hi there, everyone, it's 4:00 in the east. more than 300 classified documents were found at mar-a-lago by federal authorities over the course of the past year. that's according to a stunning brand new piece of reporting by "the new york times." let that sink in. hundreds of classified documents, some of them containing the country's most sensitive national security secret were just hanging out at donald trump's private golf club in south florida. it is just one of the many stunning new details on the efforts by federal officials to retrieve trump's records, and the criminal probe that now looms over the disgraced twice impeached ex-president thanks to brand new reporting from "the times" ask a newly released letter from the national archives from trump's attorneys. that letter was sent back in may. it was first posted last night by a conservative journalist who was named by trump as his representative to the archives. "the new york times" reports

this about the massive tranche of classified documents that were in trump's possession and have been ever since he left office in january 2021. they write this, quote, the extent to which such a large number of hailey sensitive documents remained at mar-a-lago for months, even as the department sought the return of all material that should have been left in government custody when trump left office suggested to officials that the former president or his aides have been cavalier in handling it, not fully forthcoming with investigators or both. the first batch of documents 15 boxes in total retrieved in january reportedly contained 150 classified documents, and the national archives relayed to trump's team just how sensitive these documents were in their may letter, telling trump's attorneys those boxes contained 700 pages of classified materials, some of them with the highest levels of classification possible. which suggests that they contain some of the government's most

fervently guarded secrets. quote the may 10th letter showed that nara and federal investigators had grown increasingly alarmed about potential damage to national security caused by warehousing of these documents at mar-a-lago as well as by trump's resistance to sharing them with the fbi. the correspondence shows that even though nara retrieved the 15 boxes in january, justice department and fbi investigators didn't see their contents until may after extended negotiations with trump's representatives. "the new york times" also reports this bomb shell about those 15 boxes. they write, quote, mr. trump went through the boxes himself in late 2021, according to multiple people briefed on his efforts before turning them over. "the times" goes on to report that the way trump and his staff handled the documents is one of the key focuses of the doj's criminal probe. they write this, on june 22nd, the justice department

subpoenaed the trump organization for mar-a-lago's security footage, which included a well trafficked hallway outside the storage area while much of the footage showed hours of club employees walking through the busy corridor, some of it raised concerns for investigators. that's according to people familiar with it. it revealed people moving boxes in and out, and in some cases appearing to change the containers some of the documents were held in. even after the extraordinary decision by the fbi to execute a search warrant at mar-a-lago on august 8th, investigators have sought additional surveillance footage from the club. new details on the ex-president's handling of hundreds of classified documents is where we start the hour today. mike schmidt is here, "new york times" washington correspondent and an msnbc national security contributor, also joining us msnbc legal analyst joyce vance is here, former u.s. attorney, now law professor at the yufr o

alabama, and frank figliuzzi, former fbi assistant for counterintelligence, now an msnbc national security analyst, and a.b. stoddard is also here, associated editor and columnist for real clear politics. frank, i have to start with you because we get to talk to you so often that i think sometimes we think we can play investigator, but what does it say that they're looking at the security footage and what they have seen showed them that people were moving these classified documents around and changing their containers and want you to see more. >> well, it means a couple of things. so for those of us sitting at home trying to figure out what was the switch that flipped and got them to the search warrant? what was it that happened, and i think it's a myriad of things. there's human sources because we know from filings there's references repeatedly to witnesses who have been interviewed, so that's great, but i think one of those so-called witnesses was the surveillance camera footage. i think what they saw was, you know, no surprise here that they

couldn't trust trump. by that i mean by then a couple of locks had been slapped on the storage room door, right? so everything's suppose tobd fine. we continued to nicely, civilly discuss and negotiate whatever's going to happen and lo and behold, what do they see on the surveillance camera? allegedly people coming in and out of the storage room that's supposed to be extra secure now and even reportedly changing boxes, changing the boxes, the containers in which the documents may be sitting. so that gets us, nicolle, into this whole issue of why were they charging falsification and destruction or masking of evidence? well, that's part of it, i think. it's not just the trump lawyer who filed a form saying you've got everything. we gave you everything. there's no more. it's also, i think, the storage room surveillance footage that says no, darn it, they're not securing the room, and by the

way, they seam to be moving stuff out, and by the way, they seem to be changing the containers that documents may be in. there's that going on here as well. we can see where they're getting to a statute, the statutory elements may have been met. we can see what may have flipped the switch in part to get to a search warrant. >> mike schmidt, i'd love to hear sort of your take on what pieces of this reporting move our understanding forward. it seems to me that the early narrative that trump was this, you know, hoarder has been replaced by something far more sinister. these aren't -- i don't know, i think it's a famous basketball player's shoes that were in his office at trump tower. these are documents that your colleagues are reporting he had a hand in reviewing after he left the white house and keeping and they were the most classified kind of materials, the kind of documents that if someone took one of them they'd

face serious criminal exposure. he had hundreds oaf them based on this news story. >> i think what the letter in the most recent reporting shows is the urgency that the federal government, the fbi and the justice department took here. this was a national security problem. the fbi, as frank can explain, second top priority is counterintelligence, and they according to the time line that we now have, the greater sense we have of how quickly this moved, the justice department moved as quickly as they could to try and get these materials, by issuing a subpoena, by pushing trump's lawyers. they knew there was a problem, and they were trying to solve it. they were trying to go out and get these documents, and although we do not have a full sense of the back and forth that went on between trump's lawyers and the government and how all of that played out, you have to believe based on the fact that they went for the search warrant that they had run up against a

wall, and they thought, look, we have a legitimate national security issue that we have to get to the bottom of. we have to go out. we have to collect these documents. we have to figure out who saw them, where they were, who touched them, how have we been misled about them, where, you know, what has this exposed. it's just the tame line is much shorter and faster based on the letter than i thought it would be. i thought this was something that maybe had played out, you know, over this long period, you know, not so long, but year and a half since trump left office, but it was actually faster than i thought. >> frank, i want to come back to you, and i want your thoughts on what mike's talking about, but also on all of the lying. i think, again, we've examined trump's conduct in the frame of the mueller probe, and folks like joyce and yourself always point to our windows into his intent. they were told over and over again, the fact that the government tried to protect these secrets over and over again means there was no way

that they didn't know how dangerous some of these classified materials were. what do you make of what mike's talking about, the time line, and how they knowingly mishandled this classified material? >> yeah, there's been reporting that trump himself actually at one point went through the documents, see what they are. let's talk about this. let's look at it himself. here's what that does. it takes away this defense that, you know, the movers did it. i didn't know anything about this. i had no knowledge of this. they were told repeatedly how significant these documents were for national security, and he knows it so, again, we're getting into that statute for espionage. people saying, gee, why espionage? willfulness, intent, i know it's here. i know it's highly classified. i'm being told i need to return it, and by god i'm not doing it, and by the way, i'm probably

lying to you about whether i've turned it all over. that gets us to that statutory element of willfulness and intent that's required for the espionage statute. with regard to the time line, look, i'm looking back hear, and i know if we go off to another network that shall not be named, they're criticizing the government every night on this search. i'm going to criticize something here about the time line. it was too darn slow. it was too slow, so when you have a january to may time line before the fbi is getting their hands on this and doing an assessment and figuring out, you know, look, if you've handled a lot of top secret documents, especially special access, each page numbered, marked, sometimes each page initialled, there must be something missing. they may have been -- they could have looked if they had looked at it earlier and seen there's documents, pages missing. something's wrong here. there's something not right. why are we missing that photo that's supposed to go with that document. there's things not right here,

and then, boy, there's live sources somewhere maybe that are being compromised right now. i'm not sure they went in fast enough with the search warrant because at the point you show up physically and you see, my god, there's more boxes of classified, at that point you know you cannot trust. you've been lied to. i'd come in with a search warrant then. if you want to say the government screwed up, that's when i'd say. >> mike, i'll come back to you. i want to ask you this question, "the new york times" and other outlets have reported on donald trump's alarming disinterest in the pdb, which was a daily delivery of the state's most sensitive intelligence and secrets to help a normal president protect it. he didn't like it. they tried pictures, i think some of your colleagues reported on the creative ways, and others tried to given this information. what is it about the classified material that he stole that he

liked more than the pdb that they couldn't spoon feed him even with pictures and visual aids? >> it's a great question because the trump presidency, a major part of it was this antagonistic relationship he had with the intelligence community. he repeatedly told senior white house officials he didn't trust them. he didn't believe them. he thought he was smarter than them. he thought they were part of the deep state, which was out to get him. he had -- as contentious a relationship with the intelligence committee as there was, and despite that, he takes these documents with him, which doesn't make any sense. not every -- a lot of things that trump does do not make complete sense to rational minds, but he constantly was pushing the bounds in terms of pushing back on the intelligence community, casting doubt on basic facts. we obviously remember the helsinki press conference. he tweeted out pictures that were at the time classified of an air strike.

there was a culture that he created in the white house around classified issues that was extremely lax, even going down to issues like the security clearance for his son-in-law for jared kushner, the intelligence community trying to stop that from happening, and trump having to order senior white house officials to give it to him. there was a drum beat that came directly from the top that classified information was something that was not going to be treated the same way that any previous recent president had. so there is a big gap there between constantly attacking the intelligence community and then taking a bunch of its product home with him after he lost the election. >> yeah, and i mean, joyce, i think this sort of lands us in this legal question. why would he risk -- and i know we have all established that he operates as though he is above the law, but some of the people around him have come pretty darn

close to disproving that that translates to anyone but the twice impeached ex-president. why would they conspire with him if that's what this investigation ultimately reveals to steal the kind of information they couldn't make him care about when our national security was on the line? >> so the devil is always in the details in these kinds of investigations, and i think what you're highlighting, nicolle, is this big unanswered question. you know, we have this letter written by one of his lawyers, ms. bob where she certifies that they have turned back over to the justice department all of the classified information that she's aware is there, and so the pressing question is was she part of a conspiracy? were people around the former president helping him out here, or was he lying to them, and if so, why was he lying to them? i suspect that we'll find out maybe not in short order, but

we'll find out as this advances because doj will have the same question, and they'll approach these lawyers, and although as you well know, some conversations between lawyers and their clients are shielded by the attorney/client privilege, that's not the case when there's criminality involved. doj will be entitled to establish here whether it was the former president who represented to them that there was no more classified material, that's even more interesting in light of this new reporting from "the new york times" that trump may have personally reviewed all of these documents. and you can see this scenario coming together where the requests are being made from nara and later from the justice department and trump is reviewing the documents and telling people in the white house counsel as we're told, he said to mr. philbin that these are my documents, and he was resistant to returning documents that were clearly presidential records that belong to nara, if not highly classified material.

he was resistant to turning them back over. >> yeah, i mean, a.b., it never starts with doj or the national archives, right? it always starts with white house aides who fail to get him to do -- never mind something normal, but something legal, and i want to play something congressman adam schiff said when this "new york times" story first broke. i think there's a tendency to caricature trump, it's not like it's pictures he took with ted nugent. he sought the classified material and that is what he squirrelled away. let me show you that. >> it's not like there was a classified paper mixed in with a bunch of unrelated information. it seems that it must be quite deliberate if the volume is that great and if the reporting is accurate, it covered a broad range of topics from the intel

committee perspective, though, we're just really frightened of what's in that stockpile, particularly those that are marked top secret, sci sensitive compartmented information. those generally mean there's a very sensitive source involved, like a human source whose life could be put at risk or a technical source that if it's discovered means we're going to have a blind spot where we used to be able to see. so we're deeply concerned about all of this. >> i hate to harken back to normal times, but this is a national security crisis, and it shouldn't fall just on democrats to want to know what was not just squirrelled away at mar-a-lago but potentially comp mazed. we know donald trump met with foreign leaders and chocolate cake while there were national security crises going on while he was president. he's not as reined in or staffed anymore. what do you think about the response from congress from the gang of eight and other groups to wanting to find out what's out there now?

>> well, you see an effort from serious minded leaders like the gang of eight to try to figure out what's going on, what zbg to be -- what is going to be interesting nicolle is the response from republicans among them. so far they've made it clearly they're now eternally, no matter what trump faces in any kind of exposure is that the government is wrong ask they're the gestapo and trump is right and he's above the law and gets to do whatever he wants. it's really -- what's so frightening about this is that trump was always a national security risk from the day he took the presidency until the end and remains so today. so while i agree with mike that he was contemptuous of those protocols and wasn't interested in sort of, you know, always bullied the intelligence community and insulted their work and seemed to revel in some

kind of battle with them, he took those documents, those hundreds of documents intentionally. he knows he was not allowed to. he's been poking around in them himself. he's been lying about them. nothing in the documentation we've seen since last night illustrates that he indeed declassified anything. the problems he faces with the doj, again, has nothing to do with him declassifying them anyway, and one has to wonder about the worst outcome, which is he's trying to monetize them. and that is why you have michael cohen, his former lawyer running around saying that he -- this is exactly the type of thing he would to, facing an indictment he would feel he had leverage over the government by saying i have all these documents that i can give the iranians tonight and somehow that will get him

off the hook. the government has to look at what he has not only done already to compromise our national security but the prospect that he took those documents with the intent of passing them on. >> frank, i want to give you the last word because i think a.b. just brought this to a place where i wish we spent as much attention. i think even with mueller, we all focused on whether or not trump would ultimately be held criminally accountable and liable for the crimes detailed in volume 2. what volume 1 reveals, though, is that he had a shared mission not with an american ally but an american adversary, russia, and the national security scope of the potential damage of this conduct seems at least as dire as the potential criminal consequences for an ex-president. >> yeah, a.b. has really taken this down to the core issue here, which is we've been

talking about for years. trump as national security threat. and only in the wildest fiction would anyone come up with the idea of, hey, let's have a plot where a former president holds us all hostage, threatening to turn over classified to iran or russia or something in order to get out of some indictment somewhere. it's astonishing, and i want to say a couple things. first, there's a lot of people saying, hey, they better have gotten this right. they better have been true transmission of classified. i'm not in that camp. i say getting back hundreds of pages of classified, top secret, sci special access material would have merited a search warrant no matter what. it's worth it to get it back after you've exhausted every remedy for a year and a half. that's number one, but number two, number two, i still have the suspicion based on past conduct of this former president that he was squirrelling this away # to do something with it.

he's not just a collector. rather he was intending to use it to his own benefit. he saw classified as capital and he was waiting for the moment to use it. >> i'm going to ask all of you to stick around through a quick break. after all the bluster and rhetoric, trump's lawyers have finally weighed in. they finally said something on the legal battle surrounding what we're talking about, the mar-a-lago search. it's as trumpian as you would expect, but we'll share it with you anyway. plus, a special election in new york today, acting as a test case for what issues will bring voters out to the polls. one candidate putting the focus on abortion messaging saying nothing less than choice and democracy are on the line. we'll have a live report from that district and talk about what that race says about where the country may be heading for the november midterms. and later in the show, you know the saying, get back on the saddle and try again. there is genuine concern that the ex-president is doing just that, to try again to overturn the results of a presidential election, the next one. this time he could be helped by

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supplementing yesterday's motion for a special master to review the documents seized by the fbi during the search of mar-a-lago. she's asked trump's lawyers to address multiple issues including these three, what jurisdiction the court has in the matter, exactly what relief they're seeking from the judge including whether they're seeking an injunction and what effect this filing has on the existing proceedings in the sealed search warrant case before magistrate judge bruce reinhart. joyce, explain. is she trying to protect herself from being form shopped as a trump appointee or is she sort of slow walking what will ultimately come to pass? >> well, it's good to see that she's as confused by this filing that trump's lawyers has made as the rest of us are. the third point first, right? why are you coming to me for relief? why didn't you go to judge reinhart who's got the search warrant sitting there in front of him?

and one of the obvious conclusions that we could reach is that's form shopping. judge reinhart hasn't been a good judge for trump so far. he's perhaps hoping that he's got a better judge on his hands here, but the judge is signaling something very important. she's saying what do you want me to do? what's my legal authority? litigants can't just go into court and say judge, i'd like you to wave a magic wand and make it go away. they have to say you have statutory authority for taking specific action that i want you to take, and that's what's completely missing from trump's motion. following a search warrant, if someone whose residence or car is searched, they will file a civil action for redress or they can wait until they're indicted and file a motion to suppress the evidence saying that it's the product of an illegal search. and obviously trump hasn't done that, either of those things

here, one because he hasn't, the other because he's not yet been charged, and so the judge is holding his lawyers up and saying, wait a second, before you want to take up this court's time, what precisely is the action that you're seeking, and why do i have jurisdiction to do it for you? >> you know, a.b., if you look at the branches of government that donald trump has successfully steam rolled and sort of transformed in his own image, the house republicans, you know, fell without a fight, senate republicans fell soon after. the courts have been the most difficult for trump to massage and maneuver, the 60 failed election fraud cases, i think, proved that out. what do you make of his legal strategy, which so far amounts to ignoring the court and the judge that actually has all the related cases, and i don't know any word other than sort of forum shopping before this judge. >> well, in listening to legal experts describe their filing

yesterday, it sounds like an embarrassing legal product. the president doesn't really -- the former president, i think at this point, nicolle doesn't care if he's actually doing something substantive. he's trying -- he's raising a million dollars a day off of this since the search, and it's a near-term bonanza for him. this is a person who doesn't believe because of his pathologies that he will ever be held accountable and that he has -- of all the things he calls main, whether it's the house minority leader or, you know, all these documents stuffed in the basement at mar-a-lago, he believes judges that got their jobs during his tenure as president are also his, and so it's not only that he will find someone to help him out in his mind, but that this is just really a pr stunt to fund-raise off of.

he knows his voters won't know that he's pretending to declare these documents under executive privilege when he is no longer the executive and those documents do not belong to him and executive privilege is under the purview of the current executive. these are fine details that do not matter when he rages on truth social and raises money off of this. so i think that we're going to see more of this because it's simply a means to stay in the news cycle and pretend that, you know, he's a martyr and he needs to raise more money. so far in the last two weeks it's been going very well for him. >> so frank, it's all those things, it's fund-raising, it's pr, but there was also a threat in trump's filings. let me read this to you, on august 11, 2022, counsel for president trump spoke with mr. bratt by telephone. the message was as follows, trump wants the attorney general to know that he's been hearing

from people all over the country about the raid. it was a search. if there was one word to describe their mood, it is, quote, angry. the heat is building up. the pressure is building up, whatever i can do to take the heat down, the pressure down, let us know. people are angry and the heat is building up because trump calls it a raid and has attacked the fbi. >> yep, and so while it's not a legally actionable direct threat, it is absolutely an implied threat. my people are bigger than your people. my people can beat up your people, and they're angry. last segment we talked about trump as a national security threat. now we've got trump as a mob figure. he's -- this is the copo talking to an intermediary, tell the other guy from the other family he's going to get hurt. i got people. i know people, and that's where he operates from. the innocent explanation for

this which unfortunately we can no longer apply because we have a track record of trump conduct here would be, look, i'm trying to appeal to the national calm. i think there's a public interest in trying to calm this down. but he shows no effort to do that and goes off and riles people up again. so this is the problem with trusting trump. this is the probe with waiting too long to do the search warrant. it's the problem with showing him too much deference, too much talk, too much negotiation before the fbi can get in and examine the documents, even fingerprint the documents and track them backwards. it's the proverbial peanuts comic strip where lucy pulls the football away every single time from charlie brown. why? because charlie brown says this time i can trust her. this time she'll do the right thing. the time to do that is over. it's long gone ask that's where we need to operate from. this filing in fort pierce, for those who aren't familiar with it, i was in fbi miami for five years.

we did the judicial district of southern florida. that was our territory, the southernmost part of the territory, key west. the northernmost part of our empire fort pierce, florida. you know, just long haul away. he chose the northernmost part of that judicial district to file this in, and he did it on purpose. >> mike, i want to ask you about this threat and about trump as the things that a.b. has described him as and that frank has, but i want to ask about agenies other than the fbi. i mean, the fbi is adept at protecting witnesses, at protecting institutions, at protecting events. there was news earlier today that the irs is hardening its physical structures and trying to protect their agents. what do you make of this? it feels like escalating climate of political violence. >> well, just on the threat and the comment that was sent through the lawyer to the attorney general, it just made me wonder what did trump tell

his own attorney general? we have some senses of those conversations from barr's testimony and barr's book and what sessions told mueller and that kind of thing. if that's what he's saying to the attorney general for joe biden, i can only imagine what the conversations were like with his own attorney general when he was facing similar scrutiny in other cases. and to me this all highlights a very sort of simplistic but incredibly important point, and one of the reasons that trump was so successful at evading getting held accountable throughout his presidency. he's not president anymore, and because he's not president anymore, he can't use executive privilege the way he could before. he couldn't fire the attorney general in the way that he could before, and that's obviously a very obvious issue and he's obviously stuck in mar-a-lago and not in the white house anymore, but you can see -- we could see it at the time when he

was president, pu you can see it even more clearly now how having that office, it's just so hard to hold that person accountable and how much power the president truly has in investigation, especially if they want to shatter norms and ignore thm. >> well, and with his threats to run again, it also pulls the curtain back on the extraordinary pressure law enforcement is under. mike schmidt, joyce vance, frank figliuzzi, a.b. stoddard, thank you all so much on starting us off on another extraordinary day of headlines. it is election day today in several states with competitive primaries throughout florida and new york state. one race, however, is a special election in a swing district that could go either way. the democrat there running on the urgent need to protect a woman's right to make decisions about her own body. we'll have a live report on how that is resonating at the polls today. don't go anywhere. today. don't go anywhere.

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from the trump backed candidate who brought america this line, quote, china gets our good air, end quote, the latest bit of science from georgia's senate candidate, the former nfl football player, herschel walker saying in opposition to the tax health care and climate law recently passed by democrats, the republican insisted this, quote, they continue to try to fool you that they are helping you out, but they're not because a lot of money, it's going to trees. don't we have enough trees around here? end quote. joining us now, eddie glaude chair of the department of african american studies at princeton university, and charlie sykes editor at large at the bulwark. both are msnbc contributors. eddie, i want to ask you a

different question, obviously the comments are inane and stupid, but this is what trump has wrought, candidates who the only litmus test was fealty to donald trump and the big lie. you get this guy, the silly things he says vance. you get this guy. the silly things he says are the least of the problems. he seems all too comfortable questioning the results of the last election. >> or blake masters in arizona. in these moments when we find ourselves in a backlash, in the midst of a betrayal of a really genuinely, multicultural democracy, there's always, in our history, nicole, this moment where that ugliness throws up, vomits up, in some ways, some of the ugliest characters. think about john patterson, who became the governor of alabama during the civil rights movement. he couldn't get elected to clean people's closets, and he became the governor of alabama, and that was a sign of -- that we

just needed someone to show fealty. but this is also an example of the kind of arc of the erosion of public statespersons, of people engaging in public service. we can tell a big story from gary hart to donald trump, and you might have to ask me to explain that one day. i will one day. >> oh, i'm going to take you up on that. maybe tomorrow will be that day. i mean, to eddie's point, charlie, the list goes on and on, but perhaps right at the top is, i only couped for a few minutes, ron johnson. let me play you his comments about his role in the attempt to overthrow the government. >> i had nothing to do with the alternate slate. i had no idea that anybody was going to ask me to deliver those. my involvement in that attempt to deliver spanned the course of a couple seconds. in the end, those electors were not delivered because we found out from vice president staff that they didn't want them delivered. >> so, i didn't coup further or longer than two seconds, because the vice president didn't want to coup with me. what is going on?

i actually think that what's going on is, in part, because of the january 6th public hearings, democracy is a thing now in front of the voters, and ron johnson's role and hand in trying to destroy ours is hurting him. i think that's why he says stupid things like that. >> well, it is hurting him, and he's obviously trying to distance himself from his own behavior as quickly as possible. but going back to your previous question about herschel walker and dr. oz and all of the others, you flashed up matt louis's column. one of the legacies of donald trump is encouraging -- and he uses the word -- encouraging idiots, convincing them they should run for office. you know, "idiocracy" was a documentary. and this is part of this erosion of the gap between entertainment and celebrity and politics that no longer are we interested, apparently, or the republican party under donald trump, interested in getting experienced politicians or people who have, you know, who

are -- have intelligent ideas about public policy. you have nfl stars. you have people who have been flogging supplements on television. you have somebody like jd vance. and this is the transformation of politics into a deeply unserious business. i mean, the reality is that herschel walker -- and i'm not trying to be unkind to him, but he has no business running for the united states senate. he has no business running for public office. you would think that people who loved him and cared about him would keep him from the kind of exposure that he is getting right now. a man manifestly unfit for public office. dr. oz may have liked the, you know, the frisson of celebrity that he got for running but he's clearly not ready for primetime when it comes to these offices, but this is what donald trump has done. he's not only made it more reckless and extreme and radical

and dishonest, he's also just made it dumber. he's made it more trivial. and the republican party is now faced with this problem. mitch mcconnell says it's about candidate quality. well, the problem is that mitch mcconnell recognizes that his majority rests on a, you know, the senatorial candidate clown car that donald trump has wrought for his party. >> the deeper problem, though, eddie glaude, is that these people won primaries. the rot and the appetite for the idiocy feels like the root problem that we have to deal with. >> voters. >> i think that's absolutely right. i think that's absolutely right. and so, there's a complete disregard for the voter on one level in terms of putting forward incompetent people, but there's also a desire to throw the voter, the base, at least, the red meat, and so you have these people who are willing to, in some ways, appeal to the base instincts of the electorate.

but i don't want to just put this at the feet of donald trump. this has been a part of american political life for a while, and now this is just kind of the outcome, the exaggerated consequence of processes unleashed over decades in american politics. >> exactly right. >> charlie, yeah, i mean, i want to get your thoughts on the voters, what it tells us about republican voters. >> no, i think this is an important point. look, there's a leadership problem in the republican party, but there's also a base problem, because ultimately, voters in these states had a choice, and this is what they want. donald trump has sort of a visceral understanding of this -- of the, you know, entertainment wing of the republican party, and he understands that this has been building for decades now, the entertainment wing of the party now becoming dominant. so you get entertainers. so, you know, eddie is absolutely right, that this has been building for a long time, and it will survive donald trump. donald trump disappears, and you will have this dumbing down process in the party continue

because, quite frankly, there is a large constituency for it. >> it is one of the scariest things facing our country. eddie, i'm going to take you up on your tantalizing tease for that analysis if you're free tomorrow. charlie sticks around. up next for us, what do a propro surfer, a meteorologist and some kind of dating coach have in common? well, according to new reporting, they've all accessed very, very sensitive voting data. we'll bring you that story after a quick break. we'll bring you that story after a quick break. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪♪ i got into debt in college and, no matter how much i paid, it followed me everywhere. so i consolidated it into a low-rate personal loan from sofi. get a personal loan with no fees, low fixed rates, and borrow up to $100k.

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when you have these election officials going into 2024 that are authoritarians. >> there's a well developed and well organized movement where trump's supporters are learning from his inability to overturn the election in 2020, and they are galvanizing themselves to leave nothing to chance in 2024. >> we've been warned. hi again, everyone, it's 5:00 in the east. it is the big concern looming over the next presidential election in america. will the ex-president and his supporters, should he run again and lose again, try again to overturn their loss? now having learned lots of lessons from their first failed coup attempt. this time, with the rogue's gallery of election deniers, conspiracy theorists, and insurrection enthusiasts aiding

him in local and statewide election offices. brand-new reporting in the "washington post" shines a bright light on one facet of the efforts of the twice-impeached ex-president's allies and supporters that could have grave implications for future elections, the sharing of sensitive information from election systems. "post" writes this. "a series of data leaks and alleged breaches of local elections offices since 2020 has prompted criminal investigations and fueled concerns among some security experts that public disclosure of information collected from voting systems could be exploited by hackers and other people seeking to manipulate future elections. that is exactly what happened, according to records reviewed by "the post," attorneys working to overturn trump's 2020 election defeat shared sensitive election system files with election deniers, conspiracy theorists, and far-right-wing commentators. more from that report. "a georgia computer forensics

firm hired by the attorneys placed the files on a server where company records show they were downloaded dozens of times. among the downloaders were accounts associated with a texas meteorologist who's appeared on sean hannity's radio show, a podcaster who suggested political enemies should be executed, a former pro surfer who pushed disproven theories that the 2020 election was manipulated, and a self-described former seduction and pickup coach who claims to have also been a hacker." "the post" continues. "the records include contracts between the firm and trump-allied attorneys, notably sidney powell. the data files are described as copies of components from election systems in coffee county, georgia, and antrim county, michigan." while we know there was no successful widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, we heard it back then from people like former attorney general

bill barr and chris krebs. we heard it again just yesterday from top republican in the senate, mitch mcconnell. we know that the threats to our elections remain a very real threat and a very salient concern to voters. the latest nbc news polling, which we discussed on this program at this hour yesterday, shows this. "threats to democracy has overtaken cost of living as the most important issue facing our country." it's where we begin the hour with some of the reporters who share a byline on that story we read from. "washington post" investigative reporter aaron davis is here. also joining us, our friend, harry litman, former deputy assistant attorney general, now the host of the "talking feds" podcast. former cia officer and fbi special agent tracy walder joins us, and charlie sykes is still here editor-at-large at the bulwark and msnbc contributor. aaron, i want to ask you to take us through the reporting and highlight anything that i didn't yet in our set-up here. >> sure.

well, you did a nice job there summarizing, but you're right. there are two big buckets of news we've learned in the last two weeks out of this court case in georgia. one is that entire hard drives of data containing the software and other sensitive files about how election systems work were copied by attorneys working on behalf of donald trump and then now we learned that basically how they shared and where they put that data. and it's a really remarkable set of documents that have just been turned over in that case to the plaintiffs and to the defendants, and it shows literally every key stroke that was done with that data over months, and this is people in this computer forensics firm uploading the data and then people downloading it and then trying to manipulate it so it's easier to read or massage, and then reuploading it and downloading it again, and it's a whole hodgepodge of people that really have no business having this data, particularly from

georgia where there was no court case, no court authorization for this to be distributed. a meteorologist, a former dating seduction coach, people who -- the trump campaign and their, you know, advocates thought could be hackers or at least have enough computer expertise to look at this and to try to put out a narrative. and they now have it, and we are going to have a lot of tough questions to ask going forward of how this could be used. we can say already that some of the bits and pieces of this information have shown up in symposiums and documentaries by mike lindell of my pillow. we can now begin to trace back where some of the bits and pieces of voting machine information has been out there, where this has been coming from the last two years. >> aaron, can you explain for people what the data is? is it the code? is it the results? is it personal information? >> now, to a degree, we can. to a degree, we can't.

and that is because it's almost being treated right now as stolen material, and so the plaintiffs in this case and the plaintiffs in this case in georgia are good government folks, the coalition for good governance, who say georgia needs to do more to protect the security of its election in november, and they're saying, we want to be absolved by the judge before we go in and really dig through this data or have our experts do that. and the plaintiffs -- or the defendants in this case are the state of georgia, who's being asked to do more about security. we can tell from the file names, from the particular even photographs of the laptops and the voting machines that were -- that claimed to be copied, that this includes not only voting information from 2020 but, as we understand it, from experts we've talked to, this would include a type of information called object code that could be -- you could write a cipher, basically, to then view the source code that runs some of the election systems that this

was used for. >> aaron, do you have any way of knowing or finding out, i guess, if this is also under investigation nationally, if it's part of a national effort? you're saying the genesis of what has been -- of some of what has become public is this lawsuit in georgia, but i imagine if sidney powell had her hands on this, she was spreading it through her national crazy network. >> well, that's a really good question, and we've put out a couple calls about that, but don't have any answers yet. one interesting thing that you can tell because of the detail of this particular computer data, is that, you know, while it was being taken from georgia and used and shared among people in georgia, it was also being shared among, say, doug logan with the cyber ninjas working in the arizona case and being shared with lawyers working on the antrim, michigan case, so there was multistate sharing of this data by attorneys who were

trying to maintain some kind of arm's length from the trump campaign itself and make it appear as if these were individual efforts. so, to tie this all up together, it clearly was being organized. there are contracts that show that, you know, signed by sidney powell, signed by jesse banal, attorney and outside counsel for the trump campaign, authorizing this forensic work, and one of the almost laughable parts of the contracts that have turned up now is that the computer forensics firm said, we trust that all of this information and is stuff that you're licensed to use, and later on explains, it's county election material we're evaluating and doing forensic work and analysis on. it is a national issue. and to your lead-in, you're right. so much of the post-2020 time period was people trying to look back and say, what happened before, and was there problems about how the election was taking place? here, we're starting years before the next presidential

election with, you know, a certain segment of the population bent on proving that there is problems with this software, now have it, and you know, we don't know how they could untangle and use it to manipulate or sabotage future elections. >> that is the scariest thing i've heard said on this program in a long time. tracy, what do you need russian election meddlers for when you have sidney powell? >> that's my thoughts exactly. i know we're thinking about the domestically, the impact that this has but really we have just gave russian disinformation trolls the blueprint to how we conduct elections and how votes are counted here in the u.s. there was an excellent movie about a decade ago that came out called "hacking democracy," and it was all about sort of what happened -- >> i saw it. >> yeah. and it was all about if americans got their hands on this. but i think, really, we know that russians have been trying to infiltrate our elections and

change the narrative now for at least the past two election cycles, and we just really handed it to them on a silver platter now. >> what do we do? i mean, how do we bring all of our intelligence assets to bear to protect our own country here? >> so, i think, truly, the only thing that we can do, and i know that this sounds, you know, a little grand, is we really need to change our election system now. we don't have any other choice. simply because now it's out there. the blueprint is out there. and so now, we really need to work to develop a different type of election system, and i think that that needs to be done almost at sort of a high national security level because the reality is the way that this was handled was not carefully. we're seeing this with mar-a-lago. we're seeing this here with sensitive information, sometimes classified information, being mishandled by members of, really, the president's inner

circle, and so i think we need some independent folks coming in and basically recreating our election systems or we're just going to have to go to paper at this point. >> you know, harry, we're talking about, i think, around the clock, appropriately so, a president who was hands-on in squirrelling away, stealing classified materials from the white house after he lost, after spending four years totally disinterested in the state secrets that were presented to him every morning in the form of pdb. and yet, his lawyer, sidney powell, who was his chief election denier lawyer deep inside the oval office after that defeat, trying to overturn it, some reporting you wanted to appoint her as special counsel. she got her hands on what aaron described as stolen materials, stolen information, perhaps some coding in the inside information in our voting systems. do you think that that conduct

is or should be under federal criminal sort of conspiracy kind of examination? >> i do, and i think it probably is, but as tracy says, the barn door is really open. this is to find these county systems as part of the critical infrastructure of this country, and anyone who's ever experienced or been up close to it, i've done some litigation, it is no easy matter to somehow replicate. these are incredibly complicated, and now they have been compromised in three states, and what -- how we can somehow unscramble the egg so that you can have security -- secure assurance of the election systems going forward is a very big puzzle. one other point. this really drives home the practical impact of something that trump did attempt to for the last several years, seeding the state level electors with trump partisans.

what happened here in georgia? some trump partisan, who's since been fired, just gave in over with no court order at all. remember, just last week when liz cheney lost the secretary of state elected in wyoming is a rabid trump partisan and election denier. this is exactly the kind of thing that can happen in the hands of people who care more about him than country and duty. >> you know, charlie, we know that trump doesn't have a lot of new moves. he doesn't do new things. he does the same thing over and over again as his needs, criminal, political, or whatnot -- i don't know where you put stormy daniels. let's just leave that in personal. as his needs shift or move. but we also know that manafort and kilimnik were trading not just polls but really granular information about our elections. we know that trump has been interested in having his proxies

share his political ambitions and needs in a very granular level with agents of russia, and i wonder what you think of trump's closest election overturning lawyer -- i don't know what you call sidney powell. having her hands on the most sensitive kind of voting system information. >> well, once again, we find out how vulnerable our systems are. perhaps we had been naive or complacent about the guardrails, the protections against someone like a donald trump and once again, we're finding out that he has an instinct for exploiting all of these vulnerabilities, but i'd like to look at this whole question from sort of a different end. the fact is, we have all of these investigations, the hacking, getting the detailed information, and they have never found a single credible thing wrong with the election. i mean, this is an important point to keep coming back to. they did all of this, and yet, they've never come up with

anything that is close to a smoking gun, that shows there was anything wrong with the election, and it doesn't make a difference. their lack of evidence has not changed the political dynamic that tens of millions of republicans believe the election was stolen or say they believe the election was stolen, and this has now become the litmus test for republicans. so one of the things that we need to remember, besides the fact that this is perspective and it's ongoing and we have been warned about what they're prepared to do. we also need to understand the details don't matter because the specific allegations and the lack of evidence are simply pretexts for a party that increasingly is going to refuse to accept electoral defeat. that's the bottom line. they are in search of some reason to deny the outcome of the election. they are in search of something -- and it will change day by day, and even when it's been refuted, it doesn't matter,

because on the underlying problem here is this push to delegitimize elections because they have convinced themselves that they just can't lose. that allowing democrats to win is the end of america. and i think this is really important, that they have internalized this idea that the other party is so bad, is so evil, and so dangerous, that anything they do to prevent them from getting -- to winning office is legitimate, including coming up with these bizarre things, including tampering with the election results. >> harry, i want to put you on the spot, and i want to ask you something that's sort of revealed itself, i think, in all of your reporting and analysis. i mean, are you confident that we have laws on the books to deal with someone who sits as our country's chief executive breaking them when it comes to remaining in power? >> look, the short answer is, no. well, yes, there are laws on the books, but they're always

subject to these farflung executive defenses. i'm the state, i'm the president, i can do anything. the courts have, by and large, rejected them, but the supreme court, at least on occasion, has played footsie with it. so i'm confident all of this -- if he is tied to this sidney powell effort, there are laws against the unauthorized either distribution or harvesting, either one of those happened here, and i do not see the crazy executive branch argument he could make about this. but that's the big caveat that he's played to at least delay, you know, being brought to justice and the judgment day. so, that's your short answer. there are laws, and no president has ever broken them so brazenly, so there remain sort of academic, almost, until now, constitutional defenses. >> aaron davis, thank you for this reporting. and we'll continue to look out for where this story heads.

my sense is it's far from over. tracy, thank you for bringing the national security issues into the fore. charlie, thank you for sticking around. and harry litman, thank you for introducing some fancy french there for all of us as a reward or punishment, however you view it. we're going to make you stick around. when become back, how the big lie and threats from election deniers left one texas county with zero, as in no full-time election workers. they quit. they were driven out by the relentless harassment and threats. that story's ahead. plus, a verdict in the conspiracy plot to kidnap michigan governor gretchen whitmer. and later, u.s. intelligence is warning that russia may be about to step up its attacks on civilian targets in ukraine. we'll check back in with our dear friend, former advisor to president zelenskyy, igor novikov. "deadline white house" continues after a quick break. ov "deadline white house" continues after a quick break. ♪ ♪

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in texas, something that should scare all of us, an extraordinary and alarming example of the damage that death threats and constant harassment of election workers are having on our elections and our future elections. 62 days before voters begin to cast their ballots in rural gillespie county, a scramble is now on to replace an entire office of election officials who abruptly quit. they got fed up with threats and intimidation from pro-trump election deniers who questioned the results in a place, a county, and a state he won by nearly 60-point margin in that county. from the associated press report, "by the middle of last week, no one was left at the

darkened and locked elections office in a metal building annex off the main road in fredericksburg. of your votes count poster in the door. one of the officials, terry hamilton, who had clashed with poll watchers in gillespie county in past elections, said he didn't want to go through it again. quote, that's the one thing we can't understand. their candidate won heavily, hamilton said. but there's fraud here?" joining us now, the reporter bylined on that a.p. report, associated press reporter paul weber. our friend errin haines is also here. take me through this story and this reporting and, paul, if you know what's going to happen or what the choices are. tell us what's going to happen here. >> yeah, this is a situation that even state election officials say they haven't encountered before. but this close to an election, trying to replace an entire

election staff in a single county, this happened earlier this month. gillespie county is about a two-hour drive outside of austin, which is the state's liberal capital, but politically, is very different. and earlier this month, less than 70 days before the election, the two full-time election workers in this county elections department just quit, citing threats, and so now that's left this really unique and striking situation where one county is now trying to figure out who is going to run their elections coming up. it's just, you know, a few short months away. >> paul, ruby freeman and shaye moss, i think, gave the country a window into the torment that election workers have faced at the hand of trump's lies and conspiracy theories about the election. but i think what's surprising about your reporting is that, as these election workers acknowledge, this is trump county in trump country. what is -- what fuels the attacks on election workers there?

>> you know, in talking with terry hamilton, who was one of the two election workers who quit, that was something he was trying to put his finger on as well, as to why, you know, there was this concern about the election in this county, you know, given the results. i think it's important to know, hamilton appeared to have some other issues. he signalled what he thought was a lack of support from the county. they needed more staffing. they needed more resources, he said, but threats were a driving issue both for him and anisa herrera, the elections administrator. as you know, this is a county that trump overwhelmingly won in 2020. hamilton said these run-ins with these poll workers happened in the 2020 election and the primary, both speaking with him and some locals in fredericksburg, the past primary appeared to run smoothly but it really was 2020 that appeared to be the driving force for both of these officials, and as hamilton told me, looking ahead to

november, he just didn't want to go through it again. >> you know, errin, we have covered it here, but texas is another state that trump asked to recount the results, a state he won by a pretty big margin, and he wanted abbott to -- i think the legislature passed, there was a whole -- that's how the country got to know jasmine crockett and many of her colleagues. they passed a voter suppression law there predicated on the lie about fraud in the state that he won and in the state where there wasn't any fraud. what do you make of sort of the malignancy of the lie in every corner of the country? >> yeah, well, nicole, i think the only thing that you can make of it is that elections have consequences, but so does election denial. stories like the one that paul wrote, stories like the stories that we are writing at the 19th, shedding light on these instances of the impact of voter -- of poll worker intimidation are really just a

prime example of the stakes of misinformation for our democracy. and you know, you mentioned shaye moss and her mother. they were certainly in the very bright spotlight of those january 6th hearings, but terry hamilton is not going to be the last poll worker to walk away because of this, and gillespie county is not going to be the last county that is going to be scrambling, not only to train poll workers in how to do this job but also to learn about these onerous new laws that were not solving for any kind of threat to voter fraud, which we know is not real, but the threat to democracy, which is very real, and as that nbc news poll shows is a very real concern for a lot of people in this country. >> and you can't fault these election workers for walking away, but i think the nightmare scenario, errin, is who replaces them, and you look at trump's sort of army of combination of election deniers and white nationalists, militia group members and adherents to the big lie, i mean, it feels, again, like the nightmare scenario. >> yeah, that's exactly it,

right? i mean, look, most of us, the poll workers that we know, that we have known, are fixtures in their communities. i don't know about you, nicole, but where i have gone to cast my ballot, when i was growing up, where i live now, these people have been in these precincts at least as long as the furniture and have definitely outlasted the people whose names are on the ballots that they oversee being cast safely and legally and securely year after year, election after election. but this is not what these people signed up for. i mean, paul's story so rightly points out that brennan center report that says that one in three people knows somebody who has left poll work because of threats or intimidation, and one in six people is experiencing threats themselves. i mean, you know, in our reporting at the 19th, we refer to these kind of people as the essential workers of our democracy, but much like some other people in our society that we claim to be essential workers and caregivers, they're not feeling very valued or essential right now, and they're actually being treated pretty poorly by their neighbors and other community members, and so, you know, who is going to step into that void? to your point, because these

folks did not sign up for this treatment. it's unclear, and come november, we may find out just how essential these people really are. >> paul, do you have any sort of early reporting on who will replace this entire office? >> so, according to the members of the local elections commission there, right now, they're discussing the county clerk, the county tax assessor, just really county officials who are already there, and in a lot of texas counties, county clerks run the elections. and so, there seems to be some peace of mind about that. some people that i spoke with feel the election will run smoothly but it's still a very large disruption. >> paul, we'll keep looking for your byline on this story. it's a microcosm of what's happening all over. thank you so much for joining us today. ahead for us, two men convicted today in the attempted kidnapping of michigan governor gretchen whitmer. how prosecutors won their case the second time around. we'll explain next. eir case the second timare ound

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there's some breaking news to tell you about today. two men have been convicted in the 2020 plot to kidnap michigan governor gretchen whitmer. a jury found adam fox and barry croft jr. guilty of conspiring to kidnap whitmer and conspiring to obtain a weapon of mass destruction. the convictions come after a previous trial in april was declared a mistrial when the

jury failed to reach a verdict against croft and fox. two additional defendants were acquitted in april while two others flipped and testified for the prosecution. the assistant u.s. attorney who helped prosecute the case chillingly told the jury this, "you can't just strap on an ar-15 and body armor and go snatch the governor." that wasn't the defendant's ultimate goal. they wanted to set off a second american civil war. a second american resolution. and they wanted to do it for a long time before they settled on governor whitmer. in a statement today, whitmer said that today's verdicts "prove that violence and threats have no place in our politics, and those who seek to divide us will be held accountable, but we must also take a hard look at the status of our politics. plots against public officials and threats to the fbi were a disturbing extension of radicalized domestic terrorism that festers in our nation, threatening the very foundation of our republic." we're back with harry litman. harry, first on this verdict,

take me through its impact. >> it's pretty large. so, first of all, they're looking at life in prison and the doj, as you said, they had a hung jury with sort of allegations wafting around that the fbi had overextended, maybe, and trapped the guy, and they didn't -- they wouldn't necessarily go back, and they did here because of the overall public importance of what's happening. the defendant said, oh, these are just tough-talking pot heads. guess what? tough-talking pot heads have taken up arms in many cases. that happened january 6th. and have really crossed over the line and had a really dangerous physical impact on our political culture. so, doj, i think, decided, and rightly, we've got to go back for a second try and hope for the best, and they succeeded. >> harry, when you listen to that statement by the u.s. attorney -- assistant u.s.

attorney, it's talking about things that weren't done in secret. i mean, this chatter about a civil war and a revolution is out in the open on the far, far right. what impact could this case have in sort of dealing with extremism or at least sort of a shot across the bow that crimes will be prosecuted. >> yeah, i mean, going back to what whitmer said, we just have not been successful. you would hope we can kind of reduce this and wrestle it to the ground in our politics, and it would be disavowed, but we can't, especially when the most prominent member of one party actually wants to fan the flames. so, you know, in that case, the department of justice steps in, in a backstop, and at least makes it clear, when you tough-talking pot heads make the move over to actual violence and planning -- remember, this conspiracy, they didn't go through, but they planned to kidnap her, put her on trial for treason, make a bomb, et cetera,

getting way too close for comfort to actual violence, which we've seen happens in this country. at that point, you better think twice or eight times, because you could go to jail for life. there is a sense -- i have a sense that some of these guys are, you know, like to talk in their meetings and then they sort of push each other on to actual conduct that so clearly crosses the line, and hopefully, when that happens next time in michigan or wherever, somebody's there thinking, we better keep the talk -- keep talking but not acting. >> you know, at the time that her kidnapping was plotted by these, i guess not defendants, they're convicted felons now, the -- the climate was so poisoned by the two things that i think sit at a current domestic terror or domestic violence warning, and that is chafing and dissatisfaction about covid restrictions, and the other were sort of these

lies and trump's propaganda about the election itself. neither of those things have really abated from our political system. i mean, what do you make of the ongoing threat of behavior and plots like this one? >> it's there, and look, you're exactly right. these guys didn't like the covid restrictions. plenty of people don't like the covid restrictions. plenty of people -- and you know, that's their american right. but for some reason, well, it's not so mysterious, it has a lot to do with the former president, they're now empowered to think of themselves as swashbuckling patriots and take up arms and trying to kill officials, and you know, the politics haven't done it. what do i think about the ongoing threat? pretty darn high. it's very strong in our rhetoric. look what happened in the wake of the mar-a-lago search. look at the guy who physically invaded cincinnati. but one hopes that with a few gestures like this, at least enough people will be deterred

from crossing the line into violence and enough others will be encouraged to strongly condemn it that, you know, it won't go away, but it will diminish. it's really all we can hope for in sort of post-trump america, it seems to me. it's just so amazing that 21 years after 9/11, all the threats to the homeland are home grown and spurred on and exacerbated by a twice-impeached ex-president. just amazing. harry litman, thank you so much for spending extra time with us today. >> thanks, nicole, good to see you. >> you too. up next for us, that new warning from u.s. intelligence agencies that russia is planning to ramp up strikes on civilian targets inside ukraine. that reporting, plus reaction from our friend, igor novikov, on life in kyiv after a quick break. r novikov, on life in kyiv after a quick break.

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to help keep everyone connected from wherever we go. well at at&t we'll help you find the right wireless plan for you. so, you can stay connected to all your drivers and stores on america's most reliable 5g network. that sounds just paw-fect. terrier-iffic i labra-dore you round of a-paws at&t 5g is fast, reliable and secure for your business. amid rising tensions, u.s. intelligence is today warning kyiv about a possible increase in attacks from russia targeting ukrainian civilians. the state department declassified an alert finding that russia may attempt to target civilian and government facilities in the coming days coinciding with the six-month anniversary of the war as well as with ukraine's independence day, which celebrates its break from the soviet union. despite the significance of the date, celebrations are expected to be muted across much of the country, as the people of

ukraine wait and see how russia retaliates after ukraine's military has increased pressure in recent weeks. "new york times" reports this. "across ukraine, security is being tightened. officers are fanning out on the streets. big celebrations have been banned, and people have been urged to pay special attention to air raid sirens, and there is another worry, that russia may use the milestone to start show trials. videos have emerged of iron cages being built on the stage of the philharmonic theater in mariupol, a battered city occupied by the russians. the fear is that as ukraine celebrates its decades of self-rule, the russians will try ukrainian prisoners of war there as terrorists." joining us now, igor novikov, former advisor to ukraine's president zelenskyy. it's been way too long. how are you doing? >> doing great. ukraine's 31, it's past midnight, so everything is good so far. >> tell me about these reports. u.s. intelligence, you know,

obviously wanting to make clear and perhaps maybe dissuade russia from what's been going on for a long time now. you and i have talked about it, a campaign of terrorism against ukrainian civilians. >> well, first of all, let me make this point. i have my own personal friends and sources, the same sources that kind of warned me about a possibility of russian invasion back in october, last year, and basically, they warned me early august that up until the 26th of august, you know, kyiv is under threat, under increased threat, and you know, judging by what we've seen tonight, kharkiv and zaporizhzhia, dnipro, are being heavily attacked with missiles right now. it's quiet in kyiv so far, but if you kind of here and there, air raid alert siren now because i now have a loud speaker with an air raid alert siren for the next couple of days. well, i mean, that's our reality. so, quiet so far, but we're not

holding our breath. putin loves his symbolism, so something might happen, either tonight or tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. >> i want to ask you about this prospect of show trials in mariupol, but i also want you to tell our viewers something you told me about life in kyiv right now, about the good and about how that still is fighting for itself and to come back. >> well, it's absolutely incredible, because i've never felt an energy like that anywhere in the world ever. i mean, the closest i can imagine would be new york a couple of weeks after 9/11, i.e., you know, there is a sense of compassion in the air, camaraderie, there's still a quality, no space for bigotry or hatred or anything. people are just enjoying every second of it, and it's just incell. you know how they say you feel most alive whenever you're close to death. that's what kyiv feels like, and it's such a shame i can't encourage others to witness that, but literally i love going

to the city center just to look at people smile, just because they're alive. they're happy. it's summertime. i put my headphones on, pretty reckless, death by rock and roll, and just stroll along and enjoy life. that's what it's all about. >> well, it's the ultimate sort of counter to what putin's trying to do. the attacks, the campaign of terrorism, is to make you do the opposite, to stay at home and cower. and i wonder what you make of putin's moves are very stunt-like. they're heinous, and they eke out horrific tragedy for the victims of the violence, but they are not the acts of anyone winning an illegal war that they started. >> well, exactly. what he's trying to do, now he has two main objectives. he failed in his military campaign miserably at this point, so even crimea's been struck now. by the way, thank you for the military aid. thank you for the new $3 billion package that will be announced tomorrow as i hear. we couldn't do this without you,

and we enjoy, and thank you for your support. but anyway, putin's got only two kind of levers left. he wants to break our back psychologically, and the best way to fight it would be to live and enjoy life. and secondly, he's trying to break our back economically. so, obviously, unfortunately, ukraine will need a lot of support to survive the coming months and especially the winter if the war doesn't end by then. >> so, as is often the case, you and president zelenskyy are on the same page message-wise. let me read his message of defiance, which sounds very much like yours. over the weekend, ukrainian president zelenskyy warned that russia may try to do something particularly nasty, something particularly cruel this week. on tuesday, however, he stressed defiance rather than worry when he raised the national flag in a memorial one day ahead of independence day. the blue and yellow flag of ukraine will again fly where it rightfully should be in all temporarily occupied cities and villages of ukraine, he said,

including the crimea peninsula, which russia annexed in 2014. obviously, that also includes mariupol. what do you make of this reporting that putin may stage show trials there? >> well, i'm appalled, but i'm not surprised at all. as i said, he wants to break our backs psychologically. he wants to humiliate ukrainians. he's going to fail at that, but he's going to try, and you know, we just -- we just have to hold our ground and win this war eventually. and you know, on the -- on that note, to be honest, i mean, ukraine's 31, and i just -- i can't stress enough this point that we need to do everything in our power to keep the positivity and morale up in ukraine, and because of that, let me remind you, first of all, of that fund-raiser that we're doing to give prosthetics to ukrainian kids who lost limbs in the war. the first lady actually joined us in this, and nicole, i will ask you, if possible, to retweet it yet again. >> of course. >> and also, the second story.

i got approached by some soldiers. unfortunately, there was once fallen soldier, a guy called oleksandr. he died saving his comrades, so he sacrificed his life for his comrades. his call sign was marvel, and he was a huge fan of sign of marv and i would like to publicly address marvel to see if they can do anything to commemorate him, maybe put a picture of him in the next movie or mention him. those heroes deserve to be remembered. that's the message. >> what is back to school look like for your girls? >> well, back to school, actually s very stressful at the moment, because we have to choose between online education or find an education only with schools that have bomb shelters. and there's a very philosophical point there. that's where violence leased. i think americans should take note. you don't want to end up with choice between online and bomb

shelter, pretty much. so hopefully you'll be out of and it never get to that point, but just remember that. >> you and i talked about trauma in the earliest days of the war, because your girls were living through it with you and your wife. and yesterday actor michael keaton and dr. irwin redliner who are focused on the plight of ukrainian children, who, no matter where you are, you've all been traumatized by watching your country come under attack, is the focus of their effort. i wonder if you can just speak to sort of the the scope of what children are going through here in this sixth month of the war. >> well, first of all, let me make a point that children should not be going through this in the 21st century. if you're in a war zone you have to make sure every ounce of positivity, you can give to them, dreams and hopes, you have

to give to them. i learned i can acquire a panda in the middle of the war zone, and my 3-year-old now has a panda. and as far as she's concerned, the teenager, she's going to go to school, but she's picked her passion. she wants to be a fashion designer. i'm as far removed from fashion as you can imagine, but you know, i'm doing my best to find friends in the fashion industry to find her mentors and to kind of give her that path to encourage her to dream, although she's in the middle of the war zone. i think if we can do it for every single kid in ukraine, and especially if we can return the kids that russia abducted and do that for them as well, we will not only save this country and this country's future, we'll also safe the future of humanity, because at the end of the day, it's all about our kids. >> all right, so let's call out. any fashion designer, at the beginning middle, or high end a their career that wants to mentor sofia, beautiful, young, brilliant ukrainian.

if we hear from anybody, we'll connect you guys. igor, so good to talk to you and to hear from you. and really the thing you said about life in ukraine gives me chills. thank you. thank you for spending some time with us today. please continue to stay safe. >> thank you, nicole. quick break for us. we'll be right back. be right ba.

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normal, but some signs of that today. the ukrainian premier league started its new season today with the threat of russian attacks looming all over that country. no competitive soccer has been play in the ukraine since mid december when the league had its break, but today, they played at the country's olympic stadium, to a 0-0 draw. and although now fans were allowed in the stadium, and players would be forced to take cover if air raid sirens were heard, it is another sign of defiance amid vladimir putin's campaign of terror there. quick break for us. we'll be right back. we'll be right back. but aarp has never run from a tough fight. they stood with their 38 million members and said, "enough." enough of the highest prescription drug prices in the world. together, we forced the big drug companies to lower prices and save americans money. we won this fight, but big pharma won't stop. so neither will aarp.

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thank you so much for letting us into your homes during these truly extraordinary times. we are grateful. "the beat" with ari melber starts right now. hi, ari. >> hi, nicole, nice to see you. welcome to "the beat," everyone. i am ari melber. we have more reporting tonight on just comply. that's