normal thursday we've had sort of a normal thursday show plan and then as we got closer and closer to showtime. it turned into leak christmas not as in potatoes and leeks. then it turned into subpoena christmas. so we threw out in its entirety everything we planned on doing tonight and started a whole new series of stories. i will tell you in advance there may be a little more hurly-burly than usual because so many of these stories are breaking at the last minute and developing as we're reporting them, but let's just get into it. forgive me any straying into the margins, any veering out of the lanes a little bit. let me tell you what we've been working on. first we're going to start with arizona.

back in april, republicans in the state legislature in arizona announced they would start an audit with the election results in that state. they hired a contractor to do that audit, a guy who promoted qanon conspiracy stuff online, a guy who never had any experience whatsoever with election administration or election audits, which is actually a real thing. experts can do election audits. he was not one of those experts. in fact, he had no experience in the field at all. they nevertheless hired him and his company, which appears to just be him, a company called cyber ninjas, and with that auspicious beginning just conducted a months-long circus in arizona. they started in arizona, they said it would take three weeks. it's five months later, and they're finally going to release their results tomorrow. as we've been reporting, everyone in trump world is vibrating at a very high pitch in anticipation of the audit result tomorrow.

former president trump has been outdoing himself in terms of the lead-up of the report in terms of the frequency and hysteria of his now more than daily statements about how the election was stolen from him and all will be revealed and the american people will soon see and the evidence is coming. well, i can tell you tonight that there has been a document circulating all day today that purports to be a near final draft of the arizona audit report, the results of the arizona so-called audit. now, in addition to this circulating in arizona journalism circles tonight, i can tell you we have reviewed it, i have reviewed it. it's three whole volumes -- how best to put this. other than to tell you its purported conclusions are objectively hilarious, we are

not going to report on the contents of that purported draft tonight. because even though multiple sources have told us it is legit, we tracked down many sources today who all confirmed today that that is a close to final draft of the results that will be released tomorrow. we frankly, despite that multiple source confirmation, we just do not trust anything, anything, anything that has come from anywhere near this clamshell process in arizona. so even though i can report to you with confidence and with personal knowledge that there is widely circulating in arizona a draft of the purported results, we will wait. they will release their supposed results tomorrow, 1:00 p.m. local time, 4:00 p.m. eastern time. trump world will lose their minds regardless of what it is they're going to report, but we will wait to see what it is they actually say. i will tell you once the report is finally released, one of the

things that will be interesting to see is if they revised those results from what appears to be the near final draft once it starts circulating in journalistic circles and give people a chance to laugh at it. like i said, when it rains, it pours. news has been developing over the course of the day and into tonight. tonight the select committee investigating the u.s. attack on the capitol and who sought to block the certification of the presidential election results. they sought to block president biden being named the next president of the united states. they sought through violence to keep donald trump in power. the u.s. house committee that is investigating that attack has tonight just issued some very provocative subpoenas to four very high-profile senior trump administration officials. now, this has evolved over the course of the day in an interesting way as well. we learned at the start of the day today reporting at positive polito.com and in the

"washington post" earlier today that the january 6th investigation was in the words of the politico headline as you can see there was accelerating. "politico" was the first to report that the records foundation had started to produce records to the committee from the trump white house about events leading up to and including the attack on january 6. now, they keep white house records. they are the custodians of those records. they're the ones that receive requests from the committee to produce those records, and what they do when it comes to a former president, they have to give a former president the chance to object to the release of those documents. they've done so. the first stack of those trump white house documents that have been requested from the january 6th investigation, the first stack of those results have reportedly been delivered to former president trump himself for his review as he and his lawyers consider what options they may have or may not have to try to stop the release of those

documents to the committee and ultimately the release of those documents to the public. now, those documents being delivered to trump and his lawyers so they can review them, that may be what led one slightly beside himself trump spokesman today to tell the "post" that the only reason these documents are being demanded in the first place is because of this, quote, communist-style select committee. communist-style? yes, like right after this thing with the january 6 attack, they're going to move on putting out a five-week production plan and then we'll all move to collective farms as communist style. are you sure that's exactly what you meant? well, now tonight, after that freakout earlier in the day about the trump white house documents actually being produced by the national archives and records administration so they can ultimately be given to this committee, after that little freakout from trump world earlier in the day, tonight the january 6 investigation committee has issued subpoenas to four very high-profile trump

officials. steve bannon, trump's former campaign man is jer and white house adviser who was arrested last year before he was ultimately pardoned by trump. last guys in office, scavino, one of the guys who wrote the tweets. and all four of those trump officials tonight are directed in these new subpoenas to hand over documents for the investigation by october 7. that's two weeks from now. they're also directed to appear for depositions a week after that on october 14th and october 15th. now, will they comply with the subpoenas? interesting question. congressman adam schiff is the

head of the intelligence committee and the investigation. he's also a member of the january 6 investigation. he said earlier today before these subpoenas were issued that the committee may well consider criminal referrals for anybody who obstructs the committee's work or who specifically refuses a subpoena that compels them to testify and hand over documents. so that very overt threat from congressman schiff early in the day that to resist a subpoena from the committee is to invite potential criminal referral, referral for prosecution, and now tonight from congressman schiff we've got these four subpoenas, again, to very high-profile members of trump's circle. here's are the subpoenas to testify, here are the subpoenas to hand over documents. that's developing just within the last hour. as well we're going to have more on that ahead over the course of tonight's show. there's one other thing to tell you, and this is something that we're reporting tonight exclusively. for this next bit of news tonight, we need to stand back for just a second.

do you remember this from last spring, from the spring of 2020? >> honestly, if you look at the trends today that i think by memorial day weekend we will largely have this coronavirus epidemic behind us. >> that was april 23rd, 2020, vice president of the united states, mike pence, announcing to the entire world that from his perspective in the white house, leading the covid white house task force thing he was leading, the u.s. government's point person overseeing all aspects of the covid response, from his perspective, his point of visibility, he could say this covid thing is going to be totally behind us by next month. it will be over by may. now, the pandemic, obviously, did not end in may 2020 when vice president pence said it would. but why did he say that?

in fact, it was not just vice president mike pence but president trump and all these senior appointees in the trump administration repeatedly insisting over and over again that there wasn't too much to worry about because this covid thing was about to end. it was a blip, it would go away by may. why did they say that? even all these months later, even after we have a new president, it remains one of the mysteries to the response to the covid pandemic in this country. not just why it was generally bad and terrible and ineffective, but why it was specifically weird in the way that it was. i mean, you may also remember how obsessed president trump was with this drug hydroxychloroquine. he would get up at covid briefings and say what a miracle hydroxychloroquine was. he would talk about it like it was a cure.

he would recommend to take it to treat covid if they got covid, but you should take it preventatively. hydroxychloroquine is a real drug for real things, but not for covid. it was none of the things the president said it was. why did he keep saying that? eventually they had to tell people not to take it to treat or prevent covid, because it doesn't treat or prevent covid. in fact, taking it can be dangerous. last year the speaker of the house announced she would form a specific committee in congress to investigate what went wrong in the response to covid, what went wrong in the trump administration as they failed so badly in their initial response to the pandemic and the united states became the worst hit country in the world in terms of the pandemic. that committee has started to turn up information not just about how the response to the pandemic was sort of structured, but also why we may have got

down some of those very weird cul-de-sacs. just last week that committee turned up something new, or i should say someone new, someone who was not advised on the coronavirus response. his name is dr. steven hatfield. he's a virologist. in 2020 he started working with the white house trade representative, peter navarro, as an advisor on the pandemic response. which is why, as the congressional investigation was continuing their course of looking into the u.s. government response in the first year of covid, dr. steven hat field's name started popping up all over the place, even though he had not been publicly declared to be involved in the response. you could see in this guy's correspondence that the committee has dug up so far that his involvement with the white house tracks with some of those otherwise inexplicable bizarre

decisions and public pronouncements made by the trump administration around covid. for example, i'll show you this one. this is an e-mail to steven hatfield by peter navarro. dated may of last year right before memorial day. quote, i've been working on tracking down some israeli data saying this coronavirus thing may have now run its eight-week course in most of the united states. genetic bottlenecking may be under way now. this is may 2020, dr. steven hatfield advising the white house covid response, telling his white house supervisor, this whole thing is almost over. it looks like we're about to be done. and another email that same month, doctor hatfill forwards

peter navarro on a study that had not come out yet, a study that dr. hatfill would prove once and for all that hydroxychloroquine would prove survival for covid patients. look how he ends his e-mail, quote, if fauci and steven hahn of the fda had done their jobs, 30,000 less people would have died. they have blood on their hands. what he means there is 30,000 americans died because dr. fauci and dr. hahn did not respond to the virus. if it was a legitimate national security crisis, in 2021, five people were killed after letters were sent containing anthrax powder. they named steven hatfill as a person of interest in the anthrax attacks. he was never formally accused of any wrongdoing, he was never charged with any crime, he was in fact exonerated. steven hatfill sued the doj for those personal attacks.

in the end he got $4 million when the justice department settled that lawsuit with him. that's this previous turn in the public eye for steven hatfill, again, totally unrelated to this. it was sort of all-around weird to see this guy turn up in e-mails that the house committee started releasing last week as part of their investigation. frankly, they generated more questions than answers. why was steven hatfill providing the covid response? why was it never announced publicly? what was the extent of his role? what exactly did he advise the white house to do? tonight we have something new to add to that. the house committee that is investigating trump's response to covid has just unearthed new documents during the time of steven hatfill's time in office.

these emails have not yet been made public. you're seeing them for the first time. in these emails we get a better picture of just how involved, how engrained inside the white house dr. hatfill appears to have been as he was pushing these lines about how hydroxychloroquine was going to be the solution to covid and how the epidemic was going to end, it was going to burn itself out. this one was from february 2020 when dr. hatfill is advising the white house. he appears to be writing to a friend. he says, quote, good morning, mate. got my first night sleep in over a week. never met big don but worked close to those right under him and helped draft memos for him. i have never seen anything like it. unreal. i never knew the government could move so fast. it's unbelievable. it's 100% adrenaline rush. another email we can report on

tonight's show is that in april of last year, dr. hatfill received an email from the white house personnel saying he was being considered for an official white house job. dr. hatfill appears surprised by this. he calls the email unexpected. as far as we can tell he was never officially hired by the white house in a formal capacity. he continues to refer to himself as an unpaid volunteer. what was all that about? we can also show more evidence tonight, at least to us by the committee, of not only dr. hatfill pushing the theory that hydroxychloroquine was a miracle cure for covid but that that quack advice was received by several levels of government, after the fda warned everybody to stay far, far away from high -- hydroxychloroquin here's dr. hatfill writing to the white house. he said to himself that trump has been grossly misadvised on the proper pandemic response to covid. he said both dr. anthony fauci

and dr. hahn, the head of the fda, need to be fired immediately, and then he offers his advice on what the president and the country should do instead, which includes, naturally, drum roll, please, quote, the outpatient and proef lactic use of hydroxychloroquine with zinc supplementation. that must be the covid strategy from here on out. fire fauci, fire the head of the fda and instead move to a natural hydroxychloroquine and zinc response. he said other countries are doing this. he said those countries are able to bring their covid under control in 14 days and that's why those countries in particular haven't had major outbreaks. he said it's necessary to confirm the widespread outpatient use of hydroxychloroquine is the only

way to control the covid-19 pandemic in the u.s. at this time. again, this is last fall. where is this guy coming from? how did he get in? why is he telling people he must fire the top infectious disease doctor in the government, fire the top scientists overseeing the administration's scientific response, and instead the white house should be passing out hydroxychloroquine and zinc in pez dispensers. that must be america's response. oh, and by the way, the pandemic will just disappear on its own. why did that happen? why that guy? we learned another thing about dr. hatfill in these documents, and this is brand new. it appears from looking at these documents from the house investigation that dr. hatfill's portfolio expanded beyond covid in the final months of the trump administration.

again, he's an unnamed but apparently quite connected white house advisor telling the white house that the covid pandemic will end on its own, all we need to do is give everyone hydroxychloroquine and fire fauci. that's what he's doing for months when he brags to his friends that he's working seven days a week, ten hours a day, 3 f 5 days a year, he's working there for months, that's all he's doing, but then here it's november 9th, a few days after the election. he tells a friend he's going to arizona for a few weeks for election stuff. this is less than a week after the election. why is a virologist advising the white house on covid going to arizona for election stuff? also, what proof is this about? december 12 we get another email from this virologist advising the u.s. deposit on covid response. the subject of this one is plan b for trump legal fight.

the email says for rudy, our plan b following the supreme court decision of friday evening. this is his advice, his legal advice as a virologist on how to get the supreme court to overturn the election results an keep trump in power. two days later, december 14, dr. hatfill sends his supervisor in the white house pete navarro a link on detecting fraudulent ballots. the link he sends to the white house takes you to a video of jovan pulitzer. remember the guy who developed the scanner in the shape of a cat? the technology expert can determine if ballots are legitimate or fake in seconds. the virologist is advising the white house that the epidemic will be cured and end on its

own. the video is on detecting cat scratch fever in your election results. one more. the day after that, december 15, dr. hatfill emails a white house policy analyst five words, could this possibly be true? he includes a link which takes you to a tweeted out bogus conspiracy theory about how joe biden's family owns diminutive virus responses. a friend write to dr. hatfill and asks him, why are you not fixing the virus? why are you not fixing the out-of-control virus in the country? he responds, quote, because the election is out of control. i go where my team is. i found i have a little talent

for this upon discovering what happened in nevada. this is changing second by second. i've got to admit, it's excitingly addictive. he said hydroxychloroquine is on the back burner until this fight to overturn the election results is over, because he's transitioned from advocating that the u.s. should stop responding to covid and just give everybody hydroxychloroquine. he's transitioned from that to how to expose the truth about the biden family owning the election machines, and so check with the cat guy. truly, what was this guy doing? why was he a white house advisor on covid in the first place? how did he turn into a helping hand in the fight to overturn the election? we reached out to dr. hatfill for comment tonight. we have not heard back. but the house investigation that has dug up this correspondence, they want more information on this as well. we can report first here tonight that the house committee that's investigating the u.s.

government's response to covid, that committee has just issued a subpoena to dr. steven hatfill for documents from his time advising the trump white house. the committee first asked him to voluntarily turn over documents back in april and to sit for a transcribed interview. the committee tells us dr. hatfill so far refused to cooperate and otherwise minimized his involvement in the covid response in a way that appears to be contradicted the documents that he have turned in already. so nay have, therefore, sent this subpoena for documents tonight. when it rains, it pours. in the case of this latter story, it feels like it's the beginning of this story. joining us now is congressman jamie raskin. he sits on the subcommittee for the coronavirus crisis. i will tell you he's also a member of the january 6 select committee. congressman raskin, you are a busy man at the best of times. thank you for making time for us tonight. >> i'm delighted to be with you, rachel. >> it's a lot of news to get

through, and we're breaking through some of it here for the first time. let me just ask you, based on your role in both committees, if i've gotten this wrong or misstated any of it as far as you know. >> believe it or not, everything you said about dr. hatfill is consistent with what we've been able to learn from different sources, but, of course, we sent him this s&p because we want all the documents that he's got. we're talking about a virologist who was working, he said, ten hours a day, seven days a week on covid-19. he was enthusiastically hawking the hydroxychloroquine cure for covid-19. he was an active vaccine skeptic. he was urging the firing of dr. fauci, and pretty much everything that he said was at least parallel to what president trump ended up saying. and it would be interesting to know which way the influence was

flowing. it may have been going back and forth, but he clearly was someone who was meaningfully involved in their covid-19 efforts, and i use that word in a very liberal way. but what was curious about him is he also was a political actor, and as you were saying at the end, he began to range far and wide in terms of the trump entourage's activities including being delegated to go out to arizona to work on their efforts to spread the big lie out there and to try to overturn the 2020 election. so the public health of america was in the hands of people like this because he was classified as a volunteer, he didn't have to go through an ethics review and there was not any background check into any of his prior activities. >> one of the other things that dust seem -- sort of sticks out going through these documents

today is that while he appears to have downplayed to the committee in his role in the coronavirus response, he has certainly played it up in his correspondence to many of the people he was emailing with, talking, bragging about how influential he was, how much time he was spending on this, how this had become a full-time job for him. he was sort of classified as a sort of volunteer. he never went through the vetting process and disclosure process you would have to go through to be a more formal white house advisor or white house employee. he does say in some of these documents this he's got a.gov email address. he's got an email address that cites him in the executive office of the president.

is it not clear that he was officially attached to the white house and to the trump administration? >> no, it's not entirely clear. it's possible he was put on the government payroll, but we just don't know at this point. he's using private email to conduct government business outside of the rules. but perhaps he was put on the government payroll at some point and we just don't know that. there are a lot of mysterious facts here that need to be cleared up, and we should be able to get to the bottom of that. i mean, it's kind of an affinity to what we're going through in the january 6 select committee. basically, there are lots of people who declare themselves to be public servants, people trying to render service to the country, and they should continue to render service to the country by turning over all information that they have. certainly this is where we are on january 6th. it should be considered not only a duty for anyone who has information about the violent attack and insurrection on america on january 6th to turn over that information.

it should be considered an honor, it should be considered a privilege, and i certainly hope a former president of the united states would turn over all the information he has, but perhaps that's too much to hope for. >> well, on that january 6th investigation, as i mentioned at the top, you are a very busy man. you are on the committee investigating the coronavirus crisis. you are also on the january 6th investigation committee, and these subpoenas that went out tonight to steve bannon, white house chief of staff mark meadows, dan scavino who was an aide to the president and dan scatel who ended up working for the trump administration, those subpoenas do represent a sort of acceleration, a sort of ticking up of the intensity of your investigation. i want to ask if we should expect those to be the first of many subpoenas, or are these four really at the center of the bull's eye in terms of who you're hoping to hear from? >> i think that you will find

there will be other subpoenas forthcoming. we're collecting a lot of information from emails, facebook postings, twitter postings. we have millions of pieces of evidence that have already flowed in to us, and a lot of this was televised and recorded. so if any of these people think they're somehow going to escape undetected, they've got something else coming, and they really should cooperate at this point with our investigation by giving us all of the information they have about the attack on congress. there were more than 140 officers of capitol police in the police department whose noses were broken, arms broken, legs broken, traumatic brain injuries. we've got dozens and dozens of people suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome right now, and for the first time in american history, they delayed the counting of election

votes by four or five hours, and this was the most massive violent assault on the workings of congress and on the u.s. capitol since the war of 1812 and 1814. so how in the world could a high-ranking government official want to hide information or relevant documents that he or she might have about what took place? that's an astounding thing when you consider it. >> maryland congressman jamie raskin sits on the subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis and also on the select committee that is investigating the january 6th attack. a lot of news from both of those committees tonight, sir. thank you for your diligence as a member of congress putting in all the extracurricular activities that can be done as a member of congress right now. thank you for your time tonight and for being with us. >> thank you, rachel. >> appreciate it. we've got much more to get to here tonight. busy night. stay with us.

this was the headline in the "new york times," quote, arizona's criticized election review nears end, but copycats are just getting started. as we wait to see how things play out in arizona tomorrow with the release of the report from the republicans' so-called audit of the election results in that state, we also have been watching what is, in fact, a copycat-lead election investigation in a few other states including one that is proceeding oddly now in pennsylvania. as i mentioned, when it rains, it pours, and in tonight's news we've got interesting new developments around this one. republicans in pennsylvania have voted as part of this investigation that they want to subpoena fairly intrusive personal records from every single voter in the state. if you voted in pennsylvania, republicans are demanding by s&p for every single voter in the state your full name, your date of birth, your full address, your driver's license number,

your partial social security number. are you comfortable with them having that? do you know what they'll do with it once they get it? the democrats in the pennsylvania senate quickly actually filed a lawsuit to try to stop these subpoenas from going out, but just tonight, something new. the attorney general of the state of pennsylvania has now also filed suit against the republican-led senate committee that is conducting this election investigation along with the chairman of that committee and the republican lead over the state senate all in an effort to stop these subpoenas to get all this data on everybody who voted in the state. i want to read you something about how the lawsuit starts. quote, pennsylvania citizens have constitutionally guaranteed rights to free and fair elections and to the protection of their personal information. both fundamental rights are threatened by the abuse of power at the center of this case. the commonwealth of pennsylvania, the department of state and acting secretary of the commonwealth bring this

action to protection 9 million pennsylvania voters from an unlawful attempt to share with unknown third parties their private information. the pennsylvania's state senate's intergovernmental operations committee has demanded voters' private information, not to conduct a good faith investigation or to further secure pennsylvania's elections but instead to pursue a disproven narrative designed to undermine faith in the results of the 2020 presidential election. throughout, the purpose has remained the same, to placate former president trump and his political base and propagate voter fraud that does not exist. the lawsuit not only says it is unlawful for pennsylvania republicans to s&p all this sensitive and i'd fig personal information from all the voters in the state, but the attorney general is also warning that the republicans have really not been very forthcoming about what they're going to do with this information once they get it or

who else they're going to give it to. quote, the chairman of the election committee, senator dortch, would not rule out retaining vendors associated with former trump campaign lawyer sidney powell or those who had worked for candidates in the elections under investigation. this lawsuit tonight, again, from the pennsylvania state attorney general is asking the courts to declare knees republican subpoenas invalid and unenforceable, essentially trying to choke off this pennsylvania effort to do what arizona has done over all these period of months. joining me now is attorney general josh shapiro. mr. shapiro, thanks for making time for us tonight. i know it's a busy night. >> thank you, rachel. >> is it clear what they want from all the voters in the

state? >> what's clear is they keep per petuating the big lie, but now they're putting their personal information in compromise. they're violating their right to privacy, they're violating our privacy, and they can't get away with it. >> it's surprising to me given the demand in the republican subpoena. they must know that voters across the state will not want this personal information handed over to an investigation in the state legislature. but given that, knowing how provocative it must be, they don't have an explanation. as you write in your lawsuit, they don't have any explanation as to what they're going to do with this information or who else they might give it to. is it your belief, or do you think it's plausible that what they're intending to do is to hand it over to a cyber ninja's outfit or some other kind of vendor who they're going to hire to do this work?

>> the chairman of the committee who we sued for his conduct here made clear that that is their intention, to take the private personal information, social security numbers, driver's license numbers and the like and take all that information of 9 million pennsylvanians and hand it over to a third party, and indeed, upon questioning the chairman to ask whether that third party, for example, could be associated with sidney powell, the now disgraced, discredited attorney for the former president, they indicated that that could be a responsibility, that an associate of hers could receive that. look, as the state's top lawyer, we have prosecuted and investigates prosecution of data breach. in fact, we led the lawsuit with equifax. that's a company that obviously had controls and yet people's

personal information was compromised. someone associated with sidney powell puts people's information at risk and raises all kinds of legal questions. that's why we went to court today, and that's why we simply will not let these republican leaders in the state senate get away with this. >> can you tell me about the decision why you chose to bring this suit, in addition to the entire committee and the chairman of the committee that's conducting this investigation, why did you include the republican leader in the state senate, the republican senate president as a defendant here? why was that important? >> because the republican leader is trying to orchestrate this sham. in fact, he bragged to dew point before going forward with this. he's involved in this. look. this is who the modern-day republican party is, and these poll turnians who issued and

backed these subpoenas, including the leader of the state senate, they have sold out pennsylvanians who value small government, who value their privacy to fuel a lie and to undermine the way we run elections and have run elections for generations. and they're doing it because, rachel, they believe their own power is more important than your constitutional rights. that's what this is all about. >> pennsylvania attorney general josh shapiro who, again, has brought suit tonight against this republican-led investigation in the pennsylvania legislature, seeking to investigate the election results a la arizona, a la wisconsin, all these states that have power. mr. shapiro, thank you for being with us tonight. i told you it was a busy night. stay with us.

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there is an interesting sort of update on a story we brought you a few days ago. as you know russia had its election this weekend.

navalny, russia tried to assassinate him last year, put his workers in jail as well. but they created an app that voters could use for voting strategically, voting basically in a coordinated way to consolidate support for an anti-putin candidate in each district, a candidate that actually could win. they built this smart voting app as a key part of that voting effort to try to get putin's political party out of power and therefore oust putin from the kremlin. they created the app, helping people coordinate their votes in a strategic way. but this was the headline in "the new york times" on friday as the election opened in russia. google and apple, under pressure from russia, remove voting app. they removed an app meant to coordinate voting for this

week's elections. it disappeared from the two technology platforms just as voting got under way. putin's government pressured apple and google to take this navalny app out of the app stores, and they caved. and that was not the end of it in terms of the caving. over the weekend as russians voted, google also blocked videos. google owns youtube. google blocked youtube videos that navalny's allies posted on youtube to, again, help coordinate this smart voting strategy. they blocked those videos at the request, at the demand of putin's government. well, now bloomberg news reports that employees of google are increasingly upset about the company's repeated and consequential capitulation of putin's threats. quote, staff members complained over the weekend about google's decision and on a messaging board within the breeding ground

of the company. images circulating inside google which were viewed by bloomberg news, spoofed its corporate crede about prioritizing users. one picture depicts a man reading a magazine below the slogan, putin the user first. get it? putting the user first, putin, the user first. since its formation, google has used the motto to make information universally accessible and useful. one meme image being circulated, again, inside google among its own employees displayed a map of the world where the russian voting map was allowed. every country was marked universally accessible except for russia where the information read "useful." today alexei navalny reported from prison, if something surprised me in the latest elections, it was not how putin forged the results but how obediently the almighty big tech turned into his accomplices. the giants, apple and google, have complied with the kremlin's demands and removed our app from their stores. my beloved youtube has deleted our video.

the very intentioned organizd people who did that is, criminal. turning it into an instrument for seizure of power. joining us now is reporter mark bergen who has been covering this story for bloomberg and helped bring out the story over google's own disquiet in the matter. i appreciate you being here, mark. thank you. >> thank you. >> so you cover these things more closely than i do. let me ask if i misconstrued any of that or missed anything important there? >> no. that's spot on. and the meme gem sounds kind of trivial. it's a messaging board where there are trivial things posted, but it's also been the place where google employees were the ones who protested their

government contract with the defense department. and they protested their plans to re-enter china and google didn't renew its pentagon contract and google hasn't gone into china. so google employees have been powerful forces in the past few years. that being said, a lot of their organizing within the company has experienced a significant clamp-down. so far they're not sending petitions around, they're not marching in protests like they have in the past. it's been grossly meager. it will be interesting to see how long this goes on, particularly after the elections, if people respond either way. >> no two situations are the same. political situations adapt and they're different in different countries and leadership in countries adapts over time. i don't think there is anything you can say is direct apples to apples, oranges to oranges comparison. but with that caveat, the sort of pressure that russia put on

both google and apple here, is that the kind of pressure that google and apple have previously resisted? and now they're caving? or was this some sort of new upping of the game where they really had no choice and their employees shouldn't have expected that they might have taken a more courageous stand? >> yeah, i've heard two different versions of this in talking to both people inside and people who have been at the company. and i should note that google has not said anything officially. they have given no comment whatsoever about this. and at apple the same as far as i know. others have reported that google not only had the threat of criminal charges, as you mentioned, but rather explicit threat that their local employees in russia would be arrested if they didn't take this down. and i think the people internally that will point to that is we had no other recourse. and they will also argue that they're facing similar pressures in countries like india and vietnam.

there are a fair amount of countries that are becoming much more aggressive about internet controls. that being said, rewind ten years ago, 11 years ago now to 2010, google rather famously left china. it pulled its search engine, youtube. youtube was never there, but a lot of its main services left the country. google came out and they sort of presented this as we are standing up to totalitarianism. in fact, sergey brin, who was one of google's co-founders who was born in soviet russia, was the one who publicly talked to "the new york times" and other outlets at the time and presented this as a value-based stand against censorship. so google has its history for a long time of sort of standing up for the freedom of expression, freedom of the internet. and there has been a lot of employees there, both current and former, who have said that the current management has changed significantly from the past.

>> briefly, if google did make a decision to not operate in russia because of this, if they pulled out of russia in the way they pulled out of china, particularly if russia is going to say you have to have employees here in order to operate here, and, by the way, we'll threaten to arrest them whenever you don't do what we want, if they chose to pull out of russia, would it cost them a lot of money? is russia a big revenue generator for them? >> so they don't disclose their revenue in russia. there are estimates that the country, from what i've seen, google's primarily a digital advertising company. russia is a little under $4 billion in total advertising spend to give you a sense of small fragment of what google is earning. youtube alone just in one quarter made $7 billion. and, you know, but youtube is a really interesting phenomenon where navalny called it his beloved youtube. he and a lot of other opposition figures and dissidents in russia have used youtube where the state media has blocked them out. now youtube could clearly continue to operate.

google could decide just not to make any advertising and they could go out and say we're providing a service to russians we think important. thus far the company thinks that the financial benefits of remaining there are clearly outweighing the costs. >> unsustainable. i won't put that on you. i won't ask you to respond to it, but to me it's absolutely unsustainable. mark bergen, reporter for bloomberg technology. thank you for helping us understand this. it's a pleasure to have you. >> thank you so much. appreciate it. >> we'll be right back. stay with us. some wireless carriers box your whole family into the same plan, so you're probably paying for things you don't need! bananas! not verizon. sarah, you don't need to download games. your game is watching british people bake. esther just wants to live stream leg day.

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that is going to do it for us tonight. we'll see you again tomorrow night, which i have a feeling is going to be just as nuts. "way too early" is up next. ♪♪ the house committee investigating the january 6th insurrection subpoenas four of donald trump's closest advisers. when it comes to the run-up on the riot on capitol hill, the question is what did they know and when did they know it? plus sometimes you hear critics of congress say, just shut it all down. that might actually happen. the question is why. and an amazing discovery in the deserts of new mexico, fossilized human footprints are rewriting history dating back to the ice age. the question is how cool is that? it's "way too early" for this. ♪♪