thanks for joining us this hour we got up early the book is called peril it is by washington post journalist barr rewarded and robert costa it bob word woodward and bob costa. we've obtained a copy tonight, evidence of speed-reading here, a rachel maddow specialty. this book has important news in it. what this book is about broadly speaking the peril it's describing in its title is just how fraught and dangerous the period was for the country surrounding the 2020 election and immediately thereafter. and in the broader possible strokes, of course, we know it was fraught and dangerous, right? we had our national capitol come under a violent attack. but the thing that is so bracing and nerve-wracking and important about this new book is what it reveals about how much worse it was than we knew, how much

closer we came to real disaster than we have known before now. so, again, this comes out next week. we have obtained a copy of it. this is how the book starts. quote, two days after the january 6th, 2021 violent sought on the united states capitol by supporters of president donald trump, general mark milley, the nation's senior military joint chiefs of staff placed an urgent call on a top secret back channel line at 7:03 a.m. to his chinese counterpart, general lee, chief of the joint staff of the peoples liberation army. general milley knew from extensive reports that li and the chinese leadership were stunned by the unprecedented attack on the american legislature. lee fired up questions to miley,

was the capitol collapsing? what was going on? was the u.s. military going to do something? milley said in response, quote, things may look unsteady. quote, but that's the nature of democracy, general li. we are 100% steady, everything is fine but democracy can be sloppy sometimes. quote, it took an hour and a half, 45 minutes of substance -- excuse me. it took an hour and a half, 45 minutes of substance due to the necessary use of interpreters to try to assure him. when milley hung up he was convinced the situation was grave. li remained unusually rattled putting the two nations on the knife edge of disaster. milley had witnessed up close how trump was routinely impulsive and unpredictable. making matters even more dire milley was certain trump had gone into a serious mental decline in the aftermath of the election. with trump now all but manic, screaming at officials and

constructing his own alternate reality about endless election conspiracy theories. milley had misled general li when he claimed the united states was 100% steady and the january 6th riot was just an example of sloppy democracy. to the contrary milley believed january 6th was a planned, coordinated synchronized attack on the very heart of american democracy designed to overthrow the government, to prevent the constitutional certification of a legitimate election won by joe biden. milley could not rule out the january 6th assault so unimagined and savage could be a dress rehearsal for something larger as trump publicly and privately clung to his belief that the election had been rigged for joe biden and stolen from him. that is how -- that's the start of the new book. so first of all the january 6th attack on the capitol freaked out the chinese military who believed that trump might start a war or something that would lead to a war with china in order to cling to power.

bob woodward and robert costa reporting in this new book it freaked out china and lots of foreign powers. and the united states' top military officer felt the chinese were so freaked out he had to conduct his own secret back channel cool down chat with the head of the chinese military even though chairman of the joint chiefs mark milley did not even fully believe himself everything was okay, he lied and said it was. he felt like he'd better tell the chinese military things were fine to make sure that nothing bad happened. the chinese believed they were at imminent risk of an unprovoked american attack by an unstable american president who needed to do that to save his own skin. what might they do to fend off

that attack or to gain an advantage? what's more in the new book reports he put in the cool to the same chinese general before the election as well to talk them down, talk the chinese down from fears that president trump was about to launch an attack on china to help himself win the election. that is a call, again, several days before the election that he did not tell president trump about. and, you know, it's sort of for us as americans it's one thing to learn that the chinese cited based on their own intelligence that the american president was unstable enough to launch a military strike simply to help win re-election. it's one thing for us to know that the chinese thought that. something interesting like the way chinese intelligence approaches u.s. and the world. but it's quite another thing when the u.s. chairman of the joint chiefs decides he needs to call them secretly and tell him he the chairman will let them know if that threat becomes real. he promises it won't be a surprise. but the fears about what president trump might do with his military powers around the election and around the attack

on the capitol, those were not limited just to other countries. we know, for example, that house speaker nancy pelosi called general milley, chairman of the joint chiefs two days after the january 6th attack to discuss her fears that president trump was so erratic at that moment he might launch a military action including potentially a nuclear strike of some kind. bob woodward and robert costa in their new book claim to have obtained a transcript of that phone call which is fascinating in itself. i don't know where they got the transcript from, i'm very curious. but this is a portion of that transcript as printed in this new book "peril." quotes, pelosi, what precautions are available to prevent an unstable president from initiating hostilities or from accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike? miley, this is one of those

moments, i guarantee it, i'm giving you my word. i can't say any of this publicly because i don't have the authorities and it would be misconstrued in 50 different directions but i can assure you the united states military is steady as a rock and we're not going to do anything illegal, unethical or immoral with a use of force. we will not do it." pelosi, who knows what me might do. he's crazy. don't say you don't what his state of mind is. he's crazy, and what he did yesterday -- meaning january 6th -- is further evidence of his craziness. but, anyway, i appreciate what you said. general milley, madam speaker, i agree with you on everything. and here's what bob woodward and robert costa report about chairman of the joint chiefs in the aftermath of that phone call. quote, pulling a schlesinger was what he needed to do to maintain the tightest possible control of the lines of military communication and command authority. the move was a reference to an edict by former secretary james

schlesinger to military leaders in 1974 not to follow orders that came directly from president nixon, who was facing impeachment, or the white house without first checking in with schlesinger and his jcs chairman general george brown. general brown in 1974 feared president nixon might go around the chain of command and independently contact officers or a similar military unit to order a strike putting the country and the world in jeopardy. they had been unwilling to take that risk. milley saw alarming parallels between nixon and trump. in 1974 nixon had grown increasingly irrational and isolated drinking heavily and in despair pounding the carpet in prayer with then secretary of state henry kissinger. milley decided to act, immediately summoned senior officers from the national military command center. this was the war room used in the -- excuse me, this is the war room the pentagon used for communicating emergency action orders from the national command authority. the president or his successor on military action or use of

military weapons. milley said he wanted to go over the procedures and process for launching nuclear weapons. only the president could give the order, he said. but then he made clear that he, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff must be directly involved. quote, any doubt, any irregularity first call me directly and immediately. do not act until you do. he pointed to himself, then he went around the room asking each officer for confirmation they understood looking each in the eye. got it, milley asked, yes, sir. got it he asked another, yes, sir. got it, yes, sir. got it, yes, sir. milley considered it an oath. to be clear the oath he's asking them to take there, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff isn't in the chain of command for a nuclear strike. the chairman of the joint chiefs of staffs doesn't have the authority to either call a nuclear strike or block one. the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff advises the president.

he's not in the military chain of command. he said it himself in that phone call with nancy pelosi that we now mysteriously have a transcript of. general milley told pelosi i really don't have the authorities. he doesn't. no one, not the chairman of the joint chiefs, not the defense secretary. nobody can just make a new rule, don't listen to the president, only listen to me. that's not a thing in terms of military orders. but there's a very practical reason that secretary of defense james schlesinger never really got in trouble for having done that in august 1974, and there's the same practical reason that general mark milley is unlikely to get in trouble for it now. because they were and are and i would argue, will be perceived as trying to stop a much greater evil by essentially inserting themselves into the chain of command, in order to prevent, literally, catastrophe.

and there were clearly a number of people in the top echelons of the united states government including the nation's top military officer who felt we were much closer to catastrophe than i think most of us realized at the time. and speaking of that there's this one other revelation in this new book, again, from bob woodward and robert costa, again, that i think is worth pulling out. and it concerns mike pence. former vice president mike pence is these days credited rightly with what he did on january 6th, with plowing ahead and doing his constitutional duty on january 6th despite the mob of trump supporters attacking the capitol and searching for him because they said they wanted to hang him. it was his job as president of the senate to oversee the count of the electoral votes for president and thereby certify the election of joe biden as the next president of the united states. and mike pence in fact did that. despite all the pressure from president trump and his allies

on pence that he should do something else, that he should somehow use that job he had, use that role he had as president of the senate to throw that election to trump or at least to render the election unsettled. despite all that pressure, despite trump supporters roaming the halls looking for him to kill him, to stop him from doing his job, pence did his job. but in this new book one of the things that woodward and costa report is that mike pence in their telling was far more reluctant to do his job, far more reluctant to do his constitutional duty than the public narrative thus far has suggested. and bottom line vice president pence didn't ultimately accede to trump's wishes to block the certification of the election, to overturn election results to leave trump in power or render the election results unknowable, but it was not apparently for lack of him trying to find a way to do that. from woodward and costa, quote, in late december pence phoned

former vice president dan quayle. at 74 the once boyish looking quayle was living the private golf playing life he loved in arizona. the two men shared a unique profile. pence phoned because he wanted advice. despite the electoral college casting votes for biden back on december 14th trump was convinced that pence could somehow throw the election to trump on january 6th when congress met to certify the final count. pence explained to his fellow inian dan quayle that trump was pressuring him to intervene to assure that biden wouldn't secure the needed 270 votes during the certification and push the election to the vote in the house of representatives. and trump was fixated on this twist pence said. it was the provision that could theoretically at least keep trump in power. while the democrats held the current house majority the 12th amendment of the constitution stated voting on a contested election wouldn't be done by a simple majority vote in the house. instead the amendment said the

election vote would be counted in blocks of state delegations with one vote per state. republicans controlled more delegations in the house of representatives meaning trump would likely win if the house chamber ended up deciding the victor based on the prescripts of that amendment. former vice president dan quayle thought trump's suggestion was preposterous and dangerous. trump's effort to cajole pence was a dark rube goldberg like fantasy. quayle believed. quayle told mike sense, quote, mike you have no flexibility on this, none, zero, forget it, put it away. pence said in reply, i know. that's what i've been trying to tell trump but he really thinks he can. and there are other guys in there saying i've got this power. i've -- interrupted him. you don't, just stop he said. pence pressed again. it was easy for quayle to make a

blanket statement from political winter. he wanted to know whether there was a glimmer of light legally or constitutionally quayle repeated forget it. pence finally agreed acting to overturn the election would be antithetical to his traditional view of conservatism. one man could not effectively throw the election to the house of representatives. quayle told pence to let it go. mike, don't even talk about it he said. pence paused, you don't know the position i'm in, he said. even if you're someone like mike pence who's very invested in publicly assuaging and placating your boss, if you're really admitted to rule of law and you're just trying to make trump less mad at you, it's going to hurt to call dan quayle.

you don't call dan quayle just to appease trump for doing what he wants you to do. what's being described in this new book is the action of a man who is genuinely searching for a way he could do what trump wants. in that conversation later recounted with dan quayle, woodward and costa report that pence even raises the prospect that there were real problems in the vote count in arizona, if maybe that was enough of a pretext to justify not certifying the entire election and there be setting the stage to throw it to the house of representatives or republicans in the house would assure that trump held on to power despite losing to joe biden. and this new book makes clear pence was far closer than we had previously realized to doing some version of what trump wanted him to do. and with more than half the entire republican caucus in the house ultimately voting to reject the election results. i mean, mike pence was the guy who stopped that from happening.

but it was close. we were there. and the right has honestly made no progress in widening the distance from how close we were in the months since. right, the problem here is that this history, this newly disturbing slice of our history which we're learning from woodward and costa in this new book, this history isn't very old as history. this all happened only a few months ago. and since then in the intervening eight months on the right in republican politics it's not like the stuff has gotten better. it's not like this has been put away our madness that everybody will deny they were caught up in at the time. the 2020 election results are still not a settled matter for the republican party.

tonight, tonight, for example, here on this show, we're going to be talking to with a key election official from wisconsin where republicans in the legislature there have just started their own bizarre partisan review of the 2020 election, a sort of copycat audit of what republicans are doing with the presidential election results with all the voting equipment in arizona. wisconsin republicans just yesterday started sending out their demands to local officials who frankly have no idea to what they're supposed to do with their secure equipment and election records now that republican legislatures are telling them to hand those things over to republican activists and their crazy conspiracy theories. republicans are doing this in multiple states now. now, not months ago now. now. they started doing it yesterday in wisconsin. this upcoming weekend in washington, d.c. they're preparing for the trump rally in support of the january 6th rioters who attacked the u.s.

capitol to try to stop the certification of the presidential election results. "the washington post" tonight ran a feature on these fliers that are going up all over d.c. starting today to prepare local residents what to do if the pro-january 6th attack rally on saturday does turn out to be as violently intentioned as some of the chatter online around it apparently suggests. these fliers tonight are going up all around downtown d.c. they say, quote, if you see someone with a firearm immediately call 911. if you see a gun immediately call 911. capitol police and d.c. metropolitan police are fully activated for saturday. every officer in the force will be on duty. other local police forces are already asked to be on standby in case more help is needed to defend the capital. it's not even just republicans are still looking backward to last november's elections, still promoting their efforts from january to stop the certification of that election

by force. it's not just they're still backward looking to 2020, it's also the recall election that's happening right now as we speak tonight in california. in california the leading republican candidate in the recall race was as of yesterday predeclaring he has lost the race today and preblaming his loss on some sort of fraud even before the election actually happened. with that being the lead republican messaging heading into that election it's not a surprise the local headlines in california heading into the election look like this from the l.a. times, election fraud conspiracy theories ahead of recall raise fears of violence. this isn't history. this is now. what's the way around it? what is the way out of this morass? over the august break nine u.s. senators got together to try to do something, something

substantive and forward looking to try to kind of take the heat off this issue or at least to sap it of some of its ongoing destructive power. after republican senators in june blocked the big voting rights bill called the for the people act, these nine senators went back to the drawing room to try to find something else, some other approach that could potentially get around the republican opposition while also bolstering voting rights for real. right now these republican fantasies and fabalisms about elections are being treated as pretext enough to nuke voting rights and to nuke the professional nonpartisan administration of elections all around the country. well, the freedom to vote act released today for the first time is 592 pages of compromised legislation that would establish national minimum standards for early voting and vote by mail

and national minimum standards for nonpartisan map making for drawing congressional districts and federal standards for handling elections equipment and records including cyber security around those things. it's a lot. it's 600 pages of a lot. the democrats say every single democratic senator will support it. crucially they have put democratic senator joe manchin of west virginia in charge of scaring up ten republican senators to vote for this major so it can survive another inevitable republican filibuster. that said the lead republican of the senate, mitch mcconnell, already promised today within hours of the bill being announced that won't happen, that republican, quote, will not be supporting the bill. so what happens next here? this seems quite warranted, all the more so every day. but what is the path to getting it done? joining us now is senator rafael warnock from the great state of georgia. senator warnock is a cosponsor of the freedom to vote act in

the senate. senator, thank you so much for being here. it's a real honor and pleasure to have you visit with me. >> thank you, rachel, it's great to be back with you. >> so i put this i recognize in an alarming context in terms of some of the very dire threats and some of the very high cliffs that we got very close to as a country over these last few months as these sort of myths about stolen elections have really taken hold. it seems to me, and tell me if i'm wrong here that the freedom to vote act that you have played such a key role in introducing here today is an effort to try to provide light in that heat, to try to cool down this issue, try to be constructive and move forward in a way that can attract very, very mainstream and widespread support. >> that's absolutely right, rachel. our democracy is a 911 emergency. and while there are a number of important items for us to

address in this congress, and we did so through the american rescue plan, through the infrastructure work that's happening right now. the most important thing we can do right now is to pass voting rights, to secure the future of our democracy. if we fail to do that i think we would have failed to rise in a defining moment in our american democracy, which is why in june when the republicans blocked our ability to have a debate -- and i think it's important for your viewers to know that's what got blocked in june. our ability to have a voting rights just months after an attempt on the capitol after seeing this regime of voter suppression bills sprout all over this country, and it seemed folks were then pivoting from that to infrastructure. i insisted that we can both work

on infrastructure and the infrastructure of our democracy at the same time. and so i approached leadership and said we can't allow this to slip away from us. and i'm so happy that nine of us have been in the room, senator manchin and myself and senator klobuchar and others, crafting this bill. and it was introduced today to make sure that we protect the voices of the people who sent us here in the first place. >> i feel like i have -- it more i spend time with the bill and look at its provisions and the more i hear from you and your colleagues who have taken a role in crafting it, the more i understand about the clarity of your intent and why you think this is the right path forward. i have to ask you about the nitty-gritty, how it gets done. we do have leader mcconnell making this public declaration that, just as he said no republican senators would support the for the people act, to even support moving the debate on it. he also says that republican senators will not support this. and i tend to think that leader

mcconnell whether you agree with him or disagree with him he tends to say what he means, tends to mean what he says and tends to count votes on his side pretty will. do you think he's wrong? do you think his mind can be changed on that or does it turn to procedural efforts because the ten republican votes just aren't going to be there? >> well, the good thing about democracy is that each of us who serves in the senate serves in the house, we were sent by the folks who voted for us. so whether or not this gets republican support is up to each individual senator. and it seems to me voting rights ought to be a bipartisan issue. there was a time it was passed on a bipartisan basis. so we got together over the summer. we put together a bill that is intended to get broad support. it does things like ensures that there is access to the ballot. who could be against that? to make sure that eligible americans can vote whether it's

through early voting, vote by mail, weekend voting. it ensures that states will have same day registration. the kinds of things that just make it -- makes voting accessible to the average person. in addition to that we're addressing these voter suppression laws that we're seeing all across our country that are intended to turn democracy on its head so rather than voters picking their politicians, the politicians select their own voters. it addresses the issue of partisan and racial gerrymandering. yet another way of squeezing the voices of ordinary people out of their democracy and it protects the integrity of our democracy by dealing with issues around cyber security and ensures states like georgia that have voter i.d. laws, that those laws are intended to make sure eligible people can vote. but they're not used to cherry pick certain voters. and so the bill provides a

baseline for voting so that you have access to that basic american right no matter where you live. it's the most american thing we can do. it's the most important thing we can do this congress. and i think that as important as other issues are if we fail to do it we will have failed the people who sent us here in the first place to debate about all these issues. and i think that history will rightly judge us harshly if we fail to address voting rights in this defining moment. >> among the nine of you who worked on this, did you talk about procedural matters? if senate republicans don't come along, you make a great case on the merits, you make a great case in terms of the nonpartisan appeal of this, the all-american appeal of this. and i know senator manchin is working as hard as he possibly can to get republicans on board. but if they say full stop no, did you among the nine of you who work on this legislation talk about a procedural way to get there, by finding a way around the filibuster, by

carving out some rule, some space in that senate rule, so it can pass even against uniform republican opposition? >> well, i've been very clear from day one that we must pass voting rights no matter what. and nothing is more important certainly not a senate rule. but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. i think for us not to do the work that senator manchin is attempting to do, if i'm reaching out to others, i think it lets them off the hook too easily, but at the end of the day we have to protect the votes and voices of the people of georgia and the american people and that's what i intend to do. >> senator, raphael warnock, the great state of georgia, sir, thank you for making time to be here tonight. it's always a pleasure for us to have you here whenever you can make it. >> thank you. >> we've got much more to get through tonight. stay with us.

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this new effort in wisconsin is of course a copycat of what republicans have been doing for months now with their hilarious cyber ninja audit in arizona. that has in fact been hilarious at times but a security standpoint that audit in arizona has been a disaster from the very beginning. observers of that audit say they routinely for example found the security gates left wide open at the facility where they were counting all the ballots. they said confidential manuals were left unattended, quality control measures were completely ignored. arizona republicans bungled their handling of election machines, election equipment and actual ballots so badly that the state will now spend millions of dollars replacing all the voting machines that they tampered with during this audit, because they took no measures to keep them secure. and they can't be recertified to use them in any future election. with that backdrop, we broke the

voting machines during this election audit backdrop, consider dane county, dane county, wisconsin. joe biden won dane county, wisconsin, by more than 50 points in 2020. and right now i'd like you to use your imagination for a second. pretend you're the county clerk in dane county, wisconsin. you are in charge of safely and accurately leading elections in that county. that said republicans in your state are now ginning up one of these fake arizona-style ninja audits. and with that in mind imagine you the dane county clerk just got this e-mail with no warning. the e-mail says please see the attached preservation notice, regards michael j. gableman, special councilman, wisconsin assembly. this is michael gableman, a former judge in wisconsin. republicans in the state assembly picked him to run their arizona-style audit after he

spoke in november at a stop the steal rally alleging the election had been stolen from donald trump. what this e-mail appears to look like is an e-mail from the guy running the wisconsin audit asking the dane county clerk to preserve records. this is the pdf that was attached to that e-mail. the letter says the header is from the office of special council and the wisconsin state assembly, and looks like they're screen capped off the web, maybe. they don't look like official letterhead. the letter starts off, quote, gentle persons recently i was appointed special council by the wisconsin assembly to investigate the november 3rd, 2020 election. i herebyby request you and your office preserve any requests and all records related to the wisconsin election including but not limited to information retained on all voting machines. such information includes but not limited to metadata, router information and/or access laws. please take all necessary steps

including notifying all necessary steps to comply with this request, including notifying all agents, assigns or custodians of records. to comply with this request. and it is signed michael j. gableman, sort of signed. at least his name is on it. this is the guy republicans put in charge to run this arizona style audit in wisconsin, but look at the e-mail again where this preservation notice came from. his name is on the bottom of it, right, his e-mail has his name on the bottom. but look at the e-mail address it was sent from. it was sent from john delta, all lowercase. from a gmail address? who is john delta, why is he sending a highly important, highly sensitive, highly confidential records request to county clerks from a gmail address? does the real michael gableman know about this? is there a mr. delta? is that a reference to a sci-fi movie i haven't seen yet because i'm an old person now? and that's not the only thing hinky about this. go back to the letter. look at that seal on top of it, it really does look like a

screen cap of the state seal copied off the web and plopped onto this document. this is not real letterhead. and while we're at it let's peep behind the hood of this document. look at the metadata for this pdf, this letter with this sort of bogus letterhead on top, demanding the preservation of records to the county clerks. it shows that this pdf was authorized not by john delta or gableman but someone named andrew kloster? who is andrew kloster? why did he write this? maybe it's this andrew kloster, a lawyer who used to work in the trump administration. is he the author of this letter to the county clerks in wisconsin? we don't know. the associated press asked him for comment. he didn't respond. meanwhile public reporting around the audit suggests the guy in charge of the audit, maybe the disembodied voice of john delta, who knows, the guy running the audit has been consulting with a former

political candidate who has been spreading conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. one of his theories is in every single state in 2020 donald trump's share of the vote was reduced by exactly 4.2%. where did he get that? he arrived at this theory based on his close textualist reading of the science fiction novel. the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. because in that science fiction satire the answer to the biggest question in the universe is 42, and look 4.2, sure, why not? that's the new consultant for the wisconsin election audit that taxpayers are paying for. i mean this would all be hilarious if this was not going to influence the actual election infrastructure of an actual swing state. they're demanding a records request of all the real records and real data, real information, real machines, real equipment used in real elections in wisconsin. and now people in wisconsin like the dane county clerk and all

the other clerks who got that e-mail from good knows who, they all have to contend with this science fiction that have landed on their doorstep. what do you do? if you're the dane county clerk what do you do when you get an e-mail like that? here's how that's an interesting part of the story and that's next. hey, i just got a text from my sister. you remember rick, her neighbor? sure, he's the 76-year-old guy who still runs marathons, right? sadly, not anymore.

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this week yesterday wisconsin republicans in the state legislature there effectively started their effort to try to copycat the bizarre partisan election audit that has been going under -- that has been ongoing in arizona for months. that arizona effort, these so-called cyber ninjas audit has received months of national attention and frankly ridicule for good reason. but in wisconsin undaunted republicans there are pursuing the same sort of course. as of right now county clerks all over wisconsin yesterday

received a letter -- honestly it was a sort of strange e-mail from a random gmail account, telling them they needed to preserve records from elections equipment used in the 2020 election. in dane county, wisconsin, the county clerk there immediately forwarded that random gmail request to his i.t. security department. this is how they replied. quote, scott, if this e-mail from from a gmail request i would strongly recommend against replying to it with any information. if these actions are any official cavity, i would expect it to come from an email account with an official wisconsin government email address. we also have no verification of any operational security practices from the special counsel and at this time i would not recommend any disclosure of sensitive information until official channels of communication have been established and verified. joining us now is scott mcdonald. he's the dane county clerk in wisconsin.

mr. mcdonald, it's a pleasure to have you tonight. thank you so much. >> thanks for having me. appreciate it. >> do you know if all the county clerks in wisconsin received the same sort of gmail notice that you did? >> you know, it's not clear. i think there's an attempt to send these to all the county clerks. i know some of them received it and some of them it went straight to their spam folders. so they read the news reporting and then started looking for it. >> besides this -- this missive which was strange in a lot of ways, it is from a random gmail address. it had a pdf attached to it that the metadata suggests was written by potentially a former trump administration official who's not known to be attached to this. it didn't seem to be on real letterhead. the name on the gmail address didn't match the address on the gmail address in fact had a different name john delta, that that's even a thing. a lot of obvious red flags here. was this actually the first purported official communication you received about this audit?

or have they been in touch with you before this in some more official way? >> no, this is the first communication i got from mr. gableman assuming that was mr. gableman. so, yeah, i mean there's some -- there are a lot of red flags on that e-mail as you pointed out. and, you know, it's sort of like fishing 101, you don't open a fake gmail account. you don't send something to that. you know, the name didn't match where the address was from and so this is the person who is supposedly in charge of checking to make sure that our election was honest and fair, and it's pretty scary. >> i know that it sort of deep into the letter, whoever wrote this letter to you if it is for the person running the audit for these legislative republicans. the writer asks you to pass this

request on to the municipal clerks, to the town clerks, throughout dane county and presumably all the clerks were asked to pass this on to the clerks to preserve their records and this information as well. i have to imagine you're not comfortable doing that given the kind of advice you got about it security wise about not even responding to it yourself. >> right. the thing is it didn't really ask for anything. and honestly the things he was sort of saying we should preserve the municipal clerks don't have. all these records reside with county. he first made this request to the wisconsin election commission thinking they had this data and they said, no, this is at the county level. then he sends an e-mail apparently to county clerks saying and if the municipal clerks have it -- well, they wouldn't. so he really needs to spend more time or hire more people with how elections are run in the state. >> it does sound like the records that he's asking and

supposed information and records he's asking for, betray a fundamental lack of understanding of how elections are run in the state. is that fair? >> right, and he references improving the voting machines. the voting machines really are dumb terminals, rachel. they really don't have any information on them. we code in election media basically a thumb drive that goes into those ds 200s and that's what has the information on the election. all the data is uploaded on to that stick and brought back into our office. there's nothing on those machines. he could have asked someone and found that out. >> an inauspicious beginning what is going i match be an even more auspicious process as it goes on. scott mcdonald, the county clerk for dane county, wisconsin, one of my favorite place information the country. thank you for the work. and i'm sorry for this hassle. thanks for being with us tonight. >> thanks, rachel. >> all right, i'll be right back. stay with us. with us

all right, steve kornacki here in new york. the news from the other coast. the west coast, california, the attempt to recall gavin newsom as governor of that state. nbc news has projected that it has failed. as you can see by the numbers here, it hasdecisively. it's a 2 to 1 margin, no on the recall of gavin newsom is crushing, yes, this election. you can see, the story here, we've got a vote in here across the state. you can see the pattern on this is just clear. southern california, los angeles county, orange county, san diego county, inland empire, these have all become to varying degrees democratic areas and they're holding as democratic areas, newsom areas, anti-recall areas. the bay area, remember, he used

to be the governor of san francisco developing overwhelming margins against the recall here. what is most striking, there are still more votes to be counted. more votes to come in. these numbers will change some. but what's most striking, when you look at the map and you look at the pattern here, how similar it is to what happened in california, just last year in the presidential election. fix your eyes on the map. i'm going to flip -- like one of the eye charts at the eye doctor's office. i'm going to flip the charts. keep in mind here, no/yes. check out the trump/biden. same counties that went for trump going for recall. same counties for biden going against the recall. and the margins just as lopsided. let's give you an example here. look down in orange county. no, 57%. what did biden get here? he got about 54% of the vote. right now, no is slightly outpacing biden in these places. the bottom line is, either a

couple weeks ago there were polls in california that conducted this recall might be close. the race got a lot of national attention. the president was just in yesterday for gavin newsom to try to save him in the race. but in the end there was late momentum on the polling clearly on gavin newsom's side. we were ask, hey, chance the polls were wrong in this thing. if anything, the polls undercounted, the opposition in the recall in the end in support of garbin newsom. gavin newsom survives, he will continue to be the governor of california. the recall fails. much more in the next hour.

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again, the polls close in california in about an hour. california voters deciding whether democratic governor gavin newsom should be recalled, if so, who should replace him. our live coverage will continue throughout the night. "way too early" is up next. thank you all very much. and thank you to 40 million americans, 40 million californians. and thank you for rejecting this recall. good night, everybody. governor gavin newsom survives the closely watched recall election in california. now, the question is, will the race be a model for next year's midterm elections? plus, a bombshell revelation about president trump's final days in office. a top military adviser was reportedly so fearful trump may launch an attack on china, that he made secret calls to his