meeting them where they are, and getting them where they want to be. faster. vmware. welcome change. hi there, everyone. 4:00 in new york. this will go down as the week that the threads of donald trump's war against the democracy he led in 2020 revealed themselves most fullsomely. evidence revealed how the allies operationalized the plot to overturn the election results at the federal, state and local level and how they began to prepare for january 6. not just the violence but the plot to invalidate president biden's victory with alternate slates of electors as outlined in the east marn memo.

that scheme to set up fake trump electors to be counted and certified is likely under criminal by the justice department and by the january 6 select committee. "the new york times" has now unearthed two brand new documents that the trump campaign is directly tied to. the scheme. quote, 15 days after election day in 2020 a lawyer for the trump campaign in wisconsin received a memo with the audacious strategy to put in slates of electors in slates where donald trump was trying to overturn the loss. the memo and another one three weeks later are among the earliest known efforts to put on paper proposals for prepares electors jat the heart of the strategy the idea that the real deadline is not december 14th when official electors are

chosed but january 6 when congress would meet and the second memo uncovered by "the new york times" dated december 9 between the same attorneys lays out everything the fake trump electors needed to do to present themselves as real electors. that memo describes all the hurdles and the necessary steps not just for fake electors in wisconsin but in 6 of the battleground states where they met. the memo concludes by saying this. quote it apyres that voting by an alternate state electors is unproblematic in arizona and wisconsin slightly problematic in michigan. somewhat dicey in georgia and p.a. in the event that one or more electors don't attend requires gubernatorial

ratification and very problematic in nevada. this is the springboard by rudy giuliani and attorney john eastman who wrote the infamous memo explaining how vice president pence could use the slate of electors to stop the vote from being certified january 6. new evidence of the trump campaign to set up fake electors is where we start the hour. garrett haake is here and neil katyal, now a georgetown law professor and yamiche alcindor is back. neal, the danger is you see evidence that it sees to erase questions of a closed sish kit

but appears the evidence of memos and the connection back to the plot which is also on paper from trump campaign lawyer john eastman who sat in the oval with trump and pence closes the circuit once and for all. >> i agree. it would be malpractice to ignore donald trump's role in this and bears repeating after what trump said over did weekend. we wouldn't have the news reports about the memos and the january 6 committee with multiple criminal investigations if he accepted the outcome like the nine other losing incumbent presidents before him. if he westerned anything from the january 6 investigation there's all roads lead to an unpublished memos. between these memos and unthe signed executive order the trump

administration was basically narrating its own flirtation with authoritarianism. the documents of today are kind of like voiceovers saying and then then someone had a worse idea and here's what it is, the memos. >> i want to read from the memo about how important january 6 was to the plot to over turn the result because i think we focus on the horrific scenes of law enforcement officials being brutally beaten. combat described as medieval after the fact by the officers but this is what it was really about. there is a very strong argument supported by precedent that the real deadline for a finding by the wisconsin courts in favor of the president is not december 8th. not even december 14th.

but january 6, the date the senate and house meet for the counting over electoral votes. they pledge to trump and pence meet and cast the votes on december 14 unless by then the race is conceded. you were covering the days and this is the most fullsome look at what was being sort of rigged under the surface of trump's ugliness. it was not an accident or a temper tantrum but the plot to overturn the election result. >> it was not a temper tantrum and just tweets. these revolutions underscore what lawmakers both republicans when you look at liz cheney and democrats with bennie thompson is that we don't know what really went into trying to

overturn an american election in 2020. we think we know because former president trump so blatant in the language and the tweets. let's remember a first american president in history to declare he won an election on election night when he had not won but we see the memos are laying out the scheme and how deep it went. both of course coming to sending the fake electors to try to steal the election, but also, "the washington post" reporting with the nsa and trying to use the most powerful tools the government has to try to make a false point about the fact he won and he had not won and lost the election. and then thinking about all of the news to learn about local officials, past the phone call leaked by brad raffenspenger.

former president trump called michigan officials to the white house and what was dangled in front of them and the pressure putt there? all those questions we don't know, including the different things the president was saying and the memos underscore while we think we know the story and how bad things were they were so much worse than we could imagine. >> another thing and i think about this all the time not just in two hours but the other 22, as well. there's so much that's public facing. we don't know what the doj is doing trying to plug a senior official out no mention the president into the criminal acts but the 1/6 commit tee is doing and that what they have been able to plug the president and the xheef of staff came from mark meadows' document dump.

i want to read about the contents and did conduct in these memos revealed today. memos received messages of efforts to encourage republican legislators to send alternate slates to congress, a plan a member of congress acknowledges is highly controversial and mr. me do es responded i love it responding to a similar message saying we are and another such message saying, yes. have a team on it. if the chief of staff described a team on it and i love it the white house chief of staff green lit said project. what is the status of mark meadows as a witness and a subject or target of a criminal investigation? >> reporter: i can't speak for the doj to think about meadows but the january 6 committee still thinks he is a key figure

here and using the negative space around me dos to flesh out the role. the text messages handed over is a key piece of the puzzle and testimony from meadows top aide at the time who can help paint the picture of what meadows was up to. look. a thing to talk about so much during the trump administration is how sloppy they were about the paper and the information that got to president trump. that's the case even now. a lot of what we have been covering recently is the incoming. every kind of crazy third-degree hanger-on had a plan, an idea. and the system that would exist in a normal white house to funnel it out and keep it away from the president and the chief over staff clearly not functions and catching this information and sending it down the pipe now

to the january 6 committee and gathering a ton of it. a challenge that they face is sifting out which of the crazy plots that were coming in to the building were the ones that earned the stamp of approval. and those that were filtered. >> crazy and unworkable don't seem to be the standards by which if plots held to but we'll put the question now to our next guest. joining us house january 6 select commit tee member pete aguilar of california. first your reaction to how much of the plot to overturn president biden's victory was put on paper including the memos revealed in "the new york times" to being crafted out of wisconsin and becoming the basis for the eastman memos?

>> a lot of it was put on paper. clearly as the public reporting indicates this is not something that was done at the last minute. this was coordinated effort to overturn a election why the timeline at which they had and when they started seems to be up for debate but clearly their intention is not up for debate and troubling about where we are and gathering information and in pursuit of the truth. that's what the committee is charged to do and have been doing. >> congressman, you have got the ex-president and curious if you view the tweets over did weekend as an admission overturning the election is what he wanted and putting that admission with mark meadows' tweet in the documents oif. i love it. we are. doing it, i guess, the response means with what it is which is the plots to put fake fraud

leptd electors in the serve slates what's still missing? what connective tissue do you want to see more on? >> i think there's a lot there. we are gathering that information. what we'll continue to gather is additional information to support the theories. we'll work on the timeline and the players and the levels to which the white house was actively involved. the president sought to overturn an election. whether it was by fraudulent electors or through hair-brained conspiracy theories the former president stoked that and supported that. >> the fake electors many have been subpoenaed. have scheduled or participated

in interviews with the committee yet or signaled a willingness to do so? have they happened yet? >> i can't talk about the schedule and who's kind of coming before us but there are a lot of individuals who have come before us, 475 total witness interviews. some people voluntarily or quietly and some through subpoenas. but we continue to gather that information and i would say with this group that's no different. >> two very senior aides to the former vice president have been in this week. can you characterize the cooperation as helpful, incomplete? can you tell us if they have been cooperative witnesses? >> i've seen the public reporting. i'm so sorry. i can't talk about specific folks and what they tell us and what i can say generally is

every interview even those of the past few days and weeks led to more information that we wanted to know so all are helpful to piece it together and the connective tissue that needs to be addressed between the lines of inquiry because there are multiple things to do and multiple things to seek here, not just the timeline and the fraud lent electors. there's a lot there and gathering that information and have been helpful to clarify or corroborate other things that we know or have heard. >> i respect that you can't speak about those things. we have to try. i have a question about another piece of the ex-president's remarks dangling pardons. have you detected any change in posture pertaining to testimony or document production since that offer was made to the 1/6

subjects and targets and defendants by donald trump? >> we have issued public subpoenas for evenings engaged in the insurrection on january 6. i can't talk act what we have heard and gathered but the tweet he posed or the threat and offer base chris of a pardon is deeply dangerous. i think it crossed the line. i think there are significant problems with it. but what he did is what he's done consistently and say the quiet part out loud just like telling the world that vice president pence was supposed to overturn the election. he wanted to put this out there with pardons to help -- to presumably ice the efforts and investigations. we'll continue to proceed swiftly. >> liz cheney made the point that he will do it again.

recidivism seems like an effort to wake republicans perhaps up from the stupor about the threat he posed. have you had any republicans have a change of heart that you are interested in talking to and say, look, i'll come tell you what i know? >> i think broadly i'm surprised there haven't been more republican colleagues across the aisle to say they're scared about this. where's the floor these days? when is enough enough? asking for 11,780 votes that wasn't enough for colleagues. they seek the endorse. . they want his support. it's tough to know where the floor is these days. it is incredibly difficult but i haven't heard any of that

specific chatter of colleagues having a change of heart. >> there's a meeting with u.s. senators of nsa information that's so shocking. we need more two hours to talk about that. have the people who have been reported on in recent days been asked to come talk to you? >> i'm not going to get into the specifics of individuals. it is a robust calendar. the investigative team is top notch. we are working through a lot of these details and this before the public reports and will continue to redouble those efforts. this is a top notch team of lawyers working with us and the members are committed to doing this and getting it right so that's why we won't be deterred by any tweet or threat. we continue to do the job and to

tell the whole and complete truth and make sure it doesn't happen again. if given the opportunity the former president said what he'd do, using the levers of government to effectuate the result that he wanted and not the result that the american public wanted. >> congressman, thank you for fielding the questions today. we are grateful. >> thank you. >> we'll talk about that and more when we come back and discussing the fallout from the ex-pfrt's pardon dangling. plus, the president of the united states is in new york city today holding a summit on combatting gun violence. balanced with a message for some much needed police reform with the backing of the mayor.

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potentially? >> far less likely to cooperate and probably more likely to proceed to a trial. >> that was robert jenkins, attorney for multiple january 6 defendants saying of course donald trump's suggestion to pardon the insurrectionists if elected in 2024 and he could just say he was talking to the impact on cases moving forward. neal, what can be done about this? the offer to pardon the defendants is out there. what is the remedy? >> well, the remedy is obstruction of justice. donald trump has one dance move which is to dangle the pardons with the hopes to silence people. that's what he did with ukraine and last time bill barr was the head of the justice department. now it's merrick garland. someone who's doing that with an active information going on is criminal and president doesn't have a claim he was doing it as

part of the commander in chief powers but a private citizen saying i'll do this if i'm elected and to try to stop the truth from coming out and a pardon is like a hard hat. if someone offers you one pre-emptively beware of falling rocks. you tried to get the congressman to give you specifics but he didn't do that. he's acting exactly as an investigator should and one thing i suspect the committee is looking at today are these two different reports about intelligence abuse. one, "the washington post" story today that yamiche referenced and also a "the new york times" story on monday talking about national security finding from the world of covert operations, something i used to be involved with as a young justice department law and nothing more sacred than a national security

finding. the idea that people around trump trying to use the suite of authorities to try and rig a -- to try to overturn an election, it is incomprehensible. like church and state the findings. they're supposed to be absolutely pristine for the best of reasons so i suspect the committee is looking hard at that. >> is the justice department looking hard at something that pristine and should they be? >> i think they have to. i don't think that there's a choice at this point. even if there's all these allegations that well maybe these are lone actors but as garret was saying all the crazy ideas got to the president and the one way in which it might partially disagree is i don't think it's a bug of the white house. this is a feature. donald trump was like a high

school debater. just looking for a source to support a claim no matter how propostrous. he wanted that brought to him and i think the justice department has to look at that. >> garrett, i'll let you respond. but let me add another question to this. the committee is clearly inside the oval office. the congressman wouldn't be -- probably doesn't want to characterize the level of cooperation. the most senior aides to the vice president have cooperated and had no choice. >> reporter: yeah. >> where are the holes for this probe? the congressman said they want to firm up or add to the information and all the connective tissue is publicly available between the fake electors, the extremists,

eastman, rudy. where are the gaping holes in your opinion? >> reporter: to neal's point i agree. it was a feature. in most modern white houses the goal of controlling the flow of paper to the president is like one of the key things to improve decision making. trump threw that out from the get-go. the holes i think are these. whatever happened with the effort to secure testimony from members of congress. this committee asked for the testimony of several mens a couple weeks ago and intimated to pursue other means to get them to testify. after the refusals we have heard nothing more about that. ohs have not been publicly invited to testify. and then i think to me the pence side of this is so critical and may frankly provide the

committee everything they need to know about the pressure campaign and might not need the close donald trump advisers but folks like ivanka trump, the invitation supposed to be for this week. we believe it's not happening this week but the people very close to then president trump may have information that can't come from pence world or may not but you have not heard significant follow-up on trying to compel that testimony and there's work to be done in this space. >> this is what the committee has obtained. heard from 475 witnesses. their 60,000 pages of records and 700 plus pages of trump documents. the upcoming depositions, this week february 3rd or 4th or next

week, ivanka. rudy giuliani, jenna ellis, sidney powell, boris epstein. what's the sense of the committee strategy going into some of these deadlines which as most people expect them to be missed are -- how they react will be a way by which folks will judge their teeth. >> based on my conversations with people familiar with how this will proceed it seems that lawmakers are saying we'll go after the people. they're voluntarily for now invitations to come before the committee. a question of whether or not to turn into subpoenas and compel witnesses and those who are closest to him and also the people we saw on tv mostly really trying to convince the public that this was something that this -- trying the steal election is palpable and should

be done. when you think of sidney powell. i think the thing that continues to be interesting to me is bennie thompson the chair of the commit tee talking about the black box from inside the white house i still think about the fact standing on the white house lawn and watching people break into the capitol that there's this big lull trying to get to sources and about what the president thought about the violence on the day and spent time as we should talking about the conspiracy and how many legs and how many tentacles that it had and who were the people helping former president trump trying to overthrow the elections and sort of a thing that's unknown is continuously still basics of what in the world was the president doing as lawmakers were running for their lives. i'm interested in that moment.

>> if you look at the crime of the insurrection itself those 187 minutes will be the topic of documentaries for our lives to the point that this does seem to be the most opaque period of exactly what trump was saying on the phone. it is also representing the period at which for 187 minutes the interest of mccarthy and mitch mcconnell and every member of congress and the vice president separated. there was no security at the white house. i was at the white house and told to take off the shoes and run at 9/11. you weren't evacuated. >> no. >> there was no sense a danger at the white house and yet -- >> none. >> i don't know. you know? not a very long walk down the

mall. it was medieval in the words of those defending the building. >> yeah. no. i think that's right. when the hbo movie is made they'll probably call it "187 minutes." the end of the story epa i don't think it's the most important part and i was here for the 187 minutes and as bad as they were i think the reporting coming out and the work the committee is doing that's so important is like everything from election day to january 6, that's the missing piece. i said this before. we know pretty well what happened on january 6. broad strokes are not a mystery but the efforts behinds the scene are and that's the most important part. i want to give a sense of this on how the depositions come together, those schedules are a guide at best. that is like the most optimistic

possible calendar to look at here. even for folks subpoenaed or who we have reported have been subpoenaed and they don't see the subpoenas for weeks, scoping sessions that happen with attorneys. attorneys have to be hired and the committee understand that. they put them down on a calendar for structure but my basis is to look and then stretch out a couple of weeks for the logistical reasons alone to make them happen. that is frequently the case with witnesses of big, bold-faced names like jeffrey clarke and the folks that the vast majority of viewers don't recognize but among the hundreds that came in quietly. >> what do we know about the hours before the committee of

jeffrey clarke yesterday? >> very little. he likely took the fifth to the questions. he appeared in person which i think is noteworthy. a lot of these folks when they didn't want to do so have appeared remotely. helps appear without being seen and gets the heat off of them on thank you they address the questions. that he came in in person means something and i don't know what yet and confounds me. >> neal? >> the commit tee probably insisted on it. you try to insist on a face to face meeting. jeffrey clark is at the center of this stuff. if i were his lawyer i would tell him to come in and take the

fifth often and repeatedly. >> did i cut someone off? >> reporter: so many of these witnesses have been virtual. there might be a sliding scale of importance or the necessity of reading evasiveness. >> neal? you want to explain that to us? >> yeah. they can't obviously bring everyone in and going to be limited resources and want to insist on that face to face for the more serious stuff. jeffrey clark is among the most serious. could be anyone to testify virtually can but having been on investigations if you can bring someone in in person it is a different experience just like sitting with you at the desk opposed to in my house. >> isn't that the truth? thank you so much. i can see you even not on camera and tell when someone is dealing

with the dog or looking at the phone and nobody here ever is. >> never. >> thank you. president biden is in new york city right now as we speak. like many cities across the country new york city has seen a spike in gun violence. the president is here with his attorney general and local leaders with a plan to keep the public feeling more safe. we'll talk about that next. abot at vanguard, you're more than just an investor, you're an owner

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issues of crime and public safety in this country are complex. both from a data perspective and a plit cap one. the series of causes and effect at play takes days to unravel. let's focus on what's happening in new york right now. overall crime is up 38% in new york city. shootings are up 32%. transit crimes 70%. car thefts 93%. of course, perspective here is crucial. "the new york times" points out that there were 488 homicides last year. far, far cry from what the city experienced in the '90s with 2,000 murders in a sickle year. but make no mistake there's the least among everyone you talk to a feeling that crime right now is an urgent issue. part of that might come from the tragic heart breaking reality in the images that ensued across

broadcast networks here and the country like what we saw yesterday when for the second time in five days thousands including nypd officers gathered in manhattan to pay respects to officer mora who was along with his partner officer rivera killed while responding to a domestic violence call. the poll in early january reveals that 24% of voters very or somewhat satisfied with policies reduce or congressman crime down from 47% from 2 years ago. the biggest dropoff of republican voters with dissatisfaction with a president they don't support. republicans are eager to cast democrats soft on crime and suggest that president biden is complicit for the rise of crime. they will frame counter to the

goals of cracking down on crime and violence. fully aware of that effort to distort president biden today traveled to new york city to meet with the city's new mayor. listen. >> you know, mayor adams, you and i agree. to abandon the streets is not the answer. the answer is to come together. police in communities. building trust and making us all safer. the answer is not to defund the police but to give you the tools, the training, the funding to be partners, protectors and community needs you. know the community. >> joining us is former commission bill bratton and reverend al sharpton. your thoughts on the visit and the mess and from the president?

>> i thought that it is important that we give the message that he gave about dealing with the proliferation of guns. i think the fact that they done a lot on saying that they had the attorney general there to deal with gun trafficking was important. none are manufactured in the inner cities that we see the spike in crime and that they are going to deal with gun trafficking. i think that we have to be careful that as we deal with this that we not go back in to things that in any way, shape or form violated people's civil liberties and rights that's proven not to be effective in fighting crime. when we say to the president and to the mayor who was with us and testified in that regard, that stop and frisk is biassed, when

we say that it is not only biassed and wrong, it was proven went down as we brought down stop and frisk and can't go to something easy to grab that's ineffective in dealing with the gun violence. none of us condone what happened to the policemen or what happens every day in the communities where we see even youngsters gunned down. the question is how we imagine policing in a way that effectively deals with crime and same time protects peoples' rights. >> commissioner bratton, the new mayor is dealing with questions on gun violence and frankly the tragedies of two families of the fallen officers. >> does defunding the police work? >> no, it does not and the wrong

buncher stick every. we need to do an analysis of the police agencies. look and see how many people are doing law enforcement jobs. i have too many police officers doing clerical duties. i need you to put on the vers and do the job that you were hired to do. protect us against violent people. >> your thoughts? >> described as the political hashtag in terms of defund the police movement that's movered back which is good. need to re-fund them to train them. in the 21st century the new responsibilities are huge and the traditional responsibilities of dealing with the mentally ill, the drug addicted are still there and dealing with terrorism and technology. so re-funding the police is

essential and somewhat what the president was getting to today why the issue is the discussion of guns. nice what they talk about. that will have some impact but with 440 million guns in the country they're here. we can stop some from coming in. the issue is who has guns in their hands and using them and what's happening to them when they use them? that's the problem at this time. it's city after city and why you see the rising rates of crime in city after city. demoralized and diminished police. you have prosecutors in many cities not prosecuting for some of these crimes. certainly in new york. we need to do a total rethinking of what we're trying to do here. clearly what we are doing at the moment is not working with the rising crime rates. need to identify who is committing the crime. get them before prosecutors and judges willing to basically

penalize them appropriately for shootings and the mayhem. new york city is a city in fear. i have not seen it this bad since 1990 when i got here and we changed that so by 2018 the safest quad city in america and then the political leadership, coronavirus, the controversies that erupted basically changed that dramatically in two year's time. let's hope we can change it just as dramatically. i'm not optimistic. it takes a lot of work. >> let's put up what the president proposed today. directing offices to boost violent crime strategies. cracking down on the iron pipeline. pursuing unlawful gun sellers. the problem is as identified demoralized police and judges

and prosecutors. seems like a mismatch. the policies and the problems that exist. >> i think that what we must do is we must first of all when we deal with some of the prosecutors, when i -- a lot of people have been questioning the manhattan district attorney. what he is saying is don't deal with petty crimes. i don't think anybody has said don't prosecute gun crimes and shooting and killing people including police. i think what we have to do is start having a real honest dialogue and stop distorting what people are saying to get to the mid ground and get to where we can agree because all of us are under the same seed. community policing was started many years ago and went on from there. it worked. it brought crime down. under the first few years of deblasio in the stop and frisk

and community policing and bratton was part of that. if you look at the formulas that work and not try to resurrect formulas kind of relationship and hostility between police and community, i think that grown folks need to talk about what really can work and what really has worked. why did some things work in the city of new york, in the cities around the country and other things didn't? it's best when community and police work together and when police and community know each other and build a trust. you cannot do that if we see each other as each other's enemy and foes or blame one on the other. what happened to these two policemen is an absolute horrific incident in this city that should be deplore police department by everyone.

we need to say that and say it openly but we also need to say that when police act in an excessive way, and we need to stand up on both sides and say, how do we bring this together? >> we'll give commissioner bratton the last word on the other side of a quick break. eth? >> we'll give commissioner bratton the last word on the other side of a quick break. mm. [ clicks tongue ] i don't know. i think they look good, man. mm, smooth. uh, they are a little tight.

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chest pain, stroke or mini-stroke, heart failure in the last 6 months, irregular or abnormal heartbeat not corrected by a pacemaker, if you have untreated severe breathing problems during your sleep, or if you take medicines called maois. zeposia may cause serious side effects including infections that can be life-threatening and cause death, slow heart rate, liver or breathing problems, increased blood pressure, macular edema, and swelling and narrowing of the brain's blood vessels. though unlikely, a risk of pml--a rare, serious, potentially fatal brain infection--cannot be ruled out. tell your doctor about all your medical conditions, medications, or if you are or plan to become pregnant. if you can become pregnant, use birth control during treatment and for 3 months after you stop taking zeposia. don't let uc stop you from doing you. ask your doctor about once-daily zeposia. we're back with bill bratton and the reverend al sharpton. commissioner bratton, as promised, to you, some time to respond, but i want to bring

your expression of the lack of optimism. i mean, the truth is, from new york city to philadelphia to san francisco to l.a., people are terrified. the president seems to recognize that reality among the public as well as the political threat that rising crime presents to him. what advice would you give him? what can be done? >> well, it was ironic that in the discussion today, understanding the president wanted to focus on gun crime, which is of great concern, the murders, and shootings and what role the federal government can play and he needs to be applauded for once again prioritizing that issue, it is the number two issue in the country based on latest polls, but my lack of optimism is the fact that this crisis could have been avoided, but it was created by our political leadership and cities and states around the country and embedded by many of these district attorneys who are embracing this idea of, while trying to reform the criminal justice system, they've prioritized the rights of the

defendants over the rights of the victims and so in the case of new york city, there was an incredible reluctance to put people in jail. unfortunately, they were bad people in our society and need to be in jail. there are people who are emotionally sick that need to be treated better than they have been, and we have the narcotics addicted who are engaged in so much of the quality of life crime that is so fearful to so many people. this is what eric adams is trying to do, and i applaud him, he's trying to find common ground to get everybody on to that common ground to discuss all of these issues. what was the cause? what was the reaction? how do we get out of it? we've done this before. this is not the -- i'll be frank with you. it's not rocket science. i was able to do it on the subways in '90 in new york, '94 as the first time as commissioner and as the reverend al pointed out, the first three years with de blasio, crime continued to go down to 2018, and then in 2019, the new york state legislature basically put through bail reform, criminal

justice reform and other measures. the wheels fell off the wagon. in two years time, the work of 25 years was overturned, and the reverend pointed out that we had been successful during the de blasio years of significantly reducing stop, question, and frisk, which was a particular point of concern in the minority communities but from criminal justice reforms of the legislature did not take into account how good things were. >> it's something that we'll continue to talk about. i appreciate both of you for your candor. to be continued. my thanks to bill bratton and the reverend al sharpton. bill's book, "the profession: a memoir of community, race, and the arc of policing in america" is out now. race, and the arc of policing in america" is out now .

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there's no foreign power that is flipping votes. there's no domestic actor flipping votes. i did it right. we did it right. this was a secure election. >> hi again, everyone, it's 5:00 in new york. we heard it there from the man in charge, in charge of keeping our elections safe and secure. there was no interference, foreign or domestic, in the 2020 elections. yet, in the wake of his big loss, donald trump's allies looked for any possible thread or data point, true or not true, none of them were true, to use as justification for why the results, his loss, should be overturned. brand-new reporting in the "washington post" peels back the layers on one desperate and terrifying scheme, one that sets itself apart from other attempts

for the volume of ethical and legal questions it raises. "the washington post" obtained a memo from december 18th, 2020, outlining the plan and writes this. quote, the memo used the banal language of government bureaucracy, but the proposal it advocated was extreme. president donald trump should invoke the extraordinary powers of the national security agency and defense department and sift through raw electronic communications in an attempt to show that foreign powers had intervened in the 2020 election to help joe biden win. we don't know at this hour who wrote that, who authored this memo, but what it boils down to is that allies of donald trump wanted to use what many consider the most sort of sacred kind of intelligence our country gathers from the intelligence community to find information that would help the loser flip the election back to his favor. allies of the same losing ex-president who a few years

earlier would side with vladimir putin and his word over the findings of his own intelligence community when it said there had been foreign interference in 2016 by russia. it's almost funny how that worked out, right? and even more proof to show how ridiculous this nsa data attempt was, just days before the memo circulated on december 3, 2020, trump nominated a brand-new director of national intelligence, john ratcliffe, and said this. >> does the intelligence show that any foreign adversary or criminal group had the ability to change the vote results? >> not that we have been able to determine. now, at this point in time -- >> it wasn't any on the 3rd. so then why by the 18th, were trump allies searching for proof of something that did not exist? those details the fervor in trump world at that time, more from the reporting, quote, the december 18th memo was just one in a swirl of last-ditch efforts

to prevent joe biden's legitimate victory from being recognized as trump and his backers grew more desperate after the courts rejected their claims of fraud. some of his allies mounted a series of efforts to get the memo into trump's hands in his full-time days in office, according to people familiar with the attempts, although no evidence has emerged to suggest they succeeded. quoted, that period in time was amateur hour with people who did not know trump or had never met with trump before in their lives attempting to get into the oval office to do investigations that the rest of the government had examined and had said there was no evidence for. that's according to michael pilsbury. amateur hour as the administration sought to overturn the election is where we start this hour. jackie is here, her byline is on that extraordinary piece of reporting in the "washington post," jonathan lemire, the host of msnbc's "way too early," also an msnbc contributor.

and the former deputy national security advisor to president obama and msnbc contributor ben rhodes is here. jackie, i've now read this twice. my last time around was with a blue pen and i underlined every paragraph. take us through what you're reporting. >> yeah, nicole, you set it up pretty perfectly, but basically, this was the latest in the spaghetti at the wall attempts that we've uncovered in the effort sustained by trump allies to persuade the president and other high-level officials to take extraordinary measures to overturn the results of the election. in this attempt specifically, it's a little bit different than these previous attempts that the "new york times" and politico has reported for a few different reasons. one, it actually wanted to employ the government's military and intelligence powers, seize raw data, analyze it, determine if there was foreign interference, and from there, then potentially take actions pending those findings. and then, on top of it, some of the people that were involved in

this memo, names and email addresses listed on it, included a man named frank cologne, who is actually still currently a senior lawyer in the u.s. military. this is the first time, i believe, that any reporting has shed some light on people who were involved in sort of the mainstream channels of the administration and not just these part of the outside legal cabal of sidney powell, mike lindell. we know that u.s. senators were briefed on some of these ideas on january 4th at the trump hotel. that included senators kevin kramer, cynthia loochls, ron johnson, who zoomed in. while they ultimately were not super persuaded by the arguments made by sidney powell, mike lindell, some of these other fringe figures that were present at this meeting, they were jammed into a little conference room in the trump hotel ahead of the january 6th certification of the electoral votes, they --

sources who were in the room did relay to the "post" that ultimately, those presenting wanted the senators to try to escalate and elevate this proposal as soon as possible. >> jackie, i want to -- there's so much. i want to unpack all of it. let's start with the three men who were attached to the plan to use intercept data, which is, again, i worked in the government for six years. it is often considered the most sensitive -- among the most sensitive data collected and used. i believe you have to have the highest level of clearances to even consume it on any kind of regular basis inside the government. but this memo by trump's allies, one of whom is still in the military, and the military says this about an investigation done. i wonder if they've read your piece. the results of an investigation found no evidence that any individual assigned to nscom acted inappropriately they said with respect to the election. you have to let us know if that

remains the case, jackie, as folks digest this reporting. but the three men were going to have intercept data consumed and culled through for the purpose of fabricating intelligence that didn't make its way into any intelligence analysis presented to policymakers and then they wanted to use that to buy time. i mean, jackie, the throughline is the time. the time that they wanted to stop the certification, and i wonder if you can speak to how these three men and one of them still in the army ended up on that mission to stop the transfer of power. >> so, that is something that we are still trying to figure out. this reporting also surfaces these names for the first time that they were actually working in coordination with each other. we did see frank cologne's name actually photographed by our very talented photographer,

jason, in that december/january time period after the election, and mike lindell walked into the oval office and was holding some papers that said, frank cologne, across the paper. it was visible in those photographs but we didn't really have a sense of why lindell was presenting his name to the president and what exactly was happening in those meetings. we also know that michael flynn, at least personally, invited one lawmaker and their staff. we know that michael flynn was involved with sidney powell in some capacity but it's still unclear how the rest of these players were all connected with one another, and i think it's one more level of stratification, i think, you and i were talking about this a few days ago, of the level of conspiracy theorists. there was the outside legal team, rudy giuliani, which was maybe the least fringe-y. then there was michael flynn and sidney powell and now we're seeing the emergence of a whole new tier of players that were

also trying to get involved with these efforts. >> is there any indication -- i want to read this from the story. the nsa collects a broad range of electronic data including text messages, phone calls, emails, social media posts and satellite communications. by law, the nsa cannot target a u.s. person's communication without a court order. i mean, because they were looking for evidence of foreign interference, i'm guessing this -- there's no evidence at this point that it escalated to anyone trying to get a court order to tie this back to any u.s. persons, is that right? they simply wanted this raw, i guess, intercept data about a foreign power to see some machines? is that how the plot went? >> we don't know how far this might have gone although we did get a comment from the pentagon that this proposal was never presented to anyone, at least to leadership, and it wasn't -- certainly wasn't implemented. one of the consistent themes that we keep seeing in all of the reporting about the

president, the former president's attempts to overturn the election is trying to find some sort of foreign interference as a potential basis to go through with the seizing of voting machines or to sort of provide the rationale to operationalize the push to block the electoral certification, that if someone could prove in some way that china, venezuela, you know, all of these countries that you have heard come out of the mouths of mike lindell and michael flynn publicly and privately, if that could be substantiated by potentially, in this scheme, analyzing raw data, then, you know, some of these other schemes might be able to be executed, because there was now sort of a potentially legal basis, at least in the view of these players. former nsc staffer, richard

higgins, who was let go even in the trump white house, which i think is pretty notable, for his anti-muslim views and then frank colon, the current military lawyer, along with michael del rosso, a former congressional candidate in virginia. >> so, ben, this week, we have learned that trump had his hands on a plan to corrupt d.o.d., doj, and dhs for the explicit purpose of seizing voting machines. what we're learning here is that among trump's allies, it is still unclear if this got into trump's hands, but that his allies sought to corrupt the nsa for the purposes of overturning the election. what do we do now? >> well, you know, nicole, this is precisely the scenario that we in the obama years had to spend years trying to assure people could not take place after the snowden disclosure. people know that the nsa collects a vast amount of data,

including text messages, phone numbers, metadata, and we really had to drive home to people that you cannot access that without probable cause and a court order and that's only done in cases of terrorism investigations, but the point is that this is kind of the holy grail of the potential abuse of power on top of the vast powers of the u.s. government. and i think one of the things that's been troubling and the revelations around january 6th is how much trump, who as president constantly pushed bash yerz and broke barriers in some places but didn't really get his arms around the vast kind of surveillance capacity of the united states government. he didn't fully figure out how to weaponize the fact that he was sitting on top of the most powerful intelligence community in the history of the world. and what we're seeing is a greater openness from trump to those ideas when his own political future was on the line and a group of fringe characters who had no qualms whatsoever about doing it. what worries me, nicole is, yes, we have to get to the bottom of

where did this information go? did anybody act on it? did anybody abuse these powers in the run-up to january 6th? but also, nicole, these are the stakes for the next election, because something tells me that if donald trump or someone like him, frankly, is able to get back into the white house, he's more likely to be surrounded from the get-go by fringe characters like this who have gone along with his idea of stopping the steal, and we could be looking at a scenario where it's not a donald trump who's walking into the oval office in january of 2017 with really no idea what he's doing and he's turning to generals and people who are conventional republican figures to staff his white house. to me, this points to the danger of the next time. what if they get in there from the get-go, with the most fringe characters around him, with him willing to break all these norms, as he's already demonstrated, and then suddenly we have the beginning of a presidency in which someone is willing to do the unthinkable and turn the vast capacities of the nsa or the u.s. government or the defense department or the intelligence community to his

own personal political benefit. that is something that we have only seen, you know, ad hoc cases, extreme cases in this country's history, dark cases like richard nixon and others, but kind of systematizing that, that's the worst case scenario. >> take my breath away with the thought of it happening in the future, and i mean, i think, jonathan lemire, it's frankly your line of questioning in helsinki that revealed how little he thought of his own intelligence community. if only he read a memo on what they were capable of, he might have taken their word over vladimir putin's. my question for you is about the three u.s. senators who were briefed on this plan to use intercept data to stall the certification of what lifetime republican chris krebs called the most secure election in its history, what loyal bush -- not bush -- loyal trump a.g. bill barr walked away from. three u.s. senators were apparently briefed on this memo. did they do anything?

are you aware of any efforts on any of their office's part to show what they saw or know about the 1/6 committee, jonathan? >> not that we're aware of yet, to piggyback on jackie and her team's excellent reporting. they seemed fairly unconvinced by what they were shown, but there's also no suggestion that they blew the alarm on it either and came to the conclusion that it was inappropriate. and it goes to show just the extreme levels that so many in the trump orbit were willing to take to entertain his false claims of election fraud and in some cases, go along with the scheme to try to keep him in power or at the very least, sow so much doubt about the integrity of the election during the transition that either the scheme would work on january 6th where perhaps some results would be deemed invalid and maybe, maybe vice president pence, then vice president pence, would go along with it, and not certify

the results of those seven battleground states, which at the time, if you stripped them out, would have given trump more electoral college votes than biden, not the 270, but more, and that would keep him, they believed, in power, or the very least would so cripple joe biden from the get-go that his presidency would be deemed invalid and doomed from the start. but to ben's point, it's a good one, that it did -- for most of his time in office, trump belittled the federal bureaucracy and cast doubt about the skills of the intelligence community. yes, in helsinki, most famously, but throughout. he repeatedly attacked the fbi, attacked the cia, attacked the government that worked for him, believing they were conspiring against him and had he come to the conclusion earlier in his term that he could use those agencies on his behalf, try to weaponize them, we might have been in very different place, maybe the election and the transition don't turn out the way it did. maybe we even have a greater

constitutional crisis than we faced and certainly an ominous warning for the future. >> jonathan, our friend, joyce vance, tweeted this. an important takeaway from this reporting. it takes time for all of this information to surface. conduct that looks questionable but legal can take shape as overt acts in a conspiracy. understanding the whole ball of wax surfaces evidence of who led the plan, investigations take time. what's your sense, jonathan, of where the committee is in terms of referring something broader than the specific criminal acts at the end of their probe but something bigger and more all encompassing like a conspiracy? >> i mean, that seems to be, reading tea leaves and talking to people involved with the committee, that seems like where this is going, to try to construct a case of conspiracy up against the president and his closest aides. but to joyce's insightful tweet, investigations take time. but this committee only has so

much of it. it does not have unlimited time. do we know what's going to happen this november with the midterm elections? no, we don't. there is a chance the democrats will hold control of the house. of course there's a chance. but historical trends run against them and joe biden -- president biden's current mediocre poll numbers also hurt, so certainly, if republicans were to regain control in november, there's a widely held belief they would immediately scuttle the work of this commission, so therefore, they need to get this done before then, and some lawmakers, and this includes some democrats, feel like it needs to be done even by early fall, ahead of the midterms so it's not what everyone is talking about right there before voters go to the polls. the committee is certainly ramped up their far more aggressive and more public phase in their probe, and there's talk of, as soon as this spring, some primetime televised hearings. we'll see if perhaps that moves the needle even further. >> jackie alemany, congratulations on this reporting. it's really shocking. and jonathan lemire, thank you, both of you, for starting us off this hour.

ben sticks around. when we come back, major victory in the war against terror, president joe biden giving the go-ahead to an operation by u.s. special forces in syria that left the head of isis did. we'll have new details on that raid after a quick break. plus, from fighting terrorism to fighting crime to exposing a potential false flag operation in ukraine, it has been a very busy day at president joe biden's white house. we're happy to have a chance to talk to white house communications director kate benning field coming up this hour. and later for us, another severe weather storm in the nation's midsection means more blackouts in the state of texas, even after a promise by that state's governor that the lights would stay on. "deadline white house" continues after a quick break. uld stay on. "deadline white house" continues after a quick break. every business is on a journey. and along the ride, you'll find many challenges.

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the united states military force has successfully removed a major terrorist threat to the world, the global leader of isis. known as abdullah. this is testament to america's reach and capability to take out terrorist threats no matter where they try to hide, anywhere in the world. i'm determined to protect the american people from terrorist threats and i'll take decisive action to protect this country. >> president joe biden addressing the nation this morning after an overnight raid by u.s. special forces in northwestern syria led to the death of the islamic state terror group's top leader, abu ibharim al hashimi al qurayshi. u.s. forces closed in. at least 13 people were killed. there were no u.s. casualties.

al qurayshi took over as the leader of isis in 2019. the raid came amid growing concerns about an isis resurgence. just last month, the group overran a prison in northern syria that held thousands of isis fighters. let's bring our coverage courtney kube. pen is still around. tell us what you know. >> we know a little bit more about this raid. as you mentioned, it was months in the making, president biden giving the go-ahead on tuesday in the oval office. the u.s. military spent months and weeks practicing this, though, getting ready for this raid last night. they moved into northwestern syria in the cover of darkness via helicopter. they sort of set down outside of this compound, outside of the objective, and they moved forward on foot. when they got there, they knew there was a very high potential for civilians to be on site, so they used bullhorns to try to convince the people inside to come out. a number of civilians did.

but before the u.s. military even set foot inside the building, there was a large explosion up on the third floor. we now know that that was the isis leader, abu qurayshi, blowing himself up. he also killed his wife and two kids. after that, one of his deputies, who was on the second floor, started firing on u.s. troops. he was killed along with one of his children and then as his wife, who was also there present on the second floor, she started firing on u.s. troops. she was killed as well. so, then, the u.s. military, as is common in these kinds of raids, they conducted some site exploitation, meaning they collected up some electronic devices and other intelligence on the site and then they moved on. now, a u.s. helicopter that was there had some sort of a maintenance issue after they landed. the u.s. blew it up there on site, but overall, the mission was a success. you know, a lot of people are talking about how daring and how dangerous this raid could potentially be. one thing that's really important to point out is why the military decided to go

forward with a raid as opposed to an air strike. that was because of the number of civilians who were there on site. those people, that family who was living there on the first floor who was able to get out, that was one of the major factors here. this is something that the u.s. military has come under a lot of attack for -- about lately, and that is civilian casualties in conflict. it's something they are very sensitive to, and this is a case where they chose this more dangerous path for the u.s. military in order to do their best to avoid civilian casualties. again, there were some civilians who may have been killed here who were there with these terror leaders at the building, nicole. >> who were then blown up by the terrorist leader. i want your thoughts. i mean, i think courtney covers this day in and day out, and ben, you probably still are in contact with people who work on these issues. just because, as a country, we're consumed with our divisions or whatever else consumes us, it is a good reminder of the sort of -- i

think the planning is probably tedious, and goes on for months and months and it is often the product of intelligence that is gathered for years and years and years, and it's only when there's something public-facing and dramatic that we see this. it is reminiscent of the images, obviously, of the successful raid and the killing of bin laden and i wonder what today's news -- what reflections you have today, ben. >> well, i think you're right, nicole. first of all, this kind of thing is usually the result of many months of work that people don't see. in which case, you get a bead on a terrorist leader like this, you're trying to track and confirm their location. then you're beginning to debate what are the ways of getting after this particular target? and frankly, moving into northwest syria, i mean, where we have been generally active with troops on the ground is in the eastern part of syria. so, this is a more complicated environment, and so you have to weigh the risks and, frankly,

bring a plan up to the national security council and the president to sign off on this type of operation, knowing that there's a risk. i mean, we rubenize these operations, nicole, that they're successes, that we do them all the time. the reality is any one of these could go wrong and we could lose american service members. this is the risk that our special forces members take on our behalf all the time and these are the risks that a president has to weigh, and clearly, this will have a positive impact on degrading isis capabilities. they have been trying to reconstitute themselves as an organization after essentially being scattered by really five years of being pulverized by the united states military and a coalition. part of being able to reconstitute is having clear and consistent leadership that can set direction. and this will further disrupt that. it's not an iconic leader in the way that even baghdadi, the predecessor, was, but a group like isis needs leadership and needs leadership in order to plan and make decisions. and the last thing i would say, nicole, from my experience in these circumstances is sometimes

that information that you get at the site can be very important. what hard drives did you pull out? we learned a lot about al qaeda and its operations from getting into bin laden's compound and taking out computers, taking out information. that's another reason why, in addition to the civilian casualty case, that you do sometimes special forces raids around really, really important terrorist leaders, because you don't just take them out. you get to learn a lot about what the current state of isis is. >> courtney, i would like your thoughts on that point, about how valuable the intelligence was, but it goes without saying that this was a promise that president biden made after u.s. troops left afghanistan, that the war against isis would continue, it would be sort of rooted in intelligence and special forces, and it seems like this is an important marker for him as well, that that strategy is indeed working. >> yeah, i mean, and ben is absolutely right about the site exploitation, and we know that they were able to gather up some

electronic device dwooiss. we don't know exactly what that was but i don't know if our viewers would remember, but after the bin laden raid, not long after that, we all saw video that those special forces, those special operators gathered up at his site and it was some of the first video that we had seen of bin laden in years, the freshest video we had seen, so it's not clear exactly what they were able to get. again, there was this massive explosion on the third floor where al qurayshi was living so it's possible some things were destroyed. the military was there on the ground for two hours, though, so there is -- it is plausible that they were able to gather up quite a bit of information while they were there. but on the overall state of isis, yes, you're absolutely right. you know, this -- qurayshi was not as much of a household name as al-baghdadi was and that was largely due to the fact that while baghdadi was in charge of isis, they held ground. they were a stronger caliphate than they were during his two-plus years as leading the

terror organization. they've not been able to gain background. they were trying to reconstitute and regroup, specifically in parts of northwestern syria. we heard about this massive prison uprising, it didn't get a whole lot of attention here in the united states, but it was -- it was an enormous battle back and forth and there were a lot of people who were killed in that uprising. the u.s. and the british military actually both helped to support the syrian democratic forces, but that being said, there is almost always another isis leader waiting in the wings here so this is not going to end isis. but it is a big blow to the terror organization. losing the person who still was the day-to-day operational leader for the organization, it's not only a symbolic loss, but it has an operational impact on their operations there in the region. >> courtney kube, thank you so much for your reporting. and ben rhodes, thank you so

much for your expertise here and to both of you, thank you for spending time with us today. when we come back, the u.s. is alleging that russia has a plan to launch a false flag operation by staging a fake attack in ukraine as a pretext for invasion. we will ask white house communications director kate bedingfield about that on what has been a busy day for the biden white house. out that on wt has been a busy day for the has been a busy day for the biden white house. ♪ breeze driftin' on by... ♪ if you've been playing down your copd,... ♪ it's a new dawn, it's a new day,... ♪ ...it's time to make a stand. starnew day with trelegy. ♪...and i'm feelin' good. ♪ no once-daily copd medicine... has the power to treat copd in as many ways as trelegy. with three medicines in one inhaler, trelegy helps people breathe easier and improves lung function. it also helps prevent future flare-ups. trelegy won't replace a rescue inhaler for sudden breathing problems. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition or high blood pressure before taking it.

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the u.s. government released alarming new evidence today that the kremlin has been planning an

elaborate disinformation plot that it could use as a pretext, a fabricated excuse for russian forces to invade ukraine. here was deputy national security advisor john finer on this network earlier today, confirming the details of that plan. >> we know this is an option under consideration that would involve, you know, actors playing mourners for people who are killed in an event that they would have created themselves. that would involve the deployment of corpses to represent bodies purportedly killed -- of people purportedly killed in an incident like this. >> that intelligence only adds to the biden administration's full plate of combatting disinformation abroad and here at home. to that point, it has accused a sitting u.s. senator, missouri's josh hawley, of, quote, digesting russian disinformation and parroting russian talking points. joining us now is kate bedingfield, white house communications director, a normal day at the white house,

right, seven crises and an isis raid that we just covered to contend with. >> as you know well, just another day here at the white house. >> i want to start with russia, and i want to ask you specifically, we cover a lot of just -- it's not even an echo. it's a direct line between putin himself, the propaganda in russia, tucker carlson, and it would appear josh hawley is the latest to parrot it by suggesting that the white house take nato off the table for ukraine. how does that complicate diplomacy and even on the harsher side, negotiations with russia to have one of the two parties and one still in the grips of the ex-president echoing the adversary's lines and not an american one? >> well, we know this is a key part of their playbook. i mean, this is something that we saw in 2014. it's something we saw in 2008 when they invaded georgia. so we know this is something. this is right -- textbook out of the russian playbook, and so you

know, our intention here is to put it on the table, to call it out, but you know, more broadly than that, i think what you have seen is president biden rally our allies around a strong sense of laying out, you know, the option for diplomacy. that is certainly our hope. our hope is that the russians will still ultimately choose diplomacy. if they don't, however, they know that there will be severe consequences. president biden has been very clear that we will impose severe economic consequences and we are united with our allies in europe on this front, so you know, i think part of what we're seeing here is something that we know that they attempt to do. but president biden has been very focused and very direct on calling it out, and ultimately, we hope that diplomacy is still the choice putin makes but if it's not, there will be severe economic consequences. >> there are also 8,500 u.s. troops have been put on heightened alert. a smaller number have been sent to eastern europe to our nato

allies and i wonder if you feel or the president feels that once troops are in the region, if it endangers them to have american senators parroting russian disinformation. >> well, i think it is certainly dangerous. it is, again, why we've undertaken the strategy as a united states government of calling this out. we are not going to shy away from being clear about what the russian government is trying to do here. we know that misinformation and disinformation like this is a key part of how they try to manipulate a situation. but i think it's also important to remember here, nicole, that president biden has not taken his eye off the ball. he's been very direct. he's been very forceful and he's made clear that if russia chooses further incursion into ukraine, there will be consequences. we saw movement of troops this week to, you know, further reinforce with our eastern flank allies that we are standing with them, but ultimately, again, at the end of the day, if president putin makes this decision, it

will be an economic disaster for russia and for the russian people. >> kate, what can you tell us about what is, by any analysis, an incredibly delicate balancing act for the president in terms of coming into cities that are seeing much higher crime than they saw just two years ago, pre-pandemic, and navigating the twin goals of achieving police reform and lowering crime? >> well, you know, nicole, he really doesn't view these two things as at odds with each other. he actually views them as fundamentally mutually required. it is necessary, if we're going to have accountable policing that is going to keep communities safe, there has to be a level of trust, and that means police officers have to have the funding that they need to do their jobs, to be able to, as president biden says, get out of the car, walk the beat, get to know the people in the neighborhood, and there has to be -- but there also has to be accountability with the police force so that the community

feels that sense of trust. so, to him, it's really these two things are really fundamental, and what he talked about today is something that he has felt for a long time, that he, frankly, talked about during the campaign when he was running for president, which is, the solution here is not to defund the police but to ensure that the police have the resources they need to do their jobs well, to make sure that they've got, for example, that there are resources for, you know, mental health experts when that's what's called for so that a police officer who's walking the beat is not required to also be a mental health expert when that's what's needed in the situation. so, he believes they need resources, but he also believes that these two things go hand in hand, and you heard him talk a lot about that today in new york. >> former new york city police commissioner bill bratton singled out lenient practices and policies and campaign pledges from big city d.a.s as central, as something -- the problem can't be solved without addressing that. what's the president's view, specifically, on manhattan d.a. alvin bragg and on those practices around the country?

>> well, he, again, he believes that accountable policing is necessary, and he also believes that officers need the resources -- that they need to have the resources to -- excuse me -- to be able to do the job well, so for him, again, these are two things that really go together. it's part of why, in the american rescue plan, that he passed early this year, there was funding for state and local governments, that he encouraged them to use for policing and frankly, that was a bill that not a single republican voted for, so that is funding to help cops, to help police forces around the country that, again, not a single republican voted for. so, he believes that this is incredibly important balance to strike, but there's no question that the rise in violent crime, the rise in gun crime around the country has been damaging for communities, and he is working hard to get it under control. >> kate, you want to explain the lights over your shoulder? we can see them on the air.

>> oh. >> in honor of the olympics, right? >> exactly. yes. sorry, i'm looking over through the camera. yes. exactly. honoring our athletes who are competing who will start competing in the winter olympics. exactly. team usa. >> it's a big day here for those of us at nbc as well. so noticed it right away. i do have a sense of how busy these days are so thank you for spending time to talk to us today. we appreciate it. >> of course. thanks for having me, nicole. switching gears for us, the last winter storm to hit the state of texas caused millions of people to lose power for days. that state's governor promised that the lights would stay on during the next big storm, but now that it's here, hasn't yet worked out that way. that story and matt dowd are next. it's rehe, hasn't yet worked out that way. that story and matt dowd are next

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at vanguard, you're more than just an investor, you're an owner with access to financial advice, tools and a personalized plan that helps you build a future for those you love. vanguard. become an owner. we have a very substantial winter storm coming in to texas over the next few days that will be in the state of texas for the remainder of the week. no one can guarantee there won't be a, quote, load shed event. >> it's deja vu in texas. that was texas governor greg abbott earlier this week saying he can't guarantee there won't be power outages in the state as it braces for another power grid failure for the second straight year. nearly 70,000 people have already been affected by power outages today in texas with more than 200,000 without power in

several states as a winter storm slams parts of this country. but it's texas's governor who is under fire once again after saying in november that he could guarantee that the lights would stay on if another storm were to hit texas. you may recall during last february's storm, tragically, 246 lives were lost, making it one of the worst natural disasters in the state of texas's history. however a buzzfeed analysis shows the actual number of dead is hundreds more. let's bring in to our conversation, our friend, matt dowd, a texas resident and political strategist, founder of country over party, also now, lucky for us, an msnbc political analyst. matt dowd, first, what's happening on the ground? >> well, it's a lot better than it was a year ago almost at this exact same time and it's not because of anything the leadership did. it's -- as of right now, 40,000 people here are without power, but millions have gone through ptsd one more time, fearing the

worst. that's why we had crowded grocery stores yesterday and crowded gas stations yesterday and people accumulating water, because there was a great fear, because they all knew nothing had been done. we got lucky so far. the next 24 hours, i important temperature is going to dip again tonight. but so far, there hasn't been a load shed event here. the outages we've had so far have been localized and especially in north texas. mainly due to ice and down power lines but not to a ability to get power so the system. but as i said, it is only because of luck. if the temperature had dipped ten more degrees, we'd be in the situation like we were last time. it didn't. and so far we haven't experienced it in that way. and so we got lucky. but one of the interesting things to come out in the last 24 hours, nicolle, which i think you'll find fascinating, is that

the two industries that have performed in the last 24 hours on providing power, are you know what, wind and solar power. wind and solar power have overperformed in the last 24 hours and wind and solar power were given no added benefit over the last year. and in fact, as you remember, they were blamed last time wrongly and they spun this lie that it was somehow renewable energy problem. that outperformed the gas industry in the last 24 hours. >> matt, just remind everybody of the root causes here and why governor abbott is linked to mother nature in texas. >> sure. so 15 years ago the state was warned, republicans were in power, not abbott but republicans were in power and they were weren'ted that an event like last year could have happened. they did nothing. ten years ago the legislature was told and the governor was

told you need to do something because a catastrophic event is going to come and they did nothing. and then last year, as you led into this. they did nothing. 700 people is the estimates died from it. and 8 million people last year were without power. 14 million people were without water last year because they were all inner related and in the aftermath they did nothing. but the problem, it is two-fold, one is the main contributors to the republicans are the industry that made billions off of what happened last time. it was the greatest transfer of wealth in texas' history. $6 billion in eight days went from rate payers to five or six power companies in that eight-day period and those five or six power companies have written 500,000 -- a million dollars checks to the governor and the other republican leadership here. and so i way it is part of that. obviously it is this open

corruption. but the other part is when you're in a system, in a state, in a jurisdiction and this goes to the broader question about the democracy, where it is uncompetitive, where there is not competition, where republicans feel like they're going to win election after election, they don't feel like they're going to be held accountable. so until you stop this open corruption and not dealing with the public policy issues that are warned in a system that is lacking competition for democrats, it is net a two-party competition, until now you're going to have this over and over and over again. any industry or any political environment that lacks competition, two things always develop. corruption and incompetence. corruption and incompetence happens when there is no kpegs. that is what has happened here and that is why, i've talked to so many texans today, they are minute midst of ptsd. every time they see ice or the

team drop, they freak out. it is like the guy that was robbed and the next time he hears a noise, he thinks it is another robbery, that is how people in texas feel today. >> you'll have to come back and explain to us why the people of texas don't think they could do better than someone who can't keep the power on. to be continued. matt dowd, thank you so much for spending time. >> to be continued. great to be with you, nicolle. >> you too, my friend. quick break for us. we'll be right back. my friend. quick break for us quick break for us we'll be right back. hey lily, i need a new wireless plan for my business, but all my employees need something different. oh, we can help with that. okay, imagine this. your mover, rob, he's on the scene and needs a plan with a mobile hotspot. we cut to downtown, your sales rep lisa has to send some files, like asap! so basically i can pick the right plan for each employee.

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some of our members started to say trump is not worth it. the question is whether the constitution is worth it. i know one thing really well. the constitution and the rule of law in american democracy. i feel like i honor him by doing the work that he would be proud of. thank you so much for letting us into your homes during these extraordinary times. we're grateful. the booet starts right now. >> thank you so much and welcome to the beat. we start with the trump memos and how deep they went on the fake lectors plot. they were dated as far back as november 18th, 2020, the earliest known effort to prepare the fake electors showing the trump campaign was trying to buy

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