states capitol on tuesday, september 13th. a lot to get to this morning, including the legal pressure intensifying again on former president donald trump. the justice department has issued dozens of subpoenas to associates and former aides as a grand jury investigates efforts to overturn the 2020 election. we'll dig into that report in "the new york times." also more scrutiny on trump's post election fundraising. as the right accuses the biden administration of weaponizing the justice department, there's a new firsthand account of the trump administration's urging of prosecutors to go after the then president's political opponents. we'll speak with geoffrey berman, attorney for the southern district of new york out with an anticipated new book today. we're following the major counter offensive from ukraine as forces continue to regain territory recently controlled by russia, and king charles iii is on the move this morning. this is a live picture of his

motorcade driving through the edinburgh airport. he will fly then to northern ireland to meet with leaders and receive condolences while mourners in london prepare for the arrival of the queen's coffin to that city this afternoon. with us we have columnist and associate editor for the "washington post," david ignatius, and host of "way too early" and author of "the big lie," jonathan lemire. a busy day, the report out of "the new york times" that we'll dig into about new subpoenas issued to a wide range of people in donald trump's orbit around the effort to overturn the 2020 election. >> right. you know, at first glance, surprising, after you think about it, not so much. there is a reason, of course, why we have all of these investigations moving forward and whether it's the records investigation or whether it's around january the 6th or because donald trump obviously broke the law, time and again.

and you even have the most hard right lawyers saying what attorney general barr is now saying, which is did he break the law, yes, of course he broke the law. are the papers his papers, no, they're not his papers. should he be arrested. that's where the debate stands. and yet another far right legal analyst came out and said the same thing, so, again, you see the news and you sort of draw a breath, but at the same time, it's not so surprising. one person after another person after another person, every day, is facing justice for being part of a mob that tried to overturn a presidential election. and the person that they all credit for getting them there, the person that inspired them to do that. the person who was the head of that conspiracy to commit sedition against the united states. he's living in his country club

in florida. at some point justice is served and at some point, americans can be assured that no man, no woman is above the law. >> and of course as you say, even william barr, trump's attorney general, saying the justice department, it appears has enough to indict the question, and here's what we know this morning. new information about the widening criminal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election. nbc news has confirmed 40 subpoenas were issued over the past week to people associated with former president trump. according to "the new york times," which first reported the news. former trump adviser, dan scavino was among those subpoenaed. his attorney has declined to comment. a lawyer to former new york city police commissioner confirmed to nbc news that carrick was among those subpoenaed. hired by trump's legal team to investigate fraud in the 2020 election. according to his lawyer, carrick

initially offered to grant an interview voluntarily. a source tells nbc news former trump adviser boris epstein was one of two people who have their phones seized. epstein has been tied to the scheme to replace biden electors with fake trump electors. former president trump was spotted at his golf course in northern virginia yesterday wearing that red make america great again hat. trump was seen with a group of 8 to 12 people, including his son eric. making an unexpected arrival at dulles airport on sunday amid speculation the justice department could charge him with crimes. trump posted on social media yesterday he was just working during the rare post-presidential trip to the d.c. area. let's bring in justice department reporter for the "new york times" katie benner and former u.s. attorney barbara mcquaid. katie, i'll start with you, and this report in the times that you contributed to. we laid out some of the names of this wide range of 40 people

around donald trump who did receive subpoenas from the justice department. so who all are we talking about beyond some of the names we laid out, and why this rush in recent days? >> so on the timing, i think one of the reasons why the justice department put out this sort of blast of subpoenas request for information and took phones because they are bumping up against the two months before the election, a period where the justice department really does not want to do a lot of over investigative steps. instead what they tend to do is analyze information that they already have or they try to subpoena companies like phone companies or tech companies for records. things that would not tip off to the public what it is they're investigating or looking at so close to a sensitive political cycle and in terms of who the justice department was looking at, they were really trying to get information from anybody who has acquaintance with or worked on or knows anything about a couple of the different investigative threads they're already looking at, including the plan to put forth an

alternative or fake slate of electors in key states. >> and barbara, i would take it's not great news for you whenever the department of justice seizes cell phones from your aides. what does that tell you about, first of all, where they're going, where this investigation, and how aggressive they are, how possibly close they are to charging the president? >> yeah, you know, joe, you see that the circles are closing in on the highest levels of government here, close aids to the former president, as i read these subpoenas, it seems we are seeing the fake elector scheme meets seditious conspiracy. they're looking for a commonality to connect the two together. if you can make the connection, you can put donald trump at the center of a conspiracy. he talked about seizing telephones.

it says to me they have looked at phone records they have been able to get from the phone company but there may be encrypted messages they can only get from the phones themselves. these tend to be the ones that are done in secret, the ones that might be the most sensitive. getting the phones, it's where we are our most candid, our text messages, our list of people we have made phone calls to. those can be useful in tying the threads together. and text messages can be a gold mine. as we saw in the january 6th hearings, people speak candidly, admissions come in. i think it can be a veritable gold mine. >> jonathan lemire, you wrote the best selling book on the attempted coup of the trump administration, trying to overcome the 2020 election, what jumped out to you about this report, some of the names in there. some of the suspects we would anticipate seeing in there. what else did you see in the new report? >> it shows the breadth of the probe and therefore the breadth

of the conspiracy to try to overturn that election. boris epstein is a legal point person for trump informally for some time as he struggled to retain significant lawyers, and in his post presidency. bernie carrick, of course, we know was in the room at both the willard hotel, the command center across the street from the white house in the weeks after the 2020 election, as well as having time in the oval office. he was one of those who was able to freely come and go. he was in conversations about seizing voting machines. he was in the room when michael flynn suggested that the military should be put on the nation's streets because of a quote rigged election. none of that true but just goes to show here that this probe is only widening and, katie, i wanted to get you on this. we had this conversation a lot. every time there seems to be a new doj step and there seems to be more momentum, we sort of run into that theory that 60 or so

days out the doj wouldn't do something perceived as political. we know trump's name is not on the ballot, and he's the leader of the political party, what is your sense of it, people you talk to? and i know no decision has been made, but is that informal guideline front of mind for doj or is that something they feel like they need to go now they will? >> the guideline is front of mine, vis-a-vis these investigations because they are so sensitive. i would say last week was the outside of what people would consider the period before the election, but also keep in mind, i don't think we have any indication that the justice department is anywhere near charging anybody close to the former president or even the former president himself with the crimes around january 6th in particular. keep in mind if what they did last week, if they subpoenaed information for 40 people, that's information that the department and its investigators now have to comb through, look at, read, and try to

cross-examine and cross reference, this is going to take a long time. i wouldn't say we're close to charges. i wouldn't expect any charges before the election anyway because of this guideline. even without an election, i would say there's more than two months of work to do. >> david ignatius, i mentioned we have more conservative lawyers coming out saying that donald trump clearly violated the law. former george w. bush justice department employee john yu who helped write the memo used to justify interrogation techniques after september 11th, the so called torture memo says trump's actions including the documents he took to mar-a-lago were clearly against the law. speaking to the national conservatism conference he said this, quote, trump is not allowed to have the records and to keep them. he could get copies but he can't keep them away from the

archives. that's settled. it is not whether trump violated the law. he did. it is not whether the government had legal grounds to get a search warrant. it does. the question really whether he could be charged is what's about stake, and he continued, the real issue, i think, for people on both sides should recognize is this, is it a good use of prosecutorial discretion of judgment to charge him, you said, so my view has been if you're going to go after a president for the first time in american history for violating a law, i think it should be something much more important than this, like, for example, being involved with the january 6th conspiracy. david ignatius, i think many would agree with john yoo there that the january 6th conspiracy, the possibility of being part of a conspiracy to commit sedition would be as bad of a crime as a president, a former president

could commit. but the question is, again, what will merrick garland, what will the department of justice do. you look at all of this activity, and, my gosh, it wasn't that long ago that people were saying merrick garland just didn't have the stomach to hold donald trump accountable. i don't think anybody is saying that now. >> they're not. merrick garland has been slow, careful, steady, but unblinking. he keeps moving forward. he does exactly what he told us a year ago he would. which is to make this case systematically as a good prosecutor does to start at lower levels to get information, use that information. i find in my reporting, the number of republicans around trump who are now willing to talk about him, about what happened is just growing in a startling way. i want to ask barbara mcquade,

who's a real legal expert, when we think about what they might charge donald trump with on the two fronts, the documents at mar-a-lago and january 6th conspiracy case, i'm curious about how you see justice framing a criminal charge that they might bring. what would be the predicates that they need to be convinced of to go ahead and bring those cases. obviously they're very different cases. speak briefly to what a good prosecutor, what an attorney general would need to have to go forward. >> well, i think, david, in both cases what you need is the direct evidence of the knowledge and intent of donald trump, and i don't think it's an either/or. you could charge him with both, but i think john yoo makes a good point, if you charge him first in the documents case, does it cause a distraction for the january 6th case which is by far the more significant case, but you don't have to pick one. you can charge both and in many

ways you might have to. i think what you would need in the documents case is evidence that donald trump himself knew what was happening and directed others, and i think many of his out of court statements after the search warrant was executed tend to show that he did, you know, he has not denied. he has, you know, you saw kinds of arguments like the evidence was planted and i declassified that, not that, my gosh, i didn't know they were there, my sorry, let's get this back. they still would need to show his direct evidence. i think they can get there. that's why additional investigation is necessary. in the january 6th case, i think as they're narrowing in on what happened at the willard hotel on january 5th and talking to all of those witnesses around them, i think they have the ability to determine donald trump's intent with regard to seditious conspiracy. did he know the oath keepers and proud boys were going to attack the capitol, and use physical force to stop the vote. if they can establish those

facts or use create a sub tri fuj. if they can prove either of those things, i think they can charge that case. it's there for the finding if they can find it with these witnesses that they have been talking to. >> former u.s. attorney barbara mcquade, justice reporter, katie benner, 40 subpoenas issued by the justice department. thank you both for being with us to discuss it this morning. the royal family continues to tour the united kingdom, king charles and the queen consort will travel from scotland to northern ireland where he will address the parliament there. the king will attend a service in the capital of belfast. the queen's coffin will remain in edinburgh until it's flown to london. president biden delivered remarks on his administration's cancer moonshot initiative which aims to slash the cancer death rate by 50% over the next 25 years. the president named long time

science adviser renee wegerson as the first director of a new federal agency established to drive biomedical research. biden's remarks came on the 60th anniversary of john f. kennedy's famous moonshot speech. >> president kennedy set a goal to win the space race against russia and advance science and technology for all of humanity. and when he set that goal, he established the national purpose that could rally the american people in a common cause. i believe we can usher in the same unwillingness to postpone, the same national purpose that will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, to end cancer as we know it, and even cure cancers once and for all. >> twitter's former head of

cyber security will testify before the senate judiciary committee today after filing a whistleblower complaint about the company earlier this summer. peter zatko is expected to sit before lawmakers for three hours for a hearing on data security at risk. in july he alleged members of twitter's board of directors misled the public and government agencies about the strength of the company's security. before leaving twitter in january, zatko says the company suffered significant security breaches so regularly, reports should have been filed with government agencies about once a week. twitter has defended itself from the claims placing him as a disgruntled employee who was fired for his quote ineffective leadership and poor performance. we'll hear more from him today. still ahead on "morning joe," ukraine continues to make strategic gains in the ongoing war against russia. former ukrainian president petro poroshenko will join us to weigh in on a counter offensive that has shocked the russians. and the house select

committee investigating january 6th likely to hold another public hearing later this month. we'll talk to committee member adam kinzinger about that. also this morning, with less than two months to go until election day, new polling shows ohio senate race is neck in neck. democratic senate candidate congressman tim ryan joins our conversation next when "morning joe" comes right back. nversatio joe" comes right back. trelegy for copd. [coughing] ♪ birds flyin' high, you know how i feel. ♪ ♪ breeze driftin' on by... ♪ if you've been playing down your copd,...

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a new ad from ohio's democratic nominee for the u.s. senate. congressman tim ryan responding to outside groups that are spending millions of dollars to support his republican opponent, j.d. vance. so much of vance's money has just poured in from silicon valley over the past year. a new usa today suffolk

university pole show vance trailing congressman ryan by one point, but shows just how competitive this race is in a state that donald trump won pretty easily two times. we've got congressman tim ryan with us right now, talking about those people. nice scene. you've got the jason is sudeikis car cam today. even though you're in the middle of campaigning, i know. talk about quickly those people that have funded his campaign, that funded him in the primary. the silicon valley titans that he said he loved, and the area he said he loved until he decided to become a politician. >> yeah, so, you know, peter teal gave him $15 million for the primary. he got two donors, peter gave him 15 in the primary and mitch mcconnell came in with

$30 million, all of this money that mitch mcconnell got are the very people who offshored the jobs in ohio, who made money off of nafta and all of these big trade deals that really led to the disinvestment, the job loss, the heart ache, the opioid addiction in ohio. that's the money mcconnell is using to buy the senate seat in ohio. we have 250,000 low dollars. we got low dollar donors trying to combat this thing, and we're winning by a point or two here or there, but i think we're going to win it because he's so disconnected. you ran the piece about the ohio state game. the guy is a complete fraud, started an opioid charity. who starts that to prey on people in ohio. j.d. vance does. >> there's a question, where is

j.d. vance, he doesn't seem to be campaigning that much. do you get a sense -- i'm serious. talk me to you, politician to politician, former house member to former house member, you know, people would always ask me, how do you do that, how do you knock on people's doors all day, how do you talk to them, have dinner with them. i loved it. i absolutely loved it. i considered it an honor when people would let me in their homes to talk about what mattered the most to them. i know you're the same way. this guy you're running against, he doesn't seem to even like this. and by the way, it's not just media people, top republican donors are saying he's the worst candidate they have seen in his life. he hates being out there. he shouts at people in meetings. what's his deal, man? >> i'm not going to lay him down on the couch here and analyze

him. i'm not exactly sure. all i know is there's one primary value that we have in ohio, you know, whether you're rich or poor, middle class, you better be out there grinding. you know, in ohio, we value hard work more than anything else. you know, some people are smarter than others. everybody is expected to work hard, and those are the values. that's how we were raised in ohio, and it's a complete slap in the face, the dude took the whole summer off. who doesn't want to take the whole summer off, everybody does. single moms with a couple of kids, i travel the state, meet factory workers working six, seven days a week, busting their rear ends and you got someone running for the senate here who took the entire summer off who wants to do one or two events today on a busy day, and we're grinding with five, six events a day, starting early morning like this a day. so the reality is he's not going to get rewarded. we need the resources necessary.

you saw the ad, my guys at left hook are doing a great job with our ads, and we're getting out there, and people don't like them. we just got to keep the heat on them, but i just don't think he likes people. i think he wants to be called senator one day. you have done this long ago. some people want to grind and help people, and there's some people who just want the title. he's just a guy who wants the title and he's a fraud. >> congressman, to your point about how people feel about you and feel about him, j.d. vance in the state of ohio, there's part of the poll that has you effectively tied, gets into favorability. you are 46 favorable. 26 unfavorable. you're plus 17 in the unfavorable. i guess that leads me to a question of your message to republicans in the state of ohio. there are people who say, well, ohio has gone red now. they went plus seven or eight or whatever it was for donald trump. what is your message to ohio republicans in this general election who may look at j.d.

vance, i don't like the way he's running the campaign, maybe i don't like the guy, and they're giving you a look. >> i would say i'm one of the most bipartisan members of congress. the last two congresses i have been in the top 10% of most bipartisan. i want to work across the aisle. look, the democrats aren't right on everything. and i'm willing to sit down and have conversations about how we can move out of the age of stupidity and into an age of reconciliation and reform. how do we fix all of these broken systems. some of the answers will come from republicans, not the extremists we're dealing with every single day. we have to confront that movement, but, you know, working with normal mainstream republicans, i think that's going to be really really important because we have to reform these systems, and i will tell him, to, like, we got to get the government out of our business. i'm all in on that. you see the dobbs decision, you see, you know, in florida where they're trying to punish businesses. j.d. vance is all in on that,

punishing businesses because they don't have the business culture that these ideal logs have. getting rid of birth control, talking about nullifying marriages, that is way too much government in our business. and i'm down with that, and i think it's important for us also to dominate the industries of the future. that means infrastructure. that means research, and you know, we have to talk about the fact that justice spending. just spending money does not solve problems. we have broken systems, so we've got to fix these systems. i think that's going to be an era of reform that i would love to lead and be a part of and i think it's important for this country as we come out of the pandemic. i'm saying exhausted majority, democrats, republicans, and independents against the extremists leading an era of reform and reconciliation, so we can heal this country and move into the future. and again, i don't have a billion dollar donor here to fund me. i need the low dollar people who

can go to timforoh.com and chip in a couple of bucks and help us put this extremist movement to bed so we can move on with being americans again. >> two quick questions, and we actually have some other stories we have to go to, but one of them has to do with the growing concerns about a police shortage. i have asked democrats on this show before about defunding the police, and every one that comes on is against defunding the police. some are not as supportive of our men and women in law enforcement. as a voter, i would want them to be, some democrats. i want to ask you the question about law enforcement. of course you've got crazy extreme republicans in the house calling for the defunding of the fbi. but do you understand -- do you understand as a democrat that

people are leaving law enforcement because they don't think that elected officials have their back, that they will see what the 5% do, the 3% do, the 1% do. they get picked up on cell phones and repeated on tv a thousand times. but the 99% who are kissing their kids on the forehead good night, hugging their wives or their husbands good-bye, and going off and risking their lives at night, protecting us. those people just don't feel like politicians have their back anymore, so they're quitting. do you understand that? do you understand that crisis and do you understand that law enforcement officers across america need all of our support? >> a thousand percent, joe, and that's one of the frustrating things. you saw one of the tvs in the ad

had the defund the police when i threw the football at it. we want to be very clear. that doesn't make any sense. that's crazy. people need help, especially with what's going on in some of our cities. they want to pick up the phone and call someone to come help them with a really really bad situation, and those people in those jobs, as you said, they have kids, they have spouses. it's a dangerous job. i did a ride along a month or two back, just outside of dayton, and anytime you pull somebody over at night, like it's scary. you never know. especially in ohio when you can have -- everybody can have a gun in their cars. we need more cops, better paid cops and get rid of bad cops. that's something 95% of americans can agree with. i have cops many my district, they make 14 bucks an hour to start. that's why we put money in the rescue package for states and

local governments so they can beef up some of the law enforcement on the ground. that's why i've brought back almost $500 million to ohio to fund cops in technology and equipment they would need. you have to make sure these communities are safe, and again, j.d. vance, he wants to abolish the atf, which helps cops solve crimes and prevent drug and gun crimes. he wants nothing to do with the fbi's running around with marjorie taylor greene and these other people who want to, like, punish fbi agents who keep us safe. it's crazy, and that's what i mean when i say exhausted majority, democrats, republicans, independents, bring back some freaking sanity to the country so that we can move forward and out compete china. it's got to be a united effort. >> congressman, i know you're hearing a lot on the campaign trail about immigration linked to the opioid crisis you have been talking about for a long time in the state of ohio. there will be 2 million arrests at the border this year,

shattering a record. a couple of days ago on "meet the press," vice president kamala harris said quote we have a secure border. do you agree with her? >> no. i mean, i think we've got still way too much fentanyl coming into the country. it starts in china, goes to mexico. i know the efforts are there. they're trying. we're not anywhere close to where we need to be on the border. i disagree with what's going on with the title 42 right now, too. i think it's important that we figure that out before we make things easier. we need comprehensive immigration reform. we've got to have an orderly process on how we come in. i have a resolution that says we need to -- we need a whole government approach to keeping this junk out of the communities. ohio is still suffering from that. again, j.d. vance started a fake

opioid charity, to be the mouthpiece for the charity blaming the addicts. that purdue pharma got hooked on opioids. who does that. increase border patrols and keep the junk out and make sure we know who's in the country. again, that's something that i think 90% of americans would agree on, but we've got to do a lot more. i don't necessarily agree with that comment. >> congressman, i know you got to fire up the car and hit the trail, one last question, where do you figure you'll be at 7:00 saturday night when ohio state plays toledo. >> not at the donald trump rally, i can promise you that. >> j.d. vance's campaign says those great programs when they kick off, he'll be checking the score frequently. >> these campaigns are great, joe knows you have these moments that reveal candidates.

and that was the moment when you know this guy has nothing to do with ohio. just doesn't get it, and that's obvious. >> and willie, was it a bad sign that he said he would be listening and following the score because his favorite football team has always been the ohio state nittany lions. >> might not be a football guy. >> we're not hiding congressman tim ryan, his video is frozen as he sits in the car and gets moving but at least we had his audio. we're grate. thanks checking in. congressman tim ryan, thanks again. it is time now for a look at the morning papers. we will start in delaware where joe was just talking about this, the news journal reports police forces are facing severe staffing shortages. new figures reveal on average, departments have one officer for every 370 residents. in one county, departments have one officer for more than 500 residents.

in illinois, the beacon news reports children's hospitals in that state are seeing a surge of kids with respiratory illnesses. some hospitals are treating about 50% more children than usual every day. the spike usually does not happen until winter. the surge posing a particular challenge for hospitals due to staffing shortages. maryland's the capital leads with the gubernatorial election. new data shows democratic nominee wes moore has received nearly four times as much in donations from governor larry hogan's former supporters as republican nominee dan cox. moore raised nearly $2 million. cox reported just under $200,000. and in the state of maine the portland "press herald," urging customers not to purchase lobster. the agency added u.s. lobster to a red list of seafood to avoid due to the way it's harvested and the possibility of harming

the environment. food retailers stopped offering lobster. angus king of maine is fired up about this story. we'll talk about what's going on on capitol hill, joe. >> it's an absolutely ridiculous classification. and some talk that somehow these lobster men and women are harming whales and, again, they're talking about absolutely ravaging a way of life, and it's a bizarre classification, and we're going to be talking, again, we'll be talking to the senator on this and many other things coming up. we're going to also have a look at the must read opinion pages, plus, we're going to dig into the claims from a former u.s. attorney that former president trump directed prosecutors in the justice department to go after his political enemies.

what a surprise, you know what, i'll give an example. when he told the attorney general two weeks before the election that he should arrest his opponent and his opponent's family. like, what are these people whining about now. donald trump commits crimes in broad daylight, and they're accusing the biden administration of politicizing the doj? what a joke. "morning joe" will be right back. a joke. "morning joe" will be right back st precious commodity, especially when you have metastatic breast cancer. when your time is threatened, it's hard to invest in your future. until now. kisqali is helping women live longer than ever before when taken with an aromatase inhibitor or fulvestrant... in hr+, her2- metastatic breast cancer. kisqali is a pill that's proven to delay disease progression. kisqali can cause lung problems, or an abnormal heartbeat, which can lead to death. it can cause serious skin reactions, liver problems, and low white blood cell counts that may result in severe infections. tell your doctor right away if you have new or worsening symptoms,

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a live picture of the white house at 6:44 in the morning. ukrainian forces continue their rapid push in the northeast of the country taking back more territory and driving russian troops into a chaotic and hasty retreat. in his nightly address last night, president zelenskyy said ukrainian forces had taken back more than 2,000 square miles of land that had been under russian control just this month. nbc news has not been able to

independently verify that exact figure. a spokesperson for the ukrainian military says russian soldiers were surrendering en masse as they understand the hopelessness of their situation. the mood was jubilant as the ukraine flag was raised over territories. they released video, showing their troops ambushing a russian vehicle. the unit spotted the vehicle while on patrol, and the ambush was quote arranged quickly and successfully. david ignatius, your latest piece in the "washington post" is titled "how ukraine's offensive changes the equation for putin and zelenskyy," you write, zelenskyy has refused to negotiate from weakness. now after seven punishing months, he's in a position of strength. talking to his exuberant country, he speaks of liberating

all of his territory. zelenskyy opens a door to diplomacy, even if the russians scorn his gesture, it would reinforce the image that zelenskyy has the upper hand. so david, let's start with the assessment of what's happened really in the last few days and weeks or so, which is that they have gone on this offensive, this counter offensive, the ukrainians and pushed back the russian military into the east all the way to the russian border in some case. how are they doing it? >> they're doing it through meticulous planning. i wrote this morning that ukraine and the ukrainian military are rewriting the history of the 21st century. i mean it. they initially attacked in the south, trying to relieve pressure on the black sea areas and moving toward kherson, port city in the south. russians got preoccupied with that, and then the ukrainians with great finesse move hard in the northeast towards the city of kharkiv, which is the

russians had taken that area in the beginning days of the war, and almost forgotten about it. and all of a sudden, an enormous ukrainian advance moved in that area. russians were taken by surprise, began a kind of retreat, then the ukrainians moved across substantial amounts of territory that president zelenskyy's claim on sunday night, that it's 2,000 square miles that's been occupied. it's extraordinary, but that's similar to the figures that i'm hearing. two things i think, willie, that are crucial about this. first, this encourages ukrainians and their supporters in europe and america to believe that this war can have a successful conclusion, that ukraine can take back its territory. second, it presents president vladimir putin and russia with a very difficult choice. this special military operation, as he likes to call it, is obviously, visibly, not going well. russians watch television.

they see these reversals, so putin either has to define victory downward, he has to find some way to reduce his ambitions in ukraine or he has to figure out a way to escalate and punch back harder, and that's the thing i think that's concerning officials in the biden administration. what are the ways that putin increasingly backed against the wall might strike back to try to regain some where he has lost the initiative. it's been an extraordinary week for people who watched the ukrainians fight so bravely. it's just been something remarkable to see, the courage and determination and now the success on the ground. >> david, this has been really just a colossal historic miscalculation by putin. we hear europeans announcing that they figured out a way to get through the winter effectively without russian exports. so david, the question is how is

there a negotiated settlement. vladimir putin is not just going to say i made this historic gamble and lost, and crushed russia's economy. as you said, he's got other options. so the question is, how do both sides get to the table when ukraine has an upper hand? does that go through china. is it china that xi finally gives putin the message, hey, listen, we need to wind this down and let's negotiate with the ukrainians and the americans to end this war. >> joe, the answer is we just don't know yet, and i think it's premature to talk about negotiations at a time when ukraine is moving forward still aggressively on the battlefield. whom might be a possible mediator, the u.n. secretary general has had some surprising success in negotiating deals to get ukrainian grain out of ports in the black sea.

that's a possibility. we just don't know yet. i think this war is going to go into next year before we see any real break in russia's willingness to consider negotiations, but i do think that this is now a point where ukraine has the upper hand. ukraine didn't want to negotiate in previous months because they felt they were on their back foot, they don't want to negotiate from weakness. now they're in a position of strength, and i think, they look all the stronger as they say, as the biden administration does. in the end, we need to have a negotiated settlement to this war, one in which ukraine regains its territory, regains its sovereignty, but as you suggest, it's hard to see that moment absent some additional changes on the battlefield. >> so willie, i wrote last week on the eve of this breakthrough for the ukraine's counter offensive, the biden administration was feeling bullish about where things were

and the success ukraine had and caught them by surprise. they caution there's a long way to go. they suspect the war has months and months to go. they made a key point. the success gives not just a victory for the ukrainians to rally around, but their allies, and europe has made progress addressing the gas shortages it could face this fall, could be a cold dark winter in europe and in the united states as well, as the administration plans to ask for more money for ukraine, they want to be able to keep, you know, republicans in line. there have only been a few lone dissenting voices for people saying, why are we spending so much in kyiv, why are we not doing this at home, they worried those number of voices would grow. administration officials say this ukraine victory, this push back is going to keep them silent, and they feel like they'll be able to keep the bipartisan coalition at home, and with european allies abroad. >> and one of the critical voices inside russia, by the

way, tend to be quiet. they're getting a little bit louder around vladimir putin as this goes badly for him. david ignatius, we'll be reading your piece in the "washington post." thank you so much. still ahead, nbc's ken dilanian breaks down the slate of subpoenas issued by the justice department related to donald trump and the attack on the united states capitol. plus, we'll be joined by a member of the january 6th select committee, congressman adam kinzinger. we are watching out for key new inflation data, how that might influence the federal reserve's decision to influence interest rates next week. "morning joe" is coming back. ck (vo) you can be well-dressed. you can be well-mannered. (man) oh, no, no, after you. wahoooo! (vo) you can be well-groomed. or even well-spoken. (man) ooooooo. (vo) but there's just something about being well-adventured. (vo) adventure has a new look.

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wow, that's a beautiful sunrise, just before the top of the hour in washington. big night at the emmy's last night. if you didn't stay up late, you missed "succession" and "ted lasso" winning the top awards.

succession for best drama series, and ted lasso best comedy. "the white lotus" and "squid game" winning several awards. best actor, the first person from a foreign language show to win that leading award. ""abbott elementary" had a big night. ted lasso, sudeikis winning. >> we talked about how much we love it here. for you and me, willie, it was a special mention of nathan lane who won an award for "only murders," just incredible. second season, somehow even better than the first season. and a lot of nominations didn't win, but i've got to say, when you look what ben stiller and adam scott what they've done

with that show. have you seen any? >> i confess i haven't, but all i've heard are good things, and it's in my queue waiting to watch. i hear incredible things about it. >> is one of those things that i like, for instance, the offer, i tell everybody, you got to see the offer. you'll love it. severance, it's a little out there, but i absolutely loved it, and most people that i tell them to watch severance end up loving it, but wow, i mean, ben stiller has come up with something pretty extraordinary. "the white lotus," too, big year for that show, a dark and bizarre and excellent show, and they won a bunch of awards, we're going to have much more, and dig into incredible moments, historic moments at the emmys in our fourth hour. up next, the latest reporting on dozens of subpoenas related to the january 6th investigation. also ahead, some progress in the

legal fight over the documents seized from mar-a-lago. the doj and trump's attorneys appear to be close now to agreeing on a list of potential special masters in that case. "morning joe" is coming right back. that case "morningoe j" is coming right back it's the all-new subway series menu. twelve irresistible new subs. the most epic sandwich roster ever created. ♪♪ it's subway's biggest refresh yet! if you have age-related macular degeneration, ♪♪ there's only so much time before it can lead to blindness. but the areds 2 clinical study showed that a specific nutrient formula can help reduce the risk of dry amd progression. ask your doctor now about an areds 2 supplement.

right at the top of the hour, a beautiful live picture from the top of the building in new york city, tuesday, september 13th. welcome back to "morning joe." we continue to follow the wide ranging investigation into the efforts to overturn the 2020 election. as a grand jury issues dozens of subpoenas to people in the trump orbit. we'll dig into that new reporting. former u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york, geoffrey berman is standing by out with a new book, accusing trump of pressuring prosecutors to go after his political enemies and turning the justice department into quote his own personal law firm. mr. berman will join us in a moment to explain those

allegations. jonathan lemire is with us and joining the conversation, mike barnicle, pulitzer prize winning columnist at "the washington post," eugene robinson, and special correspondent for bbc news, katty kay. good morning to all of you, we begin with the expansion of the criminal investigation into efforts to overturning the 2020 election. nbc news has confirmed about 20 subpoenas, excuse me, 40 subpoenas were issued over the past week to people associated with the former president. let's bring in nbc news justice and intelligence correspondent ken dilanian. good morning, so about 40 subpoenas, a couple of search warrants, grabbing some phones from people around donald trump. lay it out a little bit for our viewers and who we're talking about and why this is so significant. >> good morning, willie, that's right, this is a substantial escalation in a justice department investigation that we haven't been talking about as much because we have all been focused on this separate invest into the documents at mar-a-lago, but these subpoenas

went to all sorts of people associated with the trump campaign. we haven't confirmed all the names, but one of the persons whose phone was seized was a guy named boris epshteyn, a key trump insider and a lawyer named timothy, who represents bernard kerik. he told me he represents donald trump in this matter. he characterized the subpoena as very broad, basically seeking anything and everything about the trump campaign and efforts to overturn the 2020 election, which he called investigating fraud. and also, efforts to raise money for that stop the steal movement that led up to the january 6th insurrection. so it's a really broad-based set of activity that looks like it's coming just before the 60-day window, the quiet period where the justice department doesn't like to do things before the election. again, i have said this before, it's not clear they're going to

apply that here. donald trump is not on the ballot. he looms large over politics. it's a major escalation into an investigation that a lot of critics wondered where was the justice department on this. we have seen a lot from the january 6th committee. the justice department is showing up in a big way here. >> and so, ken, i wanted to ask you that, without speculating because we have absolutely no idea what direction they're going in, we can look at the doj's activities and what they have been doing as it pertains to the attempt to overturn the presidential election. does it seem to you that there is a real focus on the fake elector scheme, that part of the conspiracy to commit sedition against the united states and overturn the election? >> joe, i would say that's one of three major focuses, but it's an important one, and what we've seen from the georgia state investigation into that fake elector scheme is that at least that prosecutor down there thinks that's a really fruitful

area to look at. the potential crimes there are very clear, maybe more clear than perhaps this rather vague, you know, obstruction of congress issue that is at issue with the question of the january 6th insurrection itself and whether trump had complicity in that. the fake elector scheme looks like basic fraud, and that is a focus of the justice department. another interesting focus in recent weeks that's emerged is this focus on raising money for the stop the steal movement, a lot of which, you know, didn't really go to political activity, apparently, or that's the allegation. you know, is there a massive con there of the people who are pouring money into the effort by people who knew there wasn't fraud but who were raising money on the idea that there was fraud. both of those two things are the kind of cases that prosecutors bring all the time in different context, and so, yeah, i think those are very fruitful areas for the justice department.

hey, gene robinson, it does seem as you look at the news that breaks every day, everybody was looking closely at what was going on in south florida with the special master, with this very, let's just say, very creative ruling by the federal judge down there, the district court judge down there. and while they were doing that, the doj had been moving in this completely new area, and suddenly, you realize if you're donald trump, there are so many legal fronts that he's going to fight. all of the things we have been seeing him do through the years and ask why is he above the law. why is no one holding him accountable for doing things that would have other members of congress or senators thrown in jail in like a week's time. all of it seems to be coming together right now.

his misdeeds seem to be catching up to him all at once. >> they do. all of these investigations move kind of slowly, but they're clearly creeping toward the former president, and he's under investigation in atlanta, which is a serious investigation. he's under investigation in new york. civil violations, it's, you know, it is all closing in. about the justice department investigation into january 6th, a question that comes to mind, and of course we don't have an answer is when attorney general garland and his prosecutors decided to do this investigation in earnest, has it been going on all along, so quietly that for at least months and months, we didn't really notice it or see much of it. or was there a decision made at

some point to go all in on this investigation. whatever the answer to that question is, it does look like the justice department is all in with these 40 new subpoenas and clearly this is not the last we're going to hear of this. it's a very serious situation for donald trump. so, ken, i have a question about that he is new subpoenas, and it's what they told you that they -- the subpoena that kerik got is very broad. i'm not a lawyer. what do you read into the fact that it's so broad and how far the doj is into the investigative process. >> he said it was not a normal subpoena, which he described as very targeted. in this case, you know, of course the defense attorney would say this, he says, look, the doj is on a fishing expedition. i don't know if this is a real

investigation, he said, but what it says to me is that their focus is incredibly broad. it's one of these complex investigations involving, you know, dozens and dozens of people with bits of information and that they may not, they may not know exactly what they're looking for in all cases yet, but they're vacuuming up everything. which is dangerous for a lot of people. to eugene's point about what changed here, my reporting on this is that the cassidy hutchinson testimony, before the january 6th committee really crystallized a lot of thing inside the justice department. before that point, there wasn't a lot of appetite to even move in the direction of indicting a former president. merrick garland, former appeals court judge was not interested in doing that. knowing they were armed and sent them to the capitol, people familiar with garland's

thinking, perilous to speculate about that. that's what i'm told. >> nbc's ken dilanian. thank you so much. the senate judiciary committee will investigate claims former president trump tried to force the justice department to prosecute his political enemies and help his allies. "the new york times" was first to report the committee's chairman, democratic senator dick durbin of illinois sent a letter to attorney general garland requesting documents related to accusations made by geoffrey berman in his new book. berman was the u.s. attorney in the southern district of new york for more than half of trump's presidency. the trump appointee claims he was fired by then attorney general bill barr because his work threatened trump's reelection campaign. and former u.s. attorney geoffrey berman joins us live. his new book out today entitled "holding the line inside the nation's preeminent u.s. attorney's office and its battle with the trump justice department." good morning, it's great to have you with us. >> thank you for having me.

>> senator durbin saying we're going to launch investigations based on the material in your book. >> i welcome the investigation, you know, the conduct that occurred was so outrageous and unprecedented a light needs to be shined on it. that's the purpose of my book is to allow people to understand the outrageous and improper political interference by trump's justice department in the southern district cases. >> a lot of what you write about in the book was suspected by many people, reported on in realtime. you get into such detail as the person who was on the receiving end of those phone calls from the attorney general, so let's tick through some of those. we can talk about michael cohen. you got a phone call asking for his conviction to be overturned because it might impact negatively donald trump, the midterm elections. walk us through what happened and how unusual it is in your long experience as a prosecutor to get a phone call like that. >> well, you know, the office

was pursuing the charges arising out of michael cohen's guilty plea, so they were campaign finance charges, and what happened was as soon as barr took over, he shut down that investigation for two months, purportedly to analyze whether there was a legal basis for it. granted, you know, bear in mind, michael cohen had already pled guilty to these charges. so the idea would be, let's look at this, let our office of legal counsel take a look at this, and if it doesn't bear up to scrutiny, we may have to withdrawal michael cohen's guilty plea, which is completely, completely unprecedented, and the other thing that barr did in connection with the cohen case is he tried to install the u.s. attorney from the eastern district of new york, rich donahue, tried to install him to oversee our investigation

arising out of the michael cohen guilty plea. he tried to control the situation that way with someone who he trusted and we fought, we pushed back, and that never happened. >> so you say this is without precedent. what was your reaction at first when you realized what was coming at you, what you were up against, which is to say that the attorney general of the united states was acting at the direction of donald trump, crossing that line, and trying to shut down investigations to initiate new investigations that might be helpful to the president. how do you as a federal prosecutor continue to do your job with that kind of downward pressure? >> well, like many people who stayed in their job despite their misgivings, i decided to take the appointment and to try and keep my job because i thought it was best for the southern district of new york and the country. there were about 220 prosecutors, what we call assistant united states attorneys in the southern district of new york. none of them quit because of trump, and they needed someone to lead the office.

>> the southern district u.s. attorney's office is a legendary office filled with career prosecutors. was there a tipping point in the office with all of this pressure from washington, d.c., from bill barr, specifically, the attorney general. was there a tipping point where people came to you and said we have to do something, you have to speak out, we can't continue to go on like this? >> my job as the united states attorney was to run interference with all of these improper, you know, attempts to go after, to prosecute donald trump's political enemies and to assist his friends. and so what i did was, you know, i tried to keep the rest of the prosecutors doing their jobs, keeping their heads down, doing the work that needed to be done so we remained a productive office, and we were extremely productive. there were a few number of people who actually knew at the

time what was going on, and one of the reasons i wrote the book was to throw a light on it for transparency. >> so was it ever verbal to you from bill barr or some deputy attorney general under bill barr, hey, let's take a look at john kerry. >> let me tell you what happened with john kerry. president trump attacks john kerry in two tweets saying that kerry engaged in possible illegal conversations with iranian officials regarding the iran nuclear deal. the very next day, the trump justice department refers to the southern district of new york the john kerry criminal case. two tweets from the president, and the john kerry criminal case becomes a priority for the department of justice. >> when you say referred, how did they refer it, by paper, by phone call, how did they do it? >> initially, it was a meeting at the national security division within the department of justice followed up by, you know, phone calls and the

statute they wanted us to use was enacted in 1799 and had never been successfully prosecuted. so for about 220 years, this criminal statute had been on the books, and not a single conviction, so we investigated it. john kerry was entirely innocent, and but yet the justice department pushed us and pushed us and pushed us and when i declined, bill barr did not take no for an answer. he referred the case to another district. fortunately, that district didn't charge john kerry either. >> jonathan lemire has a question for you. john. >> geoffrey, good to see you this morning. you touched a few moments ago a dilemma that a lot of people in government faced under the presidency of donald trump, national security officials, law enforcement officials, do they stay with it, stay the course or do they leave. i want you to talk about your decision to stay in your post as

long as you did and also the why you waited until now to come forward with some of these stories. >> well, they wanted me to quit. that would have, you know, really gone into their play book. had i quit, i would not have been replaced by my deputy, which is the normal course of things, i would have been replaced by an outsider who barr trusted. i felt it was important for the office, the integrity and the independence of the southern district of new york to stay in job. as far as when i went public, when barr attempted to fire me in june of 2020, i did not go quietly. it was an extremely noisy exit. i issued a press release to the country saying exactly what bill barr was trying to do and exactly how he had crossed line. i used language from the obstruction of justice statute. and it was because of that very

noisy exit that i was succeeded not by the outsider who bill barr wanted to succeed me, i was succeeded by audrey straus, a person of incredible integrity, and icon of the bar of new york. >> we have been hearing quite a lot from bill barr recently testifying to the january 6th committee and in other statements, disparaging, effectively president trump's assertion that the election was, you know, stolen from him. how do you, having known bill barr and watched him close up and watched the lengths to which he went to try to protect the former president, how do you account for his public change of heart? >> i think when you look at the service of people in the trump administration, you should look as to whether they followed their oath prior to the november 2020 election. once the election occurred and once trump lost, people engaged

in an entirely new personal calculation of personal interests, so once the election occurred and trump lost, barr and others scurried off the ship, but before the election, he did the president's bidding. he undermined the rule of law and corrupted the department of justice. >> one of the cases you have talked about in the last couple of days with the release of the book is the steve bannon case that you were working on, this we build the wall, thrown back into headlines when he was put in handcuffs in your old district. what is that case exactly, are we talking about defrauding people who gave money to steve bannon. >> that's right. it's a cynical operation they ran. and by the way, that was a case that was percolating in our office at the time i got fired. we were very close to bringing the indictment of that case. in fact, we did bring the indictment about two months after i was fired. that's a case where they raised

money for the president's, you know, big issue, building the wall, and they promised people that the money raised would go to the organization. it wouldn't go to the individuals. and what bannon is charged with is funneling money that was supposed to go to the organization, to the individuals, including hundreds of thousands of dollars into his own pocket. >> mr. berman, what's your thoughts, what are your thoughts on the level of damage that's been done to the government in the past four years, specifically to the department of justice and the law itself, and i'm talking about including the federalist society's impact on the appointment of federal judges, what you have endured when you were a u.s. attorney. what's your level of concern. >> it was enormous damage over a relatively short period of time. it was four years, and it's unbelievable what really occurred and the destruction of the rule of law and attack on the fabric of the democracy. and that's one of the reasons i

welcome the congressional investigation that's going to go on now, and hopefully that will shed even further light on the outrages that occurred in the justice department under president trump. >> so mr. berman, as an officer of the court, as someone who's studied the law, lived the law your entire life, i'd love to -- just a little too optimistic, i suppose. my wife tells me i'm too optimistic. but could you -- we've talked about all the ways that the justice department was perverted by donald trump for his political means by barr. but how about talking about what happened with the challenges after the election. how justices liberal, moderate, conservative justices appointed by democrats, justices appointed

by republicans, they upheld, not only the rule of law in those challenges but also upheld madisonian democracy, republicans in the senate and the house did such a pa pathetic job of standing up to be a want to be autocrat, federal judges of all ideological stripes that stood up and did that. did that make you proud not only to be an american but also to be an attorney? >> you're absolutely right, joe. you know, i was in a nonpolitical position and my issues and concerns about president trump and the trump justice department are nonpolitical. they tried to destroy the very fabric of our society and both sides of the aisle can agree upon that, and i also believe that we have to restore faith and confidence in our key institutions. including the judiciary.

and the idea that people are responding in the same way to the outrages that occurred is a step in that direction. >> on that point, before you go, i know you're not working on the case, but you do have a sharp legal mind. based on everything you've seen, published information, reports about the documents taken from the white house to mar-a-lago, there's been a lot of talk that there's already just based on what we know enough for merrick garland, justice to indict the former president of the united states. what's your view on that? >> when i was the united states attorney i was always frustrated when people from the outside would venture comments and opinions on our cases when they didn't know the facts or they had a very small sliver of the facts so i'm not going to engage in speculation on that part on, you know, how much evidence they have collected. i will say that it was an extraordinary revelation from the department of justice that donald trump and those around

donald trump are being investigated not merely for the mishandling of classified information but for obstruction of the subpoena that required the production of that classified information. that is a very very serious charge. if that were in the southern district of new york, that would have the highest priority, and we would be moving very quickly on that. >> is it fair to say prosecutors have a lot to work with here? >> yes, they do. >> the new book is titled "holding the line" inside the nation's preeminent u.s. attorneys off and its battle with the trump justice department. we've only scratched the surface. the book is out today. former u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york, geoffrey berman, thank you for being here today. congressman adam kinzinger joins and we'll get the latest snapshot on the state of our economy when the august inflation report is released.

cnbc's andrew ross sorkin joins us to break it down. >> and the former president of ukraine, petro poroshenko will be our guest. and senator angus king joins us next on what the american congress can do to make sure ukraine keeps the russian military on the run. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. rumbeat. discovering the virtues of a wandering mind. conflict and climate change. a new black dream. the hidden melodies of trains. the sacred spell of words. this art was looted. the power of a dinner table. a country on the brink. carving a path through the heart of philadelphia. a story of love and obsession. affirmations, etched in vinyl. [ it's funny how the universe works. ]

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king, and talk about the pentagon saying that despite the ukraine's rapid counter offensive, the country still faces a tough fight. thank you so much for being with us. greatly appreciate it. what can you tell us about the level of support that remains in the united states senate and house by republicans and democrats alike? once in a while we'll hear a back venture in the house talking about how they want to cut and run and help vladimir putin. has that started to happen in the senate or is it still a bipartisan effort to actually stop russian aggression and do what the united states usually does which is help people free themselves. >> i don't think it's happening. i haven't heard it, joe. there are rumblings about it. i think what's happened over the weekend will if not silence, at least suppress that sentiment.

it underlines this is an important fight and a winnable fight. i think that's really important. i get letters every now and then saying why are we doing this. my answer is, google ryanland, 1936. that's where hitler could have been stopped and wasn't, and there's no doubt in my mind if putin is successful in ukraine, reabsorbing the soviet union, the baltics will be next, moldova will be next. this is an important red line for western democracy. i don't think there's opposition. we'll see, there are going to be some additional aid packages coming forward, and people are going to have to stand up and take some votes. i think most people understand how important this is to europe, to the united states, and to the world. >> what else does ukraine need right now from us? >> they need continuous support. there's no question that the weapons, like the himars, the

artillery and other weapons like that have made a real difference. one thing that isn't discussed very much is the training that we've provided to them over years, going back to 2014. and one of the differences in the war is the quality of the leadership and the troops, between the two armies. one of the best quotes i heard over the weekend, the ukrainians are fighting for their country, and the russians are fighting for their paycheck. the ranks, the training that's gone on, the ability of the ukrainians to be flexible and change direction and make decisions on the battlefield as opposed to the russians which have this totally top down, they don't have much in the way of noncommissioned officers, that's really one of the things that's making all the difference, but got to tell you, i'm worried, joe, there's a paradox here. the better the ukrainians do, the more dangerous putin becomes, because he's more and more cornered and i'm just

worried about what his next steps might be. we may have gotten a hint of it over the weekend. his pattern in aleppo and grozny and chechnya is bomb the crap out of them. just hammer the civilians and over the weekend, they started hitting electric plants. they're going after water systems to punish civilians. that's his preferred option, but of course beyond that, chemical weapons and lord help us, tactical nuclear weapons, they have a much lower threshold for the use of nuclear weapons than virtually any other nuclear country. >> senator, if putin were to escalate a la grozny, carpet bombing cities, that sort of thing, are we prepared to escalate, do you think, our aid to ukraine, deliver a whole lot

more himars, a whole lot more of these high-tech weapons that are making such a difference on the battlefield but that the ukrainians say they need lots more of? >> i think clearly that would outrage the conscience of the world, including here, and additional aid would be forthcoming. i think additional aid is going to be forthcoming anyway because of the progress that's being made and the effectiveness of the ukrainian use of the supplies that are coming, not only from the u.s., but from all over the world, places like turkey and western europe, so i think if he goes in that direction, it will only ratchet up the pressure on russia and frankly, puts him in a very dangerous position with regard to war crimes and what he's going to be answerable for when this is all over. i wish i could say, you know, this push over the weekend, which, by the way, joe, you mentioned 2,000 square miles, i did a calculation, that's about

half the size of the state of connecticut, that's a lot of territory, and it looks like what the ukrainians did was fool the russians. they talked all summer about a counter offensive in the southeast, and instead, they hit in the northeast and really surprised them and have them on the run. but question now is does putin try to cut his losses or does he double down and his history is doubling down. >> yeah, that's a serious warning. senator king, i want to shift gears and look at a domestic issue. lindsey graham wants to introduce a bill to ban abortion nationally, and i want to get your reaction to this. first, the dobbs ruling was the idea that you push abortion back to states. this seems to counter that. but also all over the country, we are looking at republicans who had taken extreme positions on abortion bans in their own states to win primaries now running in a general election in

november and trying to kind of dial back those more extreme positions. what do you make of what senator graham is proposing? >> well, it's almost amusing if it it wasn't so serious. these are the guys who for years have been talking about states rights. i think they only like states rights if the states do what they want. they only like democracy if they win elections. and the other thing, conservatives always talk about, you know, keeping the government out of your lives, how about keeping the government out of your bedroom and doctors office, and that's what we're talking about here. i think it's a profoundly conservative opinion to say, you know, these are personal decisions. this is not something that the government should be intervening in. i don't understand what lindsey graham is really thinking about here unless he's playing to some constituency in south carolina or on the right wing of the republican party, because, as you say, many candidates who have taken extreme, no

exceptions, murder and all of those kinds of things, they're dealing back as they move into the general election because they're finding out that the public doesn't support that position. again, this is more than about abortion. this is really about autonomy, this is about women's ability to have the freedom to control their bodies. i have often thought if men had to randomly have babies, i think they would be viewing this somewhat differently. to see these men leading the charge to impose rules and obligations and dangerous medical conditions on women, it's just -- it doesn't work on any level. >> senator, i got a call from a friend at bill's lobster house in southwest harbor talking about some red listing rule that actually could have a real impact on families who have if i

should for lobsters for generations, and could absolutely devastate the industry based on the protection of whales when what they're complaining about hasn't happened in 20 years. i think there was a single incident in 2003, 2004, i looked it up, and it's just absolutely bizarre that this group would do this. what can be done to protect the livelihood of these families? >> well, you put it quite right, joe, because some people, they refer to the lobster industry, it isn't really an industry. it's 5,000 sole proprietors who own their own boats, families along the maine coast, and it's a mainstay, their tones, you know, stonington, other towns along the coast, this is really what there is in that economy. this is a private group in california based at the monterey

bay aquarium that's taken it upon themselves, self-appointed, judge, jury, and execution for what's sustainable, my problem with this decision, this order, that is basically they're telling americans we're going to try to put these lobstermen out of business. let's be clear about this. avoid lobsters, they're saying don't buy lobsters, they're saying that to retailers, restaurants, several major online retailers have dropped lobsters as a result of this. and here's the problem, joe, it's not based on any evidence. you know how many white whale deaths are attributed to lobster gear in maine, zero. and i hate reading things on the air, but i got to read you this. this is from their decision. they say due to a lack of information it is often not possible to assign entang lmentes to a specific fishery, documented entanglements

involving unidentified gear of which the lobster industry may be part. they're sentencing this industry to death because of assumptions and supposition. that's not science. that's not good science. and then they go on later and report all the things we've done, the lobstermen out of their own pockets have taken thousands of miles of lines out of the water. they have changed the way they fish. they put linked in the line, using weaker line, they have done all of those things, and this outfit says well, it hasn't been proven that's effective. in other words, we've got to prove that we're innocent and they're doing this on assumptions. it's the most irresponsible decision i have encountered in my public life. >> guilty until proven innocent, and by the way, the consequences would be devastating to families, like you said, up and down the coastline. senator angus king of maine,

thank you so much. greatly appreciate you being on today as always. thanks, joe. coming up, the republican party didn't start with former president donald trump, of course, but could it end with him. author david corn is next and his new book on how the republicans went from the party of lincoln to a party of extremists. we're back in a minute. extremists we're back in a minute my dad was a hard worker. he used to do side jobs installing windows, charging something like a hundred bucks a window when other guys were charging four to five-hundred bucks. he just didn't wanna do that. he was proud of the price he was charging. ♪♪ my dad instilled in me, always put the people before the money. be proud of offering a good product at a fair price. i think he'd be extremely proud of me, yeah. ♪♪ so we need something super distinctive... dad's work, meet daughter's playtime. thankfully, meta portal auto pans and zooms

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(sirens) (news report) (sirens) (news report) something jonathan carl was asking you about, the leaks are real, the news is fake. i don't understand, it seems there's a disconnect there. if the information coming from those leaks is real, how can the stories be fake. >> the reporting is fake. >> i just want to ask -- >> here's the thing, the public, you know, they read newspapers, they see television, they watch. they don't know if it's true or false because they're not involved. i'm involved. i've been involved with this

stuff all my life. but i'm involved. so i know when you're telling the truth or when you're not, and i'll tell you what else i see. tone. the tone is such hatred. i'm really not a bad person, by the way. but the tone is such. i do get good ratings, you have to admit that. the tone is such hatred. >> that's from a 2017 news conference less than a month after donald trump took office. during that news conference that had been called to announce his new labor secretary alexander acosta, obviously went in a different direction. we're joined by washington bureau chief for mother jones, dave corn, his new book is out today "american psychosis," a historical investigation of how the republican party went crazy. congratulations on the book, it's good to see you. i want to set the table with a bit of a summary from the book, it didn't start with trump, the decades long saga of how the gop went crazy reads in part there's

a well established record for 70 years, the republican party has stoked an mouse, and capitalizing on unfounded enemies subverting the nation. 1960s and beyond, it was black people demanding social justice and societal change. 1970s, religious rite claimed liberals and democrats were destroying the nation. tea parties asserted obama had a cabal bent on turning the united states into a socialist hell hole, trump and devotees say the same about today's democrats. the gop hasn't been all extremism all the time but since the 1960s, the party has boosted extremism, prejudice, paranoia and rage, and sometimes led to the gop prevailing in political battles and in other instances, voters have beat back the gamut. it didn't start with trump, oh, no, it was the tea party, and

sarah palin and you take it back to the 1950s. >> a lot of us lived through this. you don't always see the patterns. when i started this book, i didn't expect it to be so timely, relevant to the conversation we're having. i thought it was an interesting intellectual exercise. when you look at joe mccarthy, he claimed literally there was conspiracy in the u.s. government led by george c. marshal, the secretary of defense that was plotting to hand over the united states to the soviet union. not that the policies were wrong or they were misguided or weren't tough enough, but there was actually a cabal, a secret plot, and in a lot of ways it's like qanon today without the baby eating and all the sex stuff, and the republican party lionized joe mccarthy for years before he went off the rails and they finally distanced himself further. but you can take that point and move it through the ages through

the decades up to donald trump. you know, the summation you just read hit some of those points. richard nixon made a deal with white segregationists, extremists to get the nomination in '68. ronald reagan embraced the religious rite in the late 70s when they were claiming that gay people wanted to kill americans and basically destroy christianity, and take over america, and, you know, we forget, it was only a couple of years ago that the tea party people were out there, again, with this conspiracy theory that obama purposely wanted to destroy the nation. an internal enemy, and the key point through all of this is not the crazy stuff on the right but the republican party kept exploiting it and encouraging it. boehner embraced the tea party, had them hold rallies on the capitol steps while they were promoting racist and anti-semitic conspiracy theories about barack obama. >> and joe, in every one of these eras as we tick back through history, there's the

central figure, there's donald trump, joe mccarthy and all those republicans who most of them knowing better go along for the ride. >> right. and david, listen, i'm going to get around to agreeing with you at the end, but be patient with me at the beginning because you're at the beginning. you're going to think i'm preaching a moral equivalent, i'm not, but i'm saying we have been a nation over the past 50 years, 60 years, 70 years that's been paranoid whether it's conspiracy theories around the jfk assassination, neil armstrong walking on the moon, or whether it was the truthers after 9/11. we have dealt with this. sometimes it's come from the left. sometimes it's come from the right. what disturbs me so much now are

the very people that i knew best, the people that worked with me on my campaign starting in 1994, the people whose doors, i was knocking on doors, the people i knew were people that actually -- they watched news. they saw the news. they -- you could have a conversation with them. they could say something crazy to you, i would say no, no, you need to read this. they read it and it's fine. now i talk to those people, i don't read the news anymore. i just don't follow it because you can't trust the mainstream media. i go, oh, so how do you get your information? they get it from qanon, they get it from chinese religious cult websites. they get it from the most bizarre places. when that clip of donald trump ran, i thought i'm glad we led with it because we are now in a post-fact world. i can't even talk to a lot of friends and family members and

people i care so much about, and i have for my whole life based on facts. we can't just say let's not talk about it. they'll say i read this on a chinese -- they don't say a chinese religious cult's website, but that's what it is. or i read this qanon theory, or somebody will say, mike pence, they weren't trying to kill mike pence. did they have guns? swear to god. people with advanced degrees. tell me about that development. by the way, i've been in the republican party until about five years ago. it was never this bad. how did it get this bad? >> well, joe, when they started lining up publicity appearances for me in the book, i asked am i going on "morning joe"? you are my favorite recovered republican. and i was very interested in how you would approach this. because while you're right that there has been conspiracy

theories, wacko ideas on the left and right, what i show in "american psychosis" is that the american party far more than anything on the democratic side has encouraged and exploited this. you can't go back and find -- in terms of leading democrats, i'm talking about presidential candidates and top democrats who embrace this, there's no equivalent to john boehner saying to the tea party, you're right, come into the door. i want to make you part of the republican party. there's nothing like the john burke society helping barry goldwater win the nomination in '64. there's no equivalent to pat robertson and his looniness being used by booth george bushes to become president on the left. i do think there is an asymmetry here. and that the republican party has taken advantage for decades. things have gotten worse, but if you go back and look at the

crazy ideas being generated in the '50s, there were some soviet spy rings but there western reds under the beds everywhere. >> david, i always -- and i think that's what i always say. my point is, yes, i can find you polls that show a large number of democrats believed in 2005/2006 that george w. bush was involved in 9/11. not a single democratic leader fed that hatred. fed that paranoia. they just never did it. one thing, we are always thinking these are the worst times ever. i think constitutionally they are. but i went back and read larry tie's book on mccarthyism. people died. people killed themselves. careers were destroyed. one of the most, for me, heartbreaking moments is when i

had a chance to condemn joe mccarthy on the campaign trail. and ike is a hero of mine. he was in wisconsin, he would have won any way. refused to say a damn thing about it. there are parallels to that and where we are today. >> when i came across that story for this book, and it's the start of one of the chapters, i was moved, too. i'm not a big republican or ike fan, but he almost had a moment of courage. he was going to do it. he was talked out of it by other republicans who said if you do this, it will hurt our republican chances in wisconsin and the national election and hurt us as we try to draw catholics into the republican party. that really in some ways is almost the original sin. the original turning point here, which they said this is crazy. ike knew mccarthy was crazy. he was going after the army and people that he liked. he wouldn't stand up to it because of political transactionalism.

after that point it happened again and again and again. the party that you once loved. >> mike barnicle, the person he should have defended, george c. marshall, a man who was the architect of our victory in world war ii. a man who was ike's mentor, and he kept his mouth shut. he wouldn't say anything. >> eisenhower was late to the defense of marshall and it was after mccarthy was spoken out against. 65 years or so ago, "the paranoid style of american politics" was written and the book still holds up today. along the way, we had republicans, you mentioned barry goldwater earlier. barry goldwater went in and told

richard nixon you have to go. there's been some courageous republicans in the senate and house who stood up over time for various issues. this, i would submit to you, is different. this is like a virus, an infection that has married cowardice with silence and fear. that's a trifecta that holds republicans enthralled to one man and his philosophy who has only been in power -- was only in power for four years. how did that happen so quickly? >> i think what we've seen, if you take the long view, is a lot of events leading up to this. you talk about a virus, and i call it american psychosis. it's a good metaphor. viruses sometimes take a while before they leach a certain level in which it's mass infection. they come in and out of the

bloodstream, they get weaker, stronger. what you see, particularly going back to sarah palin, the republican base was fed a stream of paranoia, death panels, glenn beck saying there were concentration camps being set up by barack obama. you see this happening and it was getting more intense over the decades in many ways. then donald trump comes along. while republicans in the past tried to encourage and exploit it but also act like statesmen and talk about policy matters, donald trump said forget about that substantive stuff. i'll give them the bloodiest red meat i can. i'm just not going to deal with anything else. i believe that the republicans with the tea party, palinism and newt gingrich had been

conditioned to want this stuff. their fears, resentments and grievances had been honored by republicans and exacerbated. trump came along and said i'll take this a step further. what do you know -- he's not the problem. he's one guy. we all know donald trump. i grew up with him. he's not a mastermind or an evil genius. it's the fact that there's tens of millions of americans out there who wanted what he offered. that had not come out of the blue. the republican party had been pushing them in that direction, certainly not putting the brakes on for the last few decades. >> david, my great grandfather in turn of the century 20th south carolina was a huge republican party activist. that's what the republican party used to be. was it mccarthy that flipped the switch and sent the party in a completely different direction? when did that happen? >> i think mccarthy had a lot to do with it in terms of the

paranoia, but actually it was richard nixon. in 1960 when he was running for president, barry goldwater and others came in and said don't talk about civil rights. there's more white southern voters that we can get. nixon said, no. he lost to jfk. and the lesson he learned was to go after the white racist or racist-oriented voters and dump the party's loyalties to civil rights and to black voters in the north. it was called the southern strategy. he told his campaign manager, john marshall, in 1968 to tell the seven delegates at the convention he would give up the pro-negro crap. that's when your grandfather, great grandfather's republican party totally went overboard. it was in the '60 to '68 period

in terms of civil rights. since then the party had a terrible, terrible legacy on racial issues, which you see up until today. >> as you look across history, all these eras you write about, is the one we live in right now unique in how widespread the cowardice is among republicans who will not say a bad word about trump, even when you look at the seizure of the documents from mar-a-lago. marco rubio saying it's just a storage issue. they were calling for hillary clinton to be put in jail because of a server in her house. is this worse than you've seen in history? >> i think the combination of the information revolution, internet people organizing online, getting information online has taken away what used to be some idea of referees. right? in the '50s, things were pretty bad, for many years people paid a high price and republicans were scared to speak out. eventually they did. some did.

and they were able to survive. not all did, but some did. i think now, the idea that a republican can take on trump, at least within the republican party, is -- doesn't exist. >> liz cheney. >> adam kinzinger, i hear he'll be on the show later. these guys cannot sustain careers as conservatives. as conservative republicans, if they don't bend the knee to donald trump. that is different. it's a -- i keep saying it's not an aberration, it's a culmination. it's a continuation from where we used to be. >> such a fascinating conversation and constructive to where we are today. the new book is can the american psychosis." david corn, congratulations on the book. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> you mentioned adam kinzinger, the congressman from illinois is with me right now. you've been standing there listening to this conversation. i'm curious about your take on

where we are and how we got here. >> for me, it was really fascinating to listen to because -- the name, "american psychosis" is the perfect name for the era we're living in. i could look back 15 years on and give insight from there. prior to that i have to lean on historians. i would say republican leaders just for some reason somewhere it all became about power. it all became about fear. donald trump brought heaps of fear into the republican party. for like a year or two people thought maybe we could take down donald trump. when he kept surviving, this fear came through of we have to do everything he wants. he is not vulnerable. a lot of people with that fear sold out their soul because they didn't want to be kicked out of the tribe. it's an intriguing discussion.

i'm sitting here shaking my head, yeah, amen, that's true. >> what's so bizarre for me, adam, is seeing how -- what is conservative has been redefined. i always -- i just stopped fighting it a long time ago. i had a lifetime, 95%, 96%, acu rating, conservative rating, one of the tops in a conservative class of 1994. liz cheney has a lifetime 95%, 96% conservative rating. people have this discussions about illegal immigration, they'll go, yeah, i'm against that. if you cross the border and the first thing you do is illegal, you should be arrested and sent back home. why are you talking that way? i thought you were a lib? if they talk about defunding the cops. no. i think cops need to be supported more. we need to reform policing. we need to take the bad cops

out, but we need more cops. we need more money, that will help the most disadvantaged americans. you just go down the list. i'm a conservative, liz cheney is a conservative on all the issues. what's shocking to me, again, all the people who said i'll vote for you because you're a conservative and you believe in one, two, three -- they don't talk about that anymore. it's are you for the failed reality tv show host? the guy who lost the white house, the senate and the house for republicans or are you for the failed reality tv host? nothing else matters. it's bizarre. >> you're 100%. it's interesting. i got elected in 2010. the number of people that came up to me and put their shoulder around me and go, adam, don't go washington. you be an independent. you do what you think is right. they're now the ones, like, adam, i can't believe you're doing what you think is right

and you're independent of the republican party. also in 2010, all those people would say i'm not a republican. i'm a conservative before i'm a republican. they're now the people i'm saying to them, i'm actually a conservative before i'm a republican because our party has gone crazy. when you came here, the holier than now folks who get elected to congress, who preach to you constantly about the constitution, what's in it, what isn't in it, how this nuance abides by it or doesn't. they're the same people who sold out their values because donald trump said to do so. they're the same people who consider conservativism to be donald trump. sometimes you expect different of us, you find out whether we're conservative or moderate and you're disappointed. we all have to come together. if you truly believe democracy is a threat, we need an

alliance. if you don't believe it, i got it. quit pretending that you do. democracy is a threat, and we need uncomfortable alliances. >> i'm sorry, it's -- we're past the point, willie, where we get hung up on ideology. i told you, where i stand, talking to willie now, where i stand on illegal immigration, i was always more conservative on illegal immigration than the mainstream republican party, the chamber of commerce and the "wall street journal" editorial page. some people may be uncomfortable with that. i get it. i think there's chaos at the southern border. i think it's out of control. all right. so you may disagree with me. we still have something bigger to worry about and that is madisonian democracy. we have to fight for it. we have to defend for it politically with ideas. we can't back down.

i just couldn't agree any more with what the congressman said. let's have those uncomfortable alliances and save this republic and then we can go back to debating about illegal immigration and cops down the road. >> the congressman and his committee, the select committee's work gets at that, the foundations of our democracy. and congressman, we all got some information that you will have your next hearing on september 28th. can you confirm that? >> if the committee announced -- whatever they announced, i'll confirm. we have long meetings today. we're setting down our agenda for the rest of september and the year. that's why we're in d.c. a bit early. again, we'll do what i think we did very effectively earlier in the summer, bring the american people the truth. we have to begin to pivot to writing this report. really, look -- it's always tough when you're dealing with people that are unwilling to talk to a committee like we've

had. doj has not prosecuted some of these folks. okay. that's their decision. there's a point at which when it comes to the criminality, that's not our role. doj has, i think, a wholesome investigation going on. that's where this baton is handed to. not by us, we may have a criminal referral, i think that's likely, but with their investigation from here out. look, we've got to hold people to account. if the rule of law says you can attempt a coup as long as you fail, and you won't be held responsible, that's way more dangerous for this country than some fear of short-term violence or riots in the street. >> on that question of the doj and its investigation, nbc news has confirmed about 40 subpoenas were issued over the past week to people associated with former president trump. according to the "new york times," dan scavino is among

those subpoenaed. a lawyer to bernard karick was among those subpoenaed. he initially offered to grant an interview voluntarily. boris epshteyn was one two people to have their phones seized. he has been tied to the scheme to replace biden electors with fake trump electors. that's the parallel investigation, what doj is looking at. what more is ahead of you on that committee? what might you be sharing with the public in that hearing whenever it is, and then as you prepare the report, how much more is left for you? >> when you say names like boris epshteyn and dan scavino, i get chills because i think that used to actually be in office. that used to be the people running the government and i

still can't believe it sometimes. for the committee, i don't want to ruin the surprise in a couple weeks. i think what we'll talk about a lot more is we may go into more depth on some stuff. more of an overview. some areas that we have not talked about. think about it this way. when we talk about the report and in the future and in my last hearing we did on thursday, the 187 minutes of trump in the white house, doing literally nothing, actively for the first time in his adult life resisting peer pressure to do something. the only time. otherwise he reacts to whatever people tell him. i could have probably had a hearing with seven hours with information on that. we had to keep it to an hour and a half. you'll see more depth, more evidence on these various areas. yeah, i think it's going to be must-watch tv, not from an entertainment perspective, but if you care about the united states american government perspective. >> congressman, when you go back to your district, whether it's on the broader issue of where the republican party has gone to

or the specific issue of january 6th, it seems there are very few minds that are open to being persuaded one way or another. i spent the summer traveling around the country trying to talk to people about the election and it's almost impossible for people to find any argument that might open a crack to them revisiting that opinion of the election being stolen. when you go back to your district and speak to your constituents about these issues, do you find there's occasionally something that can work? something that can produce a conversation where somebody is open to listening to facts and having their mind changed or does it never happen? >> it's rare. look, let's be honest -- i think our hearings -- there's a lot of republicans i heard of anecdotally that i was a die-hard trumper, now i see what he was doing, i can't stand him.

you see reflected in the numbers, the party still loves donald trump. i think it's two things. i think to admit that donald trump is as corrupt as he is means that you have to, as an individual that supported him, admit that you supported somebody who was corrupt and it is hard for people to get to that point without blaming themselves. i say to them, it's not your fault. you've been lied to and abused by your leaders that lied to you repeatedly. it's okay to change your mind. we all change our mind. the other thing is, i'm more convinced that people fear more than death, they fear being kicked out of a tribe. being excluded, being lonely, and now in our life everything is in a political sphere. where you eat dinner is in a political sphere. what tv show you watch, everything is political now, including sports teams. if you fear getting kicked out of your tribe, that's worse than being killed. as someone kicked out of the tribe, it's not fun, but you

have to be willing to do it. it makes you feel a lot better looking into the mirror if you are. >> congressman kinzinger, when the hearings do resume in a few weeks, congresswoman liz cheney now also a lame duck having lost her primary this summer because she, like you, stood up to donald trump. there are not going to be many many congressmen or women who are left who defied him. where are your colleagues, the republicans in the house, where are they taking the country? >> i think we're in a bad spot. i'll say about liz, people always in their life dream about this opportunity to kind of stand up alone in a crowd and do the right thing. only a few people get that chance. what i've noticed is that even fewer that get that chance have

the courage to do it. it's one thing to read something in a history book and be, yeah, winston churchill or whatever. it's another thing to act like that. she has acted like that. my party, nobody in power right now with maybe some rare exception actually believes the election was stolen. they don't. they are lying because they can raise money from it or they fear their constituents otherwise. i think the people come in in january, there will be a significant class of people who believe the election was stolen. that's a fearful thing to me. i have no respect for somebody who tells me i know it's all bs but i have to do this to get re-elected. what i fear is those that come here and truly believe adam kinzinger is part of the soros big government new world order machine and i was part of stealing this election. they'll be in congress in january. that frightens me. >> republican congressman adam kinzinger of illinois, thank you very much. our next guest was covering the trump rally on january 6th

that turned into an attack on the capitol. he followed the rioters as they entered the building. the footage he shot on cell phone won a george polk award. the luke mogelson joins us now, he is the author of the new book "the storm is here." you are a war correspondent, you covered wars in iraq, afghanistan, syria and ukraine. you saw something in this country that told you to come home and begin studying and reporting on what was happening here. what was that? >> it was early on in the pandemic in april when far-right militias were mobilizing against lockdown policies in michigan. on april 30th they entered the state house and accosted lawmakers and as well as law enforcement agents with rifles,

flak jackets, some of the military equipment you normally see on front lines overseas. so when i saw that, the footage and images from that day, i got on the plane to michigan. >> luke, the crowds that gathered at the capitol, the crowds that gathered earlier that day to listen to the president, former president speak and then marched to the capitol, you know, we talk about the oath keepers, proud boys, they were part of the assemblege, but with your time spent with people in the crowds on that day, as i looked at the crowds, i thought to myself, i probably know some of these people. know in the literal sense, that i know them. i know who they are. they're not all evil people. they're not all bad people. i'm wondering, what were your thoughts along those lines?

>> i think it's important to distinguish between the crowd that gathered on the national mall or for trump's speech at the ellipse and those who actually stormed the capitol. not everybody participated in that part of the day. certainly among the folks you can see in this video right now, they were radical right extremists. there's not really any other word for them. they wanted to do violence to lawmakers and police as well. you're right that during the speech there were all kinds of folks there, and folks that i also recognize and know and who i think had just been caught up in the frenzy and the energy that had been building over the course of 2020 and then

especially since the election. >> luke, weren't these the people who previously had backed the blue, who were -- who supported police, i'm wondering how they got their heads around, you know, attacking police officers in that manner, in that violent manner. >> yeah. it's interesting because when i arrived in michigan to cover the anti-lockdown movement in the spring of 2020, a lot of their rage and anger was actually concentrated on law enforcement. not just on federal agents, but also local police who were charged with implementing and enforcing some of these public health policies. and at rally after rally i saw

trump supporters viciously verbally attacking local police officers, state troopers, comparing them to the gestapo, nazis and marxists, ironically. that switched 180 degrees after george floyd was killed. and there was this national uprising against police violence and for police accountability. so i went to minneapolis to cover those protests and riots for about three weeks. when i came back to michigan, i was surprised to see the very same groups and individuals who previously -- who i had previously seen berating law enforcement officers suddenly embracing this rhetoric of backing the blue because it was -- it had shifted to a

position -- an anti-left position, an anti-race position. >> luke, the country was shocked by the images on its tv screens on january 6, 2021. given everything you had seen in the weeks and months leading up to it, were you surprised? you were there when those people breached the building and started beating up cops. >> i wasn't too surprised because there were also two previous pro-trump rallies in d.c., the million maga march on the 14th and another march on december 12th. i covered both of those events. at each one, you had the same groups, the oath keepers, different malitias, they were perpetrating really striking

violence all around d.c. against black pedestrians and cyclists. they were vandalizing black churches, and when they encountered law enforcement officers, both the capitol police and the metropolitan police and the park police, the same officers who would end up defending the capitol on january 6th, if they encountered any officers attempting to enforce the law and impede their illegal activities, they responded violently to them. no. it wasn't that surprising. the violence itself, i was anticipating. i didn't expect them to attack the capitol building. >> the new book is "the storm is here: an american crucible." any minute now, king charles will speak in front of the parliament of northern ireland

with an official message on condolence on the passing of queen elizabeth. and after months of record inflation, could things be cooling down? and the issue of abortion will be on the ballot of michigan. we'll have new reporting on how life-long republicans are struggling to boat on the ballot referendum seeking to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution. you're watching "morning joe." n" ♪♪ ♪♪ "shake your thang" by salt n pepa it's the all-new subway series menu! 12 irresistible new subs... like #11 subway club. piled with turkey, ham and roast beef. this sub isn't slowing down time any time soon. i'll give it a run for its money. my money's on the sub. it's subway's biggest refresh yet.

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david ignatius, i mentioned at the top of the show we have had more conservative lawyers coming out saying that donald trump clearly violated the law. former george w. bush justice department employee john yu who helped write the memo used to justify interrogation techniques after september 11th, the so-called torture memo says

trump's actions concerning the classified documents brought to mar-a-lago were clearly against the law. speaking to the national conservatism conference he said this, quote, trump is not allowed to have the records and to keep them. he could get copies but he can't keep them away from the archives. that's settled. it is not whether trump violated the law. he did. it is not whether the government had legal grounds to get a search warrant. it does. the question really whether he could be charged is what's about stake. and he continued, the real issue, i think, for people on both sides should recognize is this, is it a good use of prosecutorial discretion of judgment to charge him, you said. so my view has been, if you're going to go after a president for the first time in american history for violating a law, i think it should be something much more important than this, like, for example, being involved with the january

6th conspiracy. david ignatius, i think many would agree with john yoo there that the january 6th conspiracy, the possibility of being part of a conspiracy to commit sedition would be as bad of a crime as a president, a former president could commit. but the question is, again, what will merrick garland, what will the department of justice do. you look at all of this activity, and, my gosh, it wasn't that long ago that people were saying merrick garland just didn't have the stomach to hold donald trump accountable. i don't think anybody is saying that now. >> they're not. merrick garland has been slow, careful, steady, but unblinking. he keeps moving forward. he does exactly what he told us a year ago he would. which is to make this case systematically as a good prosecutor does to start at lower levels to get information,

use that information to get additional information. i find in my reporting, the number of republicans around trump who are now willing to talk about him, about what happened is just growing in a startling way. i want to ask barbara mcquade, who's a real legal expert, a question. when we think about what the justice department might charge donald trump with on these two fronts, the documents case at mar-a-lago and the january 6th conspiracy case, i'm curious about how you see justice framing a criminal charge that they might bring. what would be the predicates that they need to be convinced of to go ahead and bring those cases? obviously they're very different cases. speak briefly to what a good prosecutor, what an attorney general would need to have to go forward. >> well, i think, david, in both cases what you need is the

direct evidence of the knowledge and intent of donald trump. and i don't think it's an either/or, you could charge him with both. but i think john yoo makes a good point, if you charge him first in the documents case, does it cause a distraction for the january 6th case which is by far the more significant case. but you don't have to pick one. you can charge both and in many ways you might have to. i think what you would need in the documents case is evidence that donald trump himself knew what was happening and directed others. and i think many of his out-of-court statements after the search warrant was executed tend to show that he did, you know, he has not denied it. he has, you know, you saw kinds of arguments like the evidence was planted and i declassified that, not that, my gosh, i didn't know they were there, my sorry, let's get this back. they still would need to show his direct evidence. i think they can get there. that's why additional investigation is necessary. in the january 6th case, i think as they're narrowing in on what happened at the willard hotel on january 5th and talking to all of those witnesses around them, i think they have the ability to

determine donald trump's intent with regard to seditious conspiracy. did he know the oath keepers and proud boys were going to attack the capitol, and use physical force to stop the vertification of that vote? if they can establish those facts or use false electors to create a subterfuge so that mike pence could use that as a pretext for stopping the vote, if they can prove either of those things, i think they can charge that case. it's there for the finding if they can find it with these witnesses that they have been talking to. coming up, candidate and congressman tim ryan. we'll break down the latest developments in his race against j.d. vance. that's next on "morning joe." jo. 's most precious commodity, especially when you have metastatic breast cancer. when your time is threatened, it's hard to invest in your future. until now.

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measure the best of our energy and skills, to end cancer as we know it and even cure cancers once and for all. >> twitter's former head of cybersecurity will testify before the senate judiciary committee today after filing a whistle-blower complaint about the company earlier this summer. peter zatco is expected to sit for a hearing this morning on data security at risk. in july he said members of twitter's board misled the public and agencies about the strength of the company's security. he said the company suffered significant security breaches so regularly reports should have been filed with government agencies about once a week. twitter defended itself from those claims painting him as a disgruntled former employee who was fired for his ineffective leadership and poor performance. coming up, we'll go live to

ukraine where russian forces are in retreat in the east. the latest on the ukrainian counteroffenive when "morning joe" comes right back. comes ri. k and juicy steak. let's get some more analysis on that, chuck. mmm. pepper jack. tender steak. very insightful, guys. the new subway series. what's your pick? ♪♪ energy demands are rising. and the effects are being felt everywhere. that's why at chevron, we're increasing production in the permian basin by 15%. and we're projected to reach 1 million barrels of oil per day by 2025. all while staying on track to reduce our carbon emissions intensity in the area. because it's only human to tackle the challenges of today to help ensure a brighter tomorrow. moving forward with node- positive breast cancer is overwhelming. but i never just found my way; i made it. and did all i could to prevent recurrence.

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that ensure funds go directly to people off the streets and into there's only one choice. yes on 27. they say you can know a person by their enemies. here come the [ bleep ] ads. that's from people who push bad trade deals against china. i vote against them every time. that's for the people who sell out ohio workers. i vote against them, too. ohio workers need a tax cut. here come the culture wars. i'm not that guy. i'm tim ryan and i approve this message. still got it. >> new ad from ohio's democratic nominee for the u.s. senate, congressman tim ryan responding to the outside groups spending millions of dollars to support his republican opponent, j.d. vance. so much of vance's money has poured in from silicon valley

over the past year. a new "usa today" suffolk unity poll shows vance trailing ryan by 1 point. it shows how competitive this race is in a state that donald trump won pretty easily two times. we have congressman tim ryan with us now. talk about those people, nice scene. you have the jason sedakis car cam working for you. even though you're in the middle of campaigning, i know. talk about quickly those people that have funded his campaign, that funded him in the primary. the silicon valley titans that he said he loved, and the area he said he loved until he decided to become a politician. >> yeah. so, you know, peter thiel gave him $15 million for the primary.

he got two donors, peter gave him 15 in the primary and mitch mcconnell came in with $30 million, all of this money that mitch mcconnell got are the very people who off-shored the jobs in ohio, who made money off of nafta and all of these big trade deals that really led to the disinvestment, the job loss, the heart ache, the opioid addiction in ohio. that's the money mcconnell is using to buy the senate seat in ohio. we have 250,000 low dollar donors. we have low dollar donors trying to combat this thing, and we're winning by a point or two here or there, but i think we're going to win it because he's so disconnected. you ran the piece about the ohio state game. the guy is a complete fraud, started an opiate charity. who starts a fake opiate charity to prey on people in ohio? j.d. vance does.

>> there's a question, where is j.d. vance, he doesn't seem to be campaigning that much. do you get a sense -- i'm serious. me and you, talking politician to politician, former house member to former house member. people would ask me how do you do that? how do you knock on peoples doors all day? how do you go in and talk to them, have dinner with them? i loved it. i absolutely loved it. i considered it an honor when people would let me in their homes to talk about what mattered the most to them. i know you're the same way. this guy you're running against, he doesn't seem to even like this. and, by the way, it's not just media people, top republican donors are saying he's the worst candidate they've ever seen in his life. he hates being out there. he shouts at people in meetings. what's his deal, man?

what's his deal? >> i'm not going to lay him down on the couch here and analyze him. i'm not exactly sure. all i know is that there's one primary value that we have in ohio, you know, whether you're rich or poor, middle class, you better be out there grinding. you know, in ohio, we value hard work more than anything else. you know, some people are smarter than others. everybody is expected to work hard, and those are the values. that's how we were raised in ohio, and it's a complete slap in the face, the dude took the whole summer off. who doesn't want to take the whole summer off? everybody does. single moms with a couple of kids, i travel the state, meet factory workers working six, seven days a week, busting their rear ends for their kids and their family, and you got someone running for the senate here who took the entire summer off, who wants to do one or two events today on a busy day, and we're grinding with five, six events a day, starting early morning like this today.

so the reality is he's not going to get rewarded. we need the resources necessary. you saw the ad, my guys at left hook are doing a great job with our ads, and we're getting out there, and people don't like him. we just got to keep the heat on him. but i just don't think he likes people. i think he wants to be called senator one day. you have done this long enough, joe. some people want to grind and help people, and there's some people who just want the title. he's just a guy who wants the title and he's a fraud. >> congressman, to your point about how people feel about you and feel about him, j.d. vance in the state of ohio, there's part of that poll that we showed that has you effectively tied, it gets into favorability. you are 46 favorable. 26 unfavorable. he's 42 favorable, 43 unfavorable. you're plus 17 in the unfavorable. i guess that leads me to a question of your message to republicans in the state of ohio. there are people who say, well, ohio has gone red now. they went plus seven or eight or whatever it was for donald trump.

what is your message to ohio republicans in this general election who may look at j.d. vance and say i don't like the way he's running the campaign, maybe i don't like the guy, and they're giving you a look. >> i would say i'm one of the most bipartisan members of congress. the last two congresses i have been in the top 10% of most bipartisan. i want to work across the aisle. look, the democrats aren't right on everything. and i'm willing to sit down and have conversations about how we can move out of the age of stupidity and into an age of reconciliation and reform. how do we fix all of these broken systems. some of the answers will come from republicans, not the extremists we're dealing with every single day. we have to kill and confront that movement, but working with normal mainstream republicans. i think that's going to be really, really important. because we have to reform these systems. and i will tell them, we have to get the government out of our business. i'm all in on that. you see the dobbs decision, you see, you know, in florida where

they're trying to punish businesses. j.d. vance is all in on that, punishing businesses because they don't necessarily have the business culture that these ideologs want them to have. like with the decision, getting rid of birth-control, talking about nullifying marriages. that is way too much government in our business. i'm down with that. i think it's important for us also to dominate the industries of the future. that means infrastructure. that means research. and, you know, we have to talk about the fact that just spending money, just spending money does not solve problems. we have broken systems, so we have to fix these systems. i think that will be an era of reform that i would love to lead and be a part of, and i think it's important for this country coming out of the pandemic. i'm saying exhausted majority, democrats, republicans, independents against the extremists leading an era of reform around reconciliation so we can heal this country and move into the future.

again, i don't have a billion-dollar donor to fund me. i need low-dollar people who can go to my website and chip in a couple bucks and help us put this extremist movement to bed so we can move on with being americans again. >> ohio's democratic nominee for the united states senate, congressman tim ryan. thanks again. coming up, what's driving the day on wall street. andrew ross sorkin joins us.

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today in that city, republican senator lindsey graham of south carolina is expected to introduce a bill that would ban abortions across the country after the first months of pregnancy. senator graham previously introduced similar bills but this year's version would call for a ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy as opposed to the 20-week threshold in previous laws. nbc news washington correspondent yamiche alcindor joins us with a look at how this is playing in michigan. yamiche, good morning. what did you find in michigan? >> the national debate over abortion is at the heart of the midterm in michigan. i went to the state and caught up with candidates and

supporters. life-long republican jessica leach was devastated when the supreme court overturned roe v. wade. >> i cried for weeks. i cried for my daughter. i always considered myself pro-life. >> now she changed her mind and her party. she got pregnant at 19 and visited an abortion clin toik weigh her options. she decided to have her son, who's now 17, and says being able to make that choice is something everyone deserves. what do you say to people who think your story is an example of why abortion shouldn't be an option? >> i would tell those people that until recently it was always a hypothetical. i would beg them to understand that having these options paved the way for me to be a good mother. >> reporter: in michigan, residents will vote on a ballot referendum in november that would enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution. incumbent democratic governor gretchen whitmer is also up for

re-election. what is at stake in this election and in the ballot referendum? >> abortion and the right to be a full american citizen is on this ball tot. >> reporter: her views are also shaped by her experiences. >> this college, in the days after i was raped, it dawned on me, oh, my god, i might be pregnant. and the only thing that gave me a little bit of relief is knowing that i could make a decision that was right for me if that happened. >> reporter: her opponent, republican tudor nixon wants to ban abortion with no exceptions. i wanted to know if you've talked with others. >> i lost a baby at 18 weeks. when i lost the baby, the doctor said this baby probably died in the womb at 16 weeks. i held a beautiful baby girl. >> reporter: dixon does not believe abortion is a top issue

for voters. >> they're concerned with having get their kids back on track after being kept out of school. the crime rate has continued to rise in the past couple years. and why our businesses are being crushed by big government. >> reporter: people are mobilizing like the boshgsz rights activist working overtime after voters in kansas recently voted to keep abortion protections in its state constitution. >> i'm very concerned. frankly, the policies that are being put forth in this abortion amendment here in michigan are some of the most extremist policies we've seen in the entire country. >> reporter: meantime, jessica hope shared her story, help keep abortion legal in michigan. her son texted her. >> after you decided to keep me and change your life around me and now your perspective of life is what the world needs most. >> there you have it. both sides making passionate cases, and then there's jessica,

who told me she kept her son because she had family support, but she also said she knows so many other people across the country don't have that same support and are in situations none of us can imagine. she says she feels betrayed by the republican party, a party she's been a part of her whole life. she's voting democrat for the first time. democrats in michigan and across the country are hoping there are many more women like clesz jesz ka who turn out in big numbers in november, catty. >> yamiche, jessica is the post poster child for what democrats hope happens in the midterm elections. what kind of polling is there in michigan? before the ohio referendum, the polls put it closer than it ended up being. do we have any sense of the numbers of how many people there are like jessica who might be voting democrat because of this issue? >> it's a great question. we know the numbers are that there's a hotly contested and very tight governor's race and that the heart of that governor's race is the issue of abortion.