say no, you cannot vote because they know the majority would vote to save the planet. so us little folks out here who are not multi billionaires and just want our planet to continue and want us to be a democracy, what the hell can we do about it when people like manchin who has

an impoverished state hoo needs infrastructure and has miners dying at age 50 something because they're in the mines instead of being changed into green jobs, what do we do? if he doesn't want to help, what do we do? >> you've got to demand transparency and fight back and call on leaders of the democratic party to ask what their countermeasures are against this big operation. it's like the other side has an air force and we have none and we're going to war. and we've got to have our own air force to fight back against theirs. and ours will be an air force of like truth and light and exposure and transparency and showing who these rascals are. but we haven't deliberately gone about it. to your point about these groups, there are scientists who study this stuff who democrats have not put to effective use. but they study this stuff and

they'll show that there are 50, 60, 80, 100 different front groups all operated in this same network and that's mostly on the climate denial side. the network can dial up whichever phony baloney group it wants like a pianist playing keys on the piano and we don't bother to point out to the american people that this is a big piano that is being played by a bunch of creepy right-wing billionaires and half of the stuff that comes out of it is completely phony and it's all controlled. >> have you had this conversation with kyrsten sinema and joe manchin, because texas legislators tried to have that conversation and they didn't show up. >> not precisely. but i tell you what, when we go at the dark money thing, i'm confident that we will have them. the reason i'm confident that we will have them is what you just quoted from jane mayer's expose which we know from polling and that is that a conservative tea

partier hates special interests, anonymous dark money corrupting american politics just as much as anyone does. the numbers are unbelievable. we poll in the high 80s and the 90s fighting that. independent voters on a related question poll at 100-0. >> absolutely. >> so we can make this work if the public is with us. >> the public i believe is but i am now in the next show. i have to go and let chris hayes do his show. senator whitehouse, thank you so much. that is tonight's "reidout." go watch chris hayes. >> tonight on "all in" the trump plot to steal the election was worse than we even knew. >> one doj official called the conspiracy theories pushed by the white house, quote, pure insanity.

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